video

My queer body

Miller, Tim, 1958-
Permalink
https://hdl.handle.net/2333.1/pvmcvgzr
Title
My queer body
Author/Creator
Miller, Tim, 1958-
Restrictions/Permissions
Copyright holder: Tim Miller, Contact information: Franklin Furnace Archive, Incorporated, Pratt Institute, 200 Willoughby Avenue, ISC Building, Rooms 209-211, Brooklyn, NY 11205, U.S.A., +1-718-687-5800 (business), +1-718-687-5830 (fax), mail@franklinfurnace.org, http://www.franklinfurnace.org
Language
In English.
Date
1992 Apr. 4
Filming or performance location
Performed at the Highways Performance Space, Santa Monica, CA, on Apr. 4, 1992.
Format
1 online resource (video file (76 min., 33 sec.)) : sound, color.
Credits
Chris Gilles, lighting designer ; Richard L. Harrison, video director/producer. Tim Miller, performer.
Notes

This is a video documentation of a psycho-sexual empowering journey where performer and audience share intimacy, humor, and affects. Tim Miller explores bits and pieces of his body, in the same manner than, piece by piece, the story keeps flowing and 'giving birth' to the queer body. Through storytelling and movement, and stories of love, enchantment, disenchantment, and resistance, this solo show transforms a personal story into the story of a community. The ghost of fear and death appears with the AIDS epidemic, the loss of friends and loved ones, police brutality against gay people, and the State of California anti gay laws and homophobic harassment. A travel in time through the body, Tim Miller's striking performance invokes the bodies of those who are absent but present at the same time. The gesture of envisioning a future with a United States' lesbian president, with sexual freedom, and without homophobia, transforms sex into a call to life and hope.

Tim Miller is an internationally acclaimed performance artist. Miller's creative work as a performer and writer explores the artistic, spiritual and political topography of his identity as a gay man. Miller's performances have been presented all over North America, Australia, and Europe in such prestigious venues as Yale Repertory Theatre, the Institute of Contemporary Art (London), the Walker Art Center (Minneapolis), and the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Miller's most recent book 1001 BEDS, an anthology of his performances, essays and journals, was published by University of Wisconsin Press in 2006. Miller has taught performance at UCLA, NYU, the School of Theology at Claremont and at universities all over the US. He is a co-founder of two of the most influential performance spaces in the United States: Performance Space 122 on Manhattan's Lower East Side and Highways Performance Space in Santa Monica, CA. After a nine-year stint in New York City, in 1987 Miller returned home to Los Angeles, California where he was born and raised. He currently lives there with his partner Alistair in Venice Beach.