Chants on Camp

2022, Performance lecture, video documentation

Link: https://youtu.be/ijZIr4HIqmc

A collaboratively developed performance lecture piece based on the 1964 essay, Notes on “Camp”, by Susan Sontag. Performed during the Open Studio Days at the International Summer Academy of Fine Art in Salzburg.

Passages from the essay’s list of notes on the cultural term “camp” were read to the audience. Each performer performatively (re-)interpreted individual passages from the text. During each individual performance, the remaining group rhythmically “chanted” keywords from the passage, intensifying the intended interpretation.

Performance Text (from passages 9 & 10):

The androgyne is certainly one of the greatest images of camp sensibility. The most refined form of sexual attractiveness and sexual pleasure is going against the grain of one’s own sex.

The most beautiful in virile men is something feminine. The most beautiful in feminine women is something masculine. Camp sees everything in quotation marks. Am I a “woman”? Am I a “man”? Or am I something “in between”?

Sexless. Ambiguous. Exaggerated. Flamboyant.