Compiled from assorted conversations
between ted witzel + Erum Khan,
Creatively composed by Susanna Fournier
In 1517, Martin Luther supposedly nailed 95 theses to the door of a Church in Wittenberg. He had no intention of being labeled a really bad Catholic, nor starting the protestant revolution (for which he was excommunicated). None of what follows are his words, nor did he consent to being included in this blog post creatively composed by Sus Fournier in 2024 after listening to 235 ¼ minutes of voice memos between ted witzel + Erum Khan.
1. Now that everyone’s queer in the world, (Gen Z is definitely all queer or something) if you’re not queer, I don’t know.
2. The production was stupid. Intentionally stupid. There was this big dramatic moment where this doghouse walked in on three pairs of showgirl legs and three showgirls came out of it. A bunch of people came in and smashed a lot of computers and crucified the Flying Dutchman on a rubber dinghy. I was laughing my face off, because it was clearly meant to be funny. But there was this massive cognitive dissonance because the audience were all in black tie and nobody else was laughing. That’s partly because they’re Germans and have no sense of humour but also because it’s opera and has certain expectations around what attendance looks like.
3. When and how do we feel something other than embarrassment to be a person in systems that are so beyond complicated you can’t apply analytical solutions to them?
4. On a personal level, I do seek humans. In moments.
5. It makes sense briefly. People seeking something together. This is also a social contagion, because we’re social animals.
6. (I think sometimes we just hate that we can’t leave). (The theatre). (The animals).
7. Sorry for the beginning. I’m trying.
8. I think we really have done everything. I mean, we haven’t, but we have. I think queerness is deeply appropriative, which is maybe problematic or, you know, problematique.
9. Building a queer historiography, has been an act of re-appropriating histories that are much longer and incorporating them into queerness. We’ve built our own kind of iconography through hacking, appropriation, and retrofits.
10. Look, I don’t want to talk about the Greeks. Technically, Hindu mythology is as old if not even older. But we don’t hear a thing from her. I mean, she’s very complicated.
11. If we’re looking at ourselves, if we’re looking at society, and trying to rewrite society, we’re trying to understand a revolutionary world that exists. We can’t just make it out of nothing. We also have to take what exists.
12. We’re in this moment where identity is cultural capital (we are exploiting those conversations). But as an arts scene, we’re also programming around this because funders have required this really icky thing that felt so gross in my body, to go back over the grant and like, name all the intersections of identity of the artists. These funding programs are a reaction to widespread white supremacy in the arts. But rather than holistic investigation and change, they’re additional processes based around tokenizing communities. (Queers are not a priority group, nor women).
13. It’s how people write grants now. They think trauma is an approach to art making.
14. The word community makes me so nervous right now. It’s used so much as a space where we enforce a kind of political and behavioural orthodoxy. Even when that community supposedly values diversity, it seems to insist on a homogeneity of thought or marginality of political belief.
15. We’re on the same platter but different meals. We’re getting all mixed together like this soup. Or, no, we’re at the same dinner table, but it’s different conversations and how we separate them is tricky, because you know, I don’t know if this metaphor works, I didn’t have enough water today.
16. I think the very nature of queerness (yes, the fucking alphabet soup), contains so many facets in multitudes that we have to preserve a kind of heterogeneity. We need to emphasize difference over sameness.
17. There has to be a space for the taboo. Even at this dinner table.
18. The word community has way too many people putting their entire existence and frameworks into it. It can’t hold it anymore.
19. We’ve made ourselves fucking delusional with this concept (that if an institution or artist or art work is not meeting my needs to like a 90% level, then I am outraged. I am furious. I am going to devote a lot of my emotional energy towards resenting the fact that it’s not tailored to be 90–100% a container for someone exactly like me in terms of my interest in politics and practice).
20. I’m saying two opposing ideas and I’m sweating. I get a bit angry even though that’s the world right now. Sorry for hitting the table.
21. Here comes the cancel. (Am I cancelled for referencing a pattern of behaviour that could be held as cancel culture?)
22. It’s so fucking fragile right now.
23. Theatre asks for your heart and body all at once. But it continues to take itself seriously. Seeing four plays a week, you are not a generous human anymore.
24. I somehow managed to barely register Mariah Carey’s existence at that time.
25. The relief of being queer for me was that otherness was no longer imposed upon me, it was something I could claim for myself.
26. I don’t know what it means to live radically every day. I watch my Tik Toks on Instagram reels two weeks later, like a proper fucking millennial.
27. We bonded on that first day about hating shit. This is our relationship. It’s okay, you were avoiding your taxes.
28. I know there will be queerness thrown in. But that’s a very loose entry point.
29. An explosion of authorships.
30. A kind of transcendence or divinity.
31. Infinite facets of queerness which intersect with infinite other facets of identity markers.
32. Please synonyms—
33. I’m always going to champion queerness and the billions of intersections within all of that, but
34. Did you feel like it was a queer? (What do you want? Disco balls and cabaret?) Curating queer things for queers is inherently queer but “queer curation” is hard to say, just like, literally, how your mouth has to move.
35. I’ve been happily spending more time with muggles, who are not part of artistic scenes. I don’t know if that’s important. Maybe it’s so important.
36. I’m skeptical of any path that suggests we psychoanalyze a work of art and have to draw all of its meaning and significance from the artist’s own experience. I’m skeptical of the materialism of that. I’m skeptical of the psychobabble of that, but at the same time,
37. Context is always relevant.
38. Never rewatch the thing you saw when you were younger, that changed you.
39. Drag queens go to small towns in America, and get gun-toting Republicans to do drag & the magic of drag changes their lives. The first three episodes are moving.
40. There are people who are committed to a path beyond — it isn’t easy.
41. A revolution is. Hello.
42. I can be liberated. I can push myself.
43. Here’s our experiment. Come inside, it’s a mess.
44. What are you seeking?
45. It’s like, yes, yes, and no, because yes.
ted witzel + Erum Khan + Susanna Fournier
ted witzel and Erum Khan are, respectively, the Artistic Director and Artistic Associate of Buddies. Susanna Fournier is a writer and theatre maker.