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.)
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.)
BABLI:
ReplyDeleteOk, so I don't know whats before or after this- I am not familiar with the emotional or dramaturgical arc of the piece. Here my impressions of this section in isolation.
Version 1): I was intrigued by your position as a speaker in the beginning, but after some time the emotion of confusion dominated. I was loosing a lot of the text, and after some time my attention got lost, cause I was neither following the text, not clearly your intention.
2) I under stand your reservation about embodying the indigenous position. But this version your attention, energy, emotion were much clearer, and I got the text. I stayed engaged.
As I said i don't know the piece, or whether and how your personas change. So I don't know if you are marked clearly enough. Sorry, I can't help with this....
But I was clearly more engaged in Version 2.
SHY:
ReplyDeleteI found the first version emotionally charged until 1 min in where you say "deny our identity"
then it just gets confusing.
For the second version, I hang in a little longer because I am able to understand, but there is a point where I tune out because of the sameness with which you say it.
Would you consider doing the first minute as the first version, which can set up the complexity and clear fragmentation of your position but also the erasures that are always happening; then switch to the second version for the rest so we can clearly hear the rest of the declaration? I feel clearly hearing the rest can also help us to hear, rather then further erase, obfuscate or hide, a point of view that is rarely visible. The first minute is totally understandable even in the way it is fragmented.