Co-Documenting Queer Performances and Experiences in Monterrey, Nuevo León, Mexico. Workshop by Isabel Machado.
About this event
In 2018, Isabel Machado started interviewing drag performers from Monterrey, Nuevo León (Mexico) for the “Divas, Regias y Demoledorxs” oral history project. As she tried to figure out how to interact with her narrators when they were in and out of drag, she became interested in how to negotiate intersubjectivity when more than one persona “inhabits” the same narrator and aware of her own code-switching performance(s). While an oral history interview is by definition a collaboration between interviewer and narrator, she is developing partnerships with local artists and activists to make sure that this process is conducted with and from this community even though she is an outsider there in every sense of the word. This workshop will explore the challenges and responsibility when conducting an oral history project without institutional support and restraints as an outsider-ally to a historically marginalized community and as a fan. We will also discuss the collaborative process (and learning curves) when researcher and narrator navigate the interview while dealing with an immaterial third presence (the drag character), and question notions of “authenticity” by thinking about the performative nature of the oral history interview.
Dr. Isabel Machado is Research Associate with the SARChI Chair in South African Art and Visual Culture hosted by the Faculty of Art, Design & Architecture at the University of Johannesburg. She specializes in the fields of Gender and Sexuality and Celebration Studies and has been interviewing folks for over twenty years as a film researcher, as a documentary filmmaker, and as an oral historian. She also serves as reviews editor for the Oral History Journal and as a host at the New Books Network’s podcast.
Image Description: A selfie of Isabel and Alfredo Baez/Lilith Bardo posing in front of a mirror. Isabel is smiling and holding the cellphone. Lilith (in drag) has one hand on her left hip and the other on a headpiece composed of different colored tulle, and pink, yellow, and blue glitter paper stars and suns. The photograph was taken on the day of their second interview, conducted while Alfredo was doing his makeup to perform at a Drag Queen Story Hour event.
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