They Spent Their Youths Dreaming of Ever New Annihilations - Hamish McIntosh - PhD Exhibition

They Spent Their Youths Dreaming of Ever New Annihilations
Hamish McIntosh PhD Exhibition

Thurs Oct 27, 7-9pm, Opening drinks - registration essential
Fri Oct 28, by appointment
Sat Oct 29, 12-4pm
Sun Oct 30, 12-4pm

Might we know death through dance, and dance through death?

They Spent Their Youths Dreaming of Ever New Annihilations is a synthesis of dance performance and visual artefact. An experimental choreography has taken place: an unwitnessed dance between flesh and steel—a vasectomy deemed a ‘genetic suicide’—ending the artist’s ability to reproduce and contribute to society’s future.

Like many queer people before him, the artist has become a dead end: a threat to the passage of time, custom, and power.

From fertility to sterility through a bodily intervention, this new work by Hamish McIntosh, in the tradition of artists like Ron Athey, John Duncan, and Fred Herko, positions the vasectomy as an act of dance and in doing so questions the form’s preoccupation with liveness.

We invite you to view the documentation arising from this performance, with this exhibition forming the creative component of McIntosh’s forthcoming PhD, To an End: Death as a Queer Theory of Dance, which explores the anti-social thesis and suicide in dance performance.

The anti-social thesis argues that it is meaningful when queer people embrace the ‘negation’ they represent within heteronormative society. This negation is connected to ideas around what scholars have called ‘reprocentricity’—the drive to reproduce and form a family unit around the Child.

As such, They Spent Their Youths Dreaming of Ever New Annihilations is a practical exploration of the anti-social thesis: a symbolic ‘suicide’ that negates the Child rather than the subject, and a realisation of queerness’ threat to the future. 

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Hamish McIntosh is an artist, teacher, and researcher living and working on Wurundjeri and Boon Wurrung Country. Born in Aotearoa New Zealand, Hamish trained as a contemporary dancer at the New Zealand School of Dance before pursuing postgraduate education in dance studies. Hamish is currently a PhD candidate in dance at the University of Melbourne, researching queer theory, ontology, and death. His dance practise focuses on acts of duration and endurance. Drawing heavily on visual and performance art traditions, he is curious about the limits of dance as a form. Broadly interested in dance as a site for identity and politics, Hamish has published and presented internationally on queerness, pedagogy, and dancing masculinities, and exhibited his work at galleries including the Gus Fisher (Auckland), play_station (Wellington), and the National Gallery of Victoria (Melbourne).

They Spent Their Youths Dreaming of Ever New Annihilations is supported by the Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship and the University of Melbourne Faculty of Fine Arts and Music Faculty Graduate Researcher Fund.

Image courtesy of the artist

ACCESS AND SAFETY

This is a COVIDSafe event, please do not attend if you are feeling unwell. You can find more information on what Temperance Hall is doing to keep COVIDSafe here.
Temperance Hall's Upstairs Studio is located on the first floor of the building and is unfortunately not wheelchair accessible. 
Bathrooms are for all-genders and wheelchair accessible. 
If you have any specific accessibility needs or any queries regarding the event, please contact Temperance Hall Program Producer, Anna McDermott program@temperancehall.com.au

Temperance Hall acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of the land in which we dance and create, the Bunurong Boon Wurrung peoples of the Eastern Kulin Nation, and pay our respect to Elders both past and present and, through them, to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.