Form ID-IP is a performance intervention designed to force people to become aware of their biases and the absurdity of thinking you know someone's identity or history, based on how they appear to you.
The Performance:
I gave random people a form I made myself. The form asked questions about my identity, and participants were tasked with filling out this form based on my appearance. The participants were not allowed to ask me any questions at all and I was to remain silent and neutral as they filled out the form.
WHY:
I chose to make this form because it forced people to categorize and profile me while I was in front of them and at times making eye contact. For people who are at the intersection of multi-racial heritage non-binary gender, we’re always resisting being simplified and forced into a box that we don’t fit into.
UTOPIA:
This project addresses a Utopia of a world where we lead with self-definition and Ipseity, rather than the external classification assigned to us by others. A world where we don’t try to classify and categorize each other. A world where these labels aren’t used to determine all that we are or all we’re supposed to be. That people can admit they know nothing about anyone until they put in the effort to find out “who” we are, instead of assuming “what” we are.
Methodology:
The intervention used live encounters. I remained entirely silent, refusing to assist the participants. This silence meant that they could only rely on my appearance and their biases to check the boxes.
The Findings (Sample Size: 10)
The Confidence Paradox: The average confidence rating of the participants in how accurate they were was 59%, even though the total categorical accuracy was 0%.
Ethnic Erasure: 40% of participants failed to identify my Hispanic/Latine heritage even though the option was available to them. That meant that when looking at me, they didn’t see my Dominican/PR roots, but felt confident in categorizing me as a monoracial Black.
Gender Policing: 50% of participants defaulted to a binary "Woman" label, even though the non-binary/ genderqueer option was available, as well as an “undetermined” option, yet half of the participants assigned me as “Woman”.
Queer Visibility: Interestingly, 70% correctly identified my orientation and 0% identified me as heterosexual. This suggests that even as they failed to define my gender, they still “saw” that I wasn’t straight.
Participant Voices: The feedback revealed how people felt about the experience of labeling me using restrictive checkboxes. While one participant dismissively stated, "I don't really care if I'm wrong, it’s all in good science." To me this quote represents how others use these labels to categorize people with distant and clinical gaze. They don’t see a person or feel the weight of the labels, they just see something that needs to be solved and organized. Other participants wrote that they felt uncomfortable, awkward, and judgmental with one stating: "I feel mildly uncomfortable as I don't like to assume identities based on looks." This discomfort is the success of the performance.
Adrian Piper: Her Calling Cards which politely confronted people who made assumptions about her race.
Marina AbramoviΔ: For staying still while people observed her and she observed them inthe subject in The Artist is Present.
Coco Fusco: They did The Couple in the Cage, which highlighted the of the "ethnographic" gaze.
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