Anohni

ANOHNI — VOICE, MOURNING, QUEER PERFORMANCE & COLLECTIVE FUTURES

BLACKLIPS PERFORMANCE CULT — 1992–1995

ANOHNI co-founded Blacklips Performance Cult with Johanna Constantine and Psychotic Eve. Between 1992 and 1995, every Monday at approximately 1:00 a.m., the collective presented a new original play at the Pyramid Club, East Village, New York.

The collective included drag queens, punk women, artists and students. MoMA describes an AIDS-crisis aesthetic combining tenderness, surrealism, hysteria, enactments of violence, live music, ensemble work, lip-sync, dance, makeup, handmade costumes and sets made from street garbage. ([The Museum of Modern Art][15])

ANOHNI therefore does not move pop singer → performance art. The genealogy is QUEER UNDERGROUND PERFORMANCE → VOICE / SONG → MUSICAL PRACTICE.

Blacklips functioned as a witnessing community rather than an audience-as-consumer market. This remains relevant to ANOHNI's voice as lament, mourning, accusation, testimony and invocation.

FUTURE FEMINISM

Future Feminism emerged through collective discussions involving ANOHNI, Kembra Pfahler, Johanna Constantine, Bianca Casady and Sierra Casady. It produced 13 TENETS, engraved into round rose-quartz discs and displayed in a circle. The installation became the spatial centre for performances, lectures, readings and discussions. The first New York exhibition occurred in 2014; participants around the project included Marina Abramović, Laurie Anderson, Lorraine O'Grady, Kiki Smith and others. ([Holland Festival][16])

TEXT → STONE → CIRCLE → GATHERING → PERFORMANCE

Political language becomes material, spatial organisation and ritual assembly: a proposition becomes something around which people physically gather.