Queering Performance: Archiving as Disruption?

“Here, again, are bodies on stage.”

– Prof. Madhavi Menon¹

Project Heads: Dr. Arunima Theraja and Charul Mehndiratta Project Lead: Jagriti Jain Core ELM Student Team: Serene George, Kehkasha, Heer Nimavat with support from Kallol Kashyap Data Visualization and Design: Nithya Subramanian

A stage – an act – a dance – a song – a story – an audience – a memory – a moving body of moving bodies. This is unprecedented work. Among existing queer archives, we are India’s first archive of queer performance. Digital – globally accessible – dynamic – diverse – multilingual – a record of remembered and unremembered collective memory.

The focus of this archive is queer Indian performances, and it is essential to clarify the use of these terminologies. ‘Queer’ serves as an umbrella term encompassing both sexual and gender identities that digress from normative frameworks. It also represents a political stance broadly defined as resistant to heteronormative structures (Dasgupta, 2017). In the context of the archive, ‘queer’ encompasses both these dimensions. Building on insights from scholarly and activist perspectives on queer identities (Bhaskaran, 2004; Dave, 2012; Shahani, 2008), the term not only questions heteronormative power structures but also aims to challenge and unsettle the status quo.

The archive’s timeline stretches from the 1990s to contemporary times. The 1990s marked a transformative period for India’s queer community, shaped by the liberalization policies of 1991 and the advent of digital technologies (Dasgupta, 2017). As globalization fostered the rise of an English-speaking, educated middle class, the internet emerged as a critical space for queer individuals to explore identity, foster social connections, critique exclusionary nationalism, and reclaim South Asia’s queer histories (Vanita and Kidwai, 2000). A queer digital archive offers a dynamic record of how digital spaces facilitated identity formation, intersectional activism, and cultural expression.

This archive bridges the research gap in queer digital presence as highlighted by Shahani (2008), preserving the interplay of digital and physical spaces that defined queer identity and performance during this era. It not only captures history but also reframes queerness as a site of resistance and imagination in a rapidly changing India.

Identity is transcended in the scope of queer performance and this archive’s interpretation of it, capturing queerness as an ethos, a movement, and a challenge to conventional narratives of gender, sexuality, and artistic expression. Judith Butler (1988) refers to gender as a social construct that demands behavioral performance conditioning and repetitions. We have examined and theorized how performance serves as a space for deconstructing and reconstructing gender.

In an interview with the team, the contemporary Launda Naach performer Swaja translated their taken name as ‘self-born, self-created’. This archive, therefore, not only preserves these acts of creation but also offers a space for continuously redefining and reimagining queer identity through performance.

Queer performance, in the words of Navtej Johar², holds within it the spirit of recklessness; teasing, and teetering between play and fight. This notion of recklessness aligns with Arondekar’s (2023) concept of abundance—a framework that invites a rethinking of queer identity and performance not as fixed, but as a fluid, dynamic force. Abundance is not merely a surplus of possibilities but a deliberate excess that challenges boundaries and expectations.

Cataloging: A Key Step in Archiving

The cataloging phase was central to organizing the queer performance archive and refining its philosophical framework. Initially, the team adopted an individualized approach, with each member maintaining separate tabs in the catalogue. Each week, a few performances were catalogued personally, allowing the team to develop a foundational understanding of how to approach and analyze performances.

Weekly Feedback

As the process evolved, regular feedback sessions were held to review and refine the entries. These sessions were crucial in identifying gaps, aligning entries with the broader philosophy of the archive, and learning from each other's approaches. The number of performances catalogued each week steadily increased as the team grew more confident and skilled in this task.

Through this iterative practice, the team discovered that the concept note’s philosophy—which articulated the theoretical underpinnings of the archive—needed to be directly shaped by the catalogue. This realization brought a sense of alignment between the archive’s practical and conceptual dimensions, ensuring that every entry reflected the archive’s queer and socio-political lens.

Interactions – Workshops

Several workshops and interactions with experts contributed to the process of how the team archives currently. They were essential in shaping the team's understanding and methodology:

• CSGS Workshop: "What is ‘Queer’?" with Charul Mehndiratta introduced fundamental concepts of queerness, such as symbolic representations of desire and personal identities.
• Workshop with Sangram (Performance Artist) focused on body movements, the traditions of dance, and queering performance arts in popular culture, providing insights into the intersections of tradition and queerness.
• Workshop with Navtej Johar delved deeper into the theory and praxis of queer performance, challenging the team to think beyond identity and theme to explore form, space, and embodiment.
• Workshop with Queer India Archives (Shobhna S Kumar and Ishita Shah) covered the theoretical and practical aspects of archiving, teaching the team how to critically analyze existing archives and develop their own methodology.
• Academic Writing and Introductory Archiving Workshops (Dr. Arunima Theraja) and Reading Workshop (Jagriti Jain) with CSGS refined the language and literature of archival work, ensuring political correctness, precision, and contextual relevance.
• Conversation with Swajaa (Performance Artist) explored the nuances of Launda Naach and its language, helping the team understand the performative and linguistic layers within specific traditions.
• Regular feedback from CSGS, peers, and performers was pivotal in refining the archive. These discussions ensured a balance between inclusivity and specificity, making the archive a dynamic and living entity.
• Workshop on Queer Film-making and Visual Storytelling by Ankush Gupta and Sejal Patel gave us very helpful pointers for our individual film documentaries for Phase 2 of our archival project. Please refer to the CSGS Youtube Channel to view our upcoming archival films and for more information.

Primary and Secondary Resources

We initially cataloged performances regardless of the availability of their video clips and attempted to reach out to performers and organisations in search for them. This process was aided by the division of catalogue entries into ‘primary’ and ‘secondary’ resources. As the catalogue expanded, performances were classified into these two main types:

• Primary Resources: These entries were based on performances for which the team had clips of the performance, even if they were short clips.
• Secondary Resources: These included performances for which no direct clips or primary materials were available. These entries relied on scholarly reviews, articles, or indirect accounts and played a complementary role in contextualizing the archive.

Category Models

As we moved into a combined primary catalog we started thinking about possible categories within our performances. We have compiled performances under the categories of ‘body’, ‘space’, ‘language’, and ‘queering tradition’ as follows:

Body

These are performances wherein the body either embodies queerness or becomes an agent of queerness, either gets queered or queers space, language, form, etc. The repertoire as theorized by Diana Taylor (2003) refers to those forms of knowledge and cultural memory embedded in our bodies. The body, as the primary instrument of gender performance, embodies immediate, nuanced experience. For example "FAR... WITHIN" by Laksha (Lakshya) used the body as a site to talk about dreams and imagination of trans women's experience of questioning the heteronormative structures.

Space

Heteronormativity has dictated the spatial limits of queer bodies. Performances that make unconventional use of space or use unconventional space redraw social maps. Performances like Launda Naach have a specific location within the popular culture of a community. Performed in public spaces and viewed by audiences of all ages, it occupies space obtusely. Drag, conversely, challenges society's hypocritical duality of private and public spaces.

Language

Using language differently is the creation of a new language, through subversion, othering, or expression. From pronouns that are deeply embedded in the syntax of our psyche, the use of non-verbal language, the protest in silence, to the adjectives we choose to describe ourselves with, our expressions are riddled with gender performance. By toppling the sequence of within and without, the language of queer performances chooses to tell different stories differently. For example, in Bharath Savitri Divakar’s spoken word, ‘One Part Woman’, the binary code is used to express the mechanical binary of heteronormativity.

Rewritings

Re-writings is about subverting both, form and history and overturning conventions of a form upheld and gate kept by tradition, on and off stage. It focuses on how performers reimagine and reclaim the set, and challenge fixed, and dominant notions of traditional art forms set by upper castes, classes, and identities. For example, Mir Raheem’s Kathak performance produces a queer and novel interpretation of ‘Tum Radha Bano Shyaam’, a traditional Hindustani classical thumri.

Limitations

A primary challenge in archiving performance is preserving the transient nature of live performances without losing dynamicity. Capturing fluid, site-specific performances like Launda Naach in urban settings is complicated, as it risks losing the immediacy and cultural significance associated with such public, regional expressions. Technical limitations, such as long-term digital preservation, pose logistical hurdles; however, digitization remains the most viable option for broad dissemination.

Initially, the team faced difficulties in defining and aligning the concepts of queer and performance. Over time, the introduction of clearer litmus tests for queer performances being added for cataloging queer performances strengthened the archive’s rationale. Another significant challenge was the politics of algorithms, which shape the visibility of certain performances. Language and keyword limitations, particularly the reliance on English, further restricted the discovery of regional and cultural performances. Expanding searches to include Indian languages became essential to represent the diverse spectrum of artistic expression. Additionally, the subjective ways in which artists perceive their work as queer often diverged from archival categorizations, adding complexity to the process. The archive also faces the critical task of resisting dominant narratives and ensuring it captures the multiplicity and fluidity of queerness. Finally, sustaining the archive demands substantial technological and human resources, presenting ongoing challenges to its longevity and accessibility. Despite these limitations, this archive is a leap forward into the re-writing of the history and evolution of Indian queer performance.

Moving forward, the archive is hoping to diversify its mode of presentation and create a limited series shadowing select queer performers or performances on the center’s YouTube Channel. As foundational members of this archive of Indian modern queer performance, we are hopeful about the continued lineage of this initiative and its sustenance in collective memories, performing arts, and all that we know as ‘tradition’. Indeed, a moving body of moving bodies, this archive aims to move - not fleetingly - but in a way that echoes, reverberates, and causes ripples - long after the curtains have closed.

Endnotes

¹Quoted from Madhavi Menon’s 2015 book, Indifference to Difference: On Queer Universalism

²Johar, Navtej. What Is Queer Performance?. Workshop, Google Meet, 3 Oct. 2024.