True love’s kiss

BY phoebe osborne

In observing ontological dances of suspension, transition, merging, and moving-through that occur in corridors and caverns, this performance investigates these environmental spaces as active architectures of transness on an expansive level. Leaning into three distinct areas; the geological realms of underwater limestone halocline caves, the physiology of the human throat and the voice that arrives from it, and the Disney animation The Little Mermaid, this paper speculates on transness as an embodied mode of loving suspended in a continual state of change that can be found not just in human gender but expands to species, geology, elements, and time. The intimate relationality of these worlds and the trans-becoming they include argues for trans-becoming-ancient as a mode of true love.

Phoebe Osborne is an artist based in Brooklyn, NY. Their works have been presented in the US and Europe, including commissioned performances at Transmediale Berlin, La Caldera Barcelona, SFMoMA, Oakland Museum of California, and Lenfest Center for the Arts. They have exhibited at False Flag (NYC), Southern Exposure (SF), The Boiler Pierogi Gallery (NYC), E-flux Bar Laika (NYC), and City Limits (Oakland). Osborne was a 2017 recipient of the DanceWEB scholarship at Impulstanz in Vienna and a resident artist at the Hercules Art/Studio Program in Lower Manhattan from 2018-2021. They received an MFA in Visual Arts from Columbia University and an MA in Choreography from DAS Graduate School at the Amsterdam University of Arts. Osborne is a current resident at NARS Foundation and a 2022 fellow at A.I.R. Gallery with a forthcoming solo exhibition in spring 2022.

website: www.phoebeosborne.com