Photo by Simon Courchel for The Invisible Dog
Odalisque is a performance by Peter Clough in which he reimagines the classical reclining nude as a gender non-conforming queer bondage submissive. Sculpture, projection, story-telling, durational bondage, and original music come together in an immersive environment that complicates power relations between sub and Dom, viewer and performer, subject and object.
Custom bondage furniture restrains Clough’s body in the position of a classical reclining nude. While his physical body is restrained and his mouth gagged, digital projections of his hands and face are actively moving and speaking, reinscribing his subjectivity and his power. Clough’s words, alternately political, poetic, narrative and analytical, blend seamlessly with music and soundscapes by noise artist Peter Kalisch. A figure representing the Dom wears a digitally reproduced mask of Clough’s face and guides his movement. Together, this sensuous and haunting work takes on the seeming contradictions within the queer submissive consciousness: experiencing restraint as comforting, experiencing humiliation as affirming, experiencing exposure as a kind of armor, and experiencing bondage as freedom.
The performance is accompanied by a limited edition book by Jesse Cline and Peter Clough. It features collages made from the source material for the performance, mashups of classical paintings with Clough's collection of bondage porn, alongside the full text from the piece, which can function as both BDSM erotica and as essays on finding empowerment and agency through objectification and submission.
Duration: 90 minutes
Features four seven-minute intervals
Peter Clough's interdisciplinary work uses video, sound, sculpture, and performance to address the queer body as a personal and political site of trauma, stigma, desire and empowerment. Clough was born in Boston in 1984 and received an MFA from NYU Steinhardt in 2009. He has presented work in New York at MoMA PS1, Printed Matter, Fresh Window Gallery, Microscope Gallery, Southfirst Gallery, Wayfarers Gallery, LeRoy Neiman Gallery, SPRING/BREAK Art Fair, the Center for Performance Research, and Dixon Place Theater, in Pittsburg at the Andy Warhol Museum, in L.A. at Human Resources, in Nashville at Open Lot, in Berlin at Peres Projects and Space/Time at FLUTGRABEN e.V., in Seoul at Konkuk University and The House of Collections, in Antwerp at the Monty, in Ghent at Off/off Cinema and in Oslo at Kunstnernes Hus, Fotogalleriet, and SOPPEN Performance Festival at Ekebergparken. Clough’s work has been featured in The New York Times, Frieze, and Time Out Magazine. Clough lives and works in New York.
Dates + Times
Friday, August 13, 8:30–10pm
Saturday, August 14, 8:30–10pm
Doors open at 8pm
Admission
Free
$15 Suggested donation
RSVP here
Location
51 Bergen St.