Gend Up | Del LaGrace Volcano

In their key­note, titled INTER*me: VIS­CE­RAL PLEA­SU­RE, POLI­TI­CAL PRO­VO­CA­TI­ON, pre­sen­ter Del LaGrace Vol­ca­no will intro­du­ce their work on the sub­ject of BoDieS tHaT QweeR in an artis­tic per­for­mance by accom­pany­ing their series of pho­to­graphs with a poem of the same name. The focus of this per­for­mance is to address and cri­ti­ci­ze the socio­s­truc­tu­ral as well as poli­ti­cal­ly pre­de­ter­mi­ned ways of thin­king about and stan­dards for que­er bodies, and at the same time to issue a chall­enge to tho­se who iden­ti­fy as que­er by con­ti­nuing to oppo­se the socio­cul­tu­ral claims. On a more subt­le level, Del LaGrace also chall­enge the gene­ral public to accept and love the­se bodies. Thus, in their super­b­ly pro­vo­ca­ti­ve way, Del LaGrace invi­te us to enga­ge with the issue of resis­tance regar­ding que­er bodies.Volcano ear­ned an MA in Pho­to­gra­phic Stu­dies at Uni­ver­si­ty of Der­by, UK in 1992 after stu­dy­ing pho­to­gra­phy at the San Fran­cis­co Art Insti­tu­te from 1979–81. They are con­side­red to be one of the first ins­ti­ga­tors of que­er LGBT­QI culture.