The Unnaming of ‘Aliass’

Abstract

As a durational, site-specific performance practice that involves both nomadic journeys and daily acts of ‘barnyard ontological choreography’ with a special domestic donkey (a member of the species Equus asinus, and also a registered American Spotted Ass), the Unnaming of Aliass wrangles with linguistic authority shot through with conflicted desires: How can one name an inscrutable ass, or any other individual, with respect for her unfathomable depths? How do names ascribe or disavow intimate connections, supposed to be captured in arbitrary attachments of words to bodies? Over nearly two decades, the project has engaged various species and ecologies in an ongoing ‘assthetic’ and ontological adventure, a performance-research practice wherein ‘Aliass’ also stands for something harder to grasp than the body of one lovely little spotted ass: protagonist, setting, and even narrative turn inside-out inside this ‘name-that-ain't’, making room for unwritten tales and lacunae found across meshes of myriad lives in any environment. The project explores new strategies to evade certain dangers of names and taxonomies in the making of multispecies stories. Toward radically altered sensibilities of who, where, and how human tongues are entangled within earthly places, how can we crack open habits of naming (and their oft-hidden hierarchies and narrative structures) so that all kinds of bodies might inscribe their tales, in their own specific ways and idioms, into the mapping of time-places?