Shadow Text, Begin / The Mirror, Poem at Work, Poems and Other Emergencies, PUBLIC RELATIONS, APRIL (a performance), ...as if leaking, Forever in both Directions, This Container, Touch(ed), Soft Reality

They say that everything must be remade. They say that every word must be screened. They say our bodies are made up of language. They say our bodies are historical artifacts. They say our bodies are collective inventions. They say our bodies hold epic stories.

Shadow Text is a choreographic translation of Monique Wittig’s Les Guérillères (1971), a lesbian-feminist epic. Circular in form, the novel enacts a violent and erotic transition out of heteropatriarchal culture and into a new semiotic order of lesbian relationality. Through sound, text, and movement, Shadow Text explodes the novel, creating an immersive performance where bodily grammar cracks open the text, allowing words to act within and upon the audience’s bodies. No longer is it possible to find any neat distinction between body and word. No longer can we start by saying ‘I’. No longer can we say that everything inside of us is ours. Shadow Text exists within the fissure, under the sign of the O, alongside feminist mythologies, lesbian erotics, revolutionary practice, materialist poetics, and reparative destruction.

Shadow Text takes on Wittig’s aesthetic-political project, which can be characterized through three beliefs—First, that all political revolution must start with language; Second, that poetics are the location where change can manifest itself on and between our bodies; And third, that language is the means of political resistance and creativity that we all have access to. Shadow Text emerges from radical lesbian feminist politics and under Wittig’s infamous declaration “lesbians are not women”. Rather than claiming a certain form of womanhood as many of her second wave contemporaries did, Wittig took another approach, championing the way for queer studies and for a post-gender world. Shadow Text resurrects Les Guérillères from the page bringing it back to the flesh in all its grit, sweat and beauty. 

 
Concept, performance, choreography: Chloe Chignell and Amina Szecsödy
Sound: Amina Szecsödy
Text: Chloe Chignell 
Light design: Leticia Skrycky
Conversation: Simon Asencio

 
Shadow Text has been supported by: 
Swedish Arts Grants Committee, The Vlaamse Gemeenschapscommissie, Flanders State of The Art Kunstendecreet, WorkspaceBrussels, Cité Internationale des Arts Paris, Kunstencentrum BUDA Kortrijk, KAAP Bruges, Perdu Amsterdam and rile* books Brussels.

upcoming

11.04.25 until 13.04.25 • performance
Shadow Text, performance, Dancehouse, Melbourne/Naarm, AUS.
05.04.25 until 06.04.25 • performance
Total by Angela Goh, performance, GOMA, Brisbane, AUS.
02.04.25 until 04.04.25 • workshop
Translating the Biotext, choreographic writing workshop, BFA students, The Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne/Naarm, AUS.
27.03.25 until 29.03.25 • performance
Begin / The Mirror, Performance, Pavillon ADC, Geneva.
22.03.25 • performance
Begin/ The Mirror, Performance, Kunstencentrum BUDA, Kortijk, BE.
20.02.25 until 21.02.25 • reading
I am a Translation, Artist Presentation, Werkplatz typographie, Amsterdam NL

recent

26.01.25 until 01.02.25 • residency
TOTAL by Angela Goh, Residency, Critical Path / Ready Made, Sydney AUS.
13.01.25 until 31.01.25 • residency
SUNCUT - Research for new work, Residency, Critical Path, Sydney AUS
06.01.25 until 10.01.25 • residency
Resonance by James Bachelor, Residency, Canberra Theatre Centre, ACT, AUS.
03.12.24 until 20.12.24 • residency
Resonance by James Bachelor, Residency, Berlin, DE.
28.11.24 until 30.11.24 • performance
Begin / The Mirror [premiere] NEXT festival, Espace Pasolini, Valenciennes, FR

past

01.07.24 until 07.07.24 • residency
Begin / The Mirror, residency, Kunstencentrum BUDA, Kortrijk
22.06.24 • performance
Begin / Beguines [here love speaks] presentation at Klosterruine, Berlin.
03.06.24 until 14.06.24 • residency
Begin / The Mirror, Residency, Pavillion ADC, Geneva
22.04.24 until 26.04.24 • residency
Begin / The Mirror, Residency, Marseilles, FR
27.02.24 until 28.02.24 • performance
Shadow Text [Premiere] Bits of Dance KAAP, Bruges, BE.
16.12.23 • performance
Poem at Work, presented at SB34 as part of A Note on Dialect [Prelude] an invitation by Simon Asencio. Brussels, BE.
27.11.23 until 15.12.23 • teaching
Teaching Workshop "Translating the Bio-text" at HZT, Berlin, DE.
10.11.23 • performance
Shadow Text at Perdu, Amsterdam NL
14.09.23 until 15.09.23 • performance
Poems and Other Emergencies as part of conference: "Readings on the poetics of measure", Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp.