Of Castrati, Angels and Simians. Ernesto Tomasini interviewed by Serena Guarracino

In this interview, Ernesto Tomasini and Serena Guarracino explore the multifarious possibilities of the voice of ‘queering’ normative notions of identity and subjectivity. Journeying across the many personifications of Tomasini’s own voice – from castrato to digital angel – their dialogue starts from Butler’s notion of ‘drag’ to show how the questioning of gender identity actually entails putting into question the body as neutral signifier of a human identity. Contemporary musical and artistic practices can redraw the boundaries of the performative body. Seventeenth-century castrati remind our present of an excessive technology of the body that challenges the border between the human and the monstrous. Tomasini’s art short-circuits these (and other) experiences of the performative body, opening it up to endless possibilities of impersonation.