Performing (at) the Body's Edge: Mortal Works

skin

a conversation with Shelley Jackson and Rebecca Schneider
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November 15, Tuesday
7 to 8:30 pm
Shelley Jackson, writer and artist
Rebecca Schneider, Theatre Arts and Performance Studies, Brown University
The question of the body — the body as question – is a recurring motif in the work of multi-media artist Shelley Jackson. Whether she is spiritualizing anatomy in her short story collection The Melancholy of Anatomy, imagining an alternate universe in which conjoined twins (“twofers) are the avant-garde of identity politics (Half Life), or “publishing” a short story (“Skin”) composed entirely of tattoos inked one word at time on the bodies of 2095 participants, Jackson presses her audience to ask, where does my body begin and end? “Skin” is subtitled “A Mortal Work of Art.” But the relationship among body, art, and mortality cross-crosses her work. This issue — whether or how art preserves the body, and with what de- and re-composing effects — is at the center as well of scholarly investigations by performance studies scholar Rebecca Schneider, whose publications include the books The Explicit Body in Performance and Performing Remains: Art and War in Times of Theatrical Reenactment. Join us for an exciting evening of conversation between Jackson and Schneider at the body’s edge.
Department of Performance Studies Studio
721 Broadway, Room 612

between Waverly and Washington Places
This event is free and open to the public.  Venue is wheelchair accessible.
For more information, please call CSGS at 212-992-9540 or email csgs(at)nyu.edu.
Co-sponsored by the NYU Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality (CSGS) and the Department of Performance Studies.
Image courtesy of Shelley Jackson.


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