STEALTH LESBIAN is an experimental dance-film work part of a larger series of 2019 works by Elle Hong, Terms of Use (ToU). Through ToU, Hong collaborates with quotidian technologies of surveillance (e.g., smartphones, personal computers) in a dis/embodied investigation of AI, hyper-surveillance, queerness, and the social contracts agreed to both knowingly and unbeknownst to the general public. ToU employs absurdism as a coping mechanism for the social worlds the artist navigates, while proposing newer means of being in the world that destabilize dominant ideologies in technology, identity, and the body. The section STEALTH LESBIAN responds to Karen A. Mozingo’s essay, “Lesbian Lacunae: Invisible Spaces in Dance Education” (2011), a Journal of Dance Education contribution that delineates the political and pedagogical influence of lesbian artists throughout the field of dance education and practice as a soft technology for heterocentric resistance. Considering nearly a decade of time since the article’s publication, Hong delves deeper into the margins of dance studies in crafting a digital presence of their situatedness within the field as a QTPOC (queer/transgender/person-of-color) dancer. STEALTH LESBIAN emerges from a personal investigation into the politics of visibility, and how a general lack of knowledge and awareness surrounding QTPOC individuals contributes a simultaneous invisible/hypervisible fixation on the QTPOC dancer’s body, sociohistorical implications, and ability to be perceived beyond Europeanist and heterocentric modes of viewing.
Flitting between FaceTime calls, avatar generators, computer desktop autoethnography, and crude keying effects that blend Hong into their surroundings — including her reimagining as a former contestant on MNET K-Pop survival show, Produce 48 — STEALTH LESBIAN utilizes the ephemeral space of the digital to envision self-determined modes of visibility. Through digital performance, Hong crafts a whimsical portrayal of how the intersection of experimental film and dance studies might serve as a site for imagining new genders and worlds that stand in deep opposition to the legacy of Europeanist, heterocentrism employed through dance as a field of study.
(they/she) is an anti-disciplinary artist, writer, and educator from the occupied lands of the Hawaiian Kingdom (Honolulu, HI). Currently based in Cheyenne/Ute/Arapaho/Sioux Territories (Denver, CO), they received their MFA in Choreography from the University of Colorado Boulder with a graduate certification in Emergent Technologies & Media Arts Practice. Their work spans through dance, media arts, writing, music, and pedagogy — often bricolaging them into hybrid performances. Elle's work has been shown both nationally and internationally, including the Thessaloniki Queer Arts Festival (Greece), SPEKTRUM (Berlin), the Seattle Festival of Dance Improvisation (Seattle, WA), Counterpath Press (Denver, CO), and the Ezra & Cecile Zilkha Gallery (Middletown, CT). ellehong.com | @umamigoddess | SoundCloud
