But remember. Make an effort to remember. Or, failing that, invent.
Sun Cut: a lover's dictionary is a lexicon of 366 gestures that attempts to embody the 366 entries in Lesbian Peoples: Materials for a Dictionary written by Monique Wittig and Sandie Zeig (1979). In an act of speculative reanimation Sun Cut is an anticipatory document remembering a future yet to arrive. The work unfurls word by word, body by body. Each iteration of the performance progresses through the dictionary: gathering bodies, gestures, dances. It resists linguistic fixity in order to embrace language as a site of transformation, refusal, and reinvention. Inverting the status of printed material in archival practices Sun Cut asks how the body can be both a site and means of preservation.
Lesbian Peoples: Material for a Dictionary is a speculative dictionary that dismantles patriarchal language to posit a world of lesbian relation. Through fragmented definitions and poetic inventions, it reframes language as a site of resistance. Its entries range from definitions of everyday terms to elaborate accounts of mythical events, political movements and cultural practices. The book itself is a queer critique of linguistic authority and its role in enforcing dominant ideologies. Wittig and Zeig subvert the dictionary’s normal function, as a tool of mastery and control, and reshape it into a generative field where language destabilises its own conditions of use. Building on these foundations, Sun Cut approaches Lesbian Peoples not simply as a book but as a practice—a framework for reorganising the body through language.
Concept, Choreography and Performance: Chloe Chignell
Sound Collaborations: Mara Schwerdtfeger (Sydney), Steph Holl-Trieu (Essen), Amina Szecsödy (PAF, St Erme).
This work is supported by: Critical Path Sydney, Artspace Sydney, Dancehouse Melbourne, GC De Maalbeek, n22 Brussels, Kunstendecreet, Cité des arts, Paris.
This work has been presented by: StadthausGalerie, Kunsthalle Münster, Rakete Festival Tanzquartier Wien, PACT Zollverein, Essen, Pride Museum, MIMA, Brussels and Summer University, Performing Arts Forum, St Erme, France.
Photography by Stine Sampers, June 2025.
Photography by Anna Kucera, Critical Path, January 2026.
Reviews
From Ear to Ear by Marie Backmann, TQW Blog
"It is a martial folding. Fragmented definitions, repetitions; an elaborate choreography translating language into bodily memory. A text is a series of letters – signifiers – that link together to form repetitive chains of meaning. A dance can be a series of gestures; almost like writing."
“The dictionary is a drafted score for definition, is a neverending translation. It is the passing on of history, of myth as history. At the center of the room, in its geometry of gazes, Chignell continues to bend fingers in all sorts of directions. Not to tell a story, but to lay out the elements of it, from which any stories of the Amazonian peoples can be generated, revived, and regenerated. Three hours pass. We witness the process of overwriting [W/Z;C/H].”
"The whole thing feels like gathering before a battle – getting ready, arming oneself. Defending oneself. As I am searching for the meaning in the gestures, for a narrative, for a connection within the chain of signifiers, suddenly: a pattern becomes clear to me. Followed by another silent breath from the warrior/amazon."
