In »Dogs of Love,« the queer performance collective ONCE WE WERE ISLANDS explores the intimate connection between two people that transcends space and time. Starting from their own love for each other in the here and now, the two performers* move away from each other in the course of the performance and pass through time. On the virtual path into the future and the past, respectively, they explore and relive the equally real and fictional history of queer togetherness.
Located in the interstice of visual art, performance, dance and scientific research, Chris Gylee and Richard Aslan use (auto)biographical narration as well as meticulous research on life realities that go beyond the consciousness of heteronormative “normality” for »Dogs of Love«. The result is a semi-fictional family tree of queer belonging, in which Reinaldo Arenas appears as well as Marsha P. Johnson, Sylvia Rivera, Jack Bee Garland, Audre Lorde and Samuel R. Delany.
Chris Gylee and Aslan are working as a queer performance collective under the name ONCE WE WERE ISLANDS since 2012 in the inexhaustible field between disciplines, combining theater, film, choreography and scientific research. For their poetic works, the two performers* use (auto-) biographical narration as well as meticulous research on queer life realities. The starting point of their projects are both selected research questions and a strong connection to people who see the world from a perspective that is unfamiliar to them. perspective that is unfamiliar to them. Their collaborators may be specialists, have a particular life experience or skill, think about things in fascinating ways, or simply be open to playful exploration. Their ongoing research is dedicated to diverse phenomena such as queerness, empathy, marginalization, and activism. To realize these working focuses, they use elements of performance, theater, installation, and choreography as raw material. The result is a series of contemporary rituals closely linked to performative mechanisms and laboratories. These similarly charged spaces open up uncanny experiences, provoke surprising thought patterns, and shed light on human interaction.
