Anal Body / Anal Politics

-Lecture performance-

Aleksandar Georgieva and Slavcho Dimitrov

Pre-text

It is a Lecture Performance created by the choreographer and cultural worker Aleksandar Georgiev and the curator and independent researcher Slavcho Dimitrov. This one-hour session of antagonistic approach between the poetics and the independent academic practice through the embodiment of the anus and its politicization is the new upcoming proposal of this collaboration. 

In this session, Aleksandar and Slavcho playfully invite us to contemplate the possibilities and implications of reevaluating the integrity of the body through the lens of the anus. 

Since 2019, Aleksandar has been actively exploring the proposal of “anal politics” and the practices of “reading from behind” and along the way has created a couple of artistic proposals in this line, such as: “The Power of S”, “Echoes of S” and “Atrás”. 

Since 2015, Slavcho has been actively curating and changing the landscape in Skopje’s queer scene, through the festival for queer art, culture and theory – Skopje Pride Weekend. His practice as an independent researcher is situated in the field of queer and gender theory, performance studies and art, political philosophy, affect theory, and social choreography, and is strongly related to his activist practice. 

This is their first collaboration as co-thinkers and co-authors of the Lecture Performance “Anal Body / Anal Politics”.

Synopsis: 

“They are on four, wide open, waiting for you, inviting you to contemplate the possibilities and implications of reevaluating the integrity of the body through the lens of the anus.” 

The objective of their joint project, “anal body and politics,” is to activate the potentiality and political implications of the body from a morphologically rearticulated perspective that undermines the established hegemonic norms. This includes challenging prevailing notions such as the Phallic body, the frontal body, the heteronormative body, the reproductive body, the (liberal) individual body, among others. 

The concept of the anal body proposes something more intrinsic to the body itself, devoid of reinforcing a hetero-capitalistic logic centered on reproduction, self-possessiveness, verticality, and property/propriety. Anal politics posits that the body can find meaning and assume an active role in society without being primarily focused on reproduction. Rather, it emphasizes the body’s capacity to maintain balance, offer comfort, and willingly embrace passivity and vulnerability. It aims to transcend any specific identity, be it male, female, non-binary, trans, etc., and seeks to legitimize and emancipate pleasure as a critical aspect, one that has been problematically suppressed in our heteronormative and religiously influenced sociopolitical environments. 

CREDITS:

Authors: Aleksandar Georgiev and Slavcho Dimitrov

Text: Slavcho Dimitrov 

Choreography: Aleksandar Georgiev 

Videos selection: Slavcho Dimitrov

Multimedia visuals and graphic design: Gjorgji Despodov

Light design: Pete Ayres 

Sound: Tsvetan Momchilov 

Producer: Beatriz Bello

Thanks to Darío Barreto Damas for backing up the work

This work was realized with the support from behind the alternative budget structure of the solo choreographic work “Atras” by Aleksandar Georgiev and through various collaborators such as LAV (Laboratory of Living Arts and Citizenship), ICC (Imaginative Choreographic Center), Garage Collective, Cultural-Social Space Jadro, Konstnärsnämnden (Swedish Arts Grants Committee), Government of the Canary Islands (ICDC), European Union Next Generation EU Funds (Support for Cultural Accelerators), Cabildo of Tenerife, Teatro Victoria, Central Eléctrica, Culture Moves Europe, Ministry of Culture of Bulgaria and Toplocentrala.