A Weak Queer Body: new ways of exploring connections with oneself and their queer kin?

In my talk and workshop I will introduce the notion and the practice of exploring a weak and unstable queer body as a way to defy current neoliberal LGBTQ politics, which demand compliant rigor, certain kind of strength and subjectivity, and empowerment as normativity. I will talk about and demonstrate how dance practices, especially the ones that invite the body to leave the vertical plane and explore alternative co-being, intimacies with other bodies and their surfaces can be an entrance into a new and deeper connection with onelself and their queer kin. In the short lecture part of the presentation I will use a theoretical framework of object oriented feminism, new materialisms, necropolitics studies and queer theory as well as apply some examples from Telaboratoria, a dance improvisation program for trans and queer bodies that I facilitated in St.Petersburg, Russia from 2017 till 2019. In the practical part I will lead a short practice of finding bodily pleasure and intimacy with the environment around oneself.