Dayna McLeod – Audiences, Empathy, and Queer Embodiment

This presentation examines how I stage my queer, middle-ageing, perimenopausal body in Uterine Concert Hall, an in-situ performance art sound piece that features my uterus as a public concert venue. How we are oriented to bodies marked female (whether we have one or not), this work builds on audience’s perceived notions of what a uterus is for and proposes my uterus as a site for non-reproductive art production. I am interested in examining uterine and vaginal space as physical space, as queer space, and as sites of production. In this talk, I also discuss how I use “intimate karaoke” as a method of audience engagement, and as a means to solicit and enact empathy and vulnerability.

The latest iteration of Uterine Concert Hall asks audiences to sing their favourite karaoke song into me. Singers wear headphones that isolate and contain their voice and requested karaoke song. This mix is wired via 100-foot cable to a 54 kHz intravaginal pre-natal speaker (Babypod) that rests in my vaginal canal. Other audience members are invited to listen to the karaoke performances with me through the very flesh of my body using a 4-headed stethoscope. Sound resonates through me to this small audience as we listen to karaoke singers performing from an adjoining room. I use my body as two sites, which concurrently showcase its inside and outside through its function as a median of sociality, vulnerability, and empathy.

This presentation will track and examine how this version of Uterine Concert Hall came to be utilizing methodologies of embodied knowledge and performance as research.