Subjects of Recognition is a new performance in two parts written and choreographed by Richard John Jones. The performance literally divides the body and the voice into separate parts to consider the potentiality of each to produce a personal testament. Part II features Simon Asencio, Adriano Wilferts Jensen and Taocheng Wang. Its presentation with If I Can't Dance was established through an affinity with the Edition V: Appropriation and Dedication programming that places an emphasis on voicing and a politics of difference.

The performance takes the form of three separate monologues that become repeated, shared and spoken simultaneously. Through its exploration of authorship and the constraints of the narrative form, the performance plays with the limits of personal testimony whilst reflecting upon Gertrude Stein’s extensive exploration within the genre of literary portraiture.

Subjects of Recognition focuses on the moment of bearing witness as a charged sphere in which personal narrative, acts of recognition, the body, the voice and tensions between authenticity and ambiguity contend with a larger context. The work derives from three research areas that include; 1) contemporary and historical examples of the presentation of sexual difference in legal scripts from the UK and US; 2)  the act of withdrawal as a political gesture aligned with the sustainable living movement of the 1970s and ‘life’ as it could be lived otherwise; and 3) the broader notion of the framing of difference and the constant oscillation between the triad of camouflage, espionage and recognition as a way of positioning the lives of minority subjects under late-liberalism.

Subjects of Recognition: Part I will take place at 8:30pm on 26 June at Huize Frankendael, Middenweg 72, Amsterdam.

The performances are satellite events that coincide with Blending Blending Never Ending, a solo exhibition by Richard John Jones on view from 24 June to 5 July at Galerie Fons Welters, Bloemstraat 140, Amsterdam. 

The performances and exhibition are part of the Festival of Choices, an annual festival across Amsterdam featuring the work of the graduating students from the Sandberg Instituut Fine Art Masters.