Jack Halberstam in the Wild
The Power Institute at the University of Sydney will shortly be hosting Jack Halberstam, a pioneering and hugely influential scholar in the fields of gender, queer and trans studies.
Halberstam will be visiting Sydney from New York, where he is the David Feinson Professor of Humanities at Columbia University. Over the past twenty years, Halberstam鈥檚 work has explored the ways identity has been framed and contested in modern and contemporary literature, politics, film, art and architecture. Many works, like 1995鈥檚 Female Masculinity, are today considered landmarks in queer and gender studies.
During his Sydney visit, Halberstam will air some of the ideas from his forthcoming volume, The Wild Beyond: Music, Architecture and Anarchy. This is the second volume in a broader project that posits 鈥渨ildness鈥� as a space of possibility for forms of life that escape the binary structures of gender, sexuality and other constraining systems of knowledge.
Halberstam鈥檚 project has already garnered a wide readership in Australia. Indeed, Professor Halberstam鈥檚 first public offering鈥斺�攊s already sold out (but you can join the wait list!). This lecture will address the 鈥渁esthetics of collapse鈥� in the 1970s work of Black queer artists like Alvin Baltrop and Beverly Buchanan. This lecture forms part of 鈥淚mage Complex鈥�, which aims to introduce new ideas on art and visual culture.
"More fun than a Ted Talk, more sexy than a talk show, more controversial than a white male comedian - Queer PowerPoint is exactly what it sounds like, queers transforming the world鈥檚 most clunky presentation platform into sheer magic!" - Jack Halberstam
Tickets are still available for the following night鈥檚 event at the University of Sydney鈥檚 Seymour Centre:聽. Here Jack will approach wildness from another angle, presenting 鈥渢he case against pets鈥�. This topic is perfectly suited to the playful and slightly rowdy format of Queer PowerPoint, an artistic platform run by performance maker Harriet Gillies, interdisciplinary artist Xanthe Dobbie, creative producer Thom Smyth and AV manager Charlie Kember. 鈥淲e are so excited to have Jack as our first international Queer PowerPoint speaker,鈥� said Dobbie. 鈥淗aving followed Jack鈥檚 work for many years, we know he will bring queering banal corporate software to a new level. This is going to be wild!鈥�
Professor Halberstam鈥檚 visit is part of the Power Institute鈥檚 broader mission to engage with the most interesting and exciting thinkers in art and visual culture, and make their work accessible to Australian audiences. As Mark Ledbury, Director of the Power Institute, noted: 鈥淔rom Gayatri Spivak in the 1980s to Jack Halberstam in 2023, the Power Institute has for decades helped to place the University of Sydney at the centre of the world鈥檚 most important discussions of art, culture and identity.鈥�
Professor Halberstam is the Power Institute鈥檚 third visiting scholar of 2023, following the visit of Southeast Asian art expert聽, and the arrival of聽聽as part of the ten-month Terra Foundation Visiting Professorship in First Nations Art.聽聽