Consent Lab

Consent takes practice.

  • What are the rules for how we comport ourselves, communicate, & interact? 

    When do we come into contact with those rules?

    Who sets them?

    How are they enforced?

    What are the costs of defection?

    How can standards of behavior be remade?

    “Consent” often flags a crisis & therefore a possibility. 

    Protocols can be ambiguous, disregarded, resisted & they can also be played with.

    Our Lab is devoted to this last area of experimentation:

    Consent takes practice and we play to practice.

    Consent Lab is:

    • A mobile arts unit for social experimentation.
    • A multi-modal repertory of exercises.
    • A philosophy of risk (& rewards!)

    We run classes & workshops. Get in touch!

    See “Hate, Consent, Play” featuring Consent Lab in Critical Inquiry.

    Read our op-ed in Times Higher Education: How Mozart and the arts can help students feel less awkward

    Consent Lab was made possible with support from the Bennett-Polonsky Humanities Lab initiative, the NYU Office of the Provost, and the NYU Center for the Humanities. It was founded in 2022 by musicologist Brigid Cohen, literary theorist Wendy Anne Lee, theater artist Rosemary Quinn (Tisch Drama), and designer/choreographer Mimi Yin.

    Testimonials

    “I have now come to the point where I can acknowledge when I have crossed a boundary with someone. I can see that aggression in myself and be OK seeing it.” 

    “I was dealing with imposter syndrome. Then I realized that everyone is just as confused as I am.”

    “Consent is really hard. You have to keep making it together.” 

    “Consent is everywhere, in everything.”

    Our (ever-changing) Repertoire

    • Etiquette
      • Beau Nash, The Laws of Bath
      • Jane Austen, Pride & Prejudice
      • Mozart, Gran Partita
    • Submission
      • Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan
      • The Kama Sutra
      • Richard Wagner, Prelude to Tristan & Isolde
      • Financial domination aka “Findom”
    • Individuation
      • John Locke, Two Treatises of Government
      • Bertolt Brecht, Threepenny Opera
    • Freedom
      • Cartesian Demolition
      • Pauline Oliveros, Sonic Meditations
      • Yoko Ono, Grapefruit