I Am A Haunted House

I Am A Haunted House: Re-animating Joan was a multimedia dance theater experiment created by Scott Andrew and Jesse Factor and was presented as a work-in-progress performance as part of the Kelly Strayhorn Theater’s Freshworks Residency. It is a multimedia dance installation and performance that is centered around the life, and mythology surrounding queer film icon Joan Crawford. The initial showing was conceived of in four parts with video interludes in-between each of the main movements.

I.“I was Born in front of a Camera” Interlude: Cha Cha II.“Whom do you Dress for” Interlude: Read my lips III.“That is not the Real Joan Crawford” Interlude: Storm IV. “They said we have to do Talkies”

“Any staging of desire involves the comeback sentiment, which Freud called “uncanny”: the long-hidden treasure (a body part, a beloved) r ises once more to consciousness. So when a desire first comes to mind, it is really a return: homosexuality, when it makes its first appearance, its debut in the mind and the flesh, is actually making a comeback. When the diva returns for a special appearance she will not necessarily sing.”

– Wayne Koestenbaum, The Queen’s Throat: Opera, Homosexuality, and The Mystery of Desire

“[Its] aura is no longer based on the permanence of the “original,” but on the transience of the copy. …The poor image is no longer about the real thing—the originary original. Instead, it is about its own real conditions of existence: about swarm circulation, digital dispersion, fractured and flexible temporalities…In short: it is about reality.”

– Hito Steyerl, In Defense of the Poor Image

Kelly Strayhorn Theater