MALED IT! – Body Rebellion and Flowing Knowledge: Drag Kinging as a Collective Utopia & Un/learning

This project explores Drag Kinging as a method of embodied, collective knowledge production. It is rooted in queer-feminist, anti-normative practices and unfolds through MALED IT! – a long-term workshop series I have been developing since 2018. MALED IT! empowers queer, trans*, non-binary and FLINTA* persons through drag as a form of joyful resistance and transformation.

My interest within the School of Commons lies in further developing Drag Kinging as a commons-based methodology for peer learning, critical play, and transdisciplinary research. The focus is not on performance as outcome, but on what becomes possible through the act of becoming someone else together – shifting norms, reclaiming agency, and imagining other futures through the body.

+++ SoC Gathering

July 3 - 5 in 2026

@ZHdK Zürich +++

Welcome to Drag King Utopia: A Collective Rehearsal

For the next hour, I would like to invite you into a temporary experiment.

Before we begin, a few words about Drag Kings and masculinity*.

My name is Marilyn Nova or Marilyn Moustache.

Drag Kings are performers, artists, and researchers who explore masculinity* through embodiment, transformation, exaggeration, imitation, and play. Rather than treating masculinity* as something natural or fixed, Drag Kinging approaches it as something that can be observed, learned, rehearsed, questioned, and reinvented.

In this workshop, masculinity* is not understood as something that belongs to men.

Instead, I invite us to think of masculinity* as a collection of gestures, behaviours, postures, expectations, fantasies, privileges, vulnerabilities, and ways of relating to others. Some of these we inherit. Some we resist. Some we consciously choose. Others we may still need to invent.

My interest is not in defining what masculinity* is or teaching you how to become a Drag King.

My interest is in asking:

How does masculinity* move through bodies? How is it learned? How is it performed? How can it be transformed?

And I am interested in the knowledge that lives in our bodies.

The knowledge we inherit. The knowledge we perform. The knowledge we resist. The knowledge we pass on to others without even noticing.

Today, we will use Drag Kinging not as a performance genre, but as a research tool.

Recently, two terms have been accompanying my research: Body Rebellion and Flowing Knowledge.

Body Rebellion makes me wonder: Where does resistance live in the body? What parts of ourselves have learned to adapt? What parts still refuse?

Flowing Knowledge makes me wonder: How does knowledge travel? What happens when it moves from one body to another? What changes along the way? What gets lost? What gets invented?

For the next hour, I would like us to approach these questions together.

You will be invited to write, move, observe, speak, imagine, and perhaps try on a beard.

You don't need any previous experience with drag. You don't need to perform. You don't need to know the right answer.

I am not looking for expertise. I am looking for traces.

Traces of knowledge. Traces of rebellion. Traces of transformation.

Together, we will create a temporary Drag King Utopia: not a perfect place, but a space where other ways of being can be rehearsed.

Let's begin.

The Knowledge Exchange

cover

+++ What knowledge lives in your body? Knowledge travels. From body to body. Think of a skill, habit, gesture, survival strategy or piece of knowledge that has shaped you. +++

page 1 & 2

+++ Which parts of the body symbolise rebellion?

Which ones symbolise conformity(Anpassung)? +++

Drag King Utopia Census +++ I learned masculinity* from +++

The hangers remain empty +++ What are you wearing even when nobody sees it? +++

page 3

+++ R eflection +++

whisper

whisper

whisper

whisper

who you could become.

+++ Rehearsal end +++

Diddy

Daddy