Cassandra Troyan

Cassandra Troyan is a writer whose work demarcates space for interventions in the spheres of theory, politics, and culture. They are the author of four full-length books of multi-genre work: Freedom & Prostitution (The Elephants 2020), BLACKEN ME BLACKEN ME, GROWLED (Tiny Hardcore Press 2014/Civil Coping Mechanisms 2016), KILL MANUAL (Artifice Books 2014), THRONE OF BLOOD (Solar Luxuriance 2013), and two chapbooks, A Theory in Tears (Kenning Editions 2016) and HATRED OF WOMEN (Solar Luxuriance 2014). Their writing or interviews have appeared in The New Inquiry, Social Text Online, Chicago Review, Entropy Mag, Shifter Magazine, Elderly, ARMED CELL, Full Stop, Tripwire, Splinter Magazine, Blind Field: A Journal of Cultural Inquiry, and Harriet: The Blog at Poetry Foundation. From 2010-2015 they curated the reading and performance series ARTIFICIAL EAR with numerous friends and collaborators in Chicago, IL where they also received their MFA in Visual Arts from the University of Chicago in 2012.

They have presented, performed, or screened their work at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASSMoCA); the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago (MCA); The University of Toronto’s “Sex Salon” at the Mark Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies; Poetics: (The Next) 25 Years at SUNY-University at Buffalo NY; Capitalism, Crisis and Ideology lecture series at Cardiff University in Cardiff, Wales; Casco: Office for Art, Design & Theory in Utrecht, NL; Stanford Humanities Center at Stanford University; Perdu Literary Foundation in Amsterdam, NL; The Poetry Project, NY; Chicago Poets’ Theater Festival, with retrospectives at Spectacle Theater in Brooklyn, NY and at Artists’ Television Access in San Francisco, CA. In fall of 2016 they were a Writer in Residence at Headlands Center for the Arts.

More of their work can be found at their person site, www.cassandratroyan.com

Teaching

They live in Kalmar, Sweden and teach theory, creative-critical writing practices, and collaborative/performative interventions in the Department of Design in Visual Communication + Change, where they've also been the Programme Coordinator since 2017, and starting Autumn 2021, they've shared the role as Co-Programme Coordinator

Publications

Artistic output (Other (popular science, discussion, etc.))

Troyan, C. (2022). To Threaten the Order of the House. Stockholm, RING artspace.
The exhibition, AND now she walks on out / È Uscita, presnted the work of Giulia Essyad and Carmen Ayala Marín. The opening launched RING's second publication, a text intervention and a poem commissioned as part of the exhibition to researcher and writer Cassandra Troyan: "To Threaten the Order of the House."
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Troyan, C. (2022). AND now she walks on out / È Uscita.
The exhibition, AND now she walks on out / È Uscita, presented the work of Giulia Essyad and Carmen Ayala Marín. The opening launched RING's second publication, a text intervention and a poem commissioned as part of the exhibition from artist, researcher, and writer Cassandra Troyan: "To Threaten the Order of the House."
The exhibition starts from a selection of carpets hanging on the walls of K. Jacobssons Inredning & Auktion. Crafted in Iran before the 1979 revolution, they represent naked women in positions of submission or passivity, some carrying remnants of sexualized exoticism. Recently, discussions in the Swedish parliament addressing sex workers' right called upon nationals values to reinstitute criminalization of the practice of sex work. Can we attune to the sound of a violent female body? Revolting, revolutionary aggressive limbs moved by expectations of care and tenderness, infinitely holding brutality?
Hairs falls in meshes, their soft anticlimactic sound, each hair severed, straight cut,
The movement of your fragile wrist as you grab a collar.
Slaps, again, and more, an acid sound against a cheek repeated until it invades your stomach. A knife in a pig, squish.
The clap of your heels on a silent night.
The clamor rising from the street, thousands of womxn walking for the independence of their body.
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Pritchard, H., Troyan, C. (2021). In the mouth of a polar bear : The undead feeling of the world.

Book (Other academic)

Troyan, C. (2020). Freedom & Prostitution. Seattle, WA, The Elephants.
Troyan, C. (2014). Kill Manual. Chicago, Artifice Books.
Troyan, C. (2014). Blacken me blacken me, growled. Charleston, IL, Tiny Hardcore Press.
Troyan, C. (2013). Throne of Blood. San Francisco, USA, Solar Luxuriance.

Book (Other (popular science, discussion, etc.))

Troyan, C. (2022). Against Capture. London, Birkbeck College, Contemporary Poetics Research Centre (CPRC) & University of Surrey.
Maybury, R., Troyan, C. (2021). Faster Than An Erection. Rome, Wet Satin Press.

Chapter in book (Refereed)

Troyan, C., Pritchard, H. (2022). The Anti Menagerie : Fictions for Interrogating the Supremacy of World-shaping Violence. Multispecies Storytelling in Intermedial Practices. Punctum Books. 189-214.

Chapter in book (Other (popular science, discussion, etc.))

Troyan, C. (2020). A Generalized Theory of Capture Against its Weight in Gold. Rewilding : an ecopoetic anthology. London, The Crested Tit Collective. 85-92.

Article in journal (Refereed)

Troyan, C. (2022). A New Animal of Pain : Poems by Cassandra Troyan. Portable Gray. 5 (2). 177-185.
Status: Published

Article in journal (Other academic)

Troyan, C. (2018). Matriarkat, andra historier och motstånd bortom kvinnoförtryck. Subaltern. II (1-2). 143-152.
Status: Published

Article in journal (Other (popular science, discussion, etc.))

Troyan, C. (2018). from What Remains. Tripwire: A journal of poetics. 14. 157-164.
Status: Published

Article, review/survey (Refereed)

Troyan, C. (2015). National Veterans Art Museum, Surrealism & War. Chicago review. 59 (1/2). 302-305.
Status: Published

Conference paper (Other academic)

Gonzalez, M., Troyan, C. (2021). Sex Work and Re-housewifization : Reconsidering the Crises of Care Under the COVID-19 Pandemic. Outlines of the Current Capital-Form, Leuphana University of Lüneburg, June 23-25, 2021.
Troyan, C. (2019). Reclaiming Abolition : Sex Worker Solidarity and Intersectional Organizing. Historical Materialism. Claps of Thunder: Disaster communism, extinction capitalism and how to survive tomorrow : Sixteenth annual conference, Central London, 7-10 November 2019.
Troyan, C. (2019). My daughter, never more : A visual presentation and intervention into material scenes of engagement/refusal. Multispecies Storytelling in Intermedial Practices : January 23–25 – Linnaeus University, Växjö, Sweden.

Other (Other (popular science, discussion, etc.))

Aouragh, M., Awan, N., Barnard, G., Boudiaf, Y., Gürses, S., et al. (2021). EU Digital COVID Certificates : When governments move fast and break things. Github European eHealth network - EU Digital Covid Certificate.
Troyan, C. (2021). Untitled, Port Ref: TN2/5336432 (For Fred). SPAM zine & Press.
Poem on website.
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Troyan, C. (2020). Excerpts from “Freedom And Prostitution”. Homintern.
Troyan, C. (2019). from Freedom and Prostitution. New Haven, CT, Social Text Collective.