To Be Everything and Nothing: Speculative Gestures in LadyZunga's Performance

Abstract

This article analyzes the case of the performer LadyZunga through the lens of the speculative turn, focusing on two key aspects: how her performative practice uniquely challenges the categories of sex, gender, identity, and humanity - attempting to evade and transcend the social demands for legibility of her time -, and how she imaginatively experimented with her corporeality, daily life, and modes of subjectivation, creating speculative gestures that emerged as political and aesthetic modes of relating to her context(s), offering insights for rethinking forms of speculative, politically situated, experiential/existential, and contextual artistic research.