hook up - hooked up - hooking up is a performance conceived by Mexican artist Lorena Wolffer to make young people’s voices, stances, and perceptions regarding sex visible through a public conversation with Kira, her teenage daughter. The performance will be presented by the Blackwood Gallery on Thursday November 9, 7-8:30pm at Isabel Bader Theatre at the University of Toronto (93 Charles St W, Toronto, ON).
The intention behind this anonymous questionnaire is to collect and activate the feelings and perceptions of young people between the ages of 18 and 25 from the Greater Toronto Area and Mexico City who are interested in being part of the project. We invite you to reflect on the questions and answer some or all of them in whatever form feels comfortable for you. Your answers will be incorporated anonymously into the performance, both within the conversation between Lorena and Kira and in video projections that will be shown during the performance.
To participate in the anonymous questionnaire, please complete this submission form. The deadline to submit responses is Monday October 23, 2023.
Answers from the public will be incorporated anonymously into the performance. We thank you for your generous participation in this project. The full questionnaire is also given below.
Questions denoted with an asterisk are required. Responses to all other questions are optional.
1. I am between 18 and 25 years old.*
2. How do you identify as?*
3. What is your sexual orientation?*
4. What is sex for you?
5. What feelings accompany sex for you? (Desire, pleasure, excitement, love, friendship, amusement, anger, guilt, anxiety, shame, etc.)
6. How do your cultural beliefs inform your sexuality?
7. Do you practice a religion? If so, do you follow its mandates on gender and sexuality?
8. Do you consume or have you consumed pornography? If so, what kind?
9. How do you establish consent within your sexual interactions?
10. Do you think sex means the same for men and women in heterosexual interactions? Why?
11. Do you feel safe and comfortable in your sexual interactions?
12. Do you practice forms of self-care in your sexual interactions? If so, which?
13. Are there people in your social circle who have been accused of sexual harassment, assault or rape, either legally or in social media? If so, did this affect the ways in which you relate to them or the person who accused them?
14. Do you think having sex is a right? Why?
To participate in the anonymous questionnaire, please complete this submission form. The deadline to submit responses is Monday October 23, 2023.
Answers from the public will be incorporated anonymously into the performance.
hook up - hooked up - hooking up is presented as a part of GUT_BRAIN, an exhibition series inspired by the primary movements of the digestive system: ingestion, propulsion, mechanical breakdown, chemical digestion, absorption, and elimination. Curated by Irmgard Emmelheinz and Christine Shaw and staged in six movements in sites between Mississauga, Canada and Oaxaca, Mexico, the project moves from injury to potential, from separation to symbiosis, from damage to possible futures.
The first movement, Destructive Desires and Other Destinies of Excess, materializes at the mouth and tracks the origins and symptoms of injurious forms of interdependency that have led to our toxic world. It is on view from September 2023–March 2024 at the Blackwood Gallery, across the UTM campus, and other auxiliary locations.