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hook up-hooked up-hooking up is a performance conceived by Lorena Wolffer to make young people’s perceptions and experiences regarding sex visible through a public conversation with Kira, her teenage daughter. This unrehearsed conversation revolves around Kira's perceptions and positions, framed with the voices, stances, and experiences of other young people on the subject, both in the dialogue itself and in the form of video projections. The project aims to question gender today through the sexual practices of generations of teenagers and young adults who have grown up with a sexual education derived from normative pornography but, at the same time and thanks to feminisms, experience their bodies, genders and sexualities in more free and egalitarian forms than the generations that preceded them.

First performed in Madrid under the title darme-darse-darnos (to give myself, to give oneself, to give each other)—three conjugations of the verb “darse” (to give oneself), a common phrase used by Spanish-speaking youth to denote “making out”—this iteration renames the performance with an equivalent slang and involves the circulation of an anonymous questionnaire among young people between the ages of 18-25 at the University of Toronto, across the GTA and in Mexico City, with questions designed by Kira to collect their ideas and experiences in relation to gender and sexuality. Together with Kira's own experiences, the collected responses inform the questions and topics addressed during the performance. Both performers are committed to discussing these matters solely in the presence of a live audience.

Call for Participation

To participate in the anonymous questionnaire, please complete this submission form. The deadline to submit responses is Friday October 20, 2023.

Answers from the public will be incorporated anonymously into the performance.

About GUT_BRAIN

hook up-hooked up-hooking up is presented as a part of GUT_BRAIN, an exhibition series inspired by the primary movements of the digestive system: ingestion, propulsion, mechanical breakdown, chemical digestion, absorption, and elimination. Curated by Irmgard Emmelheinz and Christine Shaw and staged in six movements in sites between Mississauga, Canada and Oaxaca, Mexico, the project moves from injury to potential, from separation to symbiosis, from damage to possible futures.

The first movement, Destructive Desires and Other Destinies of Excess, materializes at the mouth and tracks the origins and symptoms of injurious forms of interdependency that have led to our toxic world. It is on view from September 2023–March 2024 at the Blackwood Gallery, across the UTM campus, and other auxiliary locations. For more information visit blackwoodgallery.ca.

Accessibility: There is an accessibility ramp to the venue's main entrance off of Charles Street West, a fully accessible washroom on main floor in the North Lobby, and an elevator to 2nd floor (recommend those with accessibility needs to remain on the main orchestra level in case of power outage). Please note that there are no step rows and accessibility seating in rows O, T and U.

GUT_BRAIN 1 is generously supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, and the University of Toronto Mississauga. Christine Shaw’s research was supported in part by a Curatorial Research Fellowship from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

Event Venue

Isabel Bader Theatre, 93 Charles Street West, Toronto, Canada