Sunday Arts Magazine

8 Jan 2023

Life a Knife, the Horizon

Arts, Performing Arts, Sunday Arts Magazine

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Set upon white linoleum and cast in cruciform by halogen light, Like a Knife, the Horizon is a new work by Hamish McIntosh which explores queer time through self-destruction. A durational performance-installation for four dancers, the cast attempt a five-hour marathon in Temperance Hall’s Main Hall. They run towards each other yet never meet, trying in vain to arrive at a point between them and exhausting themselves in the process.

With queer communities haunted by historic and ongoing mortalities, a future can be denied to queer people just as they ‘deny’ the future of society through non-normative embodiments and social organisations. Time both rushes forward and freezes itself in place: violent and urgent, poised and hollow.
Like a Knife, the Horizon seeks to connect fatigue and obliteration to questions around queer experiences and embodiments. In other words, to invite reflection on the links between the ‘threat’ of queerness, death, and whether we can depend on what comes next. With friendly mascot costumes and overt metaphors, this is a spectacle in sweat the whole family can enjoy. Stay for a minute or an hour and ask if the future is ours to reach.