Queer Time Travel: Inappropriate.

Katherine Wilkinson and kt shorb are collaborators, friends, and artists that have been thinking and creating together for the past eleven years. Inappropriate is the outcome of four years of investigation into artistic collaboration, friendship, desire, time, and sexuality. Through various modes of communicating, devising, and writing, Wilkinson and shorb have developed an intimate, raw, and cutting glimpse into the intimacies of queer camaraderie. 

CA: Can you describe what Fusebox Festival typically is, and what it will be this year?

KW: Normally, it's a dense mix of humans going from place to place to watch many things for free.

KT: (This weekend) an experiment in virtual connection and creativity.

CA: Before the festival took safety precautions and transitioned to a virtual landscape, what was Inappropriate going to be?

KT: It was (and still will be) a fragmented trip around a friendship that unfolds over 4+ years and across distance. It asks how queerness facilitates both disruptions to the mundane and changes how we interact with time.

KW: The show follows a queer friendship (kt & kw) through a series of conversations that span a variety of timeframes, from one afternoon in a greasy spoon diner to several years, the audience is never quite sure. These conversations are used to illuminate the performative and subconscious worlds of the characters. These two queer bodies are a vehicle through which the audience may look at the possibilities and limits of friendship and what it feels like to be inside of it. The subconscious world is augmented physically by a large ensemble of dancers inhabiting and building new space. The performative world is more poetic and isolated. The play occilates between and blends the two worlds.

CA: Can you talk about this concept of ‘queer time travel’?

KT: In the original version, we played a lot with fragmentation and making four years feel condensed into 70 minutes. I am writing my dissertation on queer time travel. Both my research and the play argue that Queerness puts us outside of normative notions of time such as birth, puberty, work/marriage, procreation, and then death.

KW: Straight time assumes linearity and biological reproduction. Queerness lives outside of known cultural time and therefore, we are capable of time traveling in a unique and important way. Our queer relationship to time is imaginative rather than prescriptive. And our show is about this imaginative space.

CA: Has the digitization of the festival opened up any future plans to translate the show to a virtual format?

KT: Yes and no. I think Katherine and I are so committed to live interaction, this only makes us recognize how that particular medium is actually precious.

KW: I don't think (the originally intended liveness) can happen over the internet. BUT let's check-in after our 24-hour live stream as I may have a different point-of-view.

CA: Can you elaborate on the logistics of the ‘alternative performance’ being live-streamed this weekend?

KT:  We plan to play with how time works and feels by undergoing a 24-hour endurance piece. The audience will witness how Katherine and I "are," but also how time will begin to warp, skip, and turn when exhaustion, tedium, and voyeurism set in.

KW:  I do think this is an incredible opportunity to do time-based research. Some of the questions we’ve taken up in these past few weeks include: What does it mean for two queer friends to communicate throughout an entire day? How does the internet erode and expand time? How can we involve all three worlds—mundane, performative, subconscious—into an intimate at-home voyeuristic experience? Queer folks are always being watched whether we know it or not. We are always being surveyed by straight culture. 

Will we sleep? No idea. Will kt replant their entire garden? Maybe. Will we have a dance party at 12:30 am? ABSOLUTELY.

CA: At the core, what is ' Inappropriate' really about/navigating? 

KW: kt and I have been friends for eleven years. It has been up and down. Even in the midst of huge fights and lots of misunderstanding, we kept making things together. The play is trying to figure out WHY we kept going and what it is that bonds queer people over time. And how our current selves can reconcile who we were in the past with who we want to be in the future.

KT: Then it became bigger than that, about how we make choices and how repetition lays bare certain magical moments that cannot be captured through logic. It might be about navigating the disconnect between what we think we should do to survive and what ends up actually feeding us.

CA: As many creatives transition their practices into digital consumption, what is important for artists to be considering/focusing on right now?

KT: Survival.

KW: Witnessing. Now is a time for us to observe, document, and pay close attention to the details of this moment. I don't think we need to be creating inside of chaos. In fact, how we make sense of this experience on the other side will be more vital to our recovery than anything we make in the midst of a crisis.

CA: How do you think the "shelter-in-place" may evolve video and performance-based art?

KT: I think it will evolve in waves. We're in a "hunker down" wave right now where there is a glut of content. Then there will be an "assessment" wave where people find a specificity to how they create. Once shelter-in-place is relaxed, there will be an over abundance of liveness that will likely overwhelm many artists and audiences. And I believe that will lead to a hybrid mixture of the introvert-quarantine/extrovert-post-quarantine approaches.

KW: I think that the near future of performance will be more about intimacy than scale. More about imagination than the well-made play. We will see small venues who are more nimble and experimental be able to welcome audiences in a way that big organizations will be unable to. Theatre will become a smaller experience that speaks to its roots and necessity, rather than big business.

I also think, sadly, we will lose many artists in this crisis. So many creatives walk a razor-thin line of poverty and this is going to push them beyond return. I am afraid of the voices we may lose, especially queer folks and folks of color.

CA: What does ‘good performance art’ succeed in doing?

KT: Good art is about inciting response beyond the logical. It can be intuitive, emotional, visceral but it needs to have a point of view that is impossible to convey in an opinion piece or essay.

KW: If you have bodies exploring time and space in creative ways, you can tell a compelling story.  And at the center of every great performance is an ensemble that has asked the question: WHY is this piece necessary right now?

Follow kt shorb and Katherine Wilkinson to keep up to date with their latest work.

——————————————————

The live feed will feature kt, KW (Katherine Wilkinson) and a series of guest artist collaborators throughout the 24-hour window. See below for the full schedule.

And Remember, there are dozens of other artists performing, offering workshops, and chatting throughout the weekend for Fusebox.

Want to get involved? 

To build a community of queer kin, Producer Christine Gwillim will perform a queer late-night confessional. She invites you to submit your secrets, regrets, conquests, memories, queries, or whatever else your queer heart desires, and they will be read aloud on Saturday night. Guess which confessions come from kt+KW to win prizes. Confess here.

In addition to this weekend, KW is working to document individual feelings and experiences during COVID-19 and has conducted 75+ interviews thus far. Visit her website, here to learn more.