Aporetic Patrimony
performance by Lorene Bouboushian

"Bouboushian's new work mines the legacies of the artist's Palatine German and Armenian forebears, questioning what healing becomes possible when queer perspectives are brought to bear on ancestral trauma. Situated within the discursive impasse of aporia, the work stages this query in zones where grammar meets its undoing--where speech, testimonial and patrimonial, is stilted, spastic, jolted, subdued, over-amplified, and always in fragmentation. Yet within that space a broader vision emerges: an ethics of a situated, contingent responsibility, whose necessity is perpetual and whose terms ever in development."
--Macklin Kowal, Curator

Lorene Bouboushian is a genderqueer artist originally from rural Texas, with family ties to Lebanon and Armenia. They work within dance, experimental music/noise, and performance art. They build a rhizomatic practice through visible forays into performances and workshopping, and less visible forays into curating, writing, dialogue, modes of care and support, and resource sharing. They utilize “self-exposure and vulnerability in real, risky ways” [CultureBot, 2011], and produce “thought-provoking commentary on social limits” [Minneapolis Star Tribune, 2016].

They have shared work in New York City at Dixon Place, JACK, Danspace Project, Issue Project Room, Center for Performance Research, and the Queens Museum. They have held residencies at New York Live Arts (Fresh Tracks) and Chez Bushwick, and currently are in residence at Movement Research.

They have also performed in Seattle, Madison, Athens, and Beirut, performing in festivals including New Genre Festival (Tulsa, US), Miami Performance International Festival, QueerNY and Queer Zagreb, Inverse Performance Art Festival, and Month of Performance Art-Berlin. They have shared their interdisciplinary teaching practice at universities in Kentucky, Beirut, and Mexico. They also curate interdisciplinary performance at the Glove in NYC.

They have performed for Jill Sigman/thinkdance, Yvonne Meier, Melinda Ring, luciana achugar, Daria Fain, and Kathy Westwater. They are a former member of NYC based collectives XHOIR (organized by Colin Self), Feminist Art Group (organized by IV Castellanos), and Social Health Performance Club. They are currently leading the UNDOING AND DOING Social Practice Collective.

'Aporetic Patrimony' marks Bouboushian's second performance in Athens. They will additionally offer a workshop, 'UNDOING' on Saturday 28 September (12:00-15:00). Stay tuned for details.