[Summer 2023]
Queer Black Masculinities: Middle-aged Boyhood
By Dayna McLeod
[Excerpt]
An exercise in confronting shyness, shame, and fear about singing, Quantum Choir1 is a moving enactment of queer kinship and vulnerability in which Michèle Pearson Clarke invites three other queer masculine people with no singing experience to learn to sing with her and ultimately be filmed individually for her four-channel video installation. Using collective vulnerability as a method of and metaphor for survival and care, Quantum Choir encourages our empathy so that we cheer on Clarke and her singers. We see them do vocal warm-up exercises, stretch, and start to sing John Grant’s Queen of Denmark a cappella individually across four screens set up in a metal framework that surrounds us. Halfway through the song, music rises and the installation bursts with instrumentation to back up the earnest singers’ voices as, their eyes closed at times, they charm us with karaoke-like harmonies, choreographed gestures, and heartfelt solos.2…
[ Complete issue, in print and digital version, available here: Ciel variable 123 – THE POWER OF INTIMACY ]
[ Complete article, in digital version, available here: Michèle Pearson Clarke, The Animal Seems to Be Moving – Dayna McLeod, Queer Black Masculinities: Middle-aged Boyhood ]