Ongoing/Current Projects
NET/WORK
Video documentation of Flight Experiment #1 (duration 8:38), a piece from NET/WORK, performed at Squirrel Haus Arts in December 2019.
NET/WORK is an ongoing, multidisciplinary record of queer disabled life created by D. Allen from 2018-present. NET/WORK has been, and will be, a process-based performance, a durational installation, a series of movement experiments, an archive of drawings and photographs, a collection of large-scale handknit and sewn textiles, a score of voice and environmental sound, and an ever-evolving film. At its heart, the work is a survival strategy for its maker. It is also an invitation for connection through our shared truth: embodiment. Although NET/WORK centers around queer, trans, disabled/chronically ill embodiment, it is a world that extends towards anyone who reaches back. For more writing and visual documentation of NET/WORK, visit the project page.
Images by 20% Theatre Co/Kristin Stoeckler, Nancy B. Allen, Beth Mikel Ellsworth, Isabel Fajardo, and D. Allen.
Essay Collection in Progress
Since 2019, I have been researching, drafting, and gathering material for a collection of lyric essays that examines queer, trans, and disabled embodiment in relationship to place. The collection brings together a range of topics by exploring micro and macro connections among them, using my lifelong practice of blending firsthand natural observation and poetic contemplation with a commitment to diverse research strategies.
Some of the broad topics I explore by braiding threads of site-specific memoir with multimodal research: relationships between disability justice and the built environment; disabled/ill lifeways as valuable forms of survival-wisdom in the presence of climate chaos; diversity expressions of gender, sexuality, movement, and embodiment beyond the human species; the devastating impact that sustained colonization and capitalist priorities have had on our natural world; and the role that understanding geologic time scales–through art, science, and experiences–can have in contemporary environmental justice actions.
Places and lands with which I have strong personal relationships, and which appear in these essays, include Minneapolis, Minnesota; Madison, Wisconsin; Bennington, Vermont; New Smyrna Beach, Florida; Durham, North Carolina; Valley of the Gods, Utah; Brooklyn, New York; Fishers Island, New York; the HJ Andrews Experimental Research Forest, Oregon; and surrounding regions of the above.
All images by D. Allen.
Past Projects
A BONY FRAMEWORK FOR THE TANGIBLE UNIVERSE
A Bony Framework for the Tangible Universe is D. Allen’s first full-length collection of poetry, lyric essays, and images. Published by The Operating System (Brooklyn, NY) in 2019, the book weaves together the author’s object collections, personal lived experiences, found text, and original 2D artworks to explore intimacy, grief, and desire within chronic illness. For more details on the book and to order, visit the book page.
Visual excerpts and previously published excerpts:
Read “The Rust Collection” (2017) at District Lit // Poems, dictionary erasure, & gouache portraits of rusted objects collected in Minneapolis, MN
Cover design by Elæ Moss / The Operating System. All artwork and text by D. Allen.
Read “Autobodiography” (2016), Connotation Press // Lyric essay with dictionary erasures
Essay: “On Material,” (2016), Black Warrior Review // Craft essay with text & images
Video:“O Sister” (2017), Voices of Hope Choir & University of Minnesota Women’s Chorus // Poem by D. Allen, composition by Kathleen Allan, choral direction by Amanda Weber.
D. Allen // the body connected 