Ashley Chambers (AC) aka Bodyconference (BC)
Performance Studies
How can performative practices of ritualistic resistance—reclaiming the erotic in autobiographical discourse with the divine—question and disrupt alternative pasts and presents, especially as related to embodied trauma and biomedical violence? AC/BC investigates the relationship between writing, performance, and documentary on hands and knees, examining states of being such as becoming, passing, rapture, effacement, and death, all the while subsisting on speculation and invention as if they were water and light.
AC/BC’s first book, The Exquisite Buoyancies, a performative elegy written to a departed spirit, was published by New Michigan Press at the University of Arizona in 2021. Her second book, Dead Grandma, based on a psychic reading conducted in 1994 by Dr. R. Leo Sprinkle, explores mysticism as a form of social transformation, both historically and personally, particularly in the context of childhood trauma and experiences with her grandmother in past lives. Since 2011, AC/BC has exhibited work and performed on stages across the country, including the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Nisus Gallery, Picasso Machinery, Story Booth, the Sella-Granata Art Gallery, and Yale University. Her writing has also been recognized by presses such as the CSU Poetry Center, Omnidawn, and Ahsahta Press. As an interdisciplinary educator, she has taught for more than a decade at Rutgers University, Portland State University, and the University of Alabama, among others. Her first full-length film, M0, a theoerotic exploration of resurrection as practice, is currently in post-production.