Olivia Michiko Gagnon is Assistant Professor in the Department of Theatre & Film and affiliated faculty in Asian Canadian and Asian Migration Studies and the Institute for Gender, Race, Sexuality, and Social Justice at the University of British Columbia.

"On Closeness is more than a host of beautifully rendered studies of artists and more than an argument that their work transforms the turn into the archive into a stage for relation-in-difference. It is Gagnon's striking and inspiring performance of methodological innovation and a modeling of the art of proximity as a means of minoritarian knowledge production. With a crisp clarity, ethical urgency, sharp bursts of critical surprise, and calibrated moments of tender intimacy, Gagnon brings to life the work of Cheryl Sim, Monika Kin Gagnon, Elizabeth M. Webb, Tanya Tagaq, asinnajaq, and Pia Arke, drawing the reader into a vibrant and productive relationship with the powers of performance theory." - Joshua Takano Chambers-Letson, author of Unfinished Grief: Queer Love and Loss  "Olivia Michiko Gagnon's On Closeness presents a rigorously theorized and ethically attuned framework – what she calls 'closeness-as-method' – that bridges performance analysis, feminist and decolonial theory, archival investigation, autoethnography, and embodied critique. Her scholarship reorients reading archives away from extraction and mastery and toward intimacy without possession; in doing so, it proposes an urgent practice of attending to partiality, vulnerability, and unknowing. Gagnon's writing is both conceptually precise and deeply felt, characterized by a rare combination of theoretical sophistication and strong evidentiary grounding." - Laura Levin, author of Performing Ground: Space, Camouflage, and the Art of Blending In

Olivia Michiko Gagnon is Assistant Professor in the Department of Theatre & Film and affiliated faculty in Asian Canadian and Asian Migration Studies and the Institute for Gender, Race, Sexuality, and Social Justice at the University of British Columbia.

"On Closeness is more than a host of beautifully rendered studies of artists and more than an argument that their work transforms the turn into the archive into a stage for relation-in-difference. It is Gagnon's striking and inspiring performance of methodological innovation and a modeling of the art of proximity as a means of minoritarian knowledge production. With a crisp clarity, ethical urgency, sharp bursts of critical surprise, and calibrated moments of tender intimacy, Gagnon brings to life the work of Cheryl Sim, Monika Kin Gagnon, Elizabeth M. Webb, Tanya Tagaq, asinnajaq, and Pia Arke, drawing the reader into a vibrant and productive relationship with the powers of performance theory." - Joshua Takano Chambers-Letson, author of Unfinished Grief: Queer Love and Loss  "Olivia Michiko Gagnon's On Closeness presents a rigorously theorized and ethically attuned framework – what she calls 'closeness-as-method' – that bridges performance analysis, feminist and decolonial theory, archival investigation, autoethnography, and embodied critique. Her scholarship reorients reading archives away from extraction and mastery and toward intimacy without possession; in doing so, it proposes an urgent practice of attending to partiality, vulnerability, and unknowing. Gagnon's writing is both conceptually precise and deeply felt, characterized by a rare combination of theoretical sophistication and strong evidentiary grounding." - Laura Levin, author of Performing Ground: Space, Camouflage, and the Art of Blending In

Olivia Michiko Gagnon is Assistant Professor in the Department of Theatre & Film and affiliated faculty in Asian Canadian and Asian Migration Studies and the Institute for Gender, Race, Sexuality, and Social Justice at the University of British Columbia.

"On Closeness is more than a host of beautifully rendered studies of artists and more than an argument that their work transforms the turn into the archive into a stage for relation-in-difference. It is Gagnon's striking and inspiring performance of methodological innovation and a modeling of the art of proximity as a means of minoritarian knowledge production. With a crisp clarity, ethical urgency, sharp bursts of critical surprise, and calibrated moments of tender intimacy, Gagnon brings to life the work of Cheryl Sim, Monika Kin Gagnon, Elizabeth M. Webb, Tanya Tagaq, asinnajaq, and Pia Arke, drawing the reader into a vibrant and productive relationship with the powers of performance theory." - Joshua Takano Chambers-Letson, author of Unfinished Grief: Queer Love and Loss  "Olivia Michiko Gagnon's On Closeness presents a rigorously theorized and ethically attuned framework – what she calls 'closeness-as-method' – that bridges performance analysis, feminist and decolonial theory, archival investigation, autoethnography, and embodied critique. Her scholarship reorients reading archives away from extraction and mastery and toward intimacy without possession; in doing so, it proposes an urgent practice of attending to partiality, vulnerability, and unknowing. Gagnon's writing is both conceptually precise and deeply felt, characterized by a rare combination of theoretical sophistication and strong evidentiary grounding." - Laura Levin, author of Performing Ground: Space, Camouflage, and the Art of Blending In