(Winternights programme)
A certain book* describes how Europe once traded a “one-sex” worldview for a binary one. It is since the Enlightenment, it says, that we have insisted on sorting ourselves strictly into man or woman. Our minds have tightened around the idea: it must be one OR the other.
Before that, people moved more freely. The assumption was that everyone shared the same basic structure, on top of that came variation. Variation as the norm.
* Making Sex, Thomas Lacquer (1992). Nearly vintage by now. Paul B. Preciado (a key influence for Rita Bifulco) also writes about this too, more recently.
Rita Bifulco is a transfeminine performance and sound artist. On Saturday of Winternights, she invites you into il ronzio degli insetti (the hum of insects).