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Session 5: Wigs
of Wonderment: Performing Race and Gender in the work of moti roti
Speaker: Dorothy Rowe, Senior Lecturer and
Programme Convenor in Art History at Roehampton University
Wigs of Wonderment, a performance piece
by Keith Khan's live art group, moti roti, is a self-declared
'investigation of issues around race and gender, as manifest
in hair and beauty' where the experience of beauty is performed
as a 'sensory journey' for and by its performer-participants.
One of the pivotal ways in which meanings are generated by the project
in its various live manifestations is via the emphasis on a one-to-one
dialogue between the individual performer and participant in front
of a mirror, with no other audience present. The participant, guided
by 'flow co-ordinators' from room to room, activates
the performance by their presence in a particular space (which includes
rooms for hair, make-up, perfumes, consultation and massage). Through
an emphasis on the sensuousness of visual, auditory and olfactory
experiences, set off against the disrupted identities generated
by the artifice of masquerade, the project offers opportunities
for a creative exploration of identity formation. This talk introduces
the audience to the series of themes that structure the interactive
CD-ROM version of this performance event.
Session 5 Webcasts:
Dorothy
Rowe 56k (Real Media stream)
Dorothy
Rowe 256k (Real Media stream)
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help with Real Player?
Suggested Further Reading
- Butler, Judith, Gender Trouble: Feminism
and the Subversion of Identity , London and New York: Routledge,
1990
- Jones, Amelia and Stephenson, Andrew (eds.),
Performing the Body: Performing the Text, London and New
York: Routledge, 1999
- Mercer, Kobena, 'Busy in the Ruins
of Wretched Fantasia' in Mirage: Enigmas of Race, Difference
and Desire, London, ICA/inIVA, 1995
- Rowe, Dorothy, 'Cultural Crossings:
Performing Race and Gender in the work of moti roti' in
Perry, Gill (ed.), Difference and Excess in Contemporary Art:
The Visibility of Women's Practice, Oxford & Boston:
Blackwell, 2004
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