Elliot Gordon Mercer

Elliot Gordon Mercer is an interdisciplinary artist, curator, and performance scholar. Working at the intersection of drag and self-portraiture, he designs and constructs historical scenarios that are staged for the production of faux-documentary films and photographs. Mercer engages drag to integrate himself as a main figure of each scene. His fictitious archival images and their corresponding curatorial texts interweave scholarship and creativity, imagination and historical accuracy, in a process of queer storytelling. In 2021 his film Sensorium premiered at Frameline San Francisco International LGBTQ Film Festival. As a performer and choreographer, Mercer is a transmitter of Yvonne Rainer’s dance repertoire and has staged Anna Halprin’s intermedia theatre works internationally.  Mercer received a PhD in Interdisciplinary Theatre and Drama from Northwestern University and an MA in Performance Studies from New York University. He is a certified Deep Listening facilitator, and a graduate of the Tamalpa Institute’s professional program in expressive arts therapy. Mercer is a 2022-24 American Council of Learned Societies Emerging Voices Fellow.