Talking with Pêdra Costa: The Southern Ass Studies

Photo: Performance "de_colon_isation part III: the bum bum cream"

Photo Credit: ©Joanna Pianka

Join the Department of Performance Studies as we welcome Pêdra Costa to discuss their practice THE SOUTHERN ASS STUDIES. The butthole’s investigations are theoretical and practical, always. Theory is on the skin and the practice comes from life. We are always collective, never individual. The artfulness is the basis of our whole life against the colonizer’s project. We move forward criticizing the "colonial fantasies" about our bodies and, specifically, butts. Our fierce criticism comes from our buttholes. Anthropophagy does not unite us anymore. We already ate them as a condition violently imposed by the colonial civilizing education. Now we vomit them and we shit them. To the South of the world, to the butthole of the body.

BIO - Pêdra Costa (1978) is a Brazilian-German Performance Artist and Visual & Urban Anthropologist based in Berlin and working with queer artists internationally. Through the complexity and fragmented epistemologies from queer communities, their work has built bridges between Performance Art, music, visual art and text, having the body as the main medium. Embodying knowledge almost destroyed by the colonial project and manifesting radical caring against the lack of opportunities of living, their projects engage with the political aesthetics of post-porn and anti-colonial strategies. In connection with mixed and forgotten ancestralities, the artist deals with failure as a transforming creative force. For more info on Costa visit their website. 

This event was curated by M.A. candidate Miro Spinelli.

Event Co-sponsor: Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality @ NYU