I Declare Myself a Transvestite on Four Stages

Multimedia Performance by Frau Diamanda

Friday, 30 June 2023 - 7pm
Admission

Free, until full capacity is reached

Place
Nouvel Building, Protocol Room
Capacity
100 people
Curator
Jesús Carrillo
Organised by
Museo Reina Sofía
Frau Diamanda, Me declaro travesti en cuatro escenas (I Declare Myself a Transvestite on Four Stages), 2022. Photograph: Jordi Trenzano 
Frau Diamanda, Me declaro travesti en cuatro escenas (I Declare Myself a Transvestite on Four Stages), 2022. Photograph: Jordi Trenzano 

In this multimedia stage piece, straddling monologue, confession and the activation of body and music, artist Frau Diamanda looks to explore the mutation of transvestite identity, punctuated by questions of class and race and affected by (neo)colonisation and hyperbolic exaltation. The staging serves to execute multimedia, spoken word and live music to approach the concept of transvestiteness in a way that is immersive and expansive, and with the aim of moving the spectator closer to that which is considered strange or far from their day-to-day. The performance, moreover, approaches issues such as migration and mutability from transvestite logic and becomes a political statement of sexual dissidence.

The artist gives a voice to the subaltern subject, banished to the margins of a heteronormative society, tracing a spatio-temporal line based on fictionalisation, simulation and hypertext. The encircling reality is concealed with forms that are exaggerated and camp, serpentine and neo-baroque, alternative experiences which extol escape. Lines of flight which are necessary to disclose her particular way of conceiving the world and to reveal a political dimension which demands the historical repair of memory and socio-cultural insertion.

In short, the piece has been conceived as a kind of introspection which, upon being collectivised, can reveal communication channels and empathy with the spectator to demonstrate how we are all, ultimately, transvestites.

Frau Diamanda (Héctor Acuña, 1971) is a translator, writer, audiovisual transvestite artist, drag performer, independent curator, DJ and occasional actress who defines herself as a “cultural infector”. Specialised in transgender and multimedia performance, Diamanda completed the Independent Studies Programme (PEI) at the Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA) in 2017–18. She is the author of the book Escenas Catalanas: errancias antropológico-sexuales (La Máquina, 2020), and works with photography, video, electronic music and multimedia platforms and is concerned with the (mis)match between bodies and architectures, and the forms of uniting the fluidity of desire and the sexualisation of spaces through a gaze of dissidence or transvestite sexual disobedience.  

Credits

Concept, direction and performance:
Frau Diamanda
Live music:
Frau Diamanda (monotron, percussion)
Audiovisuals:
Diana Collazos and Sebastián Paramio
Editing:
Laura Correa
Audio:
Human Beam
Track:
Vyltage, Miguel Rivero