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?

"how can we" - Cynthia's Response 1: Queering Cultural Memory

Here, at long last, is my queering cultural memory study.  I had a complicated vision for what visuals might go with it, but since it's a little challenging to implement given my current artistic skill-set, I thought it would be better to post something rather than nothing.

QUESTIONS:
(1) What visuals or movement might you imagine to this piece?
(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?
(3) What emotions do you experience when listening to this soundtrack?  How would you describe the emotional arc of the work?
(4) What light does this study shed on the theoretical concept of cultural queerness?
(5) Other comments?

Babli's Assignment 1: Queering Cultural Memory

After doing the freewrite, I got completely stuck- BECAUSE the concept that emerged for the assignment was one that I could not technically execute as a study.

So here I wrote out the scenario I start from. This round, I guess is more a request for brainstorming than feedback :)

Scenario 1

Background: Sruti box

After some time:

voice over: English translation of a PADAM- it should be obvious from the narration that it is a translation (i.e. searching for words)- I am still looking for one. Have been playing with “Don’t you know my house” for now. But its not ideal.

In the middle of the stage there is a wall of bricks (loosely) stacked on top of each other – about 4 feet wide and 5 feet tall

As the voice over can be heard, a hand, from behind the “wall” is carefully pushing at one of the bricks, until it falls down to the front, leaving a whole in the wall.

The whole thing happens very gradually.

A second brick is gently gradually pushed out in a similar way.

It falls, leaving a gap.

The hands reach through, bending up, exploring the wall where a face would be.

They gradually start including hastas in their exploration of the wall, which start coinciding with the recited Padam.

As the hands keep exploring the wall, interjected with hastas they start manipulating the bricks, until one can be lifted off the top of the wall.

The focus of the hands shifts away from exploring the wall, now trying to dismantle it. This has to be done with great care. The difficulty should be visible.

For now I see the end of this during the dismantling.

THIS IS JUST AN IMAGE that came to me.

Feedback questions:

11)   What does this image suggest to you? What are your associations?

22)  Do you have suggestions on how to transform this idea into a video/performance score that actually “doable” at this experimental stage?

a.     If this were a video, do you have suggestions on approaches to shoot it/angles to pursue it?

b.     If this were live, playing with props, do you have suggestions on approaches to pursue it?

33) Any other thoughts?

Shyamala's Creative Response 1: I am (queering cultural memory)

I am (queering culture) from Shyamala Moorty on Vimeo.

password: queering

1. what is the tone of this piece for you? does it change over time?
2.  what do you experience watching it?
3.  would you like there to be more in the sound score?  if so, what?
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?
5.  Any other feedback?

Assignment 1 - Queering Cultural Memory - Meena's Creative Response

Post Natyam Collective Assignment Feb 2014 Cultural Queering by Meena Murugesan from meena murugesan on Vimeo.

PW: disidentification

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

ii) how would you describe this body? 

iii) is this body doing anything subversive? 

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

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

vi) anything else?

Queering Abhinaya Assignment 1: Queering Cultural Memory

Queering Cultural Memory

We (Cynthia and Sandra) have been formulating a theoretical concept, “cultural queerness,” which we’d like to use as the inspiration for this assignment.  Here is a working definition (still in process):

Cultural queerness refers to the disruption of a dominant essentialized cultural norm in a way that complicates notions of cultural authenticity, cultural appropriation and identity-based representation.  It aims to undo the easy equation between nation, race, and cultural/artistic 
production without ignoring uneven power hierarchies or histories of inequality.  

Think of a personal memory of feeling uncomfortable with a dominant essentialized cultural norm.  For instance, Cynthia might address how it feels to be a non-Indian classical kathak dancer, while Sandra might reflect on a “relegation to Indianness” and the resulting exclusion from Germanness.

Explore this memory through a 10 minute free-write. Translate the memory into a subversive artistic or embodied product (such as choreography, writing, dance-for-camera, photos, etc…).   

Please post your responses with feedback questions by Feb 21, and give feedback by Feb 28.

Dramaturgical connections: Final Round

So the final step for our journey so far…

In order to start writing the final round, I started by not only watching the assignment videos repeatedly, but also to read the blog and the dramaturgical connections that have developed thus far. From there I have picked up some themes which have served as keywords for me and based on them I have come up with this current idea.

The keywords that I have gathered are – Racial politics, Gender, Cross-dressing, Body, Commerce, Hindi Cinema (Bollywood), political cabaret (If I am missing any please do add). The concepts that we developed based on our research and the assignments created are – suspense and surprise, hiding and revealing, costume and makeup. So bringing together all these ideas and collating the images that we have generated, here is my final round of dramaturgical connections.

The opening I see as a collection of stills/photographs of objects that we have appeared in the assignment videos, like matchstick, cork, bar stool, coins, necklace, saree, hat, tie, shoes, and etc. (if there are other things we can think of to add to this list, please do). All these images, which seem to be mismatched, come one after the other like a flipbook and end on an image of a pair of eyes. From here we see a series of eyes appearing on the screen, morphing one into the other. These then finally end on Shyamala’s eye and we see khol appearing on it. Then another sequence begins, which is like a stop motion video of different body parts being dressed up. This leads to the make-up sequence that was proposed in the last dramaturgical connections.

Here we however do not see any masculine clothing appear on anyone’s body. When Cynthia works on her section of dressing up, she could focus on a more on wearing a courtesan/tawaf like costume and jewellery. Everyone else could work with props and costumes which reflect more of the costumes from cabaret artistique, its bollywood version and belly dancing like costumes and improvisations of it, which got included in cabaret performances. So ostrich feathers, naqabs, ornaments for the head and hair, gloves, fish net stockings etc. could be surely used. Here we could bring in the split screen ideas that we had from dramaturgical connections from round 1 and work with lights focused on different body parts and then the formation of a singular dancing body(s) and individual dance sections.

I feel the last performance in this section could be Sandra’s as her performance could lead to her saree getting stuck somewhere and be stretched out to form a screen. From behind the animal print screen, clothes could be thrown out to indicate the performance of a striptease. Only the shadow/silhouette of the performer should be visible from behind the sheerness of the saree. A pile of clothes could collect and the last one to come out could be the bra. This might lead to the camera being turned to the sari screen and the viewers expecting a naked female body to appear. But instead we see 3 maybe 4(depending on the number of participants) figures appearing from behind the screen wearing men’s clothes. Here we have a split screen again and we see all the performers wearing men’s suits and appear on screen. Each suit is different from the other, one is like what Cynthia was wearing, the second like the one Shyamala had – like Victor and Victoria and Sandra comes out wearing a third. Their faces however are all hidden. Either a hat or a scarf covers them. A common choreography could be worked out so that everyone can perform one movement phrase in unison and the real their faces. Here, each performer reveals something. Cynthia could reveal her have the half black face, Shyamala her moustaches and Sandra could unbutton her shirt and reveal a bra. But this has to lead somewhere, so Cythia’s section could lead into the choreography phrase she has already created, Shyamala’s could also lead to the phrase she has made in the last assignment and Sandra could create a new phrase.

I don’t have a concluding visual yet, buy like how Shyamala drops a coin at the end, so maybe each performer could drop an object that comments on the aspect of cabaret that they have dealt with. 

Babli's Cabaret Assignment 3

Here My assignment 3- I added on to 1 and 2.....

Soundtrack only a sketch!

Babli's Cabaret Assignment 3 from Sandra Chatterjee on Vimeo.

password: vamp

Feedback questions:

1. How do the three parts relate to each other, in your opinion?
a) what does each part do on its own
b) what are you drawn to in each part and what is less exciting?
c) what is/are red (a) red thread(s) that could connect them?

2) Who could the character be that is emerging from the study/three parts?

3) Do you have any sound/soundtrack and text suggestions?

4) any other observations, thoughts, feedback?

Cynthia Cabaret Assignment #3: dancing love and theft

I reworked and expanded my last study taking Aditee's and Shyamala's feedback into consideration.  Thanks to Shyamala for her direction and camerawork!


Love and Theft from Cynthia Ling Lee on Vimeo.
password: other

FEEDBACK QUESTIONS
(1) What parts of the study do you find compelling in terms of aesthetics and/or content, and which do you find less compelling or problematic? 
(2) As per Shy's suggestion, we changed the order of the make-up and costumes in the first half.  How does it read differently than the last study?  Do you prefer one order to the other, and why?
(3) Is the use of blackface implementing a political critique or simply a reiteration of a painful part of racial denigration from US history?  If you see a critique, can you describe the nature of it?  How might I deepen, complicate, and nuance that critique?  Would it be better to eliminate the blackface?
(4) Do you like the repetition of the same song twice?  If not, what kind of sound might you imagine for the first half?
(5) Other thoughts?

Cabaret Travels: Shyamala's Creative Assignment 3

Cabaret Assignment 3: Gender money version from Shyamala Moorty on Vimeo.
Password: money

I added money (inspired by working with Meena Murugesan on her show "we used to see this"
I added gendered costuming  (inspired by Victor Victoria, Cynthia's Cabaret assignments, and that some folks at Dance Conversations thought my Ruwaxi Character looked transgendered on film!)

Also, I changed the sound score based on Cyn's suggestions to add music instead of footstamping. I think the new one above is better but have a version of the old one below as well. If you'd like to see it, here it is. Let me know if you prefer it for some reason.
Cabaret assignment 3: Gender version from Shyamala Moorty on Vimeo.
Password: money

1. What is your experience like watching this?
2. What interests you most and least about it and why?
3. Any thoughts about the sound and how it relates to the video?
4. Any suggestions to improve or expand the piece?

Cabaret Travels: Creative Assignment #3

"All participants can improvise and create sections on their own pertaining to how they can best use make-up and costume in their section. However the use of these two elements should enhance and support the politics inherent in their approaches to the form of cabaret that they are working and researching on. The use of material for creating the costumes and make-up can be improvised and be as innovative and unconventional as possible. The whole idea is however that these elements enter the piece as a character and are there to add another layer to the thoughts/arguments/reflections that each participant has on the form of cabaret they are dealing with."   -Aditee Biswas
Please post your assignments by Nov 1 at the very latest.

Dramaturgical Connections: Round 2

The beginning…

What stood out for me the most and very ‘dramatically’, from this round of assignment videos, was the use of make-up and costume. These elements have compelled me to think about the female body, it being covered-hidden, uncovered-revealed and how the body can be ‘othered’ by wearing a garb and make-up like in Cynthia’s work. It was very interesting to see how the act of putting on make-up became more like that of wearing a mask and the choice of costume added another layer of meaning to a persona being created. The choice of the costume and its use, like in Sandra and Cynthia’s work helped me re-look at the saree and the conventional male attire respectively and read new meaning into them. The way Shyamala used her kohled eyes, Anjali juxtaposed the decorative feminine costume and the masculine movements, all lead me to think about these two elements very strongly.

I feel this episode could be a prequel to the episode thought of earlier, for round 1. Here we could individually shoot sections of everyone dressing up but only certain parts of the body being revealed at a time. The episode however could start with a series of images that are a collection of snapshots of symbols, objects/props that can be linked with terms like ‘exotic’, ‘feminine’, ‘masculine’ and etc. So the episode could start with the image of the matchstick being lit and the block being burnt for soot, maybe something like a white powder can or a skin tanning spray can being opened. We can think of more images that can later be intercut with the images of putting on make-up and creating a new identity.

Next we see all 4 performers with bare faces and bare shoulders, placed on a screen, two on top and two below. We see their profiles and different colours are sprayed on to that side of their face, so as to change their skin-tones. Or the images could also be of the performers doing make-up very unconventionally, like Cynthia putting soot on her face. The idea here is to compare the action to that of putting a base layer of make-up but then not to use conventional base make-up for it. However, whether spray-painting the face or using different materials to do a base, the colours being put on the skin could be ranging from white/fair and going to black/dark.

All performers should be placed in front of a white background, with their facial profiles facing the camera on which we see the colouring of the skin, taking place. So if we spray paint on their faces we see the extra colour hitting/collecting on the background wall and spreading unevenly while spraying. Then we all four performers supporting thick layers of paint on half of their faces. The colours put on their faces should be so dense that it appears as though they are wearing half-masks. So here we again go back to our idea of using a split screen and see all the performers first in profile and then facing the camera frontally, so that we see their half coloured half bare (original sink-tone) faces clearly.

It will be very interesting if the extra paint from the spraying lands on the background wall and forms a silhouette of everyone’s face, so that their facial features become prominent. This collection of their silhouettes could then come as a separate shot, rather one image could dissolve into another and this could stay on the screen for a few seconds before we moved into the next round of images. 

Then we could have each performer focus on one facial feature or body part and capture them while in the act of doing make-up or dressing up a bit more conventionally. Like we could focus on only Shyamala’s eyes and her putting kohl, Cynthia’s lips and putting on the red lipstick, Anjali’s hands and her maybe wearing a pair of net gloves or some bangles or some middle eastern jewellery on her hand and Sandra could be dressing her feet or stretch a pair of fishnet stockings over her bare legs.

The next shot could then be of pieces of costume flying around, like a men’s shirt being flung, a gloved had putting on a large ostrich feather on a waist band or a small one on a bun on the head, an animal print material being stretched across the screen, and a top hat being placed on a head. We could probably end this section with an image of Shyamala’s eye blinking once at the audience, through her fingers. From here the next section can start and we see the camera focused on Sandra’s legs.    

Cabaret Travels: Cynthia's Written Assignment #3

Coolly Subverting the Gender Binary: Marlene Dietrich’s Impersona in Morocco

German actress Marlene Dietrich’s first American movie, Morocco, brings together many threads of our Cabaret Travels project: situated at the intersection of German and American cultural production, the film includes several representations of cabaret scenes, non-normative sexuality and gender play, and is set in an exotic “Oriental” locale.  For the purposes of this response, I chose to focus on the infamous tuxedo-wearing cabaret scene. 

I found Elizabeth Ann Taylor’s analysis of Dietrich in Morocco somewhat simplistic; she seems determined to see female empowerment no matter the situation and overly reliant on Amy Allen’s work as a theoretical model.  Nevertheless she does provide some interesting description, contextualization, and interpretation of the scene, and I will situate my reading of the scene in relation to hers.

As a viewer who enjoys gender subversion and queer desire, Dietrich’s performance brought me pleasure.  Elegant old Hollywood high feminine glamour meets top hat and tuxedo-wearing masculinity, combined with a narrow waist, full bust, and feminine singing voice.  But most of all, I’m drawn to Dietrich’s economy of gesture, imperviousness to audience boos or accolades, the coolness and aloofness of Dietrich’s gaze and performance.    I am reminded of the tawaifs’ strategy of controlling the gaze of the rasika/patron, renegotiating a male heterosexual gaze by making a male viewer come to you, emotionally, by not giving too much.  In connection to my previous research on the Harlem cabaret, I’m also reminded of Shane Vogel’s characterization of cabaret singer Lena Horne, whose impersonal style was atypical:

She offered not love but hostility, not warmth but aloofness, not presence but absence, not immediacy but hesitation, not touch but distance, not an old friend but a stranger.  She did not seek her listener out in the anonymity of the concert hall, but compelled her audience to come after her.  This aloofness characterizing her early career could be understood within the theatrical and gendered discourse of the diva. (Vogel, 167)

Vogel goes on to say, “[]Horne withheld herself in performance and contradicted the expectation of the cabaret stage as a place of performed plenitude” (169).

            Vogel characterizes Horne’s performance as an “impersona” (167) that evacuates the self, and I would tend to read Dietrich’s performance in this scene in the same way.  This directly contradicts Taylor’s reading, which interprets the scene as a “a way to express her true self” (73).  Taylor reads the female beloved addressed in the French song that Dietrich/Jolly sings as a confession of Jolly’s bisexuality.  Dietrich’s aloof impersona, in addition to the fact that this scene is narratively framed as a cabaret performance and not, for example, as a confession of sexual attraction to a female beloved, makes this interpretation interesting but somewhat suspect to me.  Interestingly, Taylor argues that the performative frame may have been what allowed for the provocative content of the scene to pass film censors:

Even Gaylyn Studlar agrees that the notion of performance allowed for the censors to let this controversial scene pass. "We can only speculate that perhaps these sophisticated, wordless hints at the transgression of gender and sexual norms were tolerated because they were contextualized as being part of the heroine's performance. (Taylor, 71)

This reminds me of the transgressive role that song and dance sequences can play in Bollywood films.  Song-and-dance sequences often depart from or rupture a film’s plot; according to Gayatri Gopinath, they are also subject to less rigorous state control than the rest of a Bollywood film (100).  Gopinath theorizes that the very “fragmented and episodic” nature of Bollywood’s film genre allows “[q]ueer spectators to seize on the numerous ruptures, slippages, and inconsistencies produced by the cinematic text’s heterogeneity in form and address to produce pleasures and identifications that may not necessarily be authorized or condoned within the ideological framework of the text itself” (98).

            Taylor reads Dietrich’s performance as a cross-dressing towards power, empowering a female subject by taking on male mannerisms, clothing, and thus male power.   She claims that Dietrich/Jolly’s “donning of male garb gives her the ability to move and function powerfully among men” and that “[t]he tuxedo indicates role reversal as a means of female empowerment, not merely androgynous appeal” (Taylor, 69-70).  She situates this in relation to Simone de Beauvoir’s formulation that

the definition of woman as female and man as human being forces woman into a position of male-imitation at those times when she most wants to be viewed as a human being (Taylor, quoting DelGaudio, 70-1)

From my position as a 21^st century feminist aware of 3^rd wave, transgendered and genderqueer challenges to the gender binary, this statement gives me pause.  For one thing, is it not possible to be an empowered, fierce femme?  And isn’t there a difference between embodying masculinity and male-imitation?  At this moment, my predilection is to read this scene as a pleasurable defiance of gender binaries, not as a woman imitating a male because she wants to be a human being.  Indeed, I wonder whether it’s necessary to read Dietrich/Jolly as a female at all in this scene.

            The most provocative part of the scene, where Jolly plucks a flower from behind a giggling female audience member’s ear, kisses her, and then tosses the flower to Tom Brown is also, for me, the most politically ambiguous part.  Given the cabaret context, I feel unsure whether Jolly’s kiss expresses queer desire or is merely for shock value.  Interestingly, this connects to my research on the women-loving blueswomen, who operated in a realm where bisexuality (as opposed to lesbianism) was seen as titillating and adventurous, and where, according to Angela Davis, many famous blues singers “purposefully seemed to present the images of themselves as bisexual, or purveyors of same-sex female relationships, in order to spark the interest of their audience” (37).  In addition, the sequence of events, where plucking a woman’s flower (a possible metaphor for taking her virginity) only to give the flower to a man, concludes with a heterosexual frame.  How differently would the scene have read if the sequence was reversed, and Jolly had plucked a flower from Brown’s buttonhole, only to give it to a woman along with a kiss, before sauntering offstage, hands in pockets?

            In relation to my previous research, both Dietrich in this scene and the queer blueswoman engaged in performances of non-normative sexuality and gender play.  Indeed, Gladys Bentley’s tuxedo and top hat outfit is strikingly similar to Dietrich’s clothing in this scene.  A key difference, however, is that the blueswomen engaged in self-representation that expressed the complexities of African-American working class women’s experiences, while I do not see this film, which was directed by a male director, Josef von Sternberg, as a instance of Marlene Dietrich’s self-representation, though I am sure Dietrich exercised agency within the parameters of the role.  In connection to our creative work for Cabaret Travels, it makes me wonder at the potential of impersona and coolness as a performative tactic that occupies a different space from performing the self and performing the other.

References

Taylor, Elizabeth Ann.  2009.  Dietrich and Sternberg: From Cabaret Performance to Feminist Empowerment.  MA Thesis, San Jose State University.

Gopinath, Gayatri.  2005.  Impossible Desires: Queer Diasporas and South Asian Public Cultures. Durham: Duke University Press.

Davis, Angela Y..  1999.  Blues Legacies and Black Feminism.  New York: Vintage Books.

Vogel, Shane.  2009.  The Scene of Harlem Cabaret: Race, Sexuality, Performance.  Chicago: University of Chicago Press.