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Gabriele Christian, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, jose e. abad

GROUP

Alif is for An(n)als

for Beyond Gravity 2019

CounterPulse

Alif is for An(n)als is a collaborative multimedia performance couched in Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s Tomorrow We Inherit the Earth: The Alif Series of performances.

An Excerpt from Speak: Beyond Gravity

“Our work/world initiates in the aftermath of our envisioned global queer revolution of apocalyptic proportions. Flaring up in the Middle East and the African continent, this uprising eventually made its way to the center of the plutocratic, apathetic empire – the United States – spreading first like wildfire from the thousands of redlined neighborhoods of black Americans. Having successfully dismantled Western imperialism, ecoterrorism, colonial-settler projects and white supremacy, new leaders emerge in this blighted terrain.


Faluda Islam (Zulfikar), a bearded Muslim drag queen guerrilla warrior was one of those martyred, killed by American-backed rebels and, miraculously, resurrected using Wifi technology. Her resurrection confuses the borders of time, asks us to suspend our expired mythos for her arrival. Her survival is contingent on Black Bussy (Gabriele), a night/mare born at the ruins of the Stud Bar in San Francisco, and jose, a necromancer and re/cycler, as no future can ever truly be a simple, solitary project.


What does the world post-radical-liberatory-revolution look like when its players are queer as fuck, high femme, high glamour and more extra than terrestrial? Do we make the same mistakes with each other or do we correct the pains inflicted on us by those who came before: straight white men with a narrow sense of fashion, politics, desire, time and space?”

Film stills: Zulfikar Ali Bhutto

In photos: jose e. abad and Gabriele Christian