Project Description:

Rupture: Sneak is a solo performance art piece exploring stories across three generations: my grandfather’s childhood in occupied Armenia after the genocide, my father’s forced migration to the US after the Lebanese civil war, and my life as a first-generation American. Through a vocal and movement exploration of compression and interaction with a pile reminiscent of a bombed-out building in Beirut, I posit smallness and sneaking as tools for navigating oppressive structures.

 

Our “smallness” (our untold stories, and less “valuable” social role as victims of empire) aids me and my forebears in discovering uncharted paths. The set, a pile evocative of war detritus, is a site of seeking safety within precarity: it is both a home I return to, and an obstacle I must face. Disorienting physical pathways drive the work: the slithering of my grandfather’s emblezzlement is both cheeky and hypervigilant; my tone alternates between taunting and fearful I share my history of fraud. Through the complex and deeply personal, I assert a universal claim: the blighted inheritance of those in SWANA Diaspora is more than tragedy – it is a path toward a special resilience we all share.

 

Bio:

Lichen Bouboushian is a non-binary performance artist based in central Texas, with a history of practice in Chicago and New York City. They build a rhizomatic practice through visible forays into performance, curating, and teaching, and less visible forays into writing, dialogue, mutual aid, and resource sharing. As a solo performer, they create emotionally jarring juxtapositions of text, experimental voice work, and somatics-based movement practices. They dive into their family history—a blend of heritage from Germany, East Texas, Armenia, and Lebanon—to ask critical questions about ancestry, migration, and social privilege. Their sense of self is carved out by multiplicities that do not synthesize: they are the descendant of both refugees and conquerors, blue-collar criminals and community educators; they experience white privilege as well as the challenges of being first-generation and working-class. This social positioning fuels the personal and collective scrutiny and healing that are central to their work.

They have shared work in New York City at Dixon Place, JACK, Danspace Project, Issue Project Room, Center for Performance Research, and the Queens Museum. They have also presented at Elastic Arts, Constellation, and Co-Prosperity Sphere in Chicago. They have held residencies at New York Live Arts (Fresh Tracks) and Chez Bushwick, Movement Research, Mount Tremper, Santa Fe Art Institute, and Stove Works. They have also performed in Athens and Beirut, and in festivals including the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, New Genre Festival (Tulsa), Miami Performance International Festival, QueerNY and Queer Zagreb, Inverse Performance Art Festival (Fayetteville, AR), and Month of Performance Art-Berlin.

 

Workshop (community class) Description:

DESIRE/REVILE: This workshop will engage participants in exploring the building blocks of Lichen's creative process through breath, body visualization, movement, writing/drawing, speaking, and vocalizing. Special focus will be placed on surprise, rebellion, and refusal, in an effort to highlight the students' agency in co-creating the workshop environment. This workshop is consent-based and accessible -- no prior experience in any field is required, and every aspect can be customized to participants' needs, interests, and comfort levels. Please bring writing/drawing materials, water, and comfortable clothing and get ready to feel expansive.