Sara Potocsny

Sara Potocsny is a trans poet, musician, artist and teacher currently pursuing their MA in Performance Studies. They are a parent to an incredible little boy named Sol. They live in Brooklyn where they are currently teaching high school to students with learning disabilities. 

Project Title: a note on pedagogy

Project Description: Sara Potocsny studies instrumentality of persons, of words, and of musical instruments. They are interested in the application of instruments to purposes and how instrumentation of anything, biological or not, infuses the object with an irresistible, often undetectable sensuality--of the kind Hortense Spillers outlines in her essay "Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe." In the 2024-2025 academic year they are working specifically on the performance of pedagogy and the ways in which educators in the western colonial classrooms (such as the public and private classrooms of the United States), must manage the impossible tight-rope walk between education, which is inherently de-colonial and radically reparative by nature, and remaining the trustworthy instruments of the oppressive state apparatus that funds and supports the existence of the academic institutions that employ them. They argue this choreography of the teacher is inherently performative, especially in the ways it's life is both only ever in the present while simultaneously leaving traces of it's ephemera everywhere.

Academic Interests: Instrumentality, Poetry, Pedagogy