Ren Mauney (she/they) is a queer performance activist based between Berlin and London, born on the unceded lands of the Siouan and Tuscarora people. She is currently a PhD Politics candidate at Goldsmiths University of London under the supervision of Francisco Carballo and the Centre for Postcolonial Studies. Her research is situated at the intersection of decolonial psychoanalysis and abolitionist activism, interrogating the "troubled traffic between psychic body and body politic" in relationship to the nation state and its unconscious disciplinary effects. (Homi K. Bhahba) She is interested in the complexities of what makes us allegiant to what has been designed to harm us and the role of an anarchic body in disrupting somatic nationalisms. Her performance practice is currently moving towards encounters between pedagogy and activism, using participatory structures to engage the public in interventions that unsettle the relationship to unconscious citizenship and nation state. Frantz Fanon, Sara Ahmed, Lauren Berlant, Michel Foucault, Homi K. Bhahba, and Judith Butler are critical theoretical influences on her practice.
Ren frequently collaborates with queer artist Telmo Branco and they were recently in Saxapahaw, NC researching the participatory performance work MISTRIAL funded by the Map Fund and hosted by Culture Mill and The Fruit.
In 2023-24, Ren collaborated with Telmo in the Portuguese initiative Art and Democracy with the performance project FLÓBÉR, an interrogation of the intimate implementation of nationalism and coloniality through the contemporary heteronormative family.
Ren has also been supported by and collaborated with various international residency programs, performance spaces, and funding bodies including VAE Raleigh, Sismografo Porto, Goethe Institut Lisboa, Estudios Victor Cordon, Polo Cultural das Gaivotas, Hosek Contemporary Berlin, Joint Adventures/National Performance Netz, Fonds Darstellende Künste, Dachverband Tanz Deutschland, Stoerpunkt Munich, AckerStadtPalast Berlin, Cordillera Berlin, HERE Arts NYC, and others.