Reimagining Citizenship: Indians

Thanks to Ulka for helping me film and giving some outside eye help too!

password:  citizenship




1.  How do you read this study in relation to the idea of citizenship in terms of movement, costume, surroundings etc., and do any of these aspects stand out to you more than others? 

2.  How do you read my positionality in particular?

3.  Are there any ways you can imagine that I might deepen the piece in relation to ideas of citizenship?

4.  Are there any ways you could imagine the study expanding artistically?

5.  Are there any ways you can imagine making the piece relate more to hapa/mixed identity which was initially going to be my inroad to Re-imagining Citizenship.   

Reimagining Citizenship: BN feet with Moten's Gift II

PW: Moten's Gift

1) Are there any movement concepts you find interesting in relationship with Moten's words?

2) Are there any movement concepts you find uninteresting in relationship with Moten's words?

3) Anything you find problematic?

4) I presented a version of this at ARC Pasadena a few weeks ago. I received some great feedback via text from friend and dance scholar Naomi Bragin, particularly relating to time in the second section. Can you think of concrete choreographic tasks that might work towards accomplishing what she is suggesting?

"This idea of death only holds true if as Fred Moten says you focus on the burial ground of the subject which is the world but what about speculative politics which is the seeing of other worlds which I would describe as parallel universes not distinct from what is now

It makes me think of the way you play with time in your work, how you might twist that to challenge a perception of time within a linear frame, in order to speculate on what's to be seen

Also I was thinking it might b meaningful for u to explore the cadences or resonances of what you do with blackness, something along the lines of what SG said about the pop lock and drop it :)"

Note: Pop lock and drop it translated into - when I go from aramandi to muramandi fast! 

Reimagining Citizenship: Pingpu Declaration

I'm in the final homestretch before "blood run" premieres, and would love your feedback on my delivery/interpretation of the Pingpu Declaration.  As context, this occurs about halfway through the performance part of my work (it starts with an installation).  I've finished doing the ethnographic movement phrase, which ends with me physically wigging out to a soundscape of various insults aimed towards both indigenous and Han people.  Afterwards I wash my hands and face with beet juice, and pour it on my feet, so I'm sopping with "blood."  Then I go into the audience and ask someone to write, with a Chinese calligraphy brush, "colonizer" on my chest and "cooked savage" on my back.  This speech, which takes place downstage center in the puddle of blood, is the next thing that follows.

Here are two options for my delivery of the speech.  The password for both is "plains".
Pingpu Declaration_fragmented from Cynthia Ling Lee on Vimeo.
Pingpu Declaration_full from Cynthia Ling Lee on Vimeo.

In the first, I try to actually translate the words in Mandarin, with the intention of speaking only in the empty spaces between my dad's words, so that the translation is partial and fragmented.  In the second, I imagine myself as an indigenous person at the Legislative Assembly delivering the speech, and say the speech in full.  This section is followed by my folding up the paper, putting it on the bloody ground, covering it with sand and rice, and burning incense that I stick in the rice (a Han ritual).

FEEDBACK QUESTIONS -
Which version do you prefer, intellectually and emotionally?  Why?  Any other comments?  (My quandary is that the first version is truer to my position, but often it seems to result in me looking confused, rather than being powerful, and I'm worried about too much of the text getting lost for non-Mandarin speakers (probably all of my audience).  I also wonder whether the fact that I'm clearly labeled "colonizer" is enough to counter or complicate my performative positionality as an indigenous person during the speech.)