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.
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.
1. Your BN-based movement and Indian clothing situate you as South Asian/Indian; for me it is unexpected to encounter these cultural referents in the physical context of a seemingly "urban" back alleyway rather than on a concert stage or on the grounds of a temple. I think this mostly has to do with class for me – the ways in which BN is associated with an upper/middle class Indian diaspora in the US – as well as frozen ideas of tradition (ie BN doesn’t belong in “modern” urban spaces). I have often read Indian clothing worn by diasporic communities in the US as an anti-assimilationist strategy against a dominant white culture. For me the clearest references to citizenship lie in the text of the songs, as well as your abhinaya-based interpretation of them: I see the genocide of native peoples, how the founding of the US was/is dependent on this genocide and land-stealing, how Manifest Destiny is inherently entangled with US patriotism. The setting of the alley reminds me of complex experiences of urban Indians, which many native authors have written about.
ReplyDelete2. Your costume and physical appearance situate you primarily as South Asian/Indian and set up a "dot vs. feather" dichotomy in the piece. For the first song, you appear as an empathetic bystander. You start out joyful, in a way that the nostalgia attached to children's songs can often evoke, who becomes sad as you realize and start to mourn the deaths of the Indian boys. The second song reveals your complicity, with you silencing (or killing?) the little Indian boy while singing about the land (but not the people who live on it). As such it makes me think about the ways in which immigrants, particularly racialized immigrants from Asia, are both denied full cultural citizenship (always seen as foreigners, as irretrievably other) while still being complicit in a settler-colonial project.
3. Right now I think your positionality in regards to citizenship, the settler-colonial state, and indigenous issues is still pretty understated – perhaps pulling out more of the elements of sympathy and complicity, as I’ve stated in (2), would help. It might be interesting to play with verb tense: “This land WAS your land/This land IS my land.” I’m also not as clear about the meaning behind your pushing away of the trees and gulfstream waters: is it a statement about environmental degradation? Right now, for me, the movement reads as a rejection, rather than a greedy taking and using/abusing of natural resources.
4. I would love for the study to be longer to get at some of the complexities of the issues. One thought is that you could repeat lines, as in abhinaya, and bring different interpretations each times. I also wonder whether it’s possible to move beyond sorrow and into some kind of solidarity, accountability, or action.
5. Right now, I don’t see a clear connection to hapa/mixed identity, unless you have native heritage that I’m not aware of?
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?
ReplyDeleteWhat stands out to me: sitting in muramandi (what reads to as a specifically trained position - not everyone can stay in this position as long as you do!). Your abhinaya is AMAZING! So evocative and says so much. Semi-Indian costume. Brown skin. Bharatanatyam gestures. In an alley. There is the play on the word Indian. The way I was raised in Canada, native people refer to themselves as Indian, but politicized non-native folks don't use that word. So that word makes me uncomfortable said by non-native folks. There is also a tension I've experienced with my native friends and native people I'm encountered about the whole mix up between East Indian and Native and "who is the real Indian?" and some folks have expressed their very real sadness and trauma about the tension of that word for both East Indians and native North American people. Also that song. That song is really painful in numerous ways. When we met up at USC 2 weeks ago, I mentioned to you that the original version of this song used the "N" word and was part of blackface performances back in that era. Is there an erasure of that history in this study? I wonder this because there is no mention. There is a wonderful set-up between the first section of ascending numbers and ascending hands, and then juxtaposed with the descending numbers and descending hands - combined with your facial expressions. Speaks so much. Speaks to me of the attempted genocide on native people (I say attempted because I don't want to propagate the "disappearing native" narrative, how I've interpreted conversations with native folks about this, but also want to speak to the level of violence and destruction European people have inflicted and continue to inflict on native communities in North America which in my eyes was a genocide. Argh, the English language…) Then with "this land is your land, this land is my land" because you are pointing to yourself, I wonder about the "when is an immigrant a colonizer too" - the conversation that came up (I believe Cynthia said this particular phrase) during assignment #3 during QA - Queer Pairings/Asian and Indigenous. You also speak to the level of of violence that has happened to (what I interpret as) native people, with the disappearing mushti, the suchi/gun, tears, the facial expressions etc.
2. How do you read my positionality in particular?
I read your positionality vaguely as femme South Asian diaspora, possibly mixed identity. Dressed in a semi-Indian outfit. Not sure about class, able-ism, caste, etc.
3. Are there any ways you can imagine that I might deepen the piece in relation to ideas of citizenship?
ReplyDeleteI am curious if there is room in this study to include the multiple versions of this song - the replacing of "n" words, to this one. I don't know how though because as a non black person I wouldn't be ok with any us saying that word or using the version of the song that uses that word. But with this inclusion there would then be an invoking of an important political frame. I'm reminded of a book I've read excerpts of and want to read fully. "Red, White and Black: Cinema and the Structure of US Antagonisms" by black studies scholar Frank Wilderson.
4. Are there any ways you could imagine the study expanding artistically?
I can't think of any artistic ways to expand this study besides working with multiple versions of this song and seeing what happens then.
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.
Hmmm… so meaning having the piece more expressly include your own positionality as mixed identity? I always kind of think that mixed is always a possibility but never assume. At the same time I also suppose that your brown skin visually trumps your other identities to me as a viewer? And it's like that thing that Cynthia says - a mixed identity person is 100% of each ethnicity they are? Cynthia might think that hapa refers to mixed/with native ancestry? Is this true in the Hawaiian context? I did a quick search on google of hapa and it seemed to say that hapa means "non-white" mixed with "whiteness." Oh the language ;-) All that to say, I don't have any ideas. I suppose your "I Am" speaks more to mixed identity stuff to me because of the costume and character changes. Maybe this is like a series of visual studies put together - like a triptych - to get at some more of the complexity.
So, in my understanding -- and Babli and Shy would know better than I -- hapa refers broadly to people with any kind of mixed heritage (not necessarily white) but it is most used to refer to people who have API heritage. I've read a critique saying that it should only refer to mixed folks with native Hawaiian ancestry -- but of course native Hawaiians are not usually called "Indians."
DeleteSorry to create confusion, I really just meant mixed heritage and was using Hapa too loosely. Thanks all for the feedback!!!!
ReplyDeletePs Hapa was a concept that Babli and I had been exploring using back in our Grad student days so I let it pop-up here as an extension of that. Let's keep it out of the dialogue for now since that really isn't the point :-)
ReplyDelete