Biography

Diane Marian Torr (10 November 1948 – 31 May 2017) was an artist, writer and educator, particularly known as a male impersonator and for her drag king, "Man for a Day" and gender-as-performance workshops. For the last years of her life, Torr lived and worked in Glasgow, where she was Visiting Lecturer at Glasgow School of Art. Diane Torr was born in Peterborough, Ontario, but grew up in Aberdeen, Scotland and later attended Dartington College of Arts, England, where she studied with dance luminaries Mary Fulkerson and Steve Paxton, art pioneer Paul Oliver, and theatre innovators, Peter Hulton and Peter Feldman (of the Open Theatre). She graduated in 1976 and arrived in New York that same year. Her first dance performances in New York (Egyptian Stock; Half-Lives of Plutonium; World Shift; Wind Fertilization) were in downtown loft spaces in 1978. Diane Torr took class at the Cunningham Studios, and began her practice of the Japanese martial art of Aikido at New York Aikikai in 1977 and in 2003 achieved the rank of sandan (3rd degree blackbelt). Torr received her MFA degree from Bard College, New York in 2004.

From the onset of her career in the late 1970s, Diane Torr was a leading figure in creating performance that challenges contemporary edicts and perceptions of gender and sexuality. With her drag king workshops, which she began teaching in 1990 in New York, with artist Johnny Science, Torr was a pivotal force in the establishment of drag king culture in the US, Europe, Istanbul and New Delhi. In collaboration with performance artist, Bridge Markland, Diane Torr co-directed the highly successful godrag! Festival (2002) in Berlin - a one-month-long festival of women performing masculinity, femininity, androgyny and drag.

Torr's performances are a radical synthesis of dance, film (original and archival footage), installation, spoken word, invented soundtracks, and borrowings from other sources such as magic tricks, and secret society signals. Her rich performance palette has resulted in an unusual body of work that continues to influence and inspire new generations of independent artists. More recent performance enquiries cover a diversity of material including: exploring her brother's (who died of AIDS in 1992) performance of Dusty Springfield; investigations on beauty and age; transferring to performance written works of surrealist artist, Claude Cahun.

Over the 26 years Torr lived and worked in New York, she performed in downtown locales such as the Mudd Club, Club 57, Tier 3, The Pyramid Club, S.N.A.F.U., Limbo Lounge and in art spaces/performance venues PS1, Franklin Furnace, The Kitchen, PS122, WOW Cafe, La MaMa and Limbo Lounge. As a member of the art group Colab, she was a participant and performer (with filmmaker Ruth Peyser) in The Times Square Show (1980) (where she performance with a rubber inflatable porno doll and sex toys), and as a solo artist at WPA, Washington (1981). Diane Torr was one of the original members of the all-girl art band, DISBAND (along with members Martha Wilson, Ingrid Sischy, Ilona Granet and Donna Henes). DISBAND formed in 1978 and most recently performed at the Incheon International Women Artists' Biennial (2009) in S. Korea, and in Salzburg at the Museum der Moderne, on 29 November 2014.

Diane Torr was the recipient of Scottish Arts Council funding, and received funding from Franklin Furnace Fund for Performance Art, Joyce Mertz Gilmore Foundation Fund, Art Matters, New York State Council on the Arts, Yorkshire and Humberside Arts, Haupstadtkulturfonds, Berlin, etc. She was a fellow of the Whitney Museum Independent Studies Program, and the Macdowell Arts Colony.

Torr's performances, videos and installations are widely presented in venues including GOMA (Gallery of Modern Art) Glasgow, Theater Schmidt, Hamburg, the genders that be, Minneapolis, Magma, Istanbul, ICA, London, LLGF Festival, Migros Museum, Zurich, Theater des Augenblicks, Vienna, Helsinki Act, WAVES Festival, Vordingborg and RE.AL, Lisbon and Theater Pradillo, Madrid, German National Historical Museum in Berlin (June until December 2015).

Torr's work has been reviewed in numerous publications, including: The New York Times, The Village Voice, New York Magazine, The Brooklyn Rail, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, The Boston Phoenix, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Chicago Tribune, El Pais, El Mundo, Contact Quarterly, Movement Research, The London Independent, The Guardian, The Scotsman, The Sunday Herald, G.Q. Magazine, ELLE Magazine, Cosmopolitan Magazine, Paris, The Japan Times, Turkish Daily News, Ballettanz, Berlin, Die Tageszeitung, Berlin, Süddeutsche Zeitung, German Vogue, der Spiegel, Brigitte Magazine, Maxi Magazine, Bild Zeitung, Freitag 38, de Volkskrant, Opzij Magazine, Helsingin Sanomat, Ylioppilasieht, Helsinki, Diva Magazine, Bizarre Magazine, San Diego Union Tribune.

Torr died in Glasgow on 31 May 2017 of a brain tumour.