Radical Vernaculars Experiments with Tradition between Politics and Performance Gabriel J. Levine A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY GRADUATE PROGRAM IN SOCIAL AND POLITICAL THOUGHT YORK UNIVERSITY TORONTO, ONTARIO September 2014 © Gabriel J. Levine 2014 ABSTRACT This dissertation focuses on four collective projects that take “tradition” as a starting point for creative experiments in performance practice. All of these disparate projects are based in early 21st-century settler-colonial North America, and all of them have anachronistic, political, and playful qualities. Following a theoretical and methodological Introduction, the dissertation moves through close readings of four experiments with “traditional” practices. Chapter One looks at the Purim Extravaganza, a diasporic and queer version of the carnivalesque Jewish festival that takes place each year in New York City. Chapter Two addresses the mobile audiovisual performances of Ottawa DJ collective A Tribe Called Red, exploring Indigenous experiments with technology and tradition. Chapter Three gives an account of the Abandoned Practices Institute, a summer school in performance pedagogy based on forgotten or endangered everyday practices, run by former members of the performance collective Goat Island. Chapter Four investigates the North American revival of culinary fermentation practices, spurred in part by the writings of Sandor Katz, in order to examine the contradictions of vernacular revivals at the level of daily life. All of these collective experiments offer insight into the fate of “tradition” as that which is abandoned (and then recuperated in frozen form) during the modernizing process, especially in settler-colonial societies. By reactivating vernacular material that has been consigned to an unchanging past, these experimental projects work through complex histories of colonization, shame, and abandonment, moving toward a space of shared capacity and collective action. Drawing on both participatory and critical research, the thesis examines various performance strategies that experiment with vernacular forms across gaps in historical and cultural continuity. In so doing, it engages with key issues in contemporary political and aesthetic thought: temporality, community, coloniality, property, and collective practice. ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS As an investigation of collective artistic and political practice, this project owes a great debt to interlocutors, friends, and collaborators. My musical and theatrical comrades over the years have grounded my thinking in practical experiments with tradition: thanks to Thierry Amar, Eric Chenaux, Clare Dolan, Scott Gilmore, Genevieve Heistek, kith&kin, Jesse Levine, Jessica Moss, Hermine Ortega, Sandro Perri, Jenny Romaine, and Sam Shalabi for showing me the way, and sometimes walking it with me. My thanks go to the members of the collectives I write about here for opening up their processes to me, and for sending my research in unexpected directions. Rachel Mattson provided me with her archive of the Purim Project; Daniel Lang/Levitsky suggested I write about A Tribe Called Red. Bear Witness, Ian Campeau and Dan General kindly agreed to an interview. Nadine Attewell read an early version of “Remixing” and offered helpful suggestions. Nick Loess reminded me to re-watch Sans Soleil. Amber Yared convinced me to attend the Abandoned Practices Institute; Matthew Goulish, Lin Hixson and Mark Jeffery were the essence of hospitality, and my fellow participants created the conditions for that extraordinary experience. Laura Cull provided me with transcripts of her lecture and response. Conversations with Micah Donovan and Rebekka Hutton were a productive starter for “Fermenting,” as was the practice and writing of Peter Schumann. Michelangelo Iaffaldano (after Rimbaud) gifted me the phrase “I is a crowd.” Antoine Peuchmaurd took the final photo in the champ des possibles. I am grateful to my teachers at York University, including Deborah Britzman, John Caruana, Nergis Canefe, Asher Horowitz, and Bonita Lawrence, in whose seminars I developed some of these ideas. My fellow students in the Graduate Program in Social and Political Thought, with their joyful negligence of disciplinary thresholds, have been an inspiring resource. A doctoral fellowship from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research iii Council of Canada gave me the time and latitude to pursue this work. Thanks to my committee members, Ian Balfour and Janine Marchessault, for their careful attention and feedback. The writing of Marcus Boon, my supervisor, inspired me to embark on this project; its shape and substance have grown out of our dialogue, and I would never have dared attempt it without his example and encouragement. My parents, Ellen and Steve Levine, guided me onto this path, and their intellectual and emotional support helped me see it through. And Bee Pallomina has accompanied me at every step, making sure I didn’t waver; thanks to her for her love and patience, and for reminding me how to play. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ........................................................................................................................................ ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ................................................................................................................. iii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS ............................................................................................................. vi PREFACE Four Experiments .............................................................................................................................. 1 INTRODUCTION Translating, Experimenting, Reclaiming ........................................................................................ 5 I. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORKS ........................................................................................... 6 II. CONTEXTS AND METHODS ............................................................................................. 64 CHAPTER ONE Profaning: A Queer Purim Ball ...................................................................................................... 81 CHAPTER TWO Remixing: A Tribe Called Red’s Electric Pow Wow .................................................................. 133 CHAPTER THREE Responding: The Abandoned Practices Institute ....................................................................... 177 CHAPTER FOUR Fermenting: Sandor Katz And The Politics Of Folk Practice ................................................... 241 CONCLUSION Projects Of Undoing ...................................................................................................................... 295 BIBLIOGRAPHY ........................................................................................................................... 311 v LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Figure 1: Cover art for the program for 2012 Purim Ball (illustration by Ethan Heitner) ....... 84 Figure 2: The Rude Mechanical Orchestra at the 2012 Purim Ball (photo by John Bell) ....... 127 Figure 3: “Guide to Making Indigenous Music” (t-shirt design by Ryan Red Corn and Ben Brown) .................................................................................................................................. 142 Figure 4: A Tribe Called Red live (photo by Nadya Kwandibens) ............................................. 149 Figure 5: “NDNs From All Directions” (video still by Bear Witness) ....................................... 159 Figure 6: Working on installations at AVU (photo by Daviel Shy) ........................................... 214 Figure 7: Installation by Ioana Gheorghiu (photo by Daviel Shy) ............................................. 215 Figure 8: Overlapping solo and trio at the Alfred Theatre (video still by Daviel Shy) ............ 224 Figure 9: Time score for the Alfred performances, determined by chance operation ............ 224 Figure 10: The analogy between fermentation and collective practice. From the Microcultures Zine (illustration by Vahida Ramujkic) ........................................................................... 244 vi PREFACE Four Experiments A warehouse in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, where costumed revellers sing in an abandoned language, celebrating a holiday of queer and profane inversion. A club in downtown Ottawa, where young people bounce to a heavy bassline, singing along with sampled voices emerging from a history of colonial suppression. A painting studio in Prague, where a group of American students play with abandoned practices and materials, creating performances out of lost fragments of the everyday. A kitchen in Tennessee, where crocks of vegetables sit by the window, fermenting in salty brine. Each of these scenes is the site of an experiment with what we moderns have named “tradition” – those collective cultural practices which have been consigned to a misty, pre-modern past. “Tradition,” in the language of modernity, refers to longstanding, customary beliefs and lifeways; depending on one’s political and intellectual orientation, tradition should be rejected as irrational, preserved as organic, or enjoyed as heritage. The four experiments explored in this dissertation reclaim the more subversive qualities of vernacular practice, by engaging in creative appropriations and translations of tradition. They activate an anachronistic energy that eludes settled categories of aesthetic and political