{"id":8792,"date":"2013-02-12T15:26:41","date_gmt":"2013-02-12T13:26:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.femininemoments.dk\/blog\/?p=8792"},"modified":"2026-01-12T10:50:41","modified_gmt":"2026-01-12T08:50:41","slug":"gender-talents-a-special-address","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.femininemoments.dk\/blog\/gender-talents-a-special-address\/","title":{"rendered":"Gender Talents: A Special Address"},"content":{"rendered":"

Review of Gender Talents: A Special Address, The Tanks, Tate Modern for Feminine Moments –\u00a0Text: Anna McNay\u00a0\/ art-Corpus<\/a> <\/em><\/p>\n

\"Panellists<\/p>\n

Panellists at The Tanks, Tate Modern<\/em>. Photo by Anna McNay<\/em><\/p>\n

Gender Talents: A Special Address<\/h2>\n

\"AnnaAs part of Tate Modern\u2019s Charming for the Revolution Congress for Gender Talents and Wildness<\/em> weekend, Saturday 2 February 2013 saw the Tanks host a full day symposium with presentations by a variety of artists, activists and academics, all seeking to investigate the contemporary status of gender politics, \u201cask[ing] what is at stake when questioning, collapsing, inverting and abandoning the gender binary.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brought together by Carlos Motta, the speakers each presented a short manifesto on the subject of queerness, be it in terms of sexuality, race, physical ability, or any other standard which society attempts to regulate, but focusing on gender. As Motta suggested, a manifesto is itself \u201ca speech act of performance\u201d which attempts to balance political subjectivity with political strategy. The location of the symposium was also significant: Tate Modern was chosen for its weight as a cultural institution, \u201ca legitimising agent of culture\u201d \u2013 a \u201ccentral\u201d place from which to speak to the \u201cmargins\u201d.<\/p>\n

[Photo right: Anna McNay in one of The Tanks’\u00a0gender neutral toilets at Tate Modern.]<\/em><\/p>\n

Alongside a short film manifesto by Dean Spade, the capacity audience was also addressed by the medical doctor and Professor of Sexology, Esben Esther Pirelli Benestad; the pioneer of queer photography, Del LaGrace Volcano; academics J. Jack Halberstam and Beatriz Preciado; the speaker and educator, Terre Thaemlitz; the transvestite philosopher and recipient of the Foundation for Arts Initiatives grant in 2013, Giuseppe Campuzano; the feminist curator and art critic, Xabier Arakistain; and the film-makers, Campbell X and Wu Tsang.<\/p>\n

Whilst some speakers took Motta\u2019s words quite literally, and performed their manifestos, moving around the central Tank space, from one brightly coloured podium to the next, others read their words more sedately, and Thaemlitz, who expounded the idea that queerness need not necessarily imply talent, and that the contemporary celebratory approach to trans issues is somewhat flippant when one considers the struggles that still go on, sat, face-hidden by hair, back to audience, on the corner of the stage.<\/p>\n

Following Pirelli Benestad\u2019s call to abandon the \u201ccurse of dichotomy\u201d and to celebrate a \u201cgender euphoria\u201d, Volcano did just that, with his poetic performance shouting out a manifesto for queer bodies, or bodies that queer, since, in his mind \u201cqueer\u201d is not a noun, but rather \u201ca verb in drag passing as an adjective.\u201d Queer bodies, then, are \u201cbodies that through the simple act of existence personify resistance.\u201d A queer body \u201cshows us how to love all that which we are taught to hate,\u201d since \u201cbodies that queer, are bodies we fear.\u201d And through standing up and speaking out, demonstrating, and showing one\u2019s body, (in Volcano\u2019s case, his \u201chairy hermaphroditic breast and Barbie doll feet\u201d), the limits and definitions of gender are gradually undone. Biology, after all, is not destiny.<\/p>\n

Halberstam\u2019s presentation showed us contemporary music idols Lady Gaga, Kanye West, and Jay Z, whilst Preciado cited Foucault, and Arakistain took us through the history of feminism. Campbell X, standing up for Queer People of Colour, showed youtube clips of young people speaking out, and finished with a clip, oft removed from youtube by the censors, from her own film, Femme, which opens with a \u201choney shot\u201d, showing a woman engaged in autoerotic activity.<\/p>\n

And that pretty much sums up the variety of the day: from Foucault to Hip-Hop; from hairy hermaphroditic breasts to naked girls self-pleasuring. Gender, and all it entails, certainly covers a vast spectrum, and cannot, and should not, be forced into a binary division. Despite Thaemlitz\u2019s worries, the \u201ctalents\u201d of the congress\u2019s title suggest, as Motta pointed out, self-empowerment, and the semantic inversion of society\u2019s imposition of \u201csyndrome\u201d or \u201cdisorder\u201d. Perhaps Pirelli Benestad\u2019s words sum it up the best: \u201cWe must rejoice in diversity, but we must not impose diversity.\u201d But, we must continue to speak out, and, thankfully for the queer community at large, there are those, like Saturday\u2019s panel, who do just this, and for whom, as Volcano stated: \u201cSilence has never been an option.\u201d<\/p>\n

About Anna McNay<\/h2>\n

Anna McNay is an art writer and editor with a background as an academic linguist. She is a regular contributor to Studio International, Photomonitor, DIVA, and various other publications, including her own blog, art-Corpus. Her areas of particular interest include art and the body, art and text, and gender.<\/p>\n

Related Links<\/h2>\n

Read also Charming for the Revolution: A Gaga Manifesto by Jack Halberstam<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Review of Gender Talents: A Special Address, The Tanks, Tate Modern for Feminine Moments –\u00a0Text: Anna McNay\u00a0\/ art-Corpus Panellists at The Tanks, Tate Modern. Photo by Anna McNay Gender Talents: A Special Address As part of Tate Modern\u2019s Charming for the Revolution Congress for Gender Talents and Wildness weekend, Saturday…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8794,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[665],"class_list":["post-8792","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-panel-debate","tag-anna-mcnay"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.femininemoments.dk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8792","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.femininemoments.dk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.femininemoments.dk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.femininemoments.dk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.femininemoments.dk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8792"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.femininemoments.dk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8792\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29475,"href":"https:\/\/www.femininemoments.dk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8792\/revisions\/29475"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.femininemoments.dk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8794"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.femininemoments.dk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8792"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.femininemoments.dk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8792"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.femininemoments.dk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8792"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}