Research components

Research question:

In what ways can the body serve as a site of resistance against patriarchal structures through experimental aerial art?

Aim: Investigate the physical, symbolic, spatial potentials of the aerialist body as a feminist mode of expression – by this challenge patriarchal structures and norms.

Objectives:

My objectives are SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound). They are my framework to set clear, focused, and practical goals that help me achieve my aim. 

-          Identify experimental aerial art. What is that? Who does practice it? Why is it different from traditional and contemporary aerial art? Why is it needed? aerialist body, how has aerial practice been used in performance art? Feminist aerial art – historical contemporary. Find examples and discuss if they engage and how with the feminist / gendered norms. Find a lens / circus critique framework to analyze them.

-          Identify the site of resistance and patriarchal structures, what am I resisting? Identify patriarchal norms in performance art and in aerial art. How can aerial practice resist / dismantle / disrupt that? through Aesthethics? Through the equipment itself? In education?

-          To test the potentials of resistance. can it bare feminist critique, is what I am doing a feminist mode of expression. Do I embody resistance?

-          Audience perception: Show audience: what does the audience perceive? Evaluate my strategy (impact of methods) through audience perception. Create a framework of evaluation

-          Contextualise verticality & suspension & find connection to feminism and performance art – relates to studio practice. Embodied feminism in aerial practice. Politics of body + ethics of body

-          Contribute to the feminist discourse, alternative modes of presence and expression, performativity (in aerial practice) How can aerial body resist/subvert gender expectations

Methods:

-          literature review

-          artistic practice analysis; archival analysis

-          studio based practice (video document + analysis) – what do I observe

-          try-outs + audience talk QnA / survey

-          reflective journaling; diary – log- reflective writing note book. Tracing

-          Qualitative interviews with ppl in the field, delineating the field of experimental circus – experimental aerial art

Field:

• experimental aerial art: intersection of aerial practice and performance art (political feminist, gender norm questioning)

  
  

• artistic components of the field:

  • Tanja Peinsipp. heck – A CARe less WORK. 2024. dismantling traditional aerial equipment – great example of experimental aerial art. Feminism? Could be stronger. Aerial art yes

  • Regina José Galindo. lo voy a gritar al viento. 1999 (performance lecture. Hang and speak) is it aerial practice no, it is a suspended body in performance art.

  • Sankai Juku. Paris bridge. 1986: aerial practice border– butoh (dance?) what if a FLINTA body hangs like that (in public space)? How does the message change, can she/I hang topless? Not a feminist piece

  • Stephanie Skrein – WIRECARD: Last Exit Bad Vöslau. 2024. Aerial Drag King, Business man. Mansplaining, hight. Feminist and aerial art: yes

• theory: feminist reclaiming agency

  • “Rethinking the Political: Art, Work and the Body in the Contemporary Circus” by Lindsay Stephens, 2012. p146: Corpo events for survival as an aerialist. - Economical struggle, stereotypical discourse?

  • “Criticism Within the Circus Sector: Redressing a Power Imbalance” by Katharine Kavanagh, 2019. p65: “The field of circus performance does not have a critical culture built within its practice the way that other performance and visual art forms do”. – what framework to use to analyze my own practice + feedback,  circus critique beyond technique

  • “Aspirational circus glamour: rethinking the circus grotesque through female aerialists of the inter-war period” by Kate Holmes, 2017. Female muscularity and transgressive bodies in circus (aerial trapeze) in historical view. - How can I see this today?

  • “You Have to Accept the Pain: Body Callusing and Body Capital in Circus Aerialism” by Walby and Stuard, 2021. p12: “Body expectations among circus companies also dictate how often an aerialist might work.“ - gender bias, how can we change that?

  • “Circus Subjects - Genderful Bodies in aerial Motion” by Laurel Abel, 2022. - theoretical analisys of artists, What does this means in pratice? 

Urgency:

• Personal

  As a survivor of rape, fighting patriarchal structures and systemic + legal oppression

  experience of not belonging in the conventional aerial world, norms of beauty and form. Exclusion—professionally and financially. 

• Societal

  Research to confront stereotypical norms and oppressive structures. Peak of the iceberg: one our of three. Create space for vulnerability and safety for FLINTA* bodies 

• Field

  feminist aerial performance underrepresented, under-theorised and under-funded. Political circus exists, aerial art questioning form, aestetics and apparatus rare

ETHICS:

• Sensitive data. Consent, stored securely, published only reviewed and permissioned.

• Topic needs contextualisation, experiment out of context-misinterpretation

• Risk assessments (rigging, audience)

• Trigger warnings & Post performance decompression for gendered trauma

• Sustainable material use / Recycling