Contemporary queer performance art in Switzerland

Art is a tool which oppressed minorities can mobilize to express themselves, and thus offers an empirical, ‘actual’ site in which the ideas and practices of a particular oppressed minority can be investigated. In this PhD project, I intend to explore the role of art for one particular marginalized group: LGBT/queer persons. In order to do so, this project will specifically investigate contemporary queer performance art. I focus on queer art because queer persons, or persons belonging to the LGBT+ spectrum (Lesbian Gay Bi Trans*), continue to face personal, legal and social discriminations in Switzerland today. I focus on queer rather than simply “LGBT” art as a way to begin with a concern for the ongoing production of queerness present in this art rather than to begin with the presumed fixed identity of “LGBT” artists. I focus on performance art in order to center questions of embodiment, which are of particular importance to queer theory.