« S.W.E.A.T. » (Sex/uality. Work. Extraction. Art. Theatr/ics): with Lori Baldwin #12

Today's conversation features performance artist, writer and director Lori Baldwin, whose thought-provoking work is based in the desire for connection and disruption. She designs performances and experiences intended to call spectators to action by questioning aspects of their immediate surroundings. Through theatre, live art and film, Lori's approach weaves lightness and provocation together in order to challenge commonly held ideas about power, gender, endings, eroticism, and death. In her collaborative creative processes, she seeks to build affirming spaces based on a non-judgmental, collective approach towards composition and devising. Her artistic strategy is to invite a critical look into the world we live in while creating an interactive experience that gently provokes audience participation and thoughtful engagement.

Today l'll share excerpts from a conversation I had with Lori in 2019 when I was first starting this project. We spoke about the "value" and work and the tricky presence of the physical sexualized body in art. We also spoke again in 2023, when I decided to check in with her again "post"pandemic. We talked about German pandemic relief, how she managed to hustle her performances during the few windows of opportunity when most live gigs were brought to a halt, and we talked about her collaboration with performance artist OONA, their guerilla-style performances Milking the Artist at Art Basel Miami and A Heist A Nude and Butter at The Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art in New York.

More about Lori Baldwin: https://www.iamloribaldwin.com/

We all sweat as we provide care, as we labour, as we perform our work, as we fuck, as we survive and as we sacrifice one choice for the other. How exactly do we define our work and how does that work entangle and circumscribe our sexual identities, our racialized bodies, our creative lives and the ways in which we provide care? How do we perform both tasks and identities within the framework of that which we consider work? These conversations are a means to speak between intersectionalities by anchoring through our (always, already, and ever pervasive) sexualized and racialized bodies, our working bodies, our artistic bodies and our performative bodies. I hope that they contribute to dialogues which normalize sex work as work, and all work as deserving of respect, healthy conditions, and a living wage.

You can find out more https://www.alfabus.us/s-w-e-a-t/

Mad Kate (they/them) is an electronic producer, sound designer, performance artist and writer who began working the Berlin performance and club scene in 2004, expanding their unique identity-queering, genderfcking and sexpositive performative work throughout music, theatre and film. Their explorations of borders between/within bodies, audibility, consent, proximity, and touch as political practice have brought them to theaters, communes, technomansions, prisons, dungeons, squats and galleries around the world.