Sun Cut: a lover's Dictionary, Shadow Text, Begin / The Mirror, Poem at Work, Poems and Other Emergencies, PUBLIC RELATIONS, APRIL (a performance), ...as if leaking, Forever in both Directions, This Container, Touch(ed), Soft Reality

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.

 

 

 

upcoming

19.05.26 • performance
SUNCUT: A lover's dictionary, [performance] Rakete Festival, Tanzquartier Wien , AT.
02.04.26 until 30.06.26 • residency
Cité dest Arts Internationale [Residency], Paris, France.
15.03.26 • performance
SUNCUT: A lover's dictionary, [performance] as part of exhibition: Hell is Other People (If you're lucky) Kunsthalle Münster, DE

recent

25.01.26 • performance
SUNCUT: A lover's dictionary, Critical Path, Sydney
19.01.26 until 24.01.26 • residency
SUNCUT: A lover's Dictionary, Residency, Artspace, Sydney
12.01.26 until 30.01.26 • residency
SUNCUT: A lover's Dictionary, Residency, Critical Path, Sydney

less recent, still present

05.12.25 • performance
SUNCUT: A lover's dictionary, Atelier no 71, PACT Zollverein, Germany

past

21.07.25 until 02.08.25 • residency
SUNCUT: a lover's dictionary, Residency at GC De Maalbeek, n22 brussels.
15.06.25 • performance
SUNCUT: a lover's dictionary, Performance, Iteration 1, PRIDE Museum, queer x Mima, Brussels
11.05.25 until 17.05.25 • residency
SUNCUT: a lover's dictionary, development at Performing Arts Forum, France.
13.01.25 until 31.01.25 • residency
SUNCUT : a lover's dictionary, residency at Critical Path, Sydney.