Open round 2: Intergenerational Art Making

Here are two artworks and a poem I made about what it is like for me being pregnant from prompts from a book called "Birthing From Within" by Pam England. The poem is describing the second art piece.

Being Pregnant, 30 weeks

Little curling seedling,

I try to imagine you inside me,

but your tender development eludes me.

As I crane to grasp the very concept of you,

the boundaries of my being expand,

making room for your ever reaching tendrils.

As we ride the turbulent tides together,

we are guided by instinct, intuition,

and my sea creature heart who flips effortlessly through the waves beside us.

I made the paintings in an art making session with my Mom, where she also made art about pregnancy, childbirth and the future baby. 

I am becoming aware that I am on a path of inter-generational healing since my Mother has come to live with me last Oct.  Some of it has manifested in my own poetry, some of it has been in a parenting class with my sweetheart, and now this art making was the first time I was able to include her in the process as well.  Thus I am thinking of the following project...

Project idea:  

My sweetheart, Mom, and I (and maybe other family members), all write a letter/poem to our own childhood self, and then another to the  unborn baby in my belly.  We then excerpt one to three lines from our letter to the baby, and each of us writes the excerpts on my belly (probably with facepaints).  If we do each of these separately, we can also decorate the belly as we wish.  However, we may wish the excerpts to somehow be in conversation with each other.    I imagine documenting this with a series of photographs of each person drawing on my belly (or maybe video which could capture any movement of the fetus as well, but other then that I think photos are enough).  

Feedback:

Any ideas for the prompts or parameters of my project idea to make it clearer or more interesting?  

Any visions of environment?

Any other ideas or thoughts?

Open Round 1: To Ask Pardon

This study continues my investigations of my indigenous and Han colonizer heritages, this time using a text written by PingPu (plains indigenous) people, "Declaration of the PingPu Peoples of Taiwan," which I found in Jolan Hsieh's book, Collective Rights of Indigenous Peoples: Identity-Based Movement of Plains Indigenous in Taiwan.  My other studies, "blood run" and "colonial mapping," have used my own writings and travel writings by Qing-era Chinese colonizers, respectively.

Version 1:

To Ask Pardon (Mandarin) from Post Natyam Collective on Vimeo.
password "pingpu"


Version 2

To Ask Pardon from Cynthia Ling Lee on Vimeo.
password: "pingpu"

FEEDBACK QUESTIONS:
(1) What intrigues or draws you in about this study politically, emotionally, aesthetically or intellectually?  What does not?
(2) How might you imagine any of this content being used in performance?  Do you want a more embodied approach, and if so, what would you suggest?  (My original vision for this text was to either find original audio of the declaration or to record the original text in Mandarin as a voice-over.  My performance would consist of attempting to translate -- eyes closed and with difficulty -- the voice-over into English, with the same messing of we/you pronouns that I do here.  Since I just got the Chinese text, I haven't had time to do a recording.)
(3) CONTEXT: This declaration was ultimately not successful, and while PingPu (plains aborigine) peoples are recognized by the UN as an indigenous tribe, they are not recognized by the government of Taiwan.  My father informs me that the PingPu search for official recognition by the government of Taiwan is very controversial and opposed by most other Taiwanese indigenous tribes.  This is because (a) the PingPu people were historically coerced into killing other indigenous tribes and (b) indigenous nations in Taiwan are given special privileges and resources (such as a certain quota of Legislative Yuan -- Taiwan's equivalent of Congress -- representation).  Since many PingPu peoples have been deeply assimilated into Han Chinese culture for generations, they (we?) don't necessarily suffer from the same systemic social disadvantages as other indigenous tribes.  Originally, alongside this declaration the PingPu people stated that they sought only recognition in name without any of these special privileges, but this has not proved to be true over time.  My dad also mentioned that a hematologist did a study in which he found that an incredibly high percentage (90%?) of Hoklo Taiwanese, which is the largest ethno-linguistic group in Taiwan and the one that my family belongs to, has aboriginal blood.  How does this information change your reception of the study, if at all?  Do you want more of this information, and if so, how could I share it in performance without being overly didactic?
(4) What do you make of my costume choices?
(5) Any other thoughts, suggestions, or useful connections to my previous studies?