Week 5 - Modes/modalities/media by Jo with additional text from Billy Taylor
Jo writes about week 5
We began with what felt like the residue of things unresolved from the previous week.
4.5 days on Body Politics wasn’t really enough eh? But I guess what happens then is we carry it with us into the next chapter, it’s all body politics ain’t it? No end to this work of the body and its surroundings.
Modes Modality and Media, a fantasy process, fantasy budget, fantasy production rider…
Media we immediately put to the side, we dance so we are not on our screens and all three of us are obsessed with the live act, with people and creating conditions for connection and community building.
Bodies need to be part of this, whatever we do.
It needs to matter
so we anchored in the truth, or near truths, sharing works that have inspired us or confused us, we talked about how they’re constructed, forms, manners, everything from Jerome Bel to “vaginal knitting” by Casey Jenkins - https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/dec/17/vaginal-knitting-artist-defence
The weeks prompt led us in the direction of the question,
What else is choreography?
Landing on Sonia Hughes’ I am from Reykjavik https://www.iamfromreykjavik.com/wltm/
Sonia is a friend of mine, I have been alongside her and the make for many years, from its first discussions to seeing it live in Portobello as part of Horizon Showcase, Edinburgh Festival. I love the layers of this work, building as choreography, making yourself at home as choreography, its interactions with people both in public and private encounters. Yet still the creative action is around finding out what this is? “What am I doing?” Sonia would say.
Some unfinished business. Where a person should or could live? Getting a taste of how it goes in places, the lay of the land, what's in the air, How's it going? Would someone like me feel welcome or not? Further she brought her son with her, him as photographer as part of the storytelling, documentation, archive and activism of this action. A partner in crime, so wherever she goes she is not the only Black person there.
The life of this work is more like anthropology than performance. Social work, social noticing. Sonia takes her parents with her and her inherited positioning in the world. It's a woman, a bunch of bolts, some wood and a SPACE yet so many Dance Festivals have invited I From From Reyjavik to visit their shores, town squares, palaces and street corners. For them and Sonia to see how it goes, in their neck of the woods.
For our selected fantasy work we looked to the back of our heads, shows that have not been made, stuff that is hanging around, consent, memory, resistance… What’s simmering and also ideas that will never be made for safety reasons, yet the images or fantasy performance conjured, feel important and we hang on to them.
On the Wednesday,
I loved how everyone sat up properly when Anna talked about the theme of her commission in our Open Studio workshop, She and artist Raffie Julien will create a movement response to an exhibition called 1880 THAT by Christine Sun Kim and Thomas Mader https://wellcomecollection.org/exhibitions/1880-that
The exhibition title refers to the Second International Congress on Education of the Deaf, held in Milan in 1880, and its influence on Deaf education around the world. The term THAT is an emphatic expression in American Sign Language (ASL), which adds weight and significance to a preceding statement. The conference declared that oral education - teaching Deaf people to communicate through lip reading and speech - should replace sign language in Deaf schools.
This led to sacking of all Sign Language teachers and children were punished for using signs, an example is D/deaf children were made to sit on their hands, of course D/deaf adults were also hugely affected by this. The teaching of sign language was sidelined and suppressed, resulting in exclusion and stigma for Deaf people.
It has to matter.
The two D/deaf artists have entitled the performance RESIST. And as the Wales Collective we had great fun dreaming the idea into a movement, a gathering of D/deaf people, international D/deaf Choirs, movements of resistance, and an army of interpreters, moments of solidarity, something that changes how people feel about themselves and how they moved through the world. Unmuting hands and voices, joining up gaps between people, not forgetting the hook from our previous week BODY, POWER and PRESENCE.
Epic scale, mass protest, awareness and a film of the final choir of 1880 D/deaf people “sounding” that goes viral on YouTube.
Yes fantasising about a make was thrilling, no budget limitations, the ideal version, sometimes when I say things out loud they become real.
———End———-
Response from Billy Taylor, who was one of the participants in our Wednesday Open Studio
Bore da Jo, Gwyn and Ana,
I hope you are having a wonderful Wednesday after the studio session yesterday.
I wanted to thank you again - it was very inspiring and great to move/write/drink tea alongside you.
A few thoughts that came to my mind that I'll write whilst I drink my coffee:
Consent-Memory-Resist: There was a real tangible link for all of these from my perspective as someone just coming into the room. Not sure if this is interesting or what you hope or not! But in Gwyn's final exercise, there was a real tension of 'what do I allow' and 'what do I push against' when facing memory.
How do we face memory now? This is a question really at the heart of some of my own creative ponderings. A way of relating to traces of yesterday without being tied to them and without losing the groundedness in the present moment.
Capturing/Containers: I am curious with each of this topics what sort of container is holding them. For example, in the resistance exercise, I remembered for a while trying to figure out what 'resist' was. A word? An action? An adjective? Was resist about physics or was it about choice? Was memory about yesterday or was it about today? And is consent a tick box or an ever flowing river (the latter I imagine)? I wonder what these words look like to you. Teacups? Air? Wildfires? Oceans? Park benches? Walls? Absence of walls?
I really appreciated the time to move. To sweat. To find stillness. To say 'I am here' in silence or in words.
Written by Jo, additional text by Billy Taylor (thanks Billy!).
