Tagged with politics

Artifact: on the eve of a new era

Election night 08 at Lincolns knee

Election night '08 at Lincoln's knee — photo by Matt Mendelsohn

At the gentle nudging of T, I have crawled out of the internet rabbit hole of online polls, political blogs and photo slideshows of President-elect Obama to bring you this artifact. I’m still coming to terms with the new reality of a having a leader who has a grasp and understanding of reality as well as a vision of how to achieve the ideals set forth at the founding of America.

Jill, I’ve been thinking about your last post and wondering how much the political climate of the last eight years has contributed to the bipolar swings between maudlin emotionality and nonchalant banality in the dance community. I’m too close to it all to have any perspective. As of Nov. 4th, I can say that I feel like I’ve emerged into the bright daylight of possibilities from spending eight dark years in some strange haunted house of horrors where my perceptions were thwarted at every turn. The Rove-Cheney-Bush theatre of the absurd and their confederacy of dunces are in their final weeks as headliners and I am so relieved.

I laughed, I cried, it was worse than Cats.

I’m also curious to see what the next four or (hopefully!) eight years will bring for our community, our nation and the world. I wonder how we artists will respond.

Forerunner

Not having a good night sleep, I woke up today a little groggy, listening to WNYC with more commentary on last night’s debate.  I too am still wondering about a lot of things.  It seems like I wasn’t the only one that was appalled when McCain referred to Senator Obama as “that one.”  What was he really saying to the American people by acknowledging him in that way (or actually not acknowledging him) and was that a new economic plan he laid out when he talked about buying out the failing mortgages? How come Obama had to continually restate what he had already said after McCain would comment and mix it all up?  I also think that the end question should just be thrown out, because both candidates have an agenda for their last comment and the question is just turned and twisted to support the message they want to send out to the American people.  (I also thought Tom Brokaw was bit condescending with his New Hampshire Zen comment about the question, but now I just might be getting overly sensitive.)

 

My point is this, there is so much to take in from those debates and the amount of information we received is overwhelming.   What did we take in? What did we learn? Gain? What do we now know? (I know that I would never put so much red and blue together in flooring and wall covering and it makes me ill to know a team of people designed that with a clear idea of the message it was sending.)  

 

To get back on track, I bring this up because I remember in one of the first descriptions I got from Jill about what she was interested in exploring with this new work is how society today is bombarded with messages from so many different sources with incredible speed, force and volume.  It can make you numb, similarly to how I felt after the debates last night.  It is a personal thing for me, but I think a lot of information that is sent out is to lead to some kind of activity: buy this, do this, take this, travel here, eat this.  However, it makes me do nothing.  It’s as if there are so many options that I just can’t begin anything.  In the political realm it is a huge inner conflict for me, because I want to be actively doing something to change the current state of things, but I am inundated and most times I am stagnant. 

 

In rehearsal last week, Jill brought in the Longfellow’s poem, “Paul Revere’s Ride” and now we are using some of the text in the piece.  He seems to be the ultimate messenger in the truest sense.  He was a messenger for the Boston Committee of Public Safety and helped organize a Intelligence and Alarm system to keep watch on the British Military.  His midnight right on the 18th of April in Seventy Five, is glorified that he alone rode and shouted “ The British are coming!”  Of course, there are tons of inaccuracies to this statement and also in the poem by Longfellow that was created 40 years after Revere’s death.  He did not act alone and he did not shout, “The British are coming!”  I was reading about this and found it humorous to note because at this point in history most people were actually still considered British to some degree.  Jill then asked Toby and I what we had thought about bringing in this text and using it in the piece.  How did we think it related to what we were doing?  One thing I thought about after that rehearsal and reading a bit more about Paul Revere is that Paul Revere’s midnight ride is well known as a Patriotic symbol.  In Zsa Zsa Land, we are playing a lot with symbols or movement motifs and manipulating/expanding them.  Whether that is a torture position, a folk dance or a public radio broadcast fundraising drive, there are sections in the piece that at first you may think the message is one thing and then it is subtlety or drastically changed to make you think about something else. 

I am still thinking about lots of things and hoping to act soon.  

Message Translation

Message Translation

Media Architecture vs Furniture Design:

Abu Ghraib coffee table by America the Gift Shop

Abu Ghraib coffee table by America the Gift Shop

 

Dancing Devil vs A Girl

Women, commercialism, and politics

The current media coverage around Sarah Palin (a newly high profile woman) reminds me of this jill sigman/thinkdance character and scenario. Just like the media is currently doing with Palin, the video coopts different images and ideas, and swirls them around together to create a humorous character and premise mixing up feminism, commercialism, patriotism, America’s misguided war efforts, etc… But, here, we are reminded of the ridiculousness of the catch-phrases, and the way that commercialism and patriotism are exploited in mind-numbingly pathetic ways – here we are actually invited to think!

This is the second part of a documentary-style monologue from Djurdja Performantsartova. The back-story from the first part is both humorous and sort of dated/sort of not: In Part 1, “Confessions of Djurdja Performantsartova (2004)”, we learn a bit about Djurdja and her career development. Apparently, back in 2000 Djurdja’s friend and fellow Serbian, Slobodan Milosovic invited her to work with him on a start-up type company (of course, the poor guy was having trouble over at the Hague, but he’s really a vedy, vedy nice man she tells us). Somehow he knew that some terrorists were going to fly planes into the World Trade Center Towers, and the US was going to be seized by a blind patriotism. America’s women would want to show their patriotism in all possible ways, including, of course with their pocketbooks (b/c that’s what we do here in America – we express ourselves through our commercial behavior). So, Milosovic is going to start a company, with Djurdja’s help, and she is going to design some, ahem, feminine hygiene products which resemble US missiles and military startegies. She designed the “Operation Eternal Freedom” (a tampax by other names). Djurdja was up to the task, so off she went to the US. She’s also designed some other brilliant products, such as the “SmartPon” (a play on the “Smart Bomb” – it lots of marvelous features, as Djurdja will tell you herself:

Well, Slobodan is no longer around now (he died in 2006), and poor Djurdja’s enterprise seems to have folded (though she will surely reemerge). It’s unclear how the current drama of the McCain-Palin candidacy will play out. Let’s just hope the weapons of mass-media destruction-of-women is contained with some SmartPons really soon.

Activism and Tutus

This year, I had a fairly standard Fourth of July – attended a bbq, visited with friends, hung out in the sun, drank sangria and lemonade. But, back in 2002, I was part of the Liberty Belles’ Independence Day Promenade. Adorned with tutus, white face mask, and assorted Americana, we slowly promenaded through Riverside Park in NYC, and then down Broadway, accompanied by a mix of music ranging from John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’ to a Jimi Hendrix version of the Stars Spangled Banner:

Liberty Belles Promenade Down Broadway
Liberty Belles Promenade Down Broadway   (Photo Credit: Severn Clay)

It was interesting to watch people respond as we came into view. Initially, we could see a look of surprise and even confusion, but usually that melted into an expression of delight (we were going for a charming circus look). People stopped to watch, and many people went out of their way to ask for a flier – a cabbie followed us for a block before he was able to get a flier. This was an art-action, and we had a supporting flier framed around the question, “How much further can this bell crack?” and raising questions about some of the (then) recent post-9-11infringements on civil liberties.

The Liberty Belles’ promenade was a much more overt form of activism than much of the activity of jill sigman/thinkdance. The mere act of making art is activist (Read some of Jill Sigman’s thoughts on making art). Making art that aims to challenges people to think is a strong form of activism. And, the art that jill sigman/thinkdance mixes up the metaphorical tutus (artistic director Sigman has extensive classical ballet training), with strong visual images, and often in surprising locations or contexts, and moves people to think and act. Long live independence.