You have to keep changing the way I address you, the way you address me
Oliver Doe (b. 1994) explores queer communication through varying levels of coding and abstraction. Research into use of colour, gesture, and other non-verbal lexicons as coded languages for cruising or signalling identity is central to this work, as well as the queer possibilities of abstraction within verbal language.
More info at: www.oliverdoe.com
With these works they are investigating Queer Linguistics and its (de)construction; queer uses of existing language; and abstracted and queered modes of interpersonal (and societal) communication. Considering repetition, indexing, code-switching and citation as the building blocks of (queer) language, their works modulate and bend these foundations to highlight the mobility and malleability of language in queer use.
Doe’s recent research has been focused on linguistic abstraction as a performative mode that can both construct and deconstruct the possibilities of queer identity categories, communicating desire or identity beyond language as we expect it. This work focuses particularly on paralanguages used in the realms of cruising and drag – on ways in which they are abstracted through time and situation, but also have significant overlaps and divergences that defy being understood from the outside.
