EG: What do you think is underneath those desires you speak of? Are we all just lonely and feel like a certain kind of love is the only validating love, or is it something more sinister? There could be a shift I suppose from ‘finding the man is all you’ll ever need’ towards ‘you can be the toughest warrior or the most intelligent leader but none of it will matter unless you have a man’. At least, if you compare Aurora to Mulan. Do you think there is hope for the prince-less princess?
KDI am not sure where these ideas come from but I think some of them are very old. Now we have few actual monarchies but we have Hollywood royalty and Disney princesses. The concept of a princess is one of hierarchy and bloodlines and royal baby christenings fused with romantic love. Just walk through the grocery store and you will see it – Disney princesses on balloons and Kate Middleton and her babies on the tabloid covers. We’ve somehow fused that idea of the princess with our notion of the nuclear family. What I would like to see is a princess who is so in love with the world that she doesn’t belong to anyone.
EG: what do you think about the relationship between politics and aesthetics? I see a strongly anticapitalist feminism in your work, but also one that isn’t about unpacking morality around those subjects, either. could you talk a little bit about whether or how you think about politics and aesthetics in relation to your practice?
KD: I agree with Marina Abramovic that art should ask questions more than it should provide answers. These are frightening times we live in and the human tendency to moralise is one that I want to move away from in my work, not because it’s wrong but because I think it is not enough to meet the demands of this planetary emergency we find ourselves in. I love that Rumi line: ‘out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing is a field. I will meet you there.’ That field is art for me. If we go beyond judgement we access our capacity for empathy, and we can more clearly see the ways in which we have failed in our visions of one another and the possibilities for our collective future.
EG: also, congratulations on the Queensland Poetry Festival Residency. What do you have planned for it?
KD: I will be doing workshops and readings in the community and I can’t wait to meet everyone. I will be working with high schoolers too, which I am really excited about. Perhaps the thing I am most excited about is doing is a performance of Hello Selfie Men, with male performers from the community. It will explore the performance of Australian masculinity. My tag line for this project is: ‘when the male gaze gazes back on itself.’
