Alok Valid-Menon, identifying as they/them, is a performing artist, writer, and educator that is rightly unapologetic in their self realization as a gender non-binary person. Thanks to the efforts of Kenna Lindsay, Asia Roberson and many others working in the office of student equity, Alok performed in the Cabrillo Horticulture building to a room so full that people were standing in the aisles.
Speaking very frankly about the concept of white supremacy, joyfully appropriating its stereotypical behaviors is at the core of Alok’s comic relief. 350 venues in more than 40 countries, HBO, MTV, The New York Times, The Guardian, and National Geographic have all featured Alok educating or taking on the persona of a clueless non-gendered Indian that wonders where all the white people are, where the white art is, where the white cultural contributions are, and apologizing profusely for their inability to correctly pronounce complicated white names like Sarah.
“I’m trying you guys,” said Alok as they attempted another common white name. “But it’s really hard you know? It’s so weird.” The levity is interrupted by jarring, and profound poems. Using a techniek called looping, where sound is recorded, augmented, layered and played back in real time, the horticulture room turned into a raging sea of words and emotion.
Alok loops a simple phrase over what begins to sound like a barrage of wind. As Aloke speaks their poetry over all of this, the meaning of a repetitive phrase that pounds out of the sound system transform in the perspective until tearful onlookers are left with a wholly different concept of the word “one”.
Living in New York, Alok deals not only with judgment from the everyday passerby, they deal with the hatred that originates from European christian colonizers: a bigotry that’s now viewed as a cultural norm in India, their native country.
Despite all of that, and perhaps because of it, Alok has carved out a name for them-self among the growing cultural movement towards accepting those that identify as the TQ+ in the LGBTQ+ community. The community has perhaps never needed it more than now because the civil rights protection under Title IX for TQ+ people are being threatened.
Alok pulls no punches while talking about how social order is kept by pitting people against each other. Black vs white, rich vs poor, Republican vs Democrat, women vs men, and on and on. Two voices shouting as loud as they can at each other without room for any other voice. However, within this dichotomy there is never a third option. Within Aloke’s art, being, and growing community there is a third option. The powers that be claim that if you don’t conform, you can’t have a say. By disenfranchising those that won’t – or truly can’t conform, through slander and legislation, people are kept in their place.
Alok has decided that their place is on a stage, in your face, and on your smart-phone obliterating the status quo.
