Aegis: A raw revisiting

 

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Everything is and is not,

for everything is fluid, is constantly changing,

constantly coming to being and passing away.

- Heraclitus

 

 

I don’t often 'review' things. Perhaps review is the wrong word to use at all? What about an inquiry or simply a revisiting? I could think of it as a raw revisiting, that could offer some legroom. A type of 'review' that is messy, unpolished and fragmented. Writing about time-based art is something I have not attempted before, but we all start somewhere *insert nervous smiley face*

 

Working on my project Living but a Day throughout the last year, the twists and turns have brought a diverse set of results – all of which, I believe, have centred around resistance. The project has gone through forms of shapeshifting, continuously inspired by the various artists, creatives, organisations and galleries that have embraced it. From exploring archival collections and creating typefaces to live performances and participatory exhibitions, Living but a Day celebrates the process over product– the undefined, raw and unruly. To investigate the question of how textual interventions can unveil queer-feminist expression across the island of Ireland, this project falls under what Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s calls an “open mesh of possibility”. Fluid in nature, the project invites the past and the present into an active conversation, using performative and creative processes to challenge established narratives and offer new spaces for dialogue and re-interpretation.

 

Anyway, this is not an inquiry into Living but a Day as a project. This is an inquiry into a happening, titled Aegis, which was performed by Cúan Cusack and Natasha Everitt as part of queer collective Alien Nation. Aegis was a multi-layered experience, encompassing sound, performance art and spoken word. It worked in response to the culmination of works displayed at GOMA Waterford (14th September – 13th October 2024) titled Living but a Day: Texere, the final destination of the project.

 

Performance can function as a site of resistance, especially when it is connected to queer expression. It is a time-based medium which invites questions of time itself and in this case, questions around queer temporalities - a 'queer time' that is haunted. But what is queer time? Queer time is non-linear, working in opposition to 'straight time' which paints us a picture of the 'ideal' adult. This ideal structure that we are all confronted with from a young age conjures up the linear timeline of going to college, getting married, having children and living happily ever after. Time is presented to us here as something stable, consistent and reproductive. Anyone who falls out of this conventional timeline is isolated and cast aside as a 'failure'. Jack Halberstam in In a Queer Time & Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives, suggests that queerness is born out its incapability of fitting into heteronormative time and “according to other logics of location, movement, and identification...as an outcome of strange temporalities, imaginative lifestyles, and eccentric life practices…”. If this heteronormative straight time offers only one possible ideal, then queer time stands in opposition and offers multiple ideals – which is pretty great for us.

 

Through this raw revisiting of Aegis, I will think about the queer ephemeral – or queer temporality – as a point of resistance that offers endless possibilities of living in relation to the past, present and future.  The queer ephemeral creates space for the continual emergence and re-emergence of the queer body. Queerness is in a constant cycle of construction and deconstruction, keeping us in this weird state of longing. The desire for queer collectivity drips down from the ephemeral nature of queerness, maintaining the 'presentness' of queer time and space while preserving its fleeting, ephemeral quality. Us queers, we live in a constant state of fragmentation. José Esteban Muñoz states that queerness exists as “innuendo, gossip, fleeting moments, and performances…”, always slipping in and out of visibility and self-emergence.

 

Aegis provided a powerful and visceral exploration of resistance and oppression, intricately linked to this notion of queer time. It unfolded quietly with ambient sound taking over the space as Everitt, dressed in white and drawings of leaves in blue and green across her face, positioned herself between two walls with her gaze fixed on her hands in a moment of stillness and suspension. As she slowly moved into the space, she inhabited a raw and emotional state, heightened by the chaotic arrangement of natural elements on the floor – branches, acorns and scattered objects such as a wine glass full of honey and a bowl of mixed berries. It staged an intimate atmosphere where nature and human expression are intertwined. In this setting, the performance could be an interrogation of what is considered 'natural', extending from gender norms to biological reproduction. Hidden within the thorny composition of leaves and twigs lies a construction of nature that codifies the dominance of heteronormative ideals. By engaging with these elements, Aegis begins to invite a redefinition of narratives, celebrating the fluidity of queer existence.

 

Gradually moving through an arrangement of objects, Everitt gathered a bouquet of flowers and drifted into the audience, offering parts of them to each spectator while locking eyes in intimate exchange – which nods to those fleeting connections that can exist in the present. Returning to the objects, she knelt by a bowl of berries, kneading them between her fingers before tasting their juice. Slowly, she removed her white dress, soaking it in the crushed berries until the fabric was stained in hues of pink and red. This act not only symbolised the interplay between nature and the body but also highlighted the beauty of existence – perhaps even its inherent fluidity. Next, Everitt lifted a wine glass filled with honey, pouring the liquid down her throat and neck, allowing it to drip slowly from her body as she turned to face the audience. Her movements continuously embodied a sense of delayed time and deferral. Julia Kristeva describes this 'slow time' as the “time of the other, the time, we might say, of an ongoing breach of selfhood.”

 

Through this entanglement of interactions and reactions between performer-spectator, Everitt reveals herself as forever becoming. She continuously re-emerges through movement within the cycle of the queer ephemeral, dragging both physical and symbolic debris with each step. Taking their hand, Everitt guides Cusack into the space. She kneels, pressing her face against their hands before reaching up so both their fingers are saturated and dripping in residue from the berries and honey. They maintain direct eye contact and touch which creates a space of tension between power and vulnerability. Everitt’s body is marked by the performance and amidst the debris, she embodies the weight of resistance. The physical strain - or stain - of enduring forces beyond herself. As she rose and found her feet, she embraced Cusack, a gesture of connection and support. Cusack turned towards the audience and began to engage in spoken word, sharing a narrative that deepens our understanding of power, vulnerability, and shared experience.

 

Cusack’s spoken word performance of An Aegis of Thorns was a primal, intense journey - one that mirrors the pain and confusion of human existence and moving towards nature’s raw embrace. Their initial speech is a slow unravelling through biting imagery of a tram scene where they announce I held your hand tighter with every sneer. It pulses with anger and anguish, the kind of anger that itches under the skin: My knuckles cracking as I stared straight down their eyes. This emotional rawness is then transformed into something more elemental, as they aim to flee into the wild, abandoning the oppressive human world for the forest. As spectators, we retreat deeper into nature as Cusack sheds the layers of social conditioning, merging with the earth. There’s a rhythmic and hypnotic flow to the words as their voice melds with imagery of the bog, vines and saplings, blurring the lines between body and nature. The forest becomes a living force, knowing when to protect and when to heal: This is where the forest wants you to be. As the narrative continues to bring us on this journey, Everitt continues to move around the natural elements. She places twigs and flowers in her hair and her mouth before kneeling again at Cusack’s feet, clinging on to their leg.

 

An Aegis of Thorns envisions a post-human world where the forest reclaims what has always been its own – yet, there is something unsettling about this reclamation. While nature offers its power, it also demands our sacrifice. The recurring visual imagery of thorns, vines, and the merging of the body with the forest evokes a tactile sense of the costs associated with this transformation. It becomes a process of becoming, suggesting that the pleasures of queerness could be found in the crevices of the wild: I did not need to breathe anymore. It is like a utopia, an ever-evolving state of an 'ideal' void that never fully materialises. After all, natural elements can also be seen as temporal, historical, and unpredictable. Returning to Muñoz again, he reminds us that “indeed, to live inside straight time and ask for, desire, and imagine another time and place is to represent and perform a desire that is both utopian and queer.”

 

Ultimately, Aegis is a happening – a moment where body, earth, and memory collide in a queer space and time. It explores the grounded body, trembling under the weight of societal constraints and giving rise to a ritual of reflection. It is an intricate exploration of the physical and emotional toll of resisting oppression and control, leaving us to reflect on the costs and outcomes of such struggles. The surrounding environment with various text-based artworks displayed through Living but a Day: Texere, offers us the idea that this performance is not only an emotional and raw happening for us to experience, but it is a commentary on societal and personal resistance. This interplay between the performers, objects, environment and audience speaks to the complex nature of resistance in all its forms. Each movement and word spoken becomes an act of shedding, reconnecting the flesh to the soil. The slush, the thorns, the blackberry vines – all become part of the sacred armour, Aegis, wrapping us in a protective, living skin.

 

 

We will continue growing towards the sun, reaching out

To hold you, just a little too tightly.