By Aubrey F. Burghardt
“You can call me ‘she’ today. Ask me again tomorrow.” This is the concluding line of Cell Lust | a body |, a one-hour performance art piece exhibited at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston (CAMH). Cell Lust, in its transitory existence, shares enlightenment on the topics of our cosmic bodies (and their requests for relational discourse between sex, gender, and nonbinary identities) through an intense, invasive experience. Its two creators, Houston-based artists Emilý Æyer and Traci Lavois Thiebaud, compacted narrated poetry, movement, echoing choral harmonies, and existential philosophies to manifest a revolutionary motif that demands a reordering of cells and their celestial realm.
When I attended the original performance in early September, the CAMH was a sold out. (Side note: selling out is nearly impossible at the CAMH considering it’s is free institution). The downstairs gallery was engulfed by bodies searching and orbiting for a vacant space as the confines of the building grew inwards, compacting us like sardines, or perhaps, cells in a body. The spectators were anticipating as one, sharing in the innate understanding that we were underprepared for the existential queer crisis inescapably confronting our bodies. Regardless, we were ready to undergo and share a transient, yet, everlasting performance.
The impressions left a mark on every cell of my body. Permeable. Divided. Constant mitosis. A refreshing take on changing societal language and understanding surrounding nonbinary existence.
Æyer’s background focuses on building music—the defining uniqueness of their sound is the stacked voices created from throat singing in a rhythmic field that yields resounding choral effects. Thiebaud’s work is rooted in writing and creative production, and she is well-known for her poetry and creative content at Diniolion and BETA Theater. The artists conceptualized Cell Lust together; Thiebaud wrote the script, while Æyer wrote the music.
Cell Lust uses a scenic and comprehensive approach to the interactive experience, grounded by the idea that one cannot dissect the topic of gender presence without also dissecting complexities of human order and purpose. Cell Lust composed a tactile, visual, and audible harmonizing experience, stuffing the audience full with interrogations of existential intentions and sensory buffets. Curated by Patricia Retresppo, the performance supplemented the exhibit “Stage Environment: You Didn’t Have to Be There,” which reviewed critical performance art that occurred at the CAMH in a retrospective ode.
Poetry flashed at the speed of light alongside Thiebaud’s commanding and reverberating oration, and subtitles were digitally projected onto a sculpture next to her. Meanwhile, Æyer’s piloting of the sound board felt like an astronaut charting nonbinary planets’ combustion—a flagrant conquest of burning the patriarchal system of identity and sexual oppression. It was through the consolidation and seamless movements—with aid from assisting performers—that the experience begged, demanded, and outright questioned the audience to think intrinsically of identity shifting.
The frame for Cell Lust was built upon influences of anarcho-queer theory and Russian Cosmism. Thiebaud explains that “anarcho-queer theory, while a branch of queer theory, is not necessarily meant to be viewed as a sexual or gender choice, rather it’s more of political choice, a way of inherently opposing power structure(s).” This notion permeates within Cell Lust—characterized not by a subtle dismissal of organized gender roles, but a stoic authoritative rejection of the policies that force humans to choose from a limiting identity list. Astronomy, the duo comments, was an additional recurring paradigm for the piece and complemented Æyer’s research of Russian Cosmism, which centers on philosophical thoughts of birth and the process of transforming the higher organism within space and time.
“Cell Lust composed a tactile, visual, and audible harmonizing experience, stuffing the audience full with interrogations of existential intentions and sensory buffets.” -Aubrey F. Burghardt
Photo by Kristin Massa/CAMH
Guy Hocquegehim’s article, “To Destroy Sexuality,” was also a critical influence on Cell Lust. The theory wills to eliminate the discordant identity roles created by the body binary based on genitalia. The influences of Hocquegehim’s writing are revealed in the performance’s recollection and referencing of cells seeking autonomy and the fluidity and inherency to exist without conforming to power structure(s)—we are simply people who make up a larger picture.
The artists’ identities as nonbinary individuals also manifest throughout the performance, represented through both larger and mundane statements with light-hearted rhetoric. This experience plays out in a bit that Thiebaud performs—in it, the artist deconstructs the language surrounding her “virgin mocktail” during a visit to an interstellar bar.
“Your kind would call it a ‘virgin cocktail,’ but every Noosphere here computes virginity as a construct based on archaic heteronormative human nomenclature rooted in inherently patriarchal religious ideology. Anyway, we say ‘mocktail,’ because sex isn’t something you can lose to another body and P and V penetration ain’t the only kind of ‘valid’ intercourse …. besides I’m no good when I’ve been drinking.”
The success Æyer and Thiebaud have enjoyed comes as no surprise. It is surprising, however, that the pair has only recently started to collaborate—their artistic partnership, as well as their first project, Any Shitty Sedan, came to fruition during Hurricane Harvey. Early renditions of their creations featured spoken word and vocal tracks with electronic elements, predecessors to Cell Lust. The trajectory is palpable, a visual arc that includes refining the idea of “digital bodies performing as kinetic energy and akin to the universe on their own paths,” says Thiebaud. Æyer was the one who brought the working title forward—Cell Lust is a play on words descending from the Latin phrase for celestial body, or “cellestus corpus.” The celestial body evolved into cell lust, stirring mental images of cells lusting after DNA.
Like any performance of impact, Cell Lust leaves us with takeaways applicable to everyday social situations. The duo discloses that they personally implement Cell Lust through the changing of their daily language—Æyer mentions this manifested in conversations with their mother about pronouns and trans identity, and that, despite their trans-ness, they still have a far way to go to become less transphobic.
“Cell Lust uses a scenic and comprehensive approach to the interactive experience, grounded by the idea that one cannot dissect the topic of gender presence without also dissecting complexities of human order and purpose.” -Aubrey F. Burghardt
Photo by Ashley Cid.
Thiebaud chimes in that, “There’s this line in regards to the pushback about nonbinary [language]: ‘It hurts no one but tradition to change the way we label things.’ Often, we seem to find that ‘language is the body that cages the body,’ but, in reality, language is meant to connect us, to help us understand one another.
If you feel the need for your own cells to shift, never fear. Future vibrations and alternative expressions of Cell Lust will exist—the duo is looking to eventually publish a script of the piece through Anklebitters Publishing, as well as the music through the CAMH gift shop late next year.
Cell Lust advised me to make my body a star. It encouraged me to solve scientific equations by using measures of representation, reality, and reflection in a sensitive way. And I can tell you that, personally, my body’s thirst for a heavenly existence hasn’t ended—I’ve just shifted.
To watch the full performance of Cell Lust, click here. Follow the artists on Instagram: Emilý Æyer (@___aeyer___ ) and Traci Lavois Thiebaud (@tracilavois).
Cell Lust
Concept by
Emilý Æyer and Traci Lavois Thiebaud
Written by
Traci Lavois Thiebaud
Music composed by
Emilý Æyer
With contributions from
Megan Easely
James Watts
Tobin Armstrong
Performed by
Emilý Æyer
Traci Lavois Thiebaud
Aveda Adara
Madison Whitaker
Animations by
Traci Lavois Thiebaud
Projection mapping
Input/Output
