Bel Mclaughlin ~ Keywords: improvisation, play, queer use, contradiction, composition, care relations, practice, skin, ideology, microscopic abstraction, material conditions, gift economy, affective labor, spatial sound

Bel McLaughlin is a performer, composer, and body modifier. They love to play, experiment, improvise, and collaborate within interdimensional space: realms located beyond human-perceived realities. Bel uses social practices, such as playing an instrument and tattooing another body, to exist in emotive, spirit-filled, interdimensional space with others. They value sensory experience that fuels fantasies but denies escapism. Bel’s imaginative practice exists to create moments of care both for themselves and the beings (humans and non-humans) in their proximity. They create to negotiate contradiction and counteract feelings of isolation, powerlessness, and socially conditioned ideologies of difference in the so-called United States.

Bel is a classically trained pianist and flautist with a bachelor’s degree in Sculptural Fine Arts from Kalamazoo College. Bel studied Sociology at PUC University in São Paulo and Arts Administration through Wesleyan University in New York City. Bel learned the practice of tattooing through an apprenticeship at Heirloom Arts and later worked as a tattoo artist and sculpture fabricator in Brooklyn. Bel received a Master of Arts in Performance Art and Theory through the Dutch Art’s Institute Roaming Academy in the Netherlands.

*Learn more about Bel McLaughlin's 20 minute performance Fantasy, 2025 for CHOREIA ~ DAI's Aeroponic Acts 2025 at Centrale Fies in Italy. 

*Learn more about Bel McLaughlin's written MA thesis (DAI, 2025): Tattooing with Frictions and Fictions

*During their journey with DAI, Bel McLaughlin made significant contributions to: COOP Summit 2024 ~ Moving with the Dunes as well as COOP Summit 2025 ~ Hearing interval; there is a place for you

*Follow Bel's 'Life after DAI' via their website & instagram