Next steps for Cyber Chat Manifesto

Based on an on-line meeting PNC had today on google plus hang out, a music meeting in LA with Ravi and Loren, and individual conversations with Prum we are modifying the Cyber Chat.

New ideas:

1. We reduced and redistributed Sandra's Yeses, to cut some of the text and reflect that they are more about the group then one individual. One of the yes sections will become Sandra's solo which she will dance to her pre-recorded voice similar to the other solos. The other 3 of them will be said by different people while the visual will be a changing composite body of different dancing body parts (we will each make a new torso solo, a head solo and a feet solo like the background rhythms but expanded vocab, not necessarily rhythmic).

2. We thought the end "yes to Post Natyam" was a little corny and like Ravi pointed out, like a political ad....so we removed the line and are trying a cacophany of "yeses" instead, so each of us will record several different yeses.

3. Tone: overall light and fun twist on traditions with moments of tongue-in-cheek humor, and moments of in-your-face political.

4. skype call: would be good to reference more of the cyber chat and thus help situate us in different places with different looking and sounding rooms and maybe play with frozen, degraded, or warped image for humor and reality check.

Because of the new ideas we need to:
1. PNC re-videoing some aspects 2. PNC adding a few new video aspects 3. Ravi n Loren editing the sound score and 4. Prum editing the video.

Here are the assignments and proposed deadlines. I know they work for PNC and am hoping they work for Ravi, Loren and Prum?

Sound (and video) elements: (if possible, use an external mike and try to maintain the same distance to the mike the whole time.)

By Oct 28, Friday:
1. Anj and Sandra re-record audio for solos (if you use video camera you can get face too skype style, might be useful to get a feeling of the skype call for a moment simultaneous to the dance?)
2. Shy and Cyn record Yes sections (Babli, we can record yours too, but we do already have audio from your previous one we can use. Please video face too with earphones skype style in case we want to establish skype feeling momentarily here and there)
3. Anj, Sandra, Cyn, Shy: video of self saying "yes" 4 different ways and 1 "no" (just in case that's useful)

4. Cyn: record kathak feet for composite body

Oct 29, Saturday:
1. Loren, Ravi, Shyamala and Cynthia meet to finalize the timing of the sound score
2. Shy will drop box draft of sound score to group for video recording

By Nov 6, Sunday: Loren draft of music

Nov 6, Sunday:

1. Loren, Ravi, Shyamala and Cynthia meet to finalize music and foley in sounds (can u all meet this day?)

2. Shy will drop box music to all

Video elements: (please try to avoid: night shots or low light shots, use still frame like skype call)

by Nov 7: Drop box the following

Anj: reshoot solo

Babli: reshoot solo (you will do on 8th which will still get to us 8th morning because of time difference)

all: each video 1-min solos of the body parts dancing (whichever parts didn't already do in backbeat: head, torso, or feet) These cannot have sound elements unless you do them by Oct 28

by Nov 10: Prum posts draft 1

by Nov 17: Prum posts final draft (Prum is this possible?)

Possible showings:

Nov 19: Highways?

Nov 25: Dance Your Revolution, Vienna?


REVISED SCRIPT

I. Yes Section 1: Video = Post Natyam composite body

Cyn:
Yes.
Yes to process.
Yes to complexity.
Rooted in the local --

Rocking the global.

II. ANJ SOLO

Anj:

We collect our many voices to create and translate choreography,writings, and art across distant boundaries, overseas, here and there,everywhere that dance happens in the “liminal” space between Classical andContemporary. Constructing, reconstructing, and deconstructing, we grapple withSouth Asian aesthetics, in dialogue with each other and informed by the spacewhere our lives and art intersect.

III. Yes Section 2: Video = PNC composite body

Babli:
Yes to interrogating our legacies.
Yes to queering.
Yes to combating exoticism orientalism colonialism racism sexism classism casteism communalism.

IV. CYN SOLO

Cyn:
Bite down hard into our naughty knotty histories
How nation-state clamped down
domesticating our bodies
Remember the unthinkable
the intimate erotic exchange between women
powerfully sacred and profane
bending borders of caste class religion and culture
Their songs reenter my body with its American stride its yellow skin its postmodern leanings
I spit and twist and breathe and say,
Make room for the funky
for the butch-femme genderqueer
woman lovin’ hard-hitting rhythm-rappin’
rasa as you ain’t never felt it before.

V. BABLI SOLO (she may choose not to say all the words but may fill in the blank with her body)
Yes to coalition.
Yes to trust.
Yes to honesty.
Yes to respect.
Yes to consensual collaboration.
Yes to process without product.
Yes to creative recycling and reusing.
Yes to open-source.
Yes to multiple voices, multiple aesthetics, multiple authors.

VI. SHY SOLO:
WE ARE A COLLECTIVE
we are not a company
we are not about one monolithic vision, position, or approach
we listen with care, we dream wild, we live process, and we create.... magic
we create that unique magic that comes from the unexpected unity of our virtual variety
we share, we learn, we grapple with difference –and we don’t gloss it over
our open-sourced voices echo across continents in harmony and sometimes in dissonance
we embrace change and our roots are deep
in sharing our responsibilities we multiply our reach, our resources, our enthusiasm, our possibilities
to create... change

VII.

Anj: Yes to community.
Cyn: Yes to collectively building infrastructure.
Babli: Yes to radical dis/agreement.
Shy: Yes to multiplying energy.

VIII. Yes Section 3

Shy:
Yes to performing across disciplines.
Yes to natyam.
Yes to “post”:

Cyn: post-modern,

Babli: post-colonial, post-structuralist,

Shy: communicating through the cyber-”post”

Anj: across genres, traditions, and communities.

Babli: Yes to each other.

All: different yeses mixed in above backbeat (Video: composite body)

Cyber Manifesto, Draft 2

Mostly Prum just added in all the endings and played with Sandra's first solo.
We realized that as he does more fun editing like the intro and Sandra's solo that it will be harder to move stuff around later, so we decided that Prum and I will finalize the timing together next week before doing any more editing....we'll put it up for feedback then and after timing is finalized Prum will do more of his wild n fun stuff!

Love,
Shy

Password: post

Cyber Manifesto title?

Please comment if you like one of these titles or brainstorm some new ones in your comments:

Cyber Chat 3.0: A Manifesto
Cyber Chat 3.0: A Manifest OH!
Cyber Chat 3.0: Let's all Manifest OH!
Cyber Chat 3.0: Post Natyam Manifesto
Cyber Yes, Manifest
Cyber Natyam Manifesto

Cyber Manifesto draft 1

Please give your feedback by Wednesday Oct 12!

Here are things Prum is planning to do still:

1. balance the sound levels
2. put in a skype ring at the beginning and perhaps as a reoccurring theme throughout.
3. put in the ending section
4. make the solos more interesting with either bits of the background beat showing or multiplying our image.


note: Rather then put our solos in relation to the music where we had planned, he put them directly after each other with no backbeat in-between. This serves to drive forward the whole manifesto and keep the whole thing concise which is already 5 1/2 min without the end. He said he could try it differently if we desire so let us know. This does mean that he can't use our live sound so the body may be synched to sound a bit differently and that I'll have to foley in our body sounds in a separate audio recording. Please let us know your thoughts on this.


Password "manifesto"



Text:

CYBER - MANIFEST - OH

Babli:
Yes.
Yes to process.
Yes to complexity.
Yes to hybridity.
Yes to being rooted in the local and rocking the global.


Anj:

We collect our many voices to create and translate choreography, writings, and art across distant boundaries, overseas, here and there, everywhere that dance happens in the “liminal” space between Classical and Contemporary. Constructing, reconstructing, and deconstructing, we grapple with South Asian aesthetics, in dialogue with each other and informed by the space where our lives and art intersect.


Babli: Yes to interrogating our legacies.
Yes to queering.
Yes to sustainability.
Yes to praxis.
Yes to challenging aesthetic hegemonies and to resisting market ideology.
Yes to combating exoticism orientalism colonialism racism sexism classism casteism communalism.

Cyn:
Bite down hard into our naughty knotty histories
How nation-state clamped down
domesticating our bodies
Remember the unthinkable
the intimate erotic exchange between women
powerfully sacred and profane
bending borders of caste class religion and culture
Their songs reenter my body with its American stride its yellow skin its postmodern leanings
I spit and twist and breathe and say,
Make room for the funky
for the butch-femme genderqueer
woman lovin’ hard-hitting rhythm-rappin’
rasa as you ain’t never felt it before.

Babli:
Yes to coalition.
Yes to consensual collaboration.
Yes to trust.
Yes to honesty.
Yes to respect.
Yes to process without product.
Yes to creative recycling and reusing.
Yes to open-source.
Yes to multiple voices, multiple aesthetics, multiple authors.

Shy:
WE ARE A COLLECTIVE
we are not a company
we are not about one monolithic vision, position, or approach
we listen with care, we dream wild, we live process, and we create.... magic
we create that unique magic that comes from the unexpected unity of our virtual variety
we share, we learn, we grapple with difference –and we don’t gloss it over
our open-sourced voices echo across continents in harmony and sometimes in dissonance
we embrace change and our roots are deep
in sharing our responsibilities we multiply our reach, our resources, our enthusiasm, our possibilities
to create... change

Anj: Yes to community.
Cyn: Yes to collectively building infrastructure.
Babli: Yes to radical dis/agreement.
Shy: Yes to multiplying energy.

Babli:
Yes to the widest possible definition of dance.
Yes to “natyam” as a multiple-faceted performing art.
Yes to “post”:

CYN: post-modern,

BABLI: post-colonial, post-structuralist,

SHY: communicating through the cyber-”post”

ANJ: across genres, traditions, and communities.

Babli: Yes to each other.
All: Yes to Post Natyam.

Post Natyam Collective Manifesto 2.2

Yes to process.
Yes to complexity.
Yes to hybridity.
Yes to being rooted in the local and rocking the global.
Yes to interrogating our legacies.
Yes to queering.
Yes to sustainability.
Yes to praxis.
Yes to challenging aesthetic hegemonies.
Yes to resisting market ideology.
Yes to combating exoticism orientalism colonialism racism sexism classism casteism communalism.
No to identity politics.

SHY: Wait a minute! What do we mean by identity politics? I have made work in the past about my identity and certainly don't wish to erase acknowledging my identity in future work.

ANJ: Much like Shy, I feel I have grappled with this in past work and that we all incorporate the autobiographical into our own work.

SHY: I just hope we’re not saying no to identification at all?

CYN: Well, my discomfort with identity politics is how it often requires a flattening of our complexities -- to be only Taiwanese, or only a feminist, or only a kathak dancer - in order to achieve solidarity.

CYN and BABLI: And what brings the four of us together is not a shared identity but a shared interest in critically and creatively expanding South Asian performance tradition.

BABLI: So, broken down it might be: we don’t say NO to identity, autobiography, and community - but we say YES to going beyond the politics of self-interest groups and enforcing borders around identitarian constructions.

CYN: Exactly.

Yes to radical dis/agreement.
Yes to coalition. [1]

Yes to consensual collaboration.

CYN: Be generous. Be a thief. Encourage each other to borrow, steal, appropriate, translate.

Do so fearlessly rather than tiptoeing on eggshells. Trust each other as artists and human beings.

Yes to trust.
Yes to honesty.
Yes to respect.
Yes to process without product.
Yes to an online collective process from which we each craft individual products.

BABLI: Create a virtual treasure-box of materials and approaches that circulates to reveal multiple facets of a shared topic.

CYN: As we translate each other, ideas manifest multiply as dance films, scholarly writing, live performance, artbooks, lecture-demonstrations, installations, workshops...

Yes to creative recycling and reusing.
Yes to open-source.

BABLI: But wait, exactly what are we saying yes to? Do we understand the implications of it? And will we really be ok with anyone just taking our work and remixing it without telling us?

SHY: I meant open-source methodology, not open-source choreography.

CYN: You know, I think we’re open-source within the collective, but not necessarily with the outside world. The term connotes creative commons, decentralization of authorship, invitation for re-appropriation, and crowd-sourcing - which do resonate with our creative process.

BABLI: After all, we do make our choreographic assignments, process, and in-progress drafts available online at no cost for the public.

CYN: It's like they have access to the source code and blueprints...

BABLI: ...but not always the final products (if there even are any).

Yes to giving credit.
Yes to supportive feedback.
Yes to multiple voices, multiple aesthetics, multiple authors.

CYN: If you need to create unity, coherence, a singular clarity, then make that work on your own, and we’ll give feedback.

Yes to multiplying energy.

ANJ: A creative toss of ideas. Listening, processing, filtering, feeding, and vocalizing in constant dialogue to sustain and feed our sense of community.

Yes to collectively building infrastructure.
Yes to intelligent divisions of administrative labor.

BABLI: Sharing responsibility instead of multiplying work. Freeing up time and energy for creativity.

Yes to responsibility.
Yes to healthy, balanced lives.
Yes to shared decision making. Yes to moving forward.

SHY: If you aren’t present, you can’t be heard. If you don’t communicate or contribute, you can’t expect to be included.

No to divas.
Seriously, no to divas.

ANJ: But when the shit hits the fan, we can all turn into divas. There is one living in each of us...she comes out under pressure. I've seen her.

Yes to the widest possible definition of dance.
Yes to “natyam” as a multiple-faceted performing art. [2]
Yes to “post.”

CYN: I do resonate with postmodern dance’s valuing of the pedestrian body, of the interdisciplinary, of art-as-everyday-life...as well as its critique of the mainstream.

BABLI: To me “post” resonates in the first place with inquiries that address post-colonialities. I do draw from post-structuralist thinkers. I do not really resonate with postmodern dance as a “genre” (though I like to play with some of the aspects you mentioned, Cynthia).

SHY: From my out-”post”, I send messages through the cyber-”post,” decentralizing and multiplying, layering and creating dialogue through art, and art through dialogue.

ANJ: Post is the invention and creativity that develops and takes flight from the roots

Post happens after the solid foundation has been established

Post is the subversive

Post is engaging in the present informed by what has come before

Post followed by Natyam is the infinite possibilities that open up after years and years of training in a traditional South Asian dance form

Post is the ability to think outside the box

Post is the meeting of modernity and tradition

Post allows for creation across genres, traditions, and communities

Post is cool

Post is open to learning

Post is not afraid

Post is experimental

Post is anything is possible

Yes to honoring, challenging, and extending our multiple traditions.
Yes to each other.
Yes to Post Natyam.

[1] In “Cartographies of Struggle: Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism,” Chandra Talpade Mohanty utilizes Benedict Anderson’s notion of an “imagined community” to think of communities of women apart from essentialized notions of race, class and gender, but as “political links we choose to make among and between struggles” (Mohanty 2003, 46). Mohanty emphasizes a coalition between women of color in the following way: a “viable oppositional alliance is a common context of struggle rather than color or racial identifications” (49).
[2] "Natya” or “natyam” is a Sanskrit word that refers to the inseparable conjunction of drama, dance, and music in Indian performance tradition. In contemporary times, this concept could also include film and multimedia.

Post Natyam Collective Manifesto 2.2

Yes to process.

Yes to complexity.
Yes to hybridity.
Yes to being rooted in the local and rocking the global.
Yes to interrogating our legacies.
Yes to queering.
Yes to sustainability.
Yes to praxis.
Yes to challenging aesthetic hegemonies.
Yes to resisting market ideology.
Yes to combating exoticism orientalism colonialism racism sexism classism casteism communalism.
No to identity politics.

SHY: Wait a minute! What do we mean by identity politics? I have made work in the past about my identity and certainly don't wish to erase acknowledging my identity in future work.

ANJ: Much like Shy, I feel I have grappled with this in past work and that we all incorporate the autobiographical into our own work.

SHY: I just hope we’re not saying no to identification at all?

CYN: Well, my discomfort with identity politics is how it often requires a flattening of our complexities -- to be only Taiwanese, or only a feminist, or only a kathak dancer - in order to achieve solidarity.

CYN and BABLI: And what brings the four of us together is not a shared identity but a shared interest in critically and creatively expanding South Asian performance tradition.

BABLI: So, broken down it might be: we don’t say NO to identity, autobiography, and community - but we say YES to going beyond the politics of self-interest groups and enforcing borders around identitarian constructions.

CYN: Exactly.

Yes to radical dis/agreement.
Yes to coalition. [1]

Yes to consensual collaboration.

CYN: Be generous. Be a thief. Encourage each other to borrow, steal, appropriate, translate.

Do so fearlessly rather than tiptoeing on eggshells. Trust each other as artists and human beings.

Yes to trust.
Yes to honesty.
Yes to respect.
Yes to process without product.
Yes to an online collective process from which we each craft individual products.

BABLI: Create a virtual treasure-box of materials and approaches that circulates to reveal multiple facets of a shared topic.

CYN: As we translate each other, ideas manifest multiply as dance films, scholarly writing, live performance, artbooks, lecture-demonstrations, installations, workshops...

Yes to creative recycling and reusing.
Yes to open-source. 

BABLI: But wait, exactly what are we saying yes to? Do we understand the implications of it? And will we really be ok with anyone just taking our work and remixing it without telling us?

SHY: I meant open-source methodology, not open-source choreography.

CYN: You know, I think we’re open-source within the collective, but not necessarily with the outside world. The term connotes creative commons, decentralization of authorship, invitation for re-appropriation, and crowd-sourcing - which do resonate with our creative process.

BABLI: After all, we do make our choreographic assignments, process, and in-progress drafts available online at no cost for the public.

CYN: It's like they have access to the source code and blueprints...

BABLI: ...but not always the final products (if there even are any).

Yes to giving credit.
Yes to supportive feedback.
Yes to multiple voices, multiple aesthetics, multiple authors.

CYN: If you need to create unity, coherence, a singular clarity, then make that work on your own, and we’ll give feedback.

Yes to multiplying energy.

ANJ: A creative toss of ideas. Listening, processing, filtering, feeding, and vocalizing in constant dialogue to sustain and feed our sense of community.

Yes to collectively building infrastructure.
Yes to intelligent divisions of administrative labor.

BABLI: Sharing responsibility instead of multiplying work. Freeing up time and energy for creativity.

Yes to responsibility.
Yes to healthy, balanced lives.
Yes to shared decision making. Yes to moving forward.

SHY: If you aren’t present, you can’t be heard. If you don’t communicate or contribute, you can’t expect to be included.

No to divas.
Seriously, no to divas.

ANJ: But when the shit hits the fan, we can all turn into divas. There is one living in each of us...she comes out under pressure. I've seen her.

Yes to the widest possible definition of dance.
Yes to “natyam” as a multiple-faceted performing art. [2]
Yes to “post.”

CYN: I do resonate with postmodern dance’s valuing of the pedestrian body, of the interdisciplinary, of art-as-everyday-life...as well as its critique of the mainstream.

BABLI: To me “post” resonates in the first place with inquiries that address post-colonialities. I do draw from post-structuralist thinkers. I do not really resonate with postmodern dance as a “genre” (though I like to play with some of the aspects you mentioned, Cynthia).

SHY: From my out-”post”, I send messages through the cyber-”post,” decentralizing and multiplying, layering and creating dialogue through art, and art through dialogue.

ANJ: Post is the invention and creativity that develops and takes flight from the roots

Post happens after the solid foundation has been established

Post is the subversive

Post is engaging in the present informed by what has come before

Post followed by Natyam is the infinite possibilities that open up after years and years of training in a traditional South Asian dance form

Post is the ability to think outside the box

Post is the meeting of modernity and tradition

Post allows for creation across genres, traditions, and communities

Post is cool

Post is open to learning

Post is not afraid

Post is experimental

Post is anything is possible

Yes to honoring, challenging, and extending our multiple traditions. 
Yes to each other.
Yes to Post Natyam.

[1] In “Cartographies of Struggle: Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism,” Chandra Talpade Mohanty utilizes Benedict Anderson’s notion of an “imagined community” to think of communities of women apart from essentialized notions of race, class and gender, but as “political links we choose to make among and between struggles” (Mohanty 2003, 46). Mohanty emphasizes a coalition between women of color in the following way: a “viable oppositional alliance is a common context of struggle rather than color or racial identifications” (49).
[2] "Natya” or “natyam” is a Sanskrit word that refers to the inseparable conjunction of drama, dance, and music in Indian performance tradition. In contemporary times, this concept could also include film and multimedia.

Shy Collective Manifesto Solo

Here is my Manifesto solo with script below. There were no room for my feet, but I think you get the idea. Unfortunately, I think I filmed it in wide screen though I though I tried not to. I can re-shoot if needed, the length won't change cause the sound is already recorded.

password: manifesto




WE ARE A COLLECTIVE
We are not a company
We are not about one monolithic vision, position, or approach
We listen with care, we dream wild, we live process, and we create.... magic
We create that unique magic that comes from the unexpected unity of our virtual variety
We share, we learn, we grapple with difference –and we don’t gloss it over
Our open-sourced voices echo across continents in harmony and sometimes in dissonance
We embrace change and our roots are deep
In sharing our responsibilities we multiply our reach, our resources, our enthusiasm, our possibilities to create...
Change

Babli's Manifesto background rhythm from Sandra Chatterjee on Vimeo.

password: babli's beat

This is my background beat. I had limited and slow internet access at the time of recording it, hence it only referenced Cynthia's audio of clapping (every fourth beat, with one gap at the third four)... I hope it is still usable, because accuracy might be off....

Anj Manifesto backbeat

anjbeat from Anjali Tata on Vimeo.

Password: beat

This is the backbeat I recorded for our Cyber Manifesto. I go off the beat towards the beginning, but I think the rest is mostly in sync. I stuck with simple as I was thinking of how the solos would add to the overall picture

Cyber Manifesto Solo - Cyn

Here is my Cyber Manifesto solo: video, soundtrack, and script!

password "make room"

  Cyn Manifesto Solo with Background by cynthialinglee 

Bite down hard into our naughty knotty histories

How nation-state clamped down

domesticating our bodies

Remember the unthinkable

the intimate erotic exchange between women

powerfully sacred and profane

bending borders of caste class religion and culture

Their songs reenter my body with its American stride its yellow skin its postmodern leanings

I spit and twist and breathe and say,

Make room for the funky

for the butch-femme genderqueer

woman lovin’ hard-hitting rhythm-rappin’

rasa as you ain’t never felt it before. 

Cyber body duet

Prum synched Cynthia's and my backbeats together and came up with this!

(note there are some spots that I"m not perfectly aliged to her beat, but we'll correct it in editing or re-film. Also, it was hard for me to know when she was going to stop so I end after sum, so I do one extra sound. This also will be cut in editing.)

Password: manifesto

Cyn's Cyber Madhya Lay

Here's a minute of Cyn's 5 minute Madhya Lay

password: manifesto

Here's the full 5 minutes for others to sync to:
password: manifesto

Shy's Manifesto Backbeat

This is the first minute of my 5 min of background sounds. It turned out a bit more "jazzy" (as Prum puts it) then I had expected. So I thought I'd post it for feedback cause once we get all 4 parts I would consider re-shooting it if that would help the bigger picture at all...

Here it is, and the password is: manifesto



Feedback Questions:

how does my appearance (sunglasses, earrings, etc.) and background read to you?

how does the movement/sound read to you?

is it "contemporary Indian" enough?

is it weird that the first "mmhmm" falls on even beats, but all the rest the "mmhmm"s are all synchopated?

Any other comments or questions?