To Be, Become and Behave
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To be read after watching video nr.1- “Shadey art tips by Shade” (2021) TO BE, BECOME AND BEHAVE Or my relationship with theory, creative process and taking refuge Majula Drammeh Master in performing Arts Stockholm University of Arts 2021 Supervisors: Áron Birtalan & Sofia Jonsson Instructions: Before you start reading, I want you to write down 3-5 words or sentences on your immediate response to the video you have just seen. What thoughts, emotions, colours or actions came to mind? We will get back to them later. Introduction These pages include parts of the process diary, notes on process, reading, as well as photos from my research process. These are abstracts of my research and therefore curated in their own right to show not only my somewhat sprawling process but also my honest attempt to share how I document and research in my process. These “written expositions” mirrors how I gather material when I work as a performer and performance maker. This document is as much about me finding out what I did in the project as you are attempting to understand the project´s content, methods and results. It is me looking at the produced material from the outside, curating it to try out words on the method, content and material. I have written about the work reflectively at the same time as I invite you into this action. It´s speculative and intimate. During my master studies in Performing Arts, I have reflected on what it means to be a performer beyond the symbolic meaning of it- such, as being material or representation for someone else work. I have investigated what the performer spends time doing and reflecting on beyond what is seen “on stage”, and present that, whatever it is and looks like. I have then, in my final degree project, looked at how I can use my gained knowledge as a mainly interactive performer in relation to performance arts and black feminism theory to create my own artistic practice. My aim has been to do this by being, meaning to exist with, breathing with, becoming part of, attending to and situating myself in relation to performance arts and black feminism theory in a mindful manner. To embody what I read with the help of somatic practice inspired from Mind Body Centring and Mindfulness practice and allow myself to create as a response to the embodiment with methods I use in my practice as performer and dancer. With these expositions, I want to invite you to spend time with my material and I encourage you to acknowledge with what kind of knowledge you are reading it with. Exposition format If you have not, please see the video before you continue reading. The first part of the exposition is mainly focused on my work in relation to black feminism theory at the beginning of the project. It contains poems, photography and extracts of what I spent time being with and writing about. I often find myself thinking back on what I have been part of. I tend to use poetic language when I do this and some of that poetry is presented here. The exposition then goes into a process of a video work I did in collaboration with dancer and choreographer Robin Dingemans. Dingemans has for the past two years worked on an umbrella project named “Deleting whiteness”. Dingemans makes work and research together with other artists and academics. He is looking on whiteness and the traces it has made on the world, his ancestry as a white male with roots from Holland growing up in a Maori context in Aotearoa (New Zealand). Looking and working on how whiteness is being presented in the arts field amongst other fields relating. Robin in his own words; “Deleting whiteness means: attempting to become human, embracing shame as an essential positive to feed imperatives of justice and liberty for all. Shut up and listen, and make that a somatic, soul practice (thank you to Hui protocols of Māori). There is no work for BIPOC people to do on racism, it is exclusively the non-BIPOC people that need work on = restore the ills of racism. BIPOC people are not working on racism, they are working on surviving oppression and trauma of genocide, persecution, subjugation and more”. (Dingemans 2021). We met briefly in September 2020 by December onwards we started making the work together as part of Welds ongoing project Weld Sided Story. Weld is an independent platform for experimental processes and production knowledge in Stockholm and has a dance company under the artistic director Anna Koch. In the project they invited several choreographers from different dance styles to work on the company to create work to the interlude of West Side Story The work I did with Dingemans resulted in the video Two averaged perfect Swedish citizens (2020). Link below. The second part of the exposition puts focus on my process and transformation of creating and becoming Shade- a persona I found refuge in to be able to be with and criticise the theories I had spent time with. This part includes process diary, photos, and an interview between me and Shade. And as you will see, at this point, I am very much involved with being in the state of transformation and I lose contact with writing and reflecting. This section is somewhat sprawling and even I sometimes find it difficult to understand what it is I have written about. The exposition then ends with a reflection on my project and my research methods and speculating on where I am and where I am going. Along with the video you already saw you will find video footage of my physical transformation and reflection filmed by filmmaker Lina Vain Ilalla. I also provide a link to Two averaged perfect Swedish citizens (2021). Background I tend to keep a close and curious relationship with performance -related theory, and I find it relevant as a tool in understanding the context and reading of a work I have seen or performed in and to place myself in the performing arts scene. Theory, thus, functions as a way for me to understand the work I do in a broader sense. The director/choreographer gives me insight into their reason or calling. But theory allows me to place the work in a broader context and gives me an understanding and possibility to go further into the field the work lands in as well as getting in contact with other artists work. It can give insight into where my representation as performer is placed within the field. However, this relationship is also conflicting and sometimes I feel trapped because I am neither an outsider looking in but mainly an insider trying to understand what I am doing. And at the same time, as a brown woman in the field, I often hold the position of being a minority in my work and I find myself often shedding light for director/choreographer on how my body could be translated in the work depending on what I perform. Which then, in relation to theory tends to create a somewhat ambivalent relationship. Many times, I feel that rather than gathering knowledge from theory I also find myself reminded of the starting point of it stemming from a white gaze and western philosophy. Meaning that, looking at theory in relation to the reality I perform from makes almost any traditional performance art and performing arts theory out of date, simplified or somewhat written from a colonial perspective. However, I see potential in theory to create updated and complex performance material. So, this expositionthen, is an attempt to present you with material from my position as performer, vulnerable in finding herself out in relation to documenting her process and share what she is exposed to in this process. Placing myself in relation to the Performing Arts context Performers tend to talk about their work in crelation to a specific performance, director/choreographer or happening. And this way I feel sheltered by my professionalism and the agency the performance comes with when I talk about my work. I identify myself as a performer who works in relation to the performing arts and performance art field and its structures. As performer I mainly perform in other performance arts artist´s work. Rather than it was when the genre was born, and the artist performed in their own work at the vernissage. Artists now more often create work that has similar length of running time has theatre plays and have several performers working from them in a variety of places, such as theatres, galleries, warehouses or outdoors just to name a few. However, there is currently an ongoing debate in the performing arts field regarding if “performance” is an accurate term to use for this kind of work, but this is not a discussion which my project is placed within. I always was interested in the reasons and understanding of the codes and conduct within visual arts more than in the performing arts. Finding my middle ground and place in the performance arts field. And that the field itself has not been able to define what performance is, rather it holds space for any (thing) to happen. Here I understood not only the theorizing of the art but most of all the doing aspect that holds the field together. In the doing, we become art. Not only in the objective matter, no, we the subject, become art. This is something I always come back to, the moment I become art, the other, or the unknown.