Abstract
This performance presents trans* experiences of cruising through autoethnographic fragments as a methodological try-out. Trans* cruising narratives illuminate embodied ways of learning gender affirmation, desire, and survival in spaces that often surveil or erase trans* bodies. Cruising is a form of re-orientation (Ahmed, 2006, Queer Phenomenology) in response to systemic exclusion, teaching survival through attentiveness and showing how to read embodied signals, negotiate risk, and create fleeting moments of mutual care.
Often framed as ‘deviant’, cruising practices function as pedagogies of care, teaching boundaries and consent, vulnerability and agency, and collective learning in ways formal education rarely provides. Institutions tend to sanitise care, transforming teaching and support into procedural, measurable labour that can be commodified and extracted, leaving little space for experimentation or relational learning. In contrast, cruising embraces messiness and improvisation, generating knowledge outside capitalist and institutional constraints.
The performance draws on my personal cruising experiences as a trans* person and reframes them through speculative storytelling, gesture, and soundscape. A narrated memory is layered with ambient sound and gestures that evoke the attentiveness and responsiveness of cruising, while subtle audience participation opens a shared speculative space. These personal and collective fragments circulate like cruising codes – embodied, ephemeral, and foregrounding desire itself as a mode of learning.
Following José Esteban Muñoz’s (Muñoz, 2009, Cruising Utopia) notion of cruising as speculative method, this performance experiments with cruising itself as a research practice that is open-ended, improvisational, and world-making. Cruising as a trans* ‘deviant’ methodology enacts pedagogies of care through embodied, ephemeral encounters, foregrounding desire and mutual care and affirming trans* ways of knowing and becoming.
Performed during the 9th Nordic Trans Studies Conference, Örebro University, Sweden, Working Group – Creative Research Methods in Trans Studies.
Often framed as ‘deviant’, cruising practices function as pedagogies of care, teaching boundaries and consent, vulnerability and agency, and collective learning in ways formal education rarely provides. Institutions tend to sanitise care, transforming teaching and support into procedural, measurable labour that can be commodified and extracted, leaving little space for experimentation or relational learning. In contrast, cruising embraces messiness and improvisation, generating knowledge outside capitalist and institutional constraints.
The performance draws on my personal cruising experiences as a trans* person and reframes them through speculative storytelling, gesture, and soundscape. A narrated memory is layered with ambient sound and gestures that evoke the attentiveness and responsiveness of cruising, while subtle audience participation opens a shared speculative space. These personal and collective fragments circulate like cruising codes – embodied, ephemeral, and foregrounding desire itself as a mode of learning.
Following José Esteban Muñoz’s (Muñoz, 2009, Cruising Utopia) notion of cruising as speculative method, this performance experiments with cruising itself as a research practice that is open-ended, improvisational, and world-making. Cruising as a trans* ‘deviant’ methodology enacts pedagogies of care through embodied, ephemeral encounters, foregrounding desire and mutual care and affirming trans* ways of knowing and becoming.
Performed during the 9th Nordic Trans Studies Conference, Örebro University, Sweden, Working Group – Creative Research Methods in Trans Studies.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Publication status | Published - 9 Dec 2025 |
Themes from the UHS research agenda
- Health and welfare
- Justice and inclusion