McKenzie Wark
Reverse Cowgirl
What if you were trans and didn’t know it? For the first time in Austria, author McKenzie Wark presents her work Reverse Cowgirl (Moderation: Francis Ruyter), spinning a comedy of errors between trying to live as a gay man and being a man with women – from Sydney in the 1980s to New York today.
As part of imagetanz, McKenzie Wark presents her work Reverse Cowgirl, in which she raises the questions: What if you were trans and didn’t know it? What if there was a gap in your life that you had no more than a vague idea existed? If you only felt at home in your body when you were high on drugs or having sex? From Sydney in the 1980s to New York today, McKenzie Wark embarks on a journey through the changing political and media landscapes and describes the attempt to find a home between the fractures of identity and body. Borrowing from the genres of autofiction and fiction criticism, the result is a deeply moving exploration of the self – an autoethnography of the opacity of our selves. The German translation of Reverse Cowgirl was published by August Verlag in 2023.
McKenzie Wark is best known for a series of books on 21st century critical theory and on alternative histories of Marxism. Her most recent, post-transition works of autofiction and autotheory – including Raving, Reverse Cowgirl and Love and Money, Sex and Death – brought her a lot of media attention. She is a professor of media and cultural theory at the New School in New York. For Ariadne Randall’s piece Reverse Cowgirl II: Ride To The Top, which can be seen as part of imagetanz 2025, she wrote a entirely new text.
Pressestimmen
“Reverse Cowgirl is as elegant as it is sexy, as clever as it is soggy. A stunning text.”
Tobi Schiller, Queerer Kanon
“Wark masterfully explores and puts into words the multi-layered dynamics of desire, the oscillation of gender roles and hierarchies that appear in or mediated by sexuality. The wild mix of pornography and existential philosophy, which breaks all literary boundaries, is insightful, pleasurable and sometimes also very funny. This courageous auto-ethnography gives space to an often overlooked fact, probably because it is not always pleasant: that we never stop being a mystery to ourselves – even after we have found the right pronouns and a name that suits us.”
Anja Kümmel, Sissy Magazine
Dates & Tickets
April 2025
Currently fully booked
studio brut
Zieglergasse 25, 1070 Wien
not accessible
Info
Moderation: Francis Ruyter
With a book table from ChickLit
Event recommendations
Imani Rameses
First Person Plural
Ariadne Randall (feat. McKenzie Wark)
Reverse Cowgirl II: Ride To The Top
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brut all over Vienna
brut nordwest
accessible
Nordwestbahnstraße 8-10, 1200 Vienna
Subway: U1, U2 (Praterstern), U4 (Friedensbrücke), U6 (Dresdnerstraße) Tram: 5 (Nordwestbahnstraße) Bus: 5A (Wasnergasse)
accessible
studio brut
not accessible
Zieglergasse 25, 1070 Wien
Subway: U3 (Zieglergasse), Tram: 49 (Westbahnstraße / Zieglergasse)
not accessible
Breitenseer Lichtspiele
not accessible
Breitenseer Straße 21, 1140 Vienna
U-Bahn: U3 (Hütteldorfer Straße) Tram: 10 (Laurentius Platz), 49 (Hütteldorfer Straße)
WUK performing arts
barrierefrei
Währinger Straße 59, 1090 Vienna
Subway: U6 (Währinger Straße / Volksoper), Tram: 40, 41, 42 (Währinger Straße / Volksoper), 5, 33 (Spitalgasse), 37, 38, 40, 41, 42 (Spitalgasse / Währinger Straße)