Dr Tōmei Bacon

Dr Tōmei June Bacon (she/they) publishes as T. J. Bacon and creates artwork under the moniker tjb.

She is a leading voice in the study of performance and visual art through queer phenomenological approaches. From 2009 to 2017, her work established the phenomenology of a multiplicity of self/s, mapping the perception of multiplicity, embodiment, and temporality across experimental, interdisciplinary practices. This foundation was later developed through the application of queer phenomenology and continues to evolve through her groundbreaking developments towards a trans phenomenology.

She has published two major books to date: An Introduction to the Phenomenology of Performance Art: SELF/s (Intellect/University of Chicago Press, 2022/24) and The Phenomenology of Blood in Performance Art (Routledge, 2025). Her third book, currently in development, expands her phenomenological inquiry into trans+ lives, art, and activism.

Her research operates at the intersection of transgender studies, phenomenology, queer theory, crip theory, disaster studies, and speculative futures, with applications in visual arts, experimental performance, and most recently the queering of XR technologies.

An internationally exhibited artist since 2001, her practice spans durational and task-based performance, site-responsive installation, environmental intervention, sculpture, painting, artefact, and sonic collaboration. Her work has been presented across major galleries, festivals, and experimental platforms in the UK, Europe, and the Americas.

As an independent curator, Tōmei  has produced socially engaged programmes in support of organisations such as Amnesty International, Ealing Foodbank, SOS Méditerranée  and Mind. Since 2012, she has served as Artistic Director and Lead Curator of Tempting Failure, developing platforms for global radical performance and marginalised voices.

As an educator, she has taught across visual and fine art, experimental theatre, and performance since 2006. Her studio pedagogy centres the body as praxis, drawing on methodologies including task-based action, endurance art, the Abramović Method, site-based intervention, improvisation, and Theatre of the Oppressed. She is also co-originator of the Performance for Futures methodology.

Tōmei has developed programmes in queer aesthetics—including trash, punk, live art, and club performance—as well as environmental response, mixed media sculpture, experimental documentary, performance art and video installation. Her transdisciplinary teaching is grounded in inclusive pedagogies of care and shaped by a decade of training in Butoh, directing, devising, and socially engaged art. In theory seminars and lectures, she contextualises student practice through philosophy, gender studies, disability studies, queer and trans+ theory, decolonial critique, phenomenology, and visual culture.

Her recent workshops encourage experimentation across digital media, embodiment, and post-performance artefact. Her professional practice feeds directly into her teaching, offering students access to live curatorial, research-led, and socially responsive art-in-action.

Tōmei is a sought-after public speaker, with recent presentations including:
– From Section 28 to Institutional Transphobia: Tracing the Evolution of LGBTQ+ Marginalization in the UK – UCL Institute of Advanced Studies
– Towards a Trans Phenomenology – keynote, CHASE Consortium Conference, Birkbeck, University of London
– ResearchWorks on Hidden Disability and Protecting Trauma Narratives – in conversation with Nazli Tabatabai-Khatambakhsh, Guildhall School of Music & Drama

She is affiliated with the Guildhall De-Centre for Socially Engaged Practice & Research, where her work aligns with justice-led, embodied inquiry. She also sits on the Guildhall Ethics Review Board.

Tōmei is the founder of the Trans+ Virtual Centre of Excellence (TVCE)—a global, interdisciplinary network centring Trans+ scholarship, advocacy, and community safety beyond the political and institutional limits of the academy.

She has previously acted as Director of Studies for MRes completions and currently supervises PhD candidates at the TransArt Institute for Creative Research. She is currently welcoming doctoral enquiries at Guildhall, especially those prioritising queer practice-as-research projects across transdisciplinary and interdisciplinary areas such as queer theory, intersectional social engagement, performance art, visual art, live art, experimental theatre, and queer phenomenology.

You can read more about her research at: https://pure.gsmd.ac.uk/en/persons/t-j-bacon