Re-imagining citizenship: Not knowing of the taking

This is the latest re-making of "10 Little..." draft. I was trying to put the resilience piece in, but also wanted to reflect the current and urgent situation in Standing Rock. I feel moved to post this tomorrow and suggest donating to Standing Rock as an alternative or addition to folks' celebrating Thanksgiving.


Thanking for the Giving, Not Knowing of the Taking from Shyamala Moorty on Vimeo.



Questions: answer any that you are moved to, I know time is short!
1. Does it need any written context for folk other than where they can donate?
2. Are there any red flags?
3. What is your experience when watching it (what are you thinking/feeling)?
4. Is the use of the song effective in making folk think about the violence inherent in the song, or does it just seem like playing on nostalgia?
5. Are there any  refinements I might be able to make before I post tomorrow?
6. Are there any refinements/changes you suggest for future versions?
7. Any other thoughts?

Re-imagining Citizenship Revision "10 little"

I got inspired to add some context to my study about the "10 little..." because of Meena's feedback on my last assignment. I am grateful to Iyatunde who filmed it for me and helped as an outside eye.


10 little from Shyamala Moorty on Vimeo.
password: citizenship

Questions:
1.  What is your experience watching this?

2. Do you feel this revision addresses Meena's comment: "This study also makes light to me of the tension between the different uses of the word Indian in a colonial context, but is specific to Shyamala's positionality as a South Asian woman. Unless maybe there is a way to FLIP the original meaning of the song but smake it specific to people's identity and history"

Is there anything else that you imagine I could do to address the above comment? 

3.  Are there any other red flags or questions this brings up for you?

4. Do you have any ideas of what I should wear?  Iyatunde thought of a t-shirt with #noDAPL #BLM (of course the blacklivesmatter is not addressed in this section of our piece just yet).

5. Any other thoughts?

Re-Imagining Citizenship, Round 4: 10 Little...

I invited in Iyatunde Folayan as a collaborator and we are planning to extend my original study "Indians" (section 3a below) into a duet that will include section 3b below as well as some new spoken word and multimedia ideas.  

Aside from the performance aspect, we intend to create a two-part interactive process for families:  Part one will be just for the parents to witness the performance piece, share their own relationships with the song and discuss ways to find language to engage children when faced with the violences on black and indigenous communities.  Part two will include both the parents and their kids and we imagine it looking something like this:

What:

Interactive, inter generational, non-traditional family-centered creative process to examine and re-frame the 10 little song.

When:

Nov 5, 3pm.  

Where:

Manazar Gamboa Community Theater 1323 Gundry Ave, Long Beach, CA 90813 (currently reserved but may consider an more lighted art gallery - the theater is dark).

Why:

The intention of this piece is to examine the story/song Ten Little Indians, also known as Ten Little Niggers, in an effort to re-frame, decolonize and humanize storytelling and the messages within. The goal is to work together with an inter generational community including Native American and African American individuals and families to create an alternative to the Ten Little Indians.  This new collaborative story, song or chant will intentionally nourish our children’s imaginations with positive imagery that stems from personal family stories rather than carelessly indoctrinating them with supremacist ideas about race.  The impetus for this was a response to the Post Natyam Collective’s creative process “Re-Imagining Citizenship.”

How:

FEEDBACK GROUP:  in early Oct. we will gather artistic and activist individuals, especially from the Native American and African American communities, to share our ideas with and get feedback from to strengthen the experience.  This will either be at the venue or in an informal home space with snacks.  

INTENTIONAL INVITATION: will be sent to 10 individuals with their chosen families (each one will be encouraged to bring a child)

Invitation will include some background on the “10 little...” song as well as the purpose of the gathering.

GATHERING:

1. Name Gesture Rhyme intro:
   say your own name, intro all in your "family" and do name gesture game with child's name:  say name and a little phrase that rhymes with name and a gesture to go along with it, like "Roshan, Roshan rides on the ocean."  Everyone repeats.  Add in all the kids names till you have a little chant.

2. storytelling (each group shares an object that represents their family, legacy, history, something they want to pass on to their kids and a story that goes with it.) 

3. a. optional:  perform the "10 little" portion of Shyamala's study "Indians"

Indians from Shyamala Moorty on Vimeo.

password:  citizenship

(not the This Land is your land part)

3. b.  One or several people Sing/or hum “10 little, 9 little, 8 little (pause instead of saying Indians), 7 little 6 little 5 little (pause), 4 little 3 little 2 little (pause), 1 little (Pause)”

The song or hum will be repeated starting loud and getting quieter as each group stands to “Say their name. “ Ideally there are 10 groups in total and we will include children’s names, as well as African Americans, and Native Americans lost to current police violence.  The purpose is to match the current situation to the historical roots of the song but not say outloud to the kids what either is about, the background will be in the invitation, and parents of older kids may choose to explain or not)

Ex: Number (1-10), Name, place (of death), age, and maybe one piece of info to humanize their identity

1. Aiyana Jones (Detroit, 8 yrs old, ?),

2. Tamir Rice (Cleveland, 12 years old, ?)

3.

etc.

3. Circle debrief:

-what did it feel like to juxtapose the singing and say say their name

-or what is your memory/experience/feelings about the song? Who passed this on to you?

4.  Walking rings, sounding and inward meditation moment, clearing

-Carrying their object, groups will walk around in one large maze of ring circle paths made with stones or drawn on paper the floor.  The ring circles are inspired by ritual objects by the KRU people (see info below) (perhaps juxtaposed with a medicine wheel, 4 stages of life, 4 directions) in a clockwise direction. As each group adds into the circle they add in a vocal sound to repeat until a group sound score is created.  Purpose to clear our minds of the “10 little…” and to meditate on our object stories.

Here are examples of the rings:

Information on the KRU rings:  

"A society that loses its symbols loses it's identity and in the process loses touch with itself." These are ritual objects created and used by the KRU people of West Africa (Ivory Coast, Liberia, Nigeria) region. They are known for being expert seafarers and these were considered both ritual objects and currency.  The KRU people refused to participate in the TransAtlantic Slave Trade and were known by the Europeans if captured to have less value because they refused to be slaves, fought or would kill themselves. The power these rings carry in meaning include the ability to stop wars, heal the sick. They can be called 'tien' and be protectors or guardians.

5. Art making (visual and rhyme)  

-Each group will find a personal space within the ring (can spread to join others) to place their family object.  Once there the group sound score will end and we will play recorded live drum to provide a beat.

-The children will be provided fingerprint pads and paper to create finger print art that tells the story of their family object, or that is a rendition of the object itself (the thought is to create something positive out of our identity markers rather than fingerprinting by the state), and/or crayons to color within the ring, or books with positive messaging (ex. A is for activist, Counting on Community, etc.) If they are too young, perhaps they run around within the ring, or play and move the rocks.

-Adults create a 2- line rhyme or couplet for the number they said for their “say their name section”  inspired by the family legacy object story.  

    Ex.  

6. sharing of the childen’s art and adults rhymes

All learn  the chants in order of the numbers and create new chant together!

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Questions:

1. What interests you most about this process?
2.  Does anything confuse or you/need clarification?

3. Are all the steps of the process ok for kids?  If not, how might we modify them or should we take them out? 

4. Is it too complex?  If so, how might it be simplified without loosing the connections to the 10 little song?

5. What red flags exist that might be misinterpreted or taken as offensive?

6. Is it useful to include all or a part of Shyamala’s study “Indians” (perhaps under a different title) either as a link in the invitation or done live before the  “say their name” portion?  https://vimeo.com/163181158 password:  citizenship

blood run performance

Here is the footage of blood run from my performance at Highways in June 2016!

password: "bloodline"

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.)

Reimagining Citizenship: Cynthia Assignment 3

Children and Citizenship

I've been thinking about how children are inculcated from a young age to other, marginalize, and treat other human beings as "less than."  This idea was partially sparked by a study by Lalenja Harrington, an extraordinary artist and a grad student in my Feminist and Queer Performance-Making class.  Her study worked with children's playground clapping songs: at first it created a sense of delight and intimate familiarity and then revealed, chillingly, the deep anti-black racism embedded in the song.  I've also thought of the RSS rewriting textbooks to reflect pro-Hitler ideologies of racial purity, and anti-aboriginal legends taught in Taiwanese public schools.  On the flip side, of course, there are traditional folktales of resistance and cultural retention, such as the Brer Rabbit stories.  I've been thinking about the power of myth to de-historicize dominant power structures by making those power structures seem "timeless" and "natural," and the various ways in which we can subversively reframe these hegemonic scripts.

ASSIGNMENT:
Find a children's story, song, textbook, or other material connected to your particular Reimagining Citizenship topic: this material may either espouse a dominant ideology or embody resistance.  Do some dramaturgical research to understand some of different interpretations, as well as historical and cultural context, surrounding this story/song/text/etc., if possible.

Create a study inspired by this children's "text" that cuts across the grain of the story by retelling it from a viewpoint other than the one it is written from.  Your study may be in any medium and should incorporate an object that you feel is emotionally/poetically related to your Reimagining Citizenship topic (for instance, Pacific seawater for blood run), but is not directly drawn from the children's text/material.

Feel free to take any element of this assignment that is useful to you.  You are welcome to modify, cut, throw out, or translate in whatever way you need.

POST YOUR RESPONSE BY APRIL 11th, 2016

Reimagining Citizenship: Assignment 1 Study: can BN feet be in conversation with blackness?

Assignment 1 study i... can BN feet be in conversation with blackness?

PW: BN feet to Moten Gift

https://vimeo.com/157516620

No specific feedback necessary because it's still in the very very rough raw unfinished phase,  but you find anything interesting or problematic, let me know please!

The Chinese Animal Zodiac for Aborigines

As part of the WGS Assemblages symposium (see my earlier post), I also will be doing a performative interaction with the audience over the course of an hour and 15 minutes.  There will be many things happening in the room, so I anticipate an ebb and flow of people.  I thought I would use the opportunity to try out a performance experiment idea I've had for awhile, based on Walis Nokan's poem, "Chinese Animal Zodiac for Aborigines."

My performative idea is to be a "fortune-teller."  Ideally I would have a semi-enclosed space, but probably the set-up will be two chairs with a small table in between.  I would interact with one person at a time.  I'll ask the audience what their zodiac sign is (I thought I'd put one of those cheesy Chinese restaurant place-mats down in case people don't know), then read them the section of Nokan's poem that corresponds to their sign.   I'm imagining sitting in front of a pile of rocks, with little scrolls for each section of the poem labeled "rat," "sheep," "dragon," etc sticking out of the rocks.  I would unfurl each scroll and read that part of the poem to the person.  I would end by giving them a little card or flyer, kind of like Christian proselytizers give out.  On one side there would be the relevant section of Nokan's poem, along with a bio, and on the other side, I would put one of my letters to a lost aboriginal ancestor (or excerpts thereof) and a bio that explains my mixed heritage and gives a little insight into the colonial history, but from a personal standpoint.  I would like to include Nokan's entire poem, but I think it would be too long.

Here is Nokan's poem:

Here's an example of a restaurant placemat I might use:

Questions:

(1) Should I have a sign announcing my fortune-telling?  If so, what should it say?  I was thinking of something like: "FORTUNE-TELLING: Chinese Animal Zodiac for Aborigines."

(2) Should I white-out or redact (black-out) the fortunes that are already on the placemat?

(3) How should I read the poem?  Should I read it from the position of an indigenous person, as it is written, from the position of a colonizer who is surprised and/or offended at what the fortune says, in the mode of an exotic Orientalist new age fortune-teller and/or charlatan?  Should my tone be sincere, theatrical/performative, flat, etc?  Should I try a mixture of performative styles corresponding to the various identities and stereotypes being invoked?  

(4) Along similar lines to (3), what should I wear?  Something "neutral" (ie western androgynous), something "Chinese," something "indigenous," something hippie-like?  A friend suggested having a different hat or head-covering for each character.  Would that be too much?

(5) I'm thinking of slightly rewriting parts of the translation to make it work better as English poetry.  However, I don't quite understand the "Dragon" section.  What do you think the "myth" refers to?   The "hand that unravels"?  In the "Rabbit" section, what do you think the "ripples that attempt to flee" mean?

Reimagining Citizenship: Cyn's Assignment #1, revised

I've revised my "embodying savagery" video study inspired by Fred Moten's talk for an upcoming Women's and Gender Studies symposium called Assemblages this Saturday, Feb 27 at UNCG.  It will be part of a multiply layered durational performance installation with several other artist-scholars, and will be looped along with a couple other series of short videos of the body.  (I'll also be doing a performative interaction with the audience that I'll post about later.)  If possible, I'd love feedback by Friday!

more than less than (in process) from Cynthia Ling Lee on Vimeo.

Questions:
(1) What do you think of how I use the ethnographic images here?  Is the connection between the images and the movement/body clearer/more effective now?
(2) How do you feel about the overall trajectory and length of the work?  Does the ending get too layered and muddy?  Any cuts you'd change?
(3) Any other thoughts or feedback?  (Anything you miss from the last version?)

Reimagining Citizenship Assignment 2 (by Babli)

This assignment consists of three steps. Please DO NOT read step 2 and step 3 before having completed step 1.

STEP 1: Do a 10-15 minute free-write reflecting on art making and cultural citizenship (the way you believe it can be effectively deployed as a concept), in times of a crisis such as the current "refugee crisis" in Europe- a crisis that is a matter of life and death for many. You can refer to different situation than the current one debated here.


STEP 2: Read your own free-write closely and try to establish the main emotion (stayibhava) tha it reveals.

STEP 3: Make a study based on that stayibhava, if you want you can use one of Cynthia's suggestions:

Creative Assignment Possibilities (Cynthia) :

(1)   Create a movement study exploring the idea of living perpetually on a border.  Consider how your study might not be completely abstract but in dialogue with actual border stories.

(2)   Create a study investigating two-facedness: both welcoming and repelling.

(3)   Do a free-write about your own history of migration (this can include your family’s).  Put this story into conversation with stories of current refugees.  You may use text, movement, video, images, etc.

Reimagining Citizenship Round 2: Cynthia's written response

The Refugee Crisis and Cultural Citizenship

Watching the debates, I am struck most keenly by the absence of the voices of refugees themselves: both the absence of their stories, their reasons for leaving their homes, what they have left behind and what it may have cost them; as well as the absence of their voices in getting to have a say in policy or, at least in these debates, in the discourse surrounding the refugee “crisis” or “problem.” 

I also notice there is only one person who is visibly not white – the black man in the second debate who is an “expert on migration” – and I wonder simultaneously (a) how race (not to mention religion) plays into the reception of the refugees and (b) whether I am exporting US frameworks of race onto Europe and West Asia.

I notice the debates shift continually between Germany’s role and that of Europe (the EU) in general.  Disagreement between different European countries: some countries are more welcoming than others, some building walls of barbed wire, some wanting to filter according to religion, an urgent need for an agreement and yet perpetual conflict.  A recognition that some countries have more resources than others.  A desire to throw money at the situation and assume that will fix things.  From my limited understanding, this disagreement seems typical of the challenges of postnationalism and the EU.  It also reminds me, curiously, of ensemble or collaborative process, and brings into relief whether different perspectives and needs can be effectively held together, whether working together across difference makes for a stronger or more watered down politics.  I am a little shocked when the last commentator says that he is waiting for a new US president to be elected so the EU can follow suit.

I am particularly interested in how people articulate Germany’s reception of refugees to its particular history: articulated in one debate as a sort of reparations – or perhaps more accurately a wish to learn from an ugly historical past and to do better; to Germany’s own split into East and West Germany; to a history of blood citizenship, which I am assuming may have something to do with the fact that Germany has no immigration policy.  There is a lot of talk about “dark” and “bright” (that metaphorical use of color is pretty racist) sides of Germany.

I’m fascinated by how Angela Merkel has become a central protagonist around this story and her own background as a refugee from East Germany.  A most un-romantic, plodding “heroine.”  How does her own lived experience inflect her position on this crisis?  What more could I learn about the dynamics of the relationship of East and West Germany that could shed interesting light, knowing that West Germany dominates US Americans’ impressions of Germany?  Time Magazine has named Merkel person of the year, and while I am dubious about US mainstream media’s celebration of her, it is fascinating to read about her growing up in a Lutheran seminary and workplace for mentally disabled adults in the woods.

How do our own histories of migration – both personally and in our families – inflect our understanding of the refugee crisis?

The lack of rigor with which the debates examine the “root causes” of migration.  The split between economic refugees and refugees of war – which here in the US would be the difference between an immigrant and a refugee – sets up a narrative of who “really needs help” and who is trying to take advantage of a more comfortable life in the EU, when surely it is much more of a spectrum.  What are the dominant narratives of migration?  And how much do they actually correspond to people’s real stories and experiences?  I am reminded that my whole life, I bought into the US narrative that my parents came to “make a better life for themselves” when they in fact were leaving an unstable political regime.  And, just to make more connections, how does this dynamic relate at all to the ways in which I have been re-thinking immigrants' complicity in damaging indigenous communities by buying into a settler-colonial state?  As we talked about a couple summers ago, is there a way in which indigeneity as a concept does not fit a European context?  Or is some sort of translation useful?

Regarding the article, which I note was written in 2002 shortly after 9/11, I found myself wondering how the idea of “cultural citizenship” can be usefully distinguished from ideas of “identity” and “belonging.”  Is this simply yet another way to pay lip service to “diversity” and “inclusion”?  For me, citizenship automatically declares a direct relationship to nation-state, to legal status, to rights.  I do understand quite deeply that reimagining what it means to be an American, a Canadian, a German on cultural terms is central to a just, tolerant, diverse society/nation.  For instance, my legal status as an American is incontrovertible, but I am often not treated like an “American” because of anti-Asian racism, xenophobia, anti-immigrant sentiment (which of course ties into actual histories of denying Asian people US citizenship – or to attempt to tie it into our thinking about anti-blackness and citizenship, the history of being legally considered 3/5 of a person for African Americans).  Yet for me, using the term cultural citizenship without a direct tie-in to rights feels overly theoretical, or more to the point, a missed opportunity to actually make change in the world.  I also noted the North American focus of the article and wanted to understand how cultural citizenship might be more salient to a German and European context.

Creative Assignment Possibilities:

(1)   Create a movement study exploring the idea of living perpetually on a border.  Consider how your study might not be completely abstract but in dialogue with actual border stories.

(2)   Create a study investigating two-facedness: both welcoming and repelling.

(3)   Do a free-write about your own history of migration (this can include your family’s).  Put this story into conversation with stories of current refugees.  You may use text, movement, video, images, etc.

Meena's notes and response to "Reimagining Citizenship Round 2"

Video from August 21, 2015 

• Someone is suggesting point system (similar to Canada). Which refugees are “useful”? Argh.
• There is no immigration system in place in Germany. Need to create a mechanism. What are Germany's immigration policies?
• Differentiating between asylum seekers versus migrants looking for a better economic life but not in life danger. Argh.
• Sweden and Germany are bearing the bulk.
• Hungary, Britain, France, Spanish, are building fences, barriers, walls.
• Betrayal of European values to not accept refugees? What are these so called European values?
• Christian refugees only for some countries. Anti-muslim sentiment :-(
• Ethnic similarities/connections to European country depending on who they accept. If relatives are in the EU, refugees should go that. One guy seems really appalled that someone might want to CHOOSE. 
• 1857 people have lost their lives since June trying to cross over Mediterranean borders.

Video from Sept 18, 2015

• Have introduced policed border controls.
• Merckel's contradiction between saying Germany must accept refugees, and then putting into place border control.

Video from Oct 30, 2015

• Controlling refugee bodies – registration centers are supposedly deterring refugees. Debate as to if they are.
• I’m curious to know how the debate has shifted since the Paris bombs. Increased anti-Muslim and violence towards refugees.
• Dude feeling like a refugee seeking asylum doesn’t have the  right to choose where they want to live. Hmm.
• Rise of right wing political groups in Europe riding on anti-immigrant policies. Argh. Can see similar movement in US too. Canada has only now after 8 years of massive right wing leadership, voted in something slightly more liberal.

Notes from article
Gerard Delanty, University of Liverpool, UK 

Two Conceptions of Cultural Citizenship: A Review of Recent Literature on Culture and Citizenship

• Citizenship as based on formal rights and not cultural belonging.
• Rights in exchange for duties and loyalties.
• Citizenship as generally defined by birth, or in some cases descent, while multicultural policies served to manage immigrants. “Today this distinction has virtually collapsed.”  How would the author now reframe this argument? That the original population is more culturally plural because of four decades of intermixing, but also because of westernization and globalization.
• How culture – mostly defined by diversity – is to be brought into the realm of citizenship.
• “Cultural citizenship”  - the inclusion or exclusion of certain groups or individuals
• I wonder – if minoritarian subjects were included within the dominant notions of cultural belonging (for example including realms of communications such as media) would the practice and policing of citizenship shift? I feel like this author is arguing for that. 

Ideas for creative assignments:

I don't have any ideas for creative assignments. Sorry :-(  I'm open to what you and Cynthia propose.

Reimagining Citizenship: Babli Assignment 2, Part 1

There are two options for this assignment:

Option 1)  read the following (academic) article about cultural citizenship:

Delanty, Gerard (2002). "Two Conceptions of Cultural Citizenship: A Review of Recent Literature on Culture and Citizenship." In: The Global Review of Ethnopolitics. March 2002, vol 1, no 3., 6-66.

http://www.ethnopolitics.org/ethnopolitics/archive/volume_I/issue_3/delanty.pdf


Option 2) Listen to these three short debates (26 minutes each) in chronological order and note the changes over time:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0l2UAQSYBU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fASuId3MtWc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QINLCK1hXA


1) What stands out to you?
2) What are the most important points for you?
3) What from the article/debate links to reimagining citizenship artistically?
4) Please suggest creative assignment possibilities.
5) Any other observations?

Reimagining Citizenship Creative Assignment 1: Embodying Savagery

more than/less than one: embodying savagery from Cynthia Ling Lee on Vimeo.
password "moten"

(1) What specific connections do you see between this video study and the ideas in Fred Moten's talk?
(2) What moments draw you in?  What might you like to see more of?  Less of?  What do you make of the overall trajectory, cuts, and transitions?
(3) How might you imagine this video in dialogue with the other material of "blood run"?  Do you imagine it as part of the live performance?  A stand-alone video?  Part of an installation?  Etc.
(4) What kind of relationship do you see between the moving body and the ethnographic images?  
(5) How do you understand the connections between indigeneity and blackness?  Is it fruitful to make connections or simply problematic or destructive?
(6) Other thoughts or suggestions?

Context: My friend Caitlin helped me film the existing movement phrase from blood-run that is based on colonial ethnographic drawings of Taiwanese indigenous peoples.  She is also interested in doing her own cut of the footage.  There are some video file format issues and some of the footage seems to be a different aspect ratio than other parts -- something I'll try to address if you think the study is worth pursuing further.

Videography: Caitlin Spencer
Performance and Editing: Cynthia Ling Lee

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.). 

Reimagining Citizenship 1: Babli's response to Fred Moten's talk:

Fred Moten Talk

https://vimeo.com/100330139

watched on October 12, 2015 and 16 October 2015

Notes-

Blackness cannot be reduced to an ontology. Blackness is a principle- a principle of a condition that is there in all of us: the principle of being “less than and more than” at the same time. And because blackness is always more and less than one, blackness it is a condition fundamentally disrupts of the concept of a (whole) self.

(though I personally always find the distinction between self and individual helpful, I need to think though more fully what this would mean for this lecture).

What strikes me in the beginning of the piece is how Moten re-counts philosophical and theoretical notions of ontology and difference in a way that highlights the ways in which black theorists W.E.B Dubois’ and Franz Fanon’s major works prefigured the works that Heidegger and – here his argument is stronger – Derrida’s and well as French philosopher’s work (from the 1960s onwards).

“One way to think of what Fanon is doing in 1952 is that it prefigures a lot of the work that Derrida will start doing roughly 10 years later”

He offers an alternative notion of universality- which as a philosophical premise was exposed in his talk as assuming the “non-fullness of black selfhood” – because it challenges the notion of universality that universalists like Kant et al. adhered to.

“As a matter of theory Kant assumes the non-fullness of my personhood”

“Laws were created to assure that non-fullness”

è American constitution: every black person is 3/5 of a man

The critique of Kant is important in this lecture (held in Eastern Europe)- and also for me listening from Germany – as a point of connection- answering the question- what does Blackness have to do with me – though I think that is very clear from the main argument (as I need it of Blackness as a principle rather than as an ontology)

But back to Kant and universalism for a moment:

Moten asks - how do we today understand the relation between difference and universalism- are still concerned with universalism?

Kant’s universality regulates difference- “regulates it, limits it and controls it”

In “contradistinction to Kant” Moten suggests “the relation between difference and universality is maintained and operates by way of and is honored not as a function of the regulation of difference, but as a function of the proliferation of difference”

I remember Meena’s question- what does this have to do with citizenship? I think,  citizenship is bound up with notions of the nation which it seem to more often than not, have difficulty or be incapable of embracing difference.

And for Moten, blackness “constitutes something on the order of a principle for the proliferation of difference, precisely insofar as it is neither, as it is always both less than one and more than one.”

“In this combination of incompleteness and excess, ok, it constitutes the living embodiment, so to speak, of the disruption, of differences, of of the of the disruptive force of difference as a universal principle, ok”

Blackness stands for:

“fundamental irregularity”

“resistance to regulation”

Moten’s connection to queer theory is another gesture me into his discussion of blackness:

The  Queer and the trans- citizen is also “less than” as well as “more than one” – “infected by impurity and multiplicity that undermines” singular notions of gender

Cynthia’s internal queer theorist asks “where is the pleasure in blackness”- I am left thinking- how does the queer notion of desire connect to Moten’s assertion that in order to embrace non-fullness (which is possible for everyone) one has to give of the desire of the fantasy of fullness.

 How does desire live in a queer-of-color debate?

This brings me to he very important question of who can embrace blackness, who can consent to blackness?  Can people who have not been subjected to the imposition of non-fullness do so?

Q: “would it be a presumption for people who are not black to claim blackness?”

A: “just call it something else then”

It is not about the ontology. Yes.

Here is where I think I get interested as well as paralyzed, when he starts looking to bthe histories of black and queer performance for “clues” for the

“enactment of another way of being in the world”

In order to claim the “less than/more than” condition, one has to give up a “normative idea of citizenship”

“a notion of home”

“Relinquish securities”

surrender to exhaustion

Accept the poststructuralist premise that “we all operate in a certain structure of deprivation and poverty” that we operate within a desire for a self, but we don’t actually have it:  “what cultural and aesthetic resources are available to us that would make it more possible for us to claim, rather than to disavow,  this condition which is already ours, irreducibly, in a way that we cannot avoid”

Assignment idea:

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