Critical Conversations with Dr. Lau Malaver

ABSTRACT: Tattooed on the right side of my neck in stacked block letters, RECOVECOS (Spanish for nooks & crannies, twists, turns) adorns my travesti body, inviting flirtatious and serious hand gestures as I move across space and as I make space. Recovecos exists due to the interactions with other travesti and cuir beings be they virtual, imaginative, flesh-y, erotic, or otherwise; that is, I only am because I become with others across spacetime. This talk asks onto-epistemological questions of travesti life at the nooks, orifices, and other openings on and beyond the body, and therefore, I invite us to dig whatever we engender as a body in this socio-political context we find ourselves in. My political intimacy emerges from my performance art where I create vínculos travesti with a twist: vin-culos trans. Vin-culos trans is an entryway within my theory of Recovecos that offers up the anus/ass as a decolonial and countersexual nook from where we (marginalized peoples) can make space for life against all systems of oppression. As part of my talk, I will analyze my participation in Johan Mijail’s workshop, “Metresas e imaginarios disidentes a la colonialidad,” that took place July 9-12, 2024 in Bogotá, Colombia. It is from this encounter that vin-culos travesti was born, and I would like to propose it as an intimate political practice of travesti life/beinghood. The talk will be multilingual, genre-bending, and invitational. Así que con este pitch, vinculemonos porque nos lo merecemos.

BIO: Lau Malaver [they/them] is an Assistant Professor of Race, Ethnic, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at St. Olaf College. Malaver's research project, Recovecos: Race, Time, and the Performance of Trans Embodiment, investigates 21st century trans cultural productions in the Américas, and analyzes how trans scholar-artists use embodied art to negotiate their relationship with the historical present and trans futures alike. They examine this relationship through the episteme Malaver terms Recovecos (Spanish for nooks, hidden turns, twists), which is the relationship of space and time. Malaver has published in ASAP/J: Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present Journal, Chiricu Journal, Ecumenica: Journal of Performance and Religion, among others. Malaver has received recognition for their performance work and artist residency at the Denver Art Museum, B2 Center for Art, Media and Performance, and as a facilitator with the New York University Institute of Performance and Politics. Lau is also a fiction writer.