El Alto | Queer: Gender Sexuality and the Arts in the Americas

El Alto 256 Brian Solomon
257
“ASK YOURSELF
HOW A WOLF DEALS
WITH BEING QUEER
IN THEIR LIFE”
Brian Solomon on identity, queerness and the body.
IDENTITY AND DANCE
“Identity is hard. Identity is easy. Identity is sold
to us. I am an artist. I am multi-disciplinary and
I practice visual/media art theatre and dance.
I identify as two-spirited – an identity that is from
time immemorial. It is birthed in Turtle Island
(North America), and when I use that term to
describe myself I’m connecting myself not only
to my indigenous ancestors, but also to my queer
ancestors around the world - an unquestionable
presence in time and on the planet. I am
Anishinaabe (an indigenous nation within North
America) and of Irish settler decent, so I am a
light-skinned indigenous person.”
MOVEMENT RESEARCH
AND QUEERNESS
“The further I look into the body, the more I
see the future. We might be able to change
everything we want with the world and ourselves
by looking deep into our body-home. It’s the
only way we are experiencing the world and life,
through our bodies. Every inch of our body has
been colonised.
How is your body held in public? How is your body
held in public if you are queer, or a person of
colour? Where is it acceptable for your eyes to
look when you are walking the streets of a city?
Where is it acceptable for your eyes to look at
your lover? The answers to these questions will
be ones that are informed by systems of control,
that exist in every land.
In every land in the world a thousand years
ago, people would have looked very different.
Their ideas of gender and sexuality would be
unrecognisable to us now - you might be able
to say all the people from that time would be
queer by today’s standards. Some of their ways
of moving through this world might have been
much wiser than our ways now, and some of their
ways might not fit now. The point is though, that
our uses of the body and how we see it have the
power to change whole societies and the world.
Is my body more important than yours? Are
my eyes more useful than my nose, or do I not
know how to use my nose properly? Is my body
different from the land around me? If it’s not,
then how do I walk this earth as an extension of
the land that is my home with many others?
I think there are many functions of the body that
we have forgotten, and many new possibilities we
haven’t explored yet. We learn about everything
around us through our bodies. They are ancient.
They are millions of years in the making and they
hold much more wisdom from our ancestors than
we can uncover in our lifetime.”
© Cylla Von Tiedemann