Miguel Gutierrez was born in San Francisco; he currently lives in Brooklyn, New York.  This show, Age & Beauty Part 1: Mid-Career Artist/ Suicide Note or &:-/, was one of three parts Gutierrez has been investigating over the past two years.  Part two is titled Age & Beauty Part 2: Asian Beauty @ the Werq Meeting or The Choreographer & Her Muse or &:@&, part three is expected next year.  Specifically, Age & Beauty Part 1, was crafted in order to question and address

The representation of the dancer, the physical and emotional labor of performance, tropes about the aging gay choreographer, the interaction of art making with administration, the idea of queer time and futurity, and mid-life anxieties about relevance, sustainability and artistic burnout. (Gutierrez)

He seemed to explore these concepts throughout many layers including working with another dancer, Mickey Mahar, setting physically demanding and exhausting movement, playing with sexuality, text, and live song/music. 

It is my belief that Miguel Gutierrez’s work engaged in subjectivity, which is thoroughly outlined in Nick Mansfield’s book Subjectivity: Theories of the Self from Freud to Haraway.  As I watched the performance and took part in the workshop, Queer Choreographies: Whatever the Fuck that Means, I noticed a strong current of subjectivity streaming through Gutierrez’s work.  Gutierrez examines themes of the self, subjectivity as a construct and queer as a strategy.

Age & Beauty Part 1 was rooted in the human experience and how the self personally experiences that.  Gutierrez is known as a queer choreographer.  He describes his approach to making work stating, “I make performances that are about things and are things themselves. The things they are about are big: how to live in the world, how to love, how to feel about being yourself. Probably the biggest question I make art about is: why are we alive” (Gutierrez).  Many of these questions are explored through subjectivity.

In the beginning of Nick Mansfield’s book he begins to define subjectivity through self.  At the fundamental level the self is made up of emotion. Mansfield explains, “our entertainment, our social values, even the work we do and the governments we elect are all to be understood in terms of satisfaction, pleasure, like and dislike, excitement and boredom, love and hate” (2).  It is how we feel about something that defines how we align ourselves. The consistent and “uninterrupted intensities of elation and grief, triumph and trauma, loss and achievement; birth, death, survival, crime, consumption, career are all now pretexts for emotion” (Mansfield 2). Mansfield believes emotion has replaced value and identity in how we know and define ourselves (2).  The basis of Age & Beauty Part 1 was rooted in how Miguel Gutierrez felt about age and beauty, about being a dancer, an artist, being gay, about time and the future.  The piece centered on “the intensification of the self as the key site of human experience” (Mansfield 2).  To Gutierrez he would define this experience as Queer.  From this platform of self, Mansfield transitions the definition into subjectivity.

Throughout the piece and the workshop it was clear that the subject was constructed.  Mansfield encompasses self in subject explaining that the “the word subject…proposes that the self is not a separate and isolated entity, but one that operates at the intersection of general truths and shared principles” (3). Mansfield shapes the definition of subjectivity:

An abstract or general principle that defies our separation into distinct selves and that encourages us to imagine that…our interior lives inevitably seem to involve other people, either as objects of need, desire and interest or as necessary sharers of common experience. In this way, the subject is always linked to something outside of it—an idea or principle or the society of other subjects. (3)

Subjectivity has also been previously made, formed and practiced (Mansfield 11). Gutierrez’s work both supported and challenged this.

The nature of the work itself succumbed to subjectivity.  It was well rehearsed and performed.  The movement, although seemingly simplistic and gestural, was demanding.  Gutierrez and Mahar never stopped moving.  The labor of the movement, the exhaustion and the commitment were clear. The performance was not spontaneous it was repeatable.  Furthermore, in the discussions of the workshop many spoke openly about the specific aesthetic of queer Choreography right now.  One woman from New York, who had yet to see the show, explained that queer choreography was stereotypically “hot pink,” “white,” “plastic,” and had “very loud” house music.  Without seeing it, she had already explained many key features present in Age & Beauty Part 1.  It was disappointing as a viewer to realize the possibility that Gutierrez’s work was not as unique as I had initially felt.  In relation to subjectivity, the woman’s comment connects the piece back to a societal idea that is informing and shaping the direction and appearance of the work.

Gutierrez did manage to challenge subjectivity in how he approached the conclusion of Age & Beauty Part 1.  Mansfield explains that subjectivity is “the way we are led to think about ourselves, so we will police and present ourselves in the correct way, as not insane, criminal, undisciplined, unkempt, perverse or unpredictable” (10).  Gutierrez ended his performance by yelling at his audience to exit.  He yelled various phrases, many difficult to hear, as the music was loud.  It stunned and paralyzed the audience because it was starkly different than what was expected.  It juxtaposed the traditional ending where lights and music fade with brighter lights and louder music.  The constructs of subjectivity were confronted.

Age & Beauty Part 1 looked at queer as less of a form of identity and more of a strategy (Gutierrez).  In analyzing the performance and the workshop I looked specifically for what made it queer.  I mainly saw it in how he played with subjectivity, repetition and the perverse. Queer is perverse, the perverse tests normality, and Gutierrez tested normality with queer.  Mansfield explains that “where the dividing line is to be drawn between the normal perversity and excessive perversity is a theoretical…problem, influencing our understanding of how we should treat each other…” (107). Gutierrez used repetition throughout the piece in choreography, gesture, dialogue, and music to normalize what would have been considered perverse elements; he engaged it as a strategy.

Overall, Miguel Gutierrez in Age & Beauty Part 1: Mid-Career Artist/Suicide Note or &:-/ examined the self through human experience, challenged and succumbed to subjectivity as construct and engaged queer as a strategy. He simultaneously questioned and supported subjectivity throughout the performance.  As I continue to reflect back I think about how subjectivity creates more ways in which we organize and identify ourselves (Mansfield 111).  Subjectivity serves as a power, to define what is normal and abnormal.  In our bipolar culture it would be wise to recall that subjectivity is an invention and it is important to question the norm.

Works Cited

Gutierrez, Miguel. "Age and Beauty Part 1 : Miguel Gutierrez." Age and Beauty Part 1 : Miguel Gutierrez. Miguel Gutierrez, 2014. Web. 02 Apr. 2015.

Mansfield, Nick. Subjectivity: Theories of the Self from Freud to Haraway. New York: New York UP, 2000. Print.