Borders Resurfacing Assignment #4

This assignment is coming after Sandra's and Cynthia's recent explorations in Salzburg and Germany together. It's a choose your own adventure assignment!

Here are some possible options:

-Respond to or work with Salaach video footage.

-Create a water-borders ritual using bottles of river water from Germany and/or Austria

-Choreograph an animal border story.

-Make a foot dance telling a border story.

-Rewrite / transform a border news-story into another literary genre (a poem, a fable, etc.)

-You may combine any of the above elements as suits you.  

Due August 4.

Babli and Cyn in Munich- Feet-Fairytale Padam

This is a response to an assignment given by Meena and Shyamala yesterday to tell a non-animal border story in a European context using our feet.

We worked on writing a fairytale inspired by a very visible border story from the local news here (we used a German article, which was more current and extensive, but here is a short English language context, which is from January: http://www.dw.com/en/deported-afghans-dream-of-returning-to-germany/a-37352655)

We then improvised to a recording of it, framing only our feet. These are two versions of the improvisation:

Fairytale 1:
Feet-Fairytale from Sandra Chatterjee on Vimeo.

Password: Fairytale


Fairytale 2:

Fairytale 2 from Sandra Chatterjee on Vimeo.

Password: Fairytale 2

 Here is the text of the fairytale, with some small revisions from the version used in the voiceover:

"It has been many moons since words poured from my poet’s pen, dried out from the painful absence of my love. But now I glimpse the face of my love’s dear friend, bringing me news of my beloved, and my heart quickens in anticipation.

But you’ve never met my love. How could you? -- as he is trapped in a distant land.

He was a handsome young musician with dark hair from a faraway land who sang and played the oud. During the day he brought song and sweetness to the ears of those wounded by war, working with others who believed in peace across borders to heal broken bodies and the hurts of the world. At night family and friends would flock to his cozy home to play music, dance joyously, chat raucously, and share food together.

But then a new regime came to power in his land. They were stern-faced and narrow-hearted and used holy books as weapons, forbidding all singing and dancing and outlawing interactions with people of other faiths and cultures. All those who had sung openly and mingled with outsiders before the regime took power became targets of their policing gaze.

My love tried to hide his passion for song and healing, to make himself quiet and small and unobtrusive. But one day a great bomb fell from the sky and shattered his home and the bones of his brothers. In mourning, he left his land.

After many moons, many border crossings, and many mountains of paperwork, he landed in our Kingdom. He had learned many languages during his journeys, and now he had one more to learn. He wandered through his new town, learning where to buy bread and vegetables, meeting warm-hearted, welcoming people, with the occasional dark glance. After some time, he found himself in a multicolored community of artists and musicians who painted and sang visions of harmony and peaceful coexistence.

We met in one of these gatherings, where I was reciting my poetry. He looked at me with laughing eyes and spontaneously started playing a tune underneath my words.

Our love grew and flourished like a seedling nourished by sun and rain. Outside the circle of our daily sweet existence, however, rumblings of discontent started to emerge in the realm. The borders of my land started to contract from fear, tightening and squeezing the hearts of those who lived within.

One day, a letter arrived at our home stamped with the official seal of the noble lion. Curiously, we opened it. The letter commanded my love to leave our new life and to return to his war-torn homeland. In tears, we held each other tightly.

Knowing that the stone-faced soldiers would come if he stayed, my love started to pack his belongings, to say his farewells sadly to his friends and family.

The people cried out and shook their fists and filled the streets in search of ways for my love to stay. Signatures upon signatures filled scrolls of letters appealing to the officials. After all, the letters said, my love had put his life in danger by fighting for our Kingdom in his homeland. Furthermore, the streets and stages would be poorer and less music-filled in his absence. All our efforts, however, were to no avail. In outrage, my love’s friend, who came from a long line of Alphorn musicians, insisted that he would accompany my love on his journey.


My love returned to find his homeland in the grip of the stern-faced men, stripped of song, ravaged by violence and intolerance. Silently, he and his friend hid in the homes of brave friends, trying to become invisible, unrecognized by the sweeping gaze of the regime. In the meantime, I joined with our friends and family and fellow dancers and singers and poets, working together to try to bring him back. Together, we braved mountains of official paperwork and bureaucratic barriers. Now, with my love’s future in the hands of the officials in power, I take comfort in the news of my love brought to me by his friend."

Zoom Rehearsal: Animal Border Stories

We did a Zoom rehearsal together with Sandra and Cynthia together in Munich and did some improvisational explorations based on a news story of Turkey threatening to export Dutch cows for political reasons: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4316788/Turkey-s-red-meat-association-sends-cows-Holland.html

password for both: "cow"

Shy read pieces of a news article, while Meena improvised with footwork and Sandra and Cynthia with hands in response to the text.

Animal Stories, take 1 from Cynthia Ling Lee on Vimeo.

On the second take, we tried to interact more with each other rather than simply responding to the text.  Shy spoke parts of the story again, while Meena, Sandra and Cynthia improvised with hands.  We attempted to choreograph the camera frames of the dancing hands so that our actions would appear to directly affect each other.  However, Zoom saved the video so that Sandra and Cynthia's frame was flipped horizontally, so it ended up looking different than we imagined.

Animal Stories, take 2 from Cynthia Ling Lee on Vimeo.

Lost Chinatowns Material

I'm fortunate to have Meena and Shyamala working with me on my "Lost Chinatowns" project as video projectionist and director, respectively.   “Lost Chinatowns” explores the destruction and historical erasure of Santa Cruz’s Chinatowns from 1860-1955.  In fall 2016, I created a short performance art work in which I build and dismantle sculptural abstractions of each of Santa Cruz’s five Chinatowns, incorporating archival visual materials such as photographs, newspaper clippings, and maps.  I became interested in creating another manifestation of the work involving my live dancing body and video projection.  This March, Meena came to Santa Cruz, where we did a film shoot of the existing performance art version of Lost Chinatowns, as well as taking footage on location at the sites where Chinatowns used to stand in Santa Cruz.  More recently, as director, Shyamala gave me a couple of choreographic assignments, asking me to work with the idea of building and collapsing while treating my body as building material.

Today, we had fun bringing together some of the video and movement material!  Meena manipulates the video live using VJ software.  Here are a few snippets from our experiments (the password for all is "chinatown".)  (Note that the second video is the same as the first part of the third video, but I liked the timing of the second video better.)

Front St Running Chinese from Cynthia Ling Lee on Vimeo.

Crawlspace Chinese Must Go from Cynthia Ling Lee on Vimeo.

Crawl Space Burn from Cynthia Ling Lee on Vimeo.

Portrait Tombstone from Cynthia Ling Lee on Vimeo.

Borders Resurfacing Improvisations

Today the four of us had an online improvisation session for Borders Resurfacing via Zoom.  Priya Srinivasan provided us with the following guidelines: 

"Tell a short story each about being stopped at the airport station or border from your personal experience and/or a time when you were stopped because you looked different bc of race gender sexuality ? How did it make you feel ? How has it shaped the way you now move at borders airports spaces where your body has been policed before ?

- Do not write this down ahead of time but you can tell it to yourself to get the gist of it and when you are all together on zoom share that story and record it

- after everyone has heard the story the first time repeat it again and see what movements the other 3 are able to create while you are retelling this story 

- if time permits tell the story for the3rd time this time incorporating everyone else's moves while you are retelling the story and have others watch you 

See what emerges in response to the 4 stories repeated 3 times" 

Below are steps 2 and 3 (narration of story while others improvise, and a solo improvisation incorporating others' movements) for each person.  The password for all is "zoom!".

Babli Narration Group Improv 4_17 from Post Natyam Collective on Vimeo.

Babli solo from Post Natyam Collective on Vimeo.

Cyn Narration Group Improv from Post Natyam Collective on Vimeo.

Cyn solo from Post Natyam Collective on Vimeo.

Meena Narration Group Improv from Post Natyam Collective on Vimeo.


Meena solo from Cynthia Ling Lee on Vimeo.

Shy Narration Group Improv from Post Natyam Collective on Vimeo.

Shy solo from Post Natyam Collective on Vimeo.

Babli's Creative Response 3- Borders Resurfacing

Here is my creative response.....

I also did not feel like choreographing or creating movements.

Borders assignment 3 from Sandra Chatterjee on Vimeo.

Password: Immigrationrecords


As you give feedback, I would like you to consider that there are a few things I experimented with but could not do right this moment, because I would have needed a different video set-up. If it makes sense to re-do this or expand this/change this in the future, I might like to play with that (or not, or something different....)

1)  work with more hastas
2) mark the hands - maybe mehendi?

Shy's Borders Resurfacing Response 3: Familial migration documents

My Father’s name squeezes itself neatly into the tiny box, whose creator didn’t anticipate the Jagarlapudis with all our extra names.

Birthplace:  India.

The box for “color or race” is not filled out.  

 Instead, I happily observe, it contains a single horizontal line as if to mark the very category itself irrelevant.

43 years later, my year-and-a-half old son, soon to get his passport, perches curiously on a stool, pointing at the camera flash.

We love the smiley picture, but the elderly black man who runs the dingy store, warns us that the rules have changed:  no smiling.

We choose the one where he looks puzzled instead.   

He is wearing his favorite color, orange, unaware of how this color is infamously linked to the 45^th president of the United States.  Unaware of the president’s attempts at travel bans.  Unaware that the world’s borders are tightening and that he may never experience the freedom that I have enjoyed with my American passport and my Overseas Indian Citizenship.

This ¾ desi child who knows more Spanish than Gujarati, who loves Bollywood music and salsa and who, like any almost two-year-old, simultaneously tests boundaries and clings to security.  And like every almost two-year-old, he knows you don’t need a big wall to feel safe, just a smile and a welcoming embrace.   

Borders Resurfacing Residency (Los Angeles)

Today Shy and I had a one day mini-residency working on Borders Resurfacing in LA.  We started in the morning with a Skype check-in with Meena and Sandra, who were in Philadelphia and Munich.  Meena left after we worked out some important logistics, and Sandra, Shy and I continued chatting to help formulate Shyamala's and my creative tasks for the day.  Together, we decided that Shy and I would make another phrase remixing other people's material together in the studio.  In addition, we shared some stories about troubles with border crossings, including people caught in Trump's travel ban, and decided that Shy and I would create some new movement based on these stories.

Here is the new remixed phrase that Shyamala and I created together.
password: remix

Remix Phrase (Shy solo)

We also played with putting it together as a canon.  We envisioned that it could be interesting to do as an ensemble of bodies in uneven canons, creating an ebb and flow of people trying to cross borders, encountering obstacles, being sent away.  Perhaps a soundscape consisting of excerpts of the border trouble stories could accompany the phrase, with parts of the stories comprehensible and parts not, with the overall effect of oceanic ebb and flow.

password: remix

Remix Phrase (duet)

For our movement inspired by stories of trouble crossing borders, we ended up creating "Border Sawal Jawab":
password: ACLU

Border Sawal Jawab

This study is based on the story of Hina Shamsi, an ACLU lawyer with a Pakistani passport and US green card who was stopped and questioned in the aftermath of Trump's travel ban. With a few modifications and additions for clarity and theatrical impact, most of the actual questions were taken verbatim from Shamsi's description of her "second screening" interrogation.  And I was inspired by Meena's earlier explorations doing footwork to Fred Moten's words!

For reference, here is Shamsi's story:

https://www.aclu.org/blog/speak-freely/flying-home-abroad-border-agent-stopped-and-questioned-me-about-my-work-aclu
You can also hear the story in her voice on the following "Intercepted" podcast (listen from 20:43-24:23):
https://theintercept.com/2017/02/15/intercepted-podcast-we-are-all-in-trumps-hunger-games-now/

And here are some of the other "border trouble" stories that we shared with each other during our Skype discussion:

• https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/feb/20/british-muslim-teacher-denied-entry-to-us-on-school-trip
• https://www.artforum.com/news/id=66941
• https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/feb/26/grandmother-deported-from-uk-despite-being-married-to-briton-for-27-years
• http://www.dw.com/en/deported-afghans-dream-of-returning-to-germany/a-37352655
• https://codastory.com/migration-crisis/geopolitical-ruptures/an-opera-singer-takes-the-stage-and-confronts-deportation
• https://codastory.com/migration-crisis/news/update-celebrity-musician-and-asylum-seeker-back-in-afghanistan-following-deportation

Cyn's Creative Response #3

Here is my study on our personal/familial migration histories.  It's an improvisation.


Migration Histories from Cynthia Ling Lee on Vimeo.

password "passport"

Also, in preparation for our Mar 2 one-day residency, here is the story of Hina Shamsi, an ACLU lawyer and US permanent resident with a Pakistani passport who was stopped and questioned in the aftermath of Trump's travel ban.

https://www.aclu.org/blog/speak-freely/flying-home-abroad-border-agent-stopped-and-questioned-me-about-my-work-aclu

You can hear the story in her voice on the following "Intercepted" podcast (listen from 20:43-24:23):
https://theintercept.com/2017/02/15/intercepted-podcast-we-are-all-in-trumps-hunger-games-now/

Borders Resurfacing Assignment #3

Choose an object/s from your personal or familial migration genealogy that feel/s significant.  Your object/s could be migration documents, personal items, objects inherited from family, etc.  Use pre-existing movement material from responses 1 and 2  to create an action in relationship to your migration object/s. If you wish, you may write a new text about your migration history; this may be incorporated into the study or stand alone.

DUE FEBRUARY 28th

Borders in the Time of Trump

"A nation without borders is not a nation. Beginning today, the United States of America gets back control of its borders, gets back its borders."  -Donald Trump, 28 Jan 2017

Trump's Executive Order, "Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry," available in full here:
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/01/trump-executive-order-immigration-refugee-muslim-ban-protest

ACLU's lawsuit and federal judge Ann Donnelley's ruling issuing a stay against Trump's Muslim ban are available in full here:
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/01/muslim-ban-federal-court

An opinion piece in the NY Times on the illegality of Trump's executive order, which discriminates against immigrants based on national origin:

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/01/27/opinion/trumps-immigration-ban-is-illegal.html?referer=http%3A%2F%2Fr.search.yahoo.com%2F_ylt%3DA0SO8y4uMYxY5TsAJnJx.9w4%3B_ylu%3DX3oDMTE0bjZkdG9iBGNvbG8DZ3ExBHBvcwMxBHZ0aWQDVUkyRkJUM18xBHNlYwNzcg--%2FRV%3D2%2FRE%3D1485611439%2FRO%3D10%2FRU%3Dhttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2017%2F01%2F27%2Fopinion%2Ftrumps-immigration-ban-is-illegal.html%2FRK%3D0%2FRS%3DOF4w9NUrBtzONwKjhbs5oPmFy8A-


An open letter to Donald Trump by 18 year old Syrian refugee, Abdulazez Dukhan:
https://www.facebook.com/aljazeera/videos/10155157306763690/?hc_ref=NEWSFEED

Stories of People affected by Trump's Order:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2017/01/28/read_these_stories_about_people_affected_by_trump_s_immigration_order.html

Vimeo: Refugee Crisis Channel
https://vimeo.com/channels/refugeecrisis

Babli's Creative Response #2

Dear all,
sadly I am unable to tape and upload video as we are still setting up here, but here is my writing remix.

Forgetting the border

We are settlers

On land that is not ours

I sit, ass on concrete, wind chilling skin through clothes, the steady zoom and surge of cars at my back.

Forgetting the border

We are settlers

On land that is not ours

"It's not a pretty beach" I usually warn visitors, so their expectations are not too high. This is no place for bougie hipsters to drink overpriced coffee in the sun. 

Forgetting the border

We are settlers

On land that is not ours

I can't imagine the possibility that I might see boats, rafts, people coming in out of the horizon.

Forgetting the border

We are settlers

On land that is not ours

I exhale

As I stand here. As we do this. People are risking their lives to save their lives. Right now. Always. Pelican. Flies. Across. Sky.

Yet this government says no to refugees

No to the boats in the far north

No to the children

No to the parents

No to all who are not white

Many of us came in thinking we could live here

Just like them

We realised soon we cannot

But we pretend

Forgetting the border

We are settlers

On land that is not ours

Meena's Creative Response #2 - Borders Resurfacing

Sorry I've been sick and not feeling creative! I didn't "remix" the written material, just chose excerpts from each of your writing that stood out to me.


The sharks were sighted here just a day ago
But now we have the all clear
The bacteria was polluting the water five days ago
But now we have the go ahead
Human waste mixed with the ocean waters seven days ago  not safe
But now we can swim (PS)

Our 1900 miles of pipeline built on Tongva land (quoting a FB post from Jools) is a tiny reflection of the DAPL:  So much can be hidden under water until the inevitable moment of structural fail as human's imperfect creations backfire into spluttering bubbles of wing destroying sludge...It was there, at the edge of my adopted city, that a Pakistani-American I once knew, lost his import export business because his incoming crates were marked suspicious after 9-11, never again to be released. (SM)

It is hard to imagine those lost bodies, those child bodies, George Ow and Young Lee fishing steelhead trout, catching little frogs and river creatures: the way play looked before capitalism took over.  Wooden houses perched rickety on stakes above the water, so precarious, so precious, so easily swept away.  In the memory of my imagination, it is always summer, not this damp chill to the bone, concrete seeping cold into my ass, this winter of unremembering. (CLL)

Refugee life. Migrant life. Brown skin. Black life. The reasons why people make these journeys. Not to colonize or dominate. But for personal reasons. To save their life. To change their life. Roaring. Constant. Ebbing. Rushing. Crashing. Flowing. (MM)

That blissful forgetting changed when the Saalach became a site of hope and despair, when the border was closed, as thousands of people fleeing from Syria wanted to pass. (SC)

Gesture remix

https://vimeo.com/200594402

PW: waterborders2

Borders Resurfacing: Shyamala's creative response 2 remix

Poem re-mix

Stumbling onto this edge between sand and water.

Roaring. Constant. Ebbing.

So much can be hidden under water

no bridges

No one gets to cross over

Stumbling onto this edge between

beauty, and and and peace.

I exhale

yellow heart shaped leaves decomposing in the mud

Stumbling between

Patrolling the water from the air
For sharks...waste... people....

Stumbling

People are risking their lives to save their lives.

Right now. 



Untitled from Shyamala Moorty on Vimeo.

password: resurface

Borders Resurfacing: Cynthia's Creative Response 2

Here is my writing remix and my movement remix!  For fun, I tried adding parts of Priya's poem as a soundtrack for the movement phrase after already choreographing and filming the phrase.  The first video is in silence, and the second one includes excerpts from Priya's writing.

borders resurfacing

stumbling at the edge of my adopted city

I don't have answers

it's all rigs and cranes and metal

frames that clog the horizon

his incoming crates were marked suspicious

after 9/11 never again to be released

hidden underwater 1900 miles

of pipeline built on Tongva land

lost bodies, child bodies

catching little frogs and river creatures

sludge oil backfire spluttering bubbles

my body alert unsure

people with their belongings strapped

to bicycles in trash bags

it is not beautiful here  

wooden houses perched rickety

so precarious so precious so

easily swept away

never again to be released

this winter of unremembering

in my imagination’s memory it is always summer

and and and peace

I exhale 

between sand and water

between Germany and Austria

I exhale oasis

the Salzach meets another river: the Saalach

pelican flies across sky

forgetting the border

the border resurfaces

a site of hope and despair

refugee life migrant life

thousands fleeing Syria

brown skin black life

roaring constant people risking their lives
ebbing rushing to save their lives

password: remix4

Borders Resurfacing remix from Cynthia Ling Lee on Vimeo.

password: remix4_priya

remix_priya from Cynthia Ling Lee on Vimeo.

Priya

Trudging up the paved road after finding a car park
Takes forever to get a parking spot
Kids are hot and irritated
Finally the cool sand beneath my toes
The sun is about to set and we have not missed it

The sharks were sighted here just a day ago
But now we have the all clear
The bacteria was polluting the water five days ago
But now we have the go ahead
Human waste mixed with the ocean waters seven days ago  not safe
But now we can swim

We feel safe knowing very few can cross
from Antarctica or Tasmania to flee here
This land with the red Center
The dry bush
The sacred fire
Of the original custodians who have everything taken from them
We are settlers
On land that is not ours
No treaty

Yet this government says no to refugees
No to the boats in the far north
No to the children
No to the parents
No to all who are not white
1973 is when they said yes
Many of us came in thinking we could live here
Just like them
We realised soon we cannot
But we pretend

2016 they say no
Now they say no to anyone on a boat
Unless they are white
Temporary bridging visas
Making them wait endlessly
On islands small islands with jails
There are no bridges
The visas never arrive
No one gets to cross over

While we have a big island
and so much space
The custodians say yes
Let them in
It is our way
They say no
Stopping the borders
Patrolling the water from the air
For sharks...waste... people....

Mimi Thi Nguyen's _The Gift of Freedom_

I came across this scholarly work on refugees and the gift of freedom by Mimi Thi Nguyen and thought it would be useful to our thinking about Borders Resurfacing.  There's a 30 minute podcast of Nguyen talking about the book's ideas here: 
http://thecriticallede.com/0116-the-gift-of-freedom/

The description of the book on the publisher website (https://www.dukeupress.edu/the-gift-of-freedom) reads as follows:
"In The Gift of Freedom, Mimi Thi Nguyen develops a new understanding of contemporary United States empire and its self-interested claims to provide for others the advantage of human freedom. Bringing together critiques of liberalism with postcolonial approaches to the modern cartography of progress, Nguyen proposes "the gift of freedom" as the name for those forces that avow to reverence aliveness and beauty, and to govern an enlightened humanity, while producing new subjects and actions—such as a grateful refugee, or enduring war—in an age of liberal empire. From the Cold War to the global war on terror, the United States simultaneously promises the gift of freedom through war and violence and administers the debt that follows. Focusing here on the figure of the Vietnamese refugee as the twice-over target of the gift of freedom—first through war, second through refuge—Nguyen suggests that the imposition of debt precludes the subjects of freedom from escaping those colonial histories that deemed them "unfree." To receive the gift of freedom then is to be indebted to empire, perhaps without end."

Borders Resurfacing - Creative Assignment #2

Create a movement phrase remix and a written remix integrating parts of each of our gestures and words from our creative responses #1.

We can add words/phrases/images/metaphors from our meeting minutes.

Post on blog by January 16th 2017.

Borders Resurfacing: Shy's creative response 1

3 movements: all passwords are "gesture"

Gesture 1 not a pretty beach from Shyamala Moorty on Vimeo.

Gesture 2 marked suspicious from Shyamala Moorty on Vimeo.

Gesture 3 backfire... from Shyamala Moorty on Vimeo.

photos:  Long Beach, Dec 2016

Excerpt of my free write (I bolded the phrases I used for movement inspirations):

"It's not a pretty beach" I usually warn visitors, so their expectations are not too high.    My visitors first notice the well manicured island with palm trees and a few tall narrow structures that look like small condos.  Wealthy get away?  Theme park?  No, it's an oil island.  Long Beach is built on oil?  Guilt on oil?  Where does it go? We still buy imported gas!  Our 1900 miles of pipeline built on Tongva land (quoting a FB post from Jools) is a tiny reflection of the DAPL:  So much can be hidden under water until the inevitable moment of structural fail as human's imperfect creations backfire into spluttering bubbles of wing destroying sludge.  (I don't usually say that to my guests!)  When they look past the island, to the right, in the distance, it's all rigs and cranes and metal frames that clog the horizon.  That's the Port of LA.  It was there, at the edge of my adopted city, that a Pakistani-American I once knew, lost his import export business because his incoming crates were marked suspicious after 9-11, never again to be released.  Could they still be sitting there is some forgotten lot?

Resurfacing Borders Creative Response #1

https://vimeo.com/196229121

Freewrite:

I wonder I can't imagine the possibility that I might see boats, rafts, people coming in out of the horizon. Stumbling onto this edge between sand and water. What happens. Why does someone make that treacherous journey. Why does someone risk their life. I don't have answers. Except to those people who don't value human life. Refugee life. Migrant life. Brown skin. Black life. The reasons why people make these journeys. Not to colonize or dominate. But for personal reasons. To save their life. To change their life. Roaring. Constant. Ebbing. Rushing. Crashing. Flowing. Can I see people making their way from the horizon to where I stand. But it's happening. As I stand here. As we do this. People are risking their lives to save their lives. Right now. Always. Pelican. Flies. Across. Sky.

https://vimeo.com/196226837

PW: waterborders1