At the same time, it’s hard to figure out why certain art is here: the many wonky little sculptures (a few would do), the big, boxy “stage” that technically goes with a Pauline Boudry/Renate Lorenz film, but mostly just takes up space.

In the exhibition catalog, Mr. Moten speaks of “Trigger” as an example of “a poetics of the mess,” a fair description, in good ways and not. The show avoids the standard institutional tactics of curating your thinking, mapping your path, telling you what you basically already know. It hands you a slew of ideas and leaves you to sort through them, which means it leaves you confused. You’re not alone: the catalog includes three round-table discussions among “exhibition advisers,” and they sound confused too — but thinking hard, which is the point of an experiment like this.

Confusion may be the only reasonable response to the world at present. And creating confusion may be queer’s most useful weapon. Queer has no fixed fan base. Genders, races, classes: bring them on. But it has one broad political mandate: to foster instability as resistance to any status quo. Resistance is good exercise. It helps keep you young. And it can keep you alert. Even when you lose track of what “normal” is, you know you don’t want to be that.