Connecting in times of Physical Distancing: Little Joys

Wait we already were physically distant...

But now it's heightened...As many of us are shuttered up at home due to trying to prevent the spread of COVID-19, PNC has been communicating mostly over What's App to keep in quick and supportive contact.  We were interested in keeping our process going but Cynthia is the only one actually able to make dances right now due to other obligations like writing and a kid.

So we decided to give Cynthia idea invitations to make movement.  So, here goes....


I am inspired by Sandra's facebook and Instagram posts.
Sandra has been posting beautiful photos that she titles "Little Joys" that show the scenic beauty and details around her her home and out her window, in appreciation of being where we are.

Cynthia, make some movement inspired by Sandra's photos!

Anyone else who wants to join, post a link to your video in the comments... we would also love to see folks’ own “little joys” photos-a nice way to join if you don’t consider yourself a mover

Cynthia's movement response:

Sandra's photo that Cynthia responded to:



Other "Little Joys" photos from Sandra:

  

Shy's Borders Resurfacing Creative Response #6: Water Ritual Remix

This is a remix of Babli's and my water rituals, taking into account some of the themes (especially feet, fences, ritual and words (I didn't find a place for dots because I feel lines is closer to borders though I could imagine how this could be a different thing with dots and instructions on or under the dots)

AT ENTRANCE invite folks to remove shoes (optional - would folks do this?)

Projection:  One of Meena’s loops of water running down and reverse up a wall at or near entrance.  

Step 1 - Ritual footwash There is a large bucket/Tub of river water with a scoop set up, as well as an empty bucket/tub. (or we can keep this handwash if you think folks wouldn’t do it, especially cause it’s cold mid-november)

Audience instructions:

Foot wash

Take the scoop and scoop out water out from the one bucket/tub

Go over to the second bucket/Tub and let the water run over each of your feet into the emptier tub 

Remembering and honoring: Our bodies are about 60 percent water!  

Step 2 - bottling: There is a row of buckets with water and empty little bottles that can be closed.

Audience instructions:

Bottling

Fill one of the little bottles with water.

About 71 percent of the Earth’s surface is covered by water.

Step 3: Memory/label. ]

Audience instructions:

Memories

Hold the bottle. Remember 2 situations:

1) A memory of you or others trying to cross a fence, border, or river

and

2) a particularly beautiful moment of spending time at a river (preferably Saalach or Salzach)

For each of the memories find one word that captures the memory.

Go to one of the tables in the room  and write your two words on a piece of paper and attach it to the bottle. 

 (NOTE:  tables should be in various places so that the lines in next section start in different places too)

Step 4 - Lines (Note 1:  this direction may be on portable slips of paper that audience members can take with them and follow the parts as you need.  Note 2: On the ground inside are curved intersecting lines - could be of tape or chalk or washable paint etc)

Audience instructions:

Exchange

 Take this slip of paper and your bottle.   Find a line on the ground and follow it with your feet.  If you come across another person on the same tape path, make a pattern with your feet together and your bottles.  Then exchange names, bottles, and river stories.   And continue on your journey. Repeat if you come across other people until you get to the end of the line.  

Step 5: - Bridges (note: this direction would be at the end of first line they followed and once again on a slip of paper they can take with them)

Audience instructions:

Bridges

Take this slip of paper and your current bottle.  Walk between or over the lines on the floor (never on them)  If you come across another person, you may create a bridge by connecting your bodies (may be hands, shoulders, backs, feet, elbows) so that someone else may go under it, or if you come across someone else’s bridge you may find a way under it.  Continue until you have made or gone under at least 4 bridges or until you wish to stop walking between and over the lines.  

Step 6:  (perhaps this part is in the final theatrical happening? )

Audience instructions:

Sharing

go to one of the two standing mikes in the room, and read the words on your current bottle into the microphone.  You may also share any part of the story you remember that is associated with those words.  

Questions:  

 1.  how much of this would you imagine folks really doing?  I imagine it with feet since that is one of the words, but hand washing is definitely easier if we want to do that instead?  Also, if people prefer not to touch, do you think I worded it in such a way that would give them an out?

2.   what do you think folks will get out of this experience?

3.  how can we bring in the theme of back to the beautiful even more to it?  how can this encourage hidden stories/histories to emerge? 

4.  Do we need to simplify even more?  if so, what do you think the most essential elements are?

5.  Any other thoughts, ideas?

Queering Abhinaya, assignment 5, response by Babli and Cyn

For this round of assignments, Babli and Cyn started collaborating on writing text for UNFINISHED, ITERATION III, Babli’s recent project inspired by painter Amrita Sher-Gil.

For this assignment, Cyn and Babli looked at two different portraits painted by Sher-Gil (at this point we won’t say which ones-sorry)

We created 2 rounds of freewrites for each portrait, i.e. looking at each portrait from 2 different perspectives.

We ask for feedback on the freewrites, and there is a video pasted below that plays with putting some of the text over movement (from Iteration II)- HOWEVER; we ask that you watch the video AFTER having responded to the text.

Our feedback questions are:

1) What do you get from the writings?  Are there any imagery, ideas, and/or phrases that stand out to you as compelling?

2) How do these writings relate to the performance, UNFINISHED?  How might you imagine them being integrated into the performance?

3) How do these writings relate to some of our explorations regarding the queer female desiring gaze?

4) Would you imagine combining these writings into one or two pieces, or do you like them as multiple perspectives on the same thing?

5) We pasted below an experiment of overlaying the text with movement (please only watch it after responding to the above questions)

a) How does watching the text with movement change the text- AND the movement for you?

b) What do you get from the combination?

c) How would you like the text to be delivered (i.e. voice over, Sandra speaking, text projection, another person speaking live - e.g. an audience member)

6) Any other thoughts?

Painting 1

Freewrites round  1

Your eyes, they look sultry, almond shaped

your gaze stern and self conscious,

indirect, since you are facing the diagonal

your prominent eyebrows appear close together

your lips deep red serious, no smile

they give your look a strictness and determination that exudes confidence

your hair is thick and very very long

I imagine it is very heavy

tied deep in the neck

Not open

Your face and hair look very Indian to me

Your shoulders stoop forward ever so slightly

On your diagonal the side of your upper body that is closer to me- it is your left side-

is light more brightly

Around your waist you are wearing a light blue pareo of which I can only  see the top part

Your hands are clasped in front of your hips

Your indirect facing

Your closed posture

your serious, confident, self conscious  face

seem to contradict the openness and lusciousness of your bare upper body

The shadow of a man in a hat towers behind you

All in front of the backdrop of a - is it a Japanese- scene where there are three figures

two female- they seem to be talking to each other

and one male

---

You are vulnerable, brown, thoughtful, hands folded protectively over your crotch.  My eyes skate between your face and your bare torso.  You face the corner with fathomless black black eyes, brows drawn together slightly, large sloping nose contrasting with your narrow jaw and round heart-shaped lips, slightly pursed, unavailable.  look don't look.  Your breasts and nipples, full with a slight sag, delicately modeled.  Your

arms browner than the rest of you -- a shirt sleeve tan?  Your chest relaxed, despite it all.  The strangest thing is the figures in the background, faint, a Japanese imperial painting, a male official with a long moustache, ladies in waiting.  An ominous shadow between you and this underpainting, a shadow which could not have been cast by you, ominous and frontal and male.

______

freewrites round 2

Your eyes- my gaze is drawn to your eyes most of all-- they are almond shaped. You are looking out into the distance, but not with your eyes wide open -- your look/your gaze into the distance- may I call it sultry?

your hair lusciously cascades down your back.

Your lips are full

deep red

serious, sensuous, earnest

contemplative

Your torso is shaped by curves-

the slight droop of your shoulders close your body

just like the protective clasp of your hands

your full breasts are marked by what looks like a tanline- leaving your arms darker than the fullness of your breast

your hips are covered snugly by a light blue, thin pareo

it is tied very low below your bellybutton

just like we were told to wear it for dance class

_______

in van gogh, whom you loved as well, brilliance and movement and color and hope.  you drew yourself against his hope, his romance-faded vision of a japanese monastic artistic community, his dark shadow looming behind you.  Amrita, how did you occupy this legacy, luxuriating in and rejecting these western eyes, so exotic, so different!  black crows of eyebrows furrowed, thick cascading hair, you paint yourself into the primitive colonial object, using the tools of your colonizers your teachers.  what a peculiar gesture, the self-portrait, to treat oneself as visual object, to be inside and outside.  as you paint your body you paint truth and flaw and desire, lushness and discomfort.  a celebration, yes, of lush brown openness and femininity, gauguin, but where you keep yourself, your secrets, is in your eyes, black, unavailable, aware of being seen.  you feel my gaze upon you, you feel the entire history of western viewers gazing upon you.

Painting 2

freewrites round 1

You are sitting

relaxed

Your left elbow supported on something (dark)

Your right hand placed on your knee

You are putting weight on your hand, it seems

Your right shoulder gets pushed up

Your posture turns out slightly skewed

But in a relaxed, provocative way

Your eyes are piercing

Your red lips match the pattern on your blouse

I ask myself if you are- or maybe want to- lift your eyebrow

to enhance the challenging, is it playful, look you are returning to the person painting you

You are playing back the gaze

Your right hand

the one on your knee

appears huge

____

You summon me to look at you, quizzical and confrontational, your shoulder jutting askew all bones and lips, hand gripping your knee like a man, the foreshortening making your hand even larger.  Your clothes scrubbed with rough strokes, black on black, energetically worked from the background, the strokes fat, undelicate, moving.  all elbows and jawline.  your face, though, is lit, cream and ivory glowing translucent in incandescent light, striking your left cheekbone, forehead.  a glint in your gray green eyes, so clear and far-seeing, your strong dark eyebrows arched expressive, your huge orange red pouty grim stubborn lips, so kissable.  your hair, bobbed, curves into your jaw and disappears into the background.  you are manly and womanly, confrontational all boney angles and yet unreadable, waiting and looking back at the one who paints you.

___________________

Freewrites round 2:

your shoulders and hair cut, your fingers and joints - their angularity exudes strength

your eyes are piercing

so striking

your gaze direct

your lips so curved

so full so striking

The folds of your dress trace the shape of your body

your left hand tucked in as if prodded on your hips

makes your right hand even larger

- protruding out

grasping your own knee

instead of reaching out

_____

Brazen and full-lipped, you thrust your elbow, shoulder, hips at me, looking at me through me beyond me.  Unreadable.  I model your face, delicate porcelain translucent eggshell, tinged with cream and shell and yolk.  The rest is the constant mystery of mixing blacks grays browns, purple shadows enriching the mahogany gleam of your hair, your clothing emerging in blacks and olives and yellow gray greens.  After all this time sharing space, I still cannot read you, a puzzle how you thrust yourself against me and retract, one key two keys, how you found us in the sheets, your green eyes and mannish hands, surveying us with amusement.  I work that drama into the drip and swirl and fold of cloth and brush, energetically moving cloth against your skin, so delicate, your stubborn lips, so kissable.

VIDEO:
UNFINISHED ITERATION III, Text, PNC Assigment Aug 2014 from Unfinished on Vimeo.

PW: iteration 3 exploration

Assignment 2: Abhinaya as a tool for queering

This assignment focuses on utilizing techniques and compositional strategies associated with abhinaya for queering beyond a Indian/South Asian context. Therefore, I would like you to focus on an aspect of your work, which explores a context/content/form that is not Indian/South Asian. This could, for example, be a study inspired by a specific cultural context (i.e. in my case the German context of the integration debate), by a narrative set in a specific cultural context, or a formal/aesthetic exploration/deconstruction (i.e. in the German context: a deconstruction of conceptual dance).

In your studies/creative responses, please explore abhinaya as a tool for queering while following this process in PAIRS.

1)
Choose one specific aspect of a previous study (or an idea that emerged from it), or an aspect/section of another project you are working on, which you would like to develop further by re-appropriating abhinaya for the purpose of queering (s.th. non-Indian).

2)
Pair up in the following pairs, and connect with your assignment partner:
Cynthia- Meena
Shyamala-Babli

If possible, try to work with your partner via distance, rather than in person.

3)
Have ONE exchange with your partner. Schedule one hour per partner. In this one hour, the person who's study is workshopped presents their idea/what they want to work on before you two brainstorm the study/creative response.

4)
Create your own rules as a pair for the collaboration leading up to completion and upload of the study, depending on your timelines and availabilities.


5)
HAVE FUN!!!

Collected feedback from Babli for assignment 1: Cultural Queering

Dear all, blogger did not let me comment- so here the feedback as a post- if any of you want to take the trouble to post as comments from PN account, please feel free- sorry about this!

Cynthia

 (1) What visuals or movement might you imagine to this piece?

For some reason I am drawn to the contrast between walking like Radha and Walking like a feminist- so possible variations of walking- just sets of feet filmed from above.

I know this is very sketchy, but my sense is for a continuous walking, covering space, which we don’t see, but get a sense of due to the progression and continuity of the walking.

Maybe changing footwear? But then its hard to get the continuity in walking…..

(2) What parts of the text are you drawn to and why?  Conversely, are there places where your attention falls away or that you would recommend cutting?

I find the mention of the nation state jarring- and parallel to it the imperialism- I think because they are loaded and the brief mentions end there…… It jars the otherwise poetic text- maybe that’s intended- but then I would maybe play with how they relate to each other. The terms as they are used now come across more black and white than they are, I think, esp when paired with an artistic practice.

Otherwise, I maybe get lost a little in the “love section” at the end-

(3) What emotions do you experience when listening to this soundtrack?  How would you describe the emotional arc of the work?

1: discomfort about physical Non-belonging

2. conflicting femininities: domesticated vs feminist

3: bridging cultural difference?

4. how do we love?

It moves to me from personal- to more personal/political to love as expansion (love as a possibility towards political change?)

(4) What light does this study shed on the theoretical concept of cultural queerness?

I actually perceive more tension than embrace of the obliqueness (which to me resonates with the queerness)

Except at the end where the interesting proposition of love as a mode of (political) expansion connects different layers of queerness (much like rapture/rupture)

(5) Other comments? 

In general, in terms of content, I feel that its clearer how the American feminist side confronts the “classical Indian” and its nationalist entanglement- but less how the classical Indian disrupts the American feminist- the puncturing goes in one direction- towards the classical, which comes across as more “passive” in this case. I am curious what the relationship looks like if the other direction is emphasized

Shyamala

1.     what is the tone of this piece for you? does it change over time?

The tone of the piece is a fascinating mixture of light/fun and serious. Overtime, I feel that  both qualities get enhanced- ending in a tongue- and-cheek way- I really like the ending of you laughing and taking off the hat!

2.     what do you experience watching it?
The

Oh I am totally drawn in from the beginning. I think the blank/serious expression on your face contrasting the more and more adventurous identity (stereotypes) provide a good contrast- I also like how interjections in the sound track (questioning) and in the facial expression mirror each other.

3.     would you like there to be more in the sound score?  if so, what?

I am torn about this one. I kind of like the sparseness of the soundscore. Anything more, might highlight one or the other mood too more and throw off the careful balance.

4.     how do you feel about the length and pacing?  Does it include everything you would like or do you feel it is too repetitive?

I like the length, and also the progression, in terms of pacing maybe there could be some playing with the editing- for some reason I can picture a fast forward or rewind kind of effect “summarizing” the stereotypes and also the mixed up ones.

5.     Any other feedback?

I really like how cultural/ethnic/religious and gender identity get addressed simultaneously- I think there could be some more thought/variety into what other variations might be possible---- I think there is more potential there

I also think it would be a fun model for all of us to follow and do a kind of video installation with…….

Meena

i) what stands out to you in terms of what this body doing? 

Posing, lounging, confronting (through looking)

Offers itself, owns itself

In control

Seducing and troubling by not-conforming

ii) how would you describe this body? 

Open yet confrontational, relaxed, comfortable in its non-conformity

Self-reflexive, in charge

iii) is this body doing anything subversive? 

Mostly I feel the contrast between seduction (inhabiting sexualized feminine poses) paired with a gender-non-conforming subjectivity

The looks into the camera- calm, stern

Less the body than the editing—the pulsing of the poses, the switch from flowing from pose to pose, to chopping them next to each other

 iv) how is this body constructing its own subjecthood (if this body is indeed constructing its own subjectivity)?

The careful choosing and deliberateness of the stances, poses, the juxtaposition of seduction and gender-noncoformity

The choice of telling a story away from the camera (that gets blurred) interjected with the stern gaze into the camera

v) how is the camera and/or the editing constructing (co-constructing?) this body's subjecthood?

I think I already addressed this above, regarding eth switch between flow from pose to pose as against chopped up stringing together, enhanced but the pulsating in a pose which is clearly edited,

The move from blurred to clear

The choice of camera angle (looking directly into the camera vs abhinaya into diagonal, away from camera)

The background sound during abhinaya vs the silence which staring

vi) anything else?