Reimagining Citizenship: Creative Assignment #1

Due by November 2, 2015.

The creative assignment suggestions each of us proposed are below. Allow yourself to be inspired by all of them in your creative study. We all were caught up with Fred Moten's conceptualization of "more than and at the same time less than one" (Sandra's suggestion, Meena's A and Cynthia's 1).  Make a creative study that concerns itself with this condition of "more than and at the same time less than one"...there is a part of me that wants to maintain a relationship with Blackness in this creative study so I wonder if I might ask that in your personal exploration of "more than and at the same time less than one" if there can be some visible (visible at least to you) trace of Moten's context of Blackness within your study.

Suggestions by...

Sandra:

I am actually struck by his adjectives, which he uses with reference to this condition-

e.g.:

Entangled, vulnerable, open non-full, more than and less than yourself.

I could imagine to make a study based on them

Meena:
 
A) Create a contact improvisation of your fragmented non-whole bodies, within the context of Black fragmented selfhood; try to work through knowing that your fragments are not the same or to the same extent as Black selfhood.
 
B) I'm trying out a version of this task as a dancer/facilitator in the upcoming exhibition of taisha paggett "School for Technicolor People" at LACE. Isolate sentences of Fred Moten that really stand out to you. Say those sentences out loud a few times to get a feeling for the rhythm and feeling of the sentences. Create a rhythm sequence with your feet that repeats or responds to the feelings, structures, syllables, of those phrases that you chose. You should have a movement sequence of foot rhythms. One sequence can incorporate some of the words (from your written response of Moten's talk). A second sequence should have no words spoken, just your feet in conversation with Moten's words quietly living within your interior you.

Cynthia:

(1)  Create a movement study that embodies – or rather, enfleshes – excess and lack.  Embrace irregularity, and resist wholeness and resolution.

 
(2) Ask yourself, “What does blackness have to do with me?”  Do a 10-minute free-write addressing this question, then transform some of those ideas into artistic form (movement, video, poetry, soundscape, etc.).