FORUM DIANE TORR
SEX, DRAG AND MALE ROLES – INVESTIGATING GENDER AS PERFORMANCE
Diane Torr gives an artist talk and performative reading from the new book Sex, Drag and Male Roles-Investigating gender as performance
Performance artist Diane Torr has been experimenting with the performance of gender for thirty years—exploring everything from feminist go-go dancing to masculine power play. One of the key pioneers of "drag king" performance, Torr has been celebrated internationally for her gender transformation workshops “Man for a day”, in which she has taught hundreds of ordinary women how to pass as men on city streets around the world. This cultural subterfuge appeals to participants for many different reasons: personal confidence-building, sexual frisson, gender subversion, trans-curiosity, or simply the appeal of disguise and role play.
Torr is visiting Bergen as a partaker in the Never or Now performance festival, and will give an artist talk at Hordaland Art Centre. She will show a BBC video documentation of one of her many workshops, and do a performative reading from the new book Sex, Drag and Male Roles – Investigating gender as performance, a book which documents the evolution of Torr's work by blending first-person memoir and commentary from Torr with critical reflections and contextualization from leading performance critic Stephen J. Bottoms.
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Diane Torr developed her cross-disciplinary art in the downtown New York art scene from 1976 to 2002. Now living in Scotland, Torr has earned an international reputation for her performances and gender transformation workshops (featured on HBO, BBC, and This American Life on NPR, among others). Her work is the focus of a feature film, Man for a Day.
Organised in collaboration with the performance festival Never or Now.