Boychild

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Tosh Basco, known by her performance name boychild (stylized in lowercase), is an American performance artist, dancer, and photographer.[1] boychild identifies as nonbinary trans, but considered her persona of boychild to be female and uses she/her pronouns when performing.[2] She uses her body as a vehicle for performing. Her choreography, she told Interview Magazine, is like "the physical body turning into a cyborg ... It’s like a glitch; there’s a repetitive thing that happens."[3] Performances of boychild's often consist of lip-syncs to heavily distorted pop songs.[2] Her signature style includes a shaved head, full-body makeup, tinted contact lenses, and neon lighting.[4] She lives and works in California.

Work[]

boychild was born in Sacramento, California and grew up in San Francisco during the 1990s.[2] She experimented with drag at an early age and cites Dia Dear as an early influence.[5] boychild began performing with her persona in 2012 in the San Francisco drag scene.[2] San Francisco is home to the first "gay riot" that broke out in August of 1966 when drag queens dining at Compton's Cafeteria on Turk Street fought back against police harassment. This riot proceeded the Stonewall Rebellion in New York City that would take place three years later.[6] boychild states that the birth of the Boychild persona occurred during months of research into clowns, healers, and non-western cultures, medicine men, shamans, witches.[5]

Performances by boychild are sci-fi in aesthetic and nature. boychild uses posthuman performance strategies to communicate meaning through combinations of body, voice and technology.[7] boychild's performances often reference idea of cyborgs, which plays with the hybrid of machine and organism and becomes a creature of social reality and fiction.[8]

boychild walked in Hood By Air's 2013 spring/summer show with signature white-out contacts lenses and glowing mouthpieces alongside A$AP Rocky.[9] Later that year, boychild toured with singer Mykki Blanco and began collaborating with multimedia polymath Wu Tsang.[10]

boychild's collaboration with Wu Tsang has led to numerous performances, videos, and other projects, such as Moved by the Motion, which includes cellist Patrick Belaga, dancer Josh Johnson, electronic musician Asma Maroof, and poet Fred Moten.[11]

boychild's performances have been presented at the Gropius Bau, the Venice Biennale, the Sydney Biennial, the Whitney Museum of American Art, MoMA PS1, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, ICA London, and Berghain.[12]

#Untitled Lip-Syncs[]

Many of boychild's performances are a part of her #Untitled Lip-Sync series. #Untitled Lip-Sync 2 begins in complete darkness. Eventually, three red lights begin flashing to form a triangle shape that illuminates boychild's head. One light is held in boychild's mouth, while the other two are held in each of her hands. A spotlight shines on boychild, which reveals that she is tangled in ropes and has white paint on her face. The performance displays boychild struggling against the constraint of the ropes, symbolizing the struggle that occurs from acts of pain, hate, anger, and desire towards queer people.[13]

Many of boychild's lip-syncs use similar elements to those in #Untitled Lip-Sync 2, like lights and paint, to accompany the movement and music in the performance.[13]

References[]

  1. ^ "How collaboration is the driving force behind Wu Tsang's mesmerising new film on the Migrant Crisis". www.sleek-mag.com. Retrieved 2020-05-08.
  2. ^ a b c d Riszko, Leila (2017-07-03). "Breaching bodily boundaries: posthuman (dis)embodiment and ecstatic speech in lip-synch performances by boychild". International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media. 13 (2): 153–169. doi:10.1080/14794713.2017.1348094. S2CID 27049412 – via EBSCO Host.
  3. ^ Small, Rachel (2014-12-10). "Boychild". Interview Magazine. Retrieved 2020-05-08.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  4. ^ "Boychild - 0 Artworks, Bio & Shows on Artsy". www.artsy.net. Retrieved 2020-05-08.
  5. ^ a b Team, i-D. (2013-11-13). "all about the boychild". i-D. Retrieved 2020-05-08.
  6. ^ Hillman, Betty (2011). "The most profoundly revolutionary act a homosexual can engage in": Drag and the Politics of Gender Presentation in the San Francisco Gay Liberation Movement, 1964-1972". Journal of the History of Sexuality. 20 (1): 161 – via EBSCO Host.
  7. ^ Popat, Sita (2017-07-03). "Bodily extensions and performance". International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media. 13 (2): 101–104. doi:10.1080/14794713.2017.1358525. PMC 5720339. PMID 29226918 – via EBSCO Host.
  8. ^ Haraway, Donna (1991). "A Cyborg Manifesto". Artificial Life: Critical Contexts: 456.
  9. ^ Hawgood, Alex (2013-04-10). "Hood by Air Has a Fashion Moment". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2020-05-08.
  10. ^ Dazed (2014-09-08). "Boychild on bending the rules of gender". Dazed. Retrieved 2020-05-08.
  11. ^ "How I became an artist: Wu Tsang". Art Basel. Retrieved 2020-05-08.
  12. ^ "Performance by Tosh Basco (aka boychild) - "Untitled: darkness"". Wesleyan University. November 7, 2020.
  13. ^ a b Hamamcioglu, Gamze (2020). Gesturing Toward Utopia: Queer Time and Place in the Performance Art of Cassils, boychild and Marval A Rex. İhsan Doğramacı Bilkent University. pp. 85–88.
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