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xavinisms · 4 years ago

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of whiplash and hope - 2021 review

I didn’t want to write this blog. The main reason for that is the same as to why I didn't want to (and didn’t) write one last year.

The last time I wrote one of these ‘end-of-the-year round-ups’ was in 2019 before the world shut down. And I did it proudly and hopeful of better and more calm futures...

But last year and today, I wasn’t keen. It’s been too much and too frightening to look back for so much has happened. I thought it would overwhelm people, and most probably overwhelm me.

Many of us have experienced quite the tumultuous year. The on-going pandemic and the grief that it continues to bring to our lives, the growing climate anxiety, rampant fascism across the UK, the decimation of culture sectors and the constant uncertainty of what will happen next...

Yet somehow, now that the main bulk of my workload is winding down, I need to make sense of what happened these past few years, if only to honour everything that was achieved and the people who made it happen. But also to acknowledge that the only way I managed to persevere and survive throughout was by working myself sick. Literally.

In the hope of some personal and collective healing, I tried to be as open and raw as I can here, without impeding on anyone else’s experiences. This isn’t an easy read, but it is essential for me to put it out there.

So here it is. It is a sort of reflection of events of the past 12 months, with the heroes I had the pleasure to make magic with, but also with some absolute bastards whom I have no pleasure of ever having met or will ever give credit to.

Eventually, somewhere, I will write more on some of the events of this year. I think I need to and so many others do to. There's a lot of people waiting for a resolution. For clarity and justice, but also to start the process of letting go.

For now, here are the main events of the year.

If we were in each other's company and/or collaborated this year, please know I have nothing but love and appreciation for you.

I hope that somehow some of this brings you joy, or the potential for some.

Please do let me know if you have any note, or comment, or words about what you experienced from the below. I am keen to listen and thankful for your time and patience.

performingborders

The present and the future. What an amazing year it has been for our PB and the team. We spent a big part of the year reflecting and changing our we work, what the intentions of the work are and what we, as curators and culture workers want to explore. Internationalism, solidarity and horizontality were some of the new ways we have started to look at not just how we operate but how we collaborate with our partners, our friends and the artists we commission. We got a new team member, Anahi Saravia Herrera, who is a brilliant writer and has changed PB from the inside out. With this new dynamic, we were able to commission some of our favourite artists to create new performances to camera, bi-monthly newsletters, our own reflections, interviews and our very first e-Journal - the first of its kind for migrant artists.

We've also partnered this year with the wonderful friends at Necessity who have been supporting our work and will continue to do so into 2022. Moving forward, performingborders is going to be my main point of focus, work wise. As a curator and caretaker I love it, I love the work we do, how we do it and our friendship. You can keep up and get in touch with performingborders through our website and newsletter (Link)

Commissions:

Spells for a border town (retrocedare) by Diana Damian Martin (LINK)

Long term collaborator of PB Diana dives into the entanglement between a receding process and de-colonial practices in Eastern Europe, paying attention not only to the territorial but to the temporal. Her collaboration with Rusanda Curcă, Mihaela Drăgan, and Iulia Mărăcine gifts us the wonderful “Spells for a border town (retrocedare)” with interviews and a series of spells against fascists, against the states, for independence, for the future, and much more. Text and audio. English, Romani and Romanian languages.

Recipes for Autonomy by Syowia Kyambi (LINK)

Our friend Syowia (based in Nairobi, Kenya), shares an episode on ‘Unthethered Magic’ by Sauti Msituni, an independent radio station hosted by Kibe Wangunyu and Dennis Kiberu, as well as gifting us an advice booklet from the collective ‘what the hEll she doin’ where we hear from the artists Usha Seejarim, Immy Mali, Sonia E. Barrett and Kyambi herself. The issue closes with an ongoing conversation between Syowia Kyambi, Kijo Agacuand, and Sibonelo Gumede titled ‘(In)Formal Frission: Another Conversation’.

Shifting Landscapes by Xavier de Sousa, Alessandra Cianetti and Anahi Saravia Herrera (LINK)

Coming together to explore our own researches together, we digested ideas of collectivity, horizontally, and open language through four reflections: Alessandra wrote A journal, Un diario, Xavier interviewed choreographer Dinis Machado in On temporalities and process of transformation, and Anahi wrote Entre acá y allá, Encuentros Solitarios. We were also joined by Istanbul Queer Art Collective who reflected on “automation and possession in live art and performance” in their text Whatever Possessed You To Perform? as a part of an ongoing collaboration and conversation that performingborders is having with the Performance, Possession & Automation project.

performingborders e-Journal #1: fragments for borderless futures (LINK)

We hope that this will be the first in a yearly series, creating a space to collectively reflect on borders, live art, community, and resistance. We want these journals to be a space that centres embodied knowledge and artist perspectives and we are launching the first issue with text contributions from Elena Marchevska, Syowia Kyambi, Jade Montserrat, Vijay Mathew, Jemima Yong and Sagar Shah. These sit alongside new commissioned works, including a place to sit, a performative reflection by Tara Fatehi Irani as well as a visual essay titled urgent images by Manuel Vason. To be experienced as a whole. Curated by Xavier de Sousa, Alessandra Cianetti and Anahi Saravia Herrara.

Amnion by Lynn Lu (LINK)

This new performance to camera thinks through hydrofeminism and reflects on water as an agent that connects all watery bodies - living, creature, hydrogeological and meteorological. In this work, Lu considers the relationship between water, life-giving, and menopause as liquid processes of change. There is a leakiness to all borders: between each other, between humans and the environment, between humans and creatures, and in our own watery selves. Conceived, written, narrated & performed by: Lynn Lu; Directed, filmed, edited by Ana de Matos; Second performer: Satsuki Lu-Sharpe

My solo work

It was never my intention to premiere two brand new shows this year, specially not during a pandemic and definitely not after some drastically traumatic events. However, I am thankful for them for they challenged me and saved me. Both were the most expansive I've ever been and experimented with, not just in terms of form but in terms of language and scope of discourse. Both these shows form the middle and final part in a trilogy of performance works that I am calling Slow Cooking. The first one was POST which I had been on tour with over 3 years and explored personal and political inheritances, and belonging in the context of migration and national identity.

Pós- opened at Teatro do Bairro Alto, Lisbon, after many years of coffees, launches, gossip and challenges with Francisco. It marks my first show in Portugal and also the first one to blend both the Portuguese and the English languages in me, creating a sort of 'migrant language' on stage that I loved playing with. It was a very raw and honest look at a country going through a crisis that is long-incoming: its confrontation with a horrific colonial past and legacy, and how we are treating migrant and queer/trans communities today.

If POST looked at the past, Pós- looked at the here and now, so it wouldn't make sense for me to be alone on stage. I had been away for too long, looking in. After many discussions with Ana Rocha, my dramaturg, mentor and pretty much the person who kicked me up the arse anytime I needed it, we decided to open the space up more and give it to others to come in and collaborate, take space and ownership. Instead of a solo show, Pós- became a type of Fado House, where communities converged, songs about loss and longing were sang and new queer fado was danced to. We invited Luis Silva for the lights, Lisbon-based queer fado band Fado Bicha and performance makers Puta da Silva and Gabriella Gomez of the incredible Casa T to join us. I can't quite tell you how this impacted me yet, I am still discovering that. But it felt joyous and disruptive. And for the first time in many years, I felt like I was challenged in ways that I wasn't expecting. Plus, I got to show my ass by mooning around Lisbon's main colonial monuments, so I'm happy.... And it is all Francisco and Ana's fault, really... blame them! You can find info on the show here, here and here.

REGNANT was the final piece in the trilogy, and this one focused on looking at the present so we can dream about the future. A long-gestating show that had encountered many forms until a last-minute injury and surgery demanded that we adapted it to a performance installation. In hindsight, I cant even picture how the show was meant to be originally anymore, for this new shift - although very abrupt as the surgery happened only two weeks before the show - actually allowed us to settle on a form that we are all much happier with. It was the biggest show I've done so far. 6hours, no interruptions, with a team of 14 people, including 4 on stage with me. Whilst I hosted every single one of the audience members who got on stage and sat the table with me, the wonderful Yas Clarke provided the sonic landscapes; An* Neely created these beautiful clay mats for people to write on; Sonia Sandhu made her vegan dall and served everyone. Emmy Lahouel (jumping in at last min after our Jade Montserrat had to pull out), created a live manuscript that was projected onto the back wall. I made 379 pieces of pottery for people to eat with (and for decoration purposes). Hannah Sibai made these beautiful tables and the table cloth that stretched onto the back wall, projecting Emmy's work. Tarrick Wilks' lighting held the piece together with what I like to think as the passing seasons over the narrative being done on stage. At the end of the day, the show was very much a recreation of labour. The labour we do every day to adapt to new contexts. The labour from the working class migrants that goes unseen by those they serve every day. The labour of dreaming collectively about a potential future from the destruction all around us. It was an absolute please, even with my arm on a sling for the 6hrs and then weeks of pain afterwards! I should really listen to my doctor, really....

You can find more info on the project here and here.

The show really wouldnt have been possible without The Uncultured, Theatre in the Mill, Live Collision International Festival and METAL, amongst a few others. You are really all amazing!

Part of the reason as to why REGNANT took so long, was because this idea of 'most of whats on stage is created by us for you' involved me learning a new skill and my first instinct was that I wanted to create a large amount of materials that would serve both as decoration but also the utensils we would use to serve people with. So the wonderful folk at East Street Arts gave me the resources, fee and space (and patience) to do just that. I learned pottery!! First in lockdown, then by having my own pottery studio set up in their Convention House building. This was such an incredible experience, precisely because I got to play and get lost in a whole new practice. 379 pots and over 130 spoons were created by hand over a period of 6weeks. And I loved every moment of it.

New Queers on the Block

Throughout the last four years of amazing collaborations, initiatives and new friendships across Brighton, Bradford, Folkestone, Hastings and Blackpool, we managed to support the development of new artists across parts of the country where there was a distinct lack of support for queer markers.

Some have gone on to make incredible work in incredible places . Along the way, new companies, new spaces and queer-support groups were set up as a consequence of our work and with our support. We always listened to the demands of local communities and the project turned from a touring initiative into a artist and community development one.

This year, we were able to launch a new phase of it, where instead of the usual commissioning strategies, we want to instead support artists with 6-month long salaries, producing support, mentorship, dramaturgy, residencies and community-development strategies. It is an experiment, and a new model that I hope will have long-last impact on how we programme and work with artists in the UK. Alongside this, our team of Associate Producers in each location will be setting up new initiatives and events that will be come part of this extended network. So far the response has been amazing and the new artists line-up will be announced in the new year... You can follow up the project here.

Sadly, the time has come for me to leave this project. It is all very bittersweet for me, and I wish things had panned out differently but I am pretty fucking proud of what we achieved, how it impacted people and my own work. And that's all thanks to the my friends at Marlborough Productions.

Producer Gathering

Hard to believe that Producer Gathering got a second wind this year!

After the wonderful Anna Jefferson and Sam Worboys from Arts Council England contacted the Marlborough Productions team to create a new initiative to support independent producers, we thought that the best thing would be to look into what is already out there and elevate it. So we went back to PG, a web page of free resources and information that the legendary Sally Rose and I created back in 2016!! We grew it, expanded it and invited a bunch of amazing collaborators to create new resources for free distribution on the website.

Alongside case studies with Sud Badu, Rob Jones and our own Lee Smith, we commissioned Industry Rates packs, quizes, How To Broadcast, How To Produce Digital Festivals, new COVID-19 related resources, budget templates, fundraising How To's, etc... It is another project I am deeply proud of!! You can get everything for free here.

With my PG hat on, and as member of BECTU and ITC, I also undertook some work on the new Freelance Producer agreement that was launched late November. Im pretty proud of that document, specially as it provides producers with new base-lines for rates of pay and support -in-the-work-place information, and it marks the first of its kind in the sector. I would recommend you joining those organisations, as both provide vital support for the sector.

Writing

I started of this year in isolation like the rest of the world, and I cannot tell you how impactful that was for me this year. I had never written a text for publications like these, and invites to write based on my approaches to language, navigating bilingual contexts and being lost in translation were thrilling and set me on a new investigative path. I started to play with writing form and the merging of languages. In some places, passages of Portuguese, English and Iraqi Arabic (translated by the wonderful Tara Jaffar) took form across performances, audio pieces and publications. I have to thank Larisa Faber, Mark Richards and Ruth Campbell for kicking off this new focus, really! I love you all.

You can find some of my writing from this year in the following contexts:

In Other Words by METAL

Triptyphon (Season 2, Ep 4) https://www.xavierdesousa.co.uk/post/639031549407395840/somewhere-in-between-the-flowers

Les Cahiers Lucembourgeois 2021 #1 http://cahiersluxembourgeois.lu/

Centre national de littérature de Luxembourg, 'Theatre Talks 4' by Larisa Faber https://shop.literaturarchiv.lu/fr/accueil/204-theatrical-talk-larissa-faber.html

As Produtoras, de Vânia Rodrigues, https://www.wook.pt/livro/as-produtoras-vania-rodrigues/24432459

An impossible situation

I've been thinking a lot about rage and healing, in light of the events of this year and how they go together, hand in hand, one driving the other. Can we ever truly forgive? Sometimes I don't think we can, and perhaps there is a lot of hope and healing in rage about something you cannot change. The way I deal with trauma is by engaging and getting my hands dirty. Sure is primarily a copying mechanism but it is also my pathway to healing. Often, resolution comes from feeling like I was able to do something about it. I might take me a long time to get there, and often it is scarred with a lot of sleeping, isolation and depressive periods. You harness that rage and turn it into action, or into trying to get some peace of mind at least.

But some moments are just too big. Too impactful on you and those around you.

Too many people have been marked by the events of Chris Goode's death this year. And many were also deeply affected by the violence he perpetrated over the decades of his career.

Together with an amazing group of people that were historically survivors of his abuse, we managed to get support for individual healing, collective therapy and industry change. We've been working to challenge the company for 5 years, and were the only ones who did it, often with quite awful consequences to our careers and mental health. This is still on-going and I am thankful that those waiting on more news have been patience. Healing takes time, and so does change.

I am sure that more will come to light in the near future. That is my hope, at least for now for I believe it is by being open and honest that we can collectively healing.

This can no longer be about *yet another* abuser in the sector who so many people knew about but did nothing. That type of person is very common in our sector and I am fucking sick of abusers who suffer no consequences for their actions.I have no issue with saying that this was the most impactful moment of recent years, for it tapped into other circumstances of personal abuse in and out of this sector that I hadn't dealt with. So for me, this is it. I'm done with not speaking up for fear of consequences.

This is what I mean about rage being part of hope. I am hopeful that the rage we feel about this will lead to a better tomorrow. It has to. Otherwise, what's the point, right?....

2022

I’m going to rest next year. And I will also take time to enjoy life, for I seemingly have forgotten how to do that if it is outside of work.

So if I make a promise to myself about next year is that I will focus on stop using work as a copying mechanism. Instead, I will focus on me and my friends.

With love and in solidarity x

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criticalinterruptions · 6 years ago

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A critical conversation for the digital page about border patrols of unrecognised states. A project for performingborders | LIVE 2019 and supported by the Live Art Development Agency.

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pixelsniper · 6 years ago

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performingborders | LIVE 2019

performingborders | LIVE 2019 is a programme of events and new commissions curated by Alessandra Cianetti and Xavier de Sousa and focusing on the exploration of artistic practices happening within the UK Live Art sector around notions of cultural, juridical, racial, gendered, class, physical and everyday borders.

In partnership with the Live Art Development Agency (LADA), we are inviting int…

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xavierdesousaofficial · 1 year ago

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Slow Cooking Live

Food-sharing is an act deeply connected to our ideas of home, nourishment and community.

Slow Cooking Live are two special ‘An Evening with…’ style live events, with home-made food sharing and conversations with artists Selina Thompson and Toni-Dee Paul (Fri 14th) and Sonia Sandhu (Sat 15th).

Hosted by Xavier de Sousa and video work directed by Richard Warburton, SCL is a live podcast-video art experiment, inviting artists who have a history of migration and also work with food-making and food-sharing as creative tools. Together, they will spend the day buying food from local markets and independent shops, cook together and then travel to Theatre in the Mill to share it all with you.

Cooking recipes that are relevant to the guests’ own creative practices (or their favourite foods), Selina, Toni-Dee and Sonia discuss the origins of the food, the impact on their communities and how they have incorporated it into their creative practices.

These events will were broadcasted live on HowlRound Theatre Commons website, and you can watch the post-live stream here: https://howlround.com/happenings/slow-cooking-live

The events were recorded as part of the Slow Cooking project, which will be fully edited and released as a 5-part series of video and sound art works on the performingborders platform.

Art work by Anna Corfa.

Slow Cooking Live is commissioned by Theatre in the Mill and performingborders. Broadcast by HowlRound Theatre Commons, and live captions by National Captions Institute. Produced by Lee Smith with support from The Uncultured, and Project Managed by Lydia Tissier. Sound art by Olive Mondegreen

#xavier de sousa #performance #live art #performingborders #migrants #food #live event #slow cooking live

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xavierdesousaofficial · 3 years ago

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performingborders x Central School of Speech & Drama Collaborative Doctoral Award

Border-artists: Critiquing border logics in transnational digital performance Supervised by Dr Diana Damian Martin (Royal Central School of Speech and Drama) and performingborders (Xavier de Sousa, Alessandra Cianetti & Anahí Saravia Herrera)

Fully funded by London Arts & Humanities Partnership (LAHP)

The application process is now concluded and the award recipient as been selected. More to be announced soon.

performingborders and Central School of Speech and Drama are proud to announce a new fully funded Collaborative Doctoral Award (PhD), now open to application by any prospective student interested in borders, digital performance, live art and transnational research. This PhD looks at the reproduction and revisioning of borders in contemporary transnational digital performance. Its objective is to develop a method of analysis — ‘border work’ – that captures the complex artistic and political processes that shape contemporary transnational digital performance, its production and curation, advancing new imaginaries for migrant-led social change. Starting from the performingborders archive, this CDA examines the development, curation, and outcome of digital performances by migrant artists of colour working in the UK and internationally, exploring how borders are experienced and how they become a space of fluidity and agency, rather than violence and separation. As the focus of this studentship is on border-work, this application is open to candidates with lived experience of migration.

#ccsd #performingborders #border artists #migrants #education #live art

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xavierdesousaofficial · 3 years ago

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It is impossible to say everything here so I leave you with this SERAFINE1369

Performance to Camera commissioned by Xavier de Sousa, Anahí Saravia Herrera & Alessandra Cianetti for performingborders.

Watch the full Performance to Camera here

It is recommended that you play with speakers or headphones as sound features low bass.

The commission comes with an accompanying text to be read or listened to after and/or whilst watching the commission: read & listen here.

I am thinking about skin, as boundary, as border site – for exchange, the manifestation of internal and external happenings and also the largest organ of our bodies and as such, a place of messages. Skin is involved in balance, orientation, relation…Skin as interface.

Skin is an organ that speaks to me loudly, a site of sensitivity, protection, defence, warning signs, as well as communing and absorbing resource from sun and other skin foods. Sun is a big thing for me, a site of particular interest, resonance, astrological affinity and a constant craving as a body formed for another climate born onto this non-tropical island.

This was a dance for the outside, with the outsides of myself up against, in relation to, distinct surfaces, visible and invisible touching. Thinking about communication, connection and ways of being together that are flowing and intimate and influential without being overstated or stated explicitly, thinking about exposure and sensation of what is there, not being described in language or conventional social gesture.

I am practicing sensing, through skin and slowness – what is there, what is passing through, what is coming up and out and this a kind of threshold crossing/traversing/dancing state of holding or opening or clearing space or trying to become space. Trying to feel and listen out for voices away from/between/around language. Internal and external. Central and peripheral. In exchange. Receiving and releasing. Distinct and entangled. Always moving.

I chose not to shoot any new footage for this commission, and to work with what was already t/here, an attempt to unravel and elaborate on/from/through this archive footage, bound in time. This is part of a project towards consciously recycling, working with transforming or reframing relationships to past works, the words and objects and movements that are formed and left behind like hollowed out shells. Being with the cyclical, chaotic and irregular flows of time, like weather, moving in relation affecting and responding.

This video work is accompanied by a small edition of 10 handmade body butters, continuing the conversation with skin as border and as interface. To receive one please send an email request to [email protected] with your address, and also any known allergies

Concept, choreography, performance SERAFINE1369 Camera Katarzyna Perlak Edit SERAFINE1369 Sound Josh Anio Grigg Voice SERAFINE1369

Featuring documentation from performance ‘I I I (something flat, something cosmic, something endless)’ commissioned by Liverpool Biennial and performed at The Bluecoat, 2021 Accompanying text edited by SERAFINE1369 featuring contributions from Alice MacKenzie, Anouk Thériault, Antonija Livingstone, Fernanda Muñoz-Newsome, Harun Morrison, Jamila Johnson-Small, Nissa Nishikawa, Phoebe Collings-James, Zinzi Buchanan. Please note: If you can’t watch the video above, please try this Vimeo link here.

#live art #performingborders #performance art #performance

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xavierdesousaofficial · 2 years ago

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Puzzling Home 家的形狀 by Ghost and John, Michael and Jane

Performance to Camera commissioned by Queer Arts Projects, Xavier de Sousa, Anahí Saravia Herrera and Alessandra Cianetti for performingborders 2023

Experience the full performance by clicking here

Queer Art Projects and performingborders responded to this commission through a conversation held in May 2023, to see this response alongside the performance to camera, see HERE.

Two travellers arrive at a black and white sandy beach. Carried with them are all shapes of all sizes, holding visions of their former lives. These memories are mismatched and misaligned, yet all together form a picture we fantasise as “home”.

Accompanied by a poem built up by collaging Cantopop lyrics, this performance-to-camera work looks at the figurative of live performances’ ephemerality and the disappearance of home. We witnessed how meanings break and disintegrate in the face of feelings. With shared lived experiences in activism and migration, we form a puzzle designed to be disassembled.

Let heartbreaks be sufferable

Production credits: Concept: Ghost and John, Michael and Jane Film Editing: Michael Mui Ting Fai Sound Mixing: Ghost Chan Poem Collage and Translation: Jane Lam, John Chan Cinematography: Ivan Wong and his film crew Body Paint: Lau Hiu Tung Performance: Ghost and John

#live art #performance #performance to camera #performingborders #curator #commission

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xavierdesousaofficial · 3 years ago

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performingborders e-Journal #2 Rallying The Commons

Curator, Producer

Rallying the Commons is here – we couldn’t be more excited to share our second e-journal!

READ the e-journal HERE

The performingborders e-journal is a space to reflect on borders, live art, community, and resistance. Centering embodied knowledge and artists’ imagination as a space of knowledge production, the e-journal is a site to nourish and connect thinking and working practices. The theme of this year’s journal: Rallying the Commons stems from the process of rallying together, of commoning and communing, for the creation of something better and the maintenance of other ways of being. It is a movement away from disembodied discourse towards actions and gestures that let us consider what we can do when we harness our resources, time, bodies, and care, to collectivize them.

In the e-journal, you’ll find contributions from artists and activists working across cultural and political spaces. We are excited to share sonic listening rituals by Ximena Alarcón-Díaz and Sheila Ghelani’s tender reflections on care in the art sector. Helena Walsh reflects on the role of feminist organising and art activist groups within an Irish context. Harun Morrison shares his collaboration with horticulturist Antonia Couling and their work The Anchor, The Drum, The Ship.Elif Sarican and Dilar Dirik write on hevaltî- revolutionary friendship reflecting on the Kurdish Women’s Movement. Lara Khaldi from The Question of Funding shares with us community-centered funding models and the use of Dayra within their project in Palestine. And we close with a Budget Commission by Jack Ky Tan who has been reflecting with us on budgets, value systems and thinking beyond numbers. We hope that within these words, sounds, images, and gestures you find echoes of resistance that allow us to continue the necessary work of imagining other worlds.

performingborders e-Journal #2 Rallying The Commons

Curated and Edited by Xavier de Sousa, Anahí Saravia Herrera and Alessandra Cianetti. Designed by Rodrigo Nava Ramírez Social Media and Design support: Anna Corfa

Thank you to our friends at the Necessity Fund and to Arts Council England for supporting this work.

#live art #performance #xavier de sousa #performingborders #e-journal #rallying the commons

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xavierdesousaofficial · 2 years ago

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performingbordersLIVE23: Our Bodies in the Commons at Battersea Arts Centre

23th April 2024

After 3 years of digital transnational work we partnered with Battersea Arts Centre for an event to re-center our bodies in explorations of live art & borders. With participatory sessions led by our collaborators, ‘Our Bodies in the Commons’ moves away from disembodied and individualised discourse around solidarity and care, towards actions and gestures that are building and maintaining collective ways of working together. Session I: Dance & Embodied Movement by Camille Barton Opening the day with their embodied dance practice, Camille will re-focus our bodies and awareness of those around us, to process feelings deposited in our bodies to build more beautiful futures together. Session II: Rallying the Commons Reading Karaoke: Rustling Words with Youngsook Choi & live streamed on Howl Round Theatre Commons. Guiding us through our e-Journal #2, this session will include embodied interventions by guest contributors Ximena Alarcón-Diaz, Harun Morrison and Helena Walsh to activate its content and explore ways of working together. Closing off the event, we will screen our 2022 performance-to-camera in the room, bringing the previously only digitally-broadcasted piece to an encounter with our bodies and discussions in the live setting. Documentation, including pictures and the video broadcastings of the afternoon session can be found here: https://performingborders.live/performingborderslive23/performingborderslive23-programme-documentation/ Our Bodies in the Commons is presented and curated by performingborders with partners Battersea Arts Centre, InclusiveDigital, HowlRound Theatre commons and is funded by Arts Council England & Necessity

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xavierdesousaofficial · 4 years ago

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AMNION | LYNN LU

Performance to Camera, 2021

Commissioned by Xavier de Sousa, Anahí Saravia & Alessandra Cianetti for performingborders.

Watch full Performance to Camera here: https://performingborders.live/commissions/amnion-lynn-lu/

This work thinks through water as a medium that literally connects all watery bodies – all living creatures to each other, as well as to hydrogeological and meteorological bodies, the significant water loss in menopausal bodies, our human affinity to whales – the only other species that undergoes the climacteric and lives a long post-reproductive life, and the enduring biological enigma that is the menopause.

Layered voices narrate text excerpts from philosopher Astrida Neimanis’ and writer Darcey Steinke’s ideas exploring the leakiness of borders between our bodies and our environment, and between human and cetacean, as well as the fallacies and fears that continue to surround bodies transitioning from a state of fertility to one of barrenness that affects more than half the world’s population.

Conceived, written, narrated & performed by: Lynn Lu Directed, filmed, edited by: Ana de Matos Second performer: Satsuki Lu-Sharpe

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xavierdesousaofficial · 3 years ago

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WE NEED QUEER LIBERATION NOW!

East Street Arts, Migrant Actions Productions, performingborders

Participant

In Summer 2022, the We Need Queer Liberation Now! residency gathered a collective of artists from the Middle East, North Africa and Europe to explore digitally 'What does Queer liberation mean to you?' Grids on a screen, one artist on the programme said, keep people separate in neat little boxes. They are solid boundaries. But they can also form a net, and our group became a web of solidarity and community care, through the generosity, compassion, and openness of our artists and facilitators.

Collective dreaming, resting, holding, healing.

Later many of us acknowledged that the connection we’d created as a group, and the levels of intimacy we’d built, perhaps would not have been possible had we been in-person.

The outcome of the residency included a series of new art works, south baths and new writing which can be found here: https://performingborders.live/residences/we-need-queer-liberation-now/

More information on the project and its artists: https://eaststreetarts.org.uk/article-type/wnqln/

Artists involved: Teddy, Nahi Mitti, Axmed Maxamed, Roland Korponovics, Xavier De Sousa, Vee Dagger, Metin Akdemir, Keith Zenga King.

We Need Queer Liberation Now is an international residency and artist support project from East Street Arts and Theatre In The Mill, facilitated by Leeds-based artist Sayang and funding from the European Culture Foundation. It includes queer artists based across Europe, Middle East and North Africa. The responses here presented are commissioned by East Street Arts and Migrant Actions Productions for performingborders, as a result of a week-long online residency around the themes of care.

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xavierdesousaofficial · 7 years ago

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performingborders | LIVE | Feb - June 2019

Curated and produced by Xavier de Sousa and Alessandra Cianetti

performingborders | LIVE aims at gathering live artists, curators and producers whose practice has been committed in working on, across, and against borders to invite one artist of their choice for a series of public open conversation events held in England.

Curated and produced by Alessandra Cianetti and Xavier de Sousa, performingborders | LIVE aims at exploring live events as a way to broadening the number of artists, art professionals, activists and general public involved in the online performingborders platform. The project creates a series of live events and new commissions to encounter the UK-based audience, its urges and perspectives while making sure those discourses feed into the international sociopolitical and artistic discourses.

All events are free and open to everyone, from all backgrounds.

LIVE EVENTS

6th February 2019 | Contact | Manchester (link) Artist Nima Séne & Curator Tuna Erdem - Istanbul Queer Arts Collective interview + open conversation as part of Queer Contact

19th Mar 2019 | Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts | Brighton (link) A performative reading by Nobel Peace Prize photographer and artist Sim Chi Yin, who will be in conversation with curator Annie Jael Kwan from Something Human and Asia-Art-Activism.

April 2019 | Toynbee Studios | London A conversation between interdisciplinary artist Anti-Cool and curators osborn&møller (UK/Denmark). The evening is curated by osborn&møller in collaboration with Artsadmin as part of performingborders | LIVE. More information coming soon.

22 June 2019 | Live Art Development Agency | London Join performingborders | LIVE final event, Curating Borderless Spaces. A day of talks, conversations, actions, sharing at/across/against borders. The event will be the London premiere of the new performingborders | LIVE performance to camera commissions by Istanbul Queer Art Collective and Tara Fatehi Irani & will present the two selected digital conversations on Live Art and borders. Artist and writer Season Butler will respond live to the event’s contributions, with the outcomes being shared on our website.

WORKSHOPS

21st March 2019 | Attenborough Centre for the Arts | Brighton 6th July 2019 | Depford Lounge | London (tickets)

In the Embodied Social Change workshop by Camille Barton, dance, somatics and mindfulness are used to explore how oppression is rooted in the body and how we can shift its hold on our lives using mindful attention and movement. The work is intended to generate new approaches to activism that focus on the body, as well as the mind. After all, systems of power and oppression are reproduced by our bodies on a daily basis.

INTERNATIONAL PRESENTATION

May 2019 - Beyond the Wall / Más Allá del Muro Festival, Nogales, Mexico/US Exhibition + screenings of new commissions + UK-based live interviews screenings

Each event will be recorded and shared on the performingborders platform and at the Beyond the Wall binational Festival in Nogales (Mexico/US) for international audiences to connect with UK-based artists and art professionals’ work and critical thinking.

To bring the discussion further, 2 original performance to camera commissions will be produced and shown at the project final event in the UK, at the Beyond the Wall binational Festival in Nogales (Mexico/US), and also screened freely online and at other selected events.

CREDITATION

performingborders | LIVE is a programme of events and new commissions focusing on the exploration of artistic practices happening within the UK live art sector around notions of cultural, juridical, racial, gendered, class, physical and everyday borders. Curated by Alessandra Cianetti and Xavier de Sousa.

Presented by performingborders and Foreign Actions Productions in collaboration with Live Art Development Agency (London, UK), Contact Theatre (Manchester, UK), Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts (Brighton, UK), Artsadmin (London, UK), Deptford Lounge (London, UK), and Beyond the Wall/Más Allá del Mur Festival (Nogales, US/Mexico). Supported by the Arts Council England.

performingborders.live

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xavierdesousaofficial · 6 years ago

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performingborders | LIVE 2019

documentation and reflections

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performingborders | LIVE 2019, curated by Alessandra Cianetti and Xavier de Sousa, was the first edition of a public programme of events, open conversations, artist digital commissions, and workshops focusing on the exploration of experimental and exciting artistic practices happening within the UK Live Art sector around notions and intersectional lived experiences of physical, racial, gendered, class, cultural, juridical, national and everyday borders.

Curators’ reflections on the programme: (click here)

“…how we strategise and how we survive…”

(Season Butler, Curating Borderless Spaces, LADA, 22nd June 2019)

pbLIVE19 draws from the three-year ongoing research curatorial platform performingborders that has been gathering over seventy national and international original interviews, guest posts, writings and experimental responses from live artists, thinkers, activists, academics and art professionals on physical and conceptual borders within an increasingly shared feeling of uncertainty. As an attempt to make sense of oppressive systems that hugely impacts on minorities and oppressed communities, pbLIVE19 aimed at bringing those discussions into national and international venues to meet both art audiences and general public. The transition from online to a live setting allowed us to widen the conversation, create a broader inclusive discussion, and commission new artworks that were also internationally broadcasted and accessible online.

Furthermore pbLIVE19 gave us the opportunity to open art spaces to conversations that are not yet mainstream (i.e. How do different cultural backgrounds influence our thinking/standing on notions of and lived experiences of borders? How are artists with different cultural upbringings exploring identities within different contexts?). It also allowed us to provoke artists and curators to play with the live interview format either according to their artistic aesthetics or to their intentions, and give space for them to think critically about their work and experiences. pbLIVE19 created the space for us to think of the contexts we were playing in (for instance in Manchester, we reflected on the history of the city as a historically migrant LGBTQ+ inclusive city, and how different cultural backgrounds can influence perspectives on our own identities) and how they could influence the events’ contents and the conversation around borders as a whole. The direct influence of the live audience included voices in the conversation that the online format didn’t: direct, unedited provocations and reflections.

Live Artists & Curators Talks

Invited guest curators Annie Jael Kwan, Tuna Erdem, and osborn&møller nominated artists Sim Chi Yin, Nima Séne, and Anti-Cool, respectively, and to delve into what ‘borders’ means to them. Together they looked at different perspective of borders from war, memory and trauma, to queer identities and race, migrant stories and juridical obstacles with the presentation of these issues though the use of public open discussions, performative lecture and film.

Watch them all here: Manchester, Brighton , London.

Commissioned art works include (click on links):

- Borderline Dialogue by Tara Fatehi Irani. A coming together of seven actions for public space, different understandings and experiences of borders and embracing the border as a site where different bodies, concepts and perspectives bleed into one another. Performed in Australia, Hong Kong, Iran, Ukraine, USA, Chile and Mexico; *

- Moebius Stripping by Istanbul Queer Art Collective, cuts documents they submitted for their ‘leave to remain’ status to the UK Home Office, into pieces. Carried with a tongue in cheek manner, in line with the collectives’ firm belief in the “queer art of failure” *.

*both premiered at Beyond the Wall/Más Allá del Mur Festival (Nogales, US/ Mexico)

- Patrolling by Critical Interruptions, a critical multi--platform conversation for the digital page about border patrols of unrecognised states by the Serbo-Romanian critical cooperative comprised by Bojana Janković and Diana Damian Martin.

- All the Tea in China by Burong (曾不容), a multi-perspective and coral narrative around Belgrade’s Performance Hub with contributions by Franko B (UK/Italy), Alejandro Chellet (Mexico), Richard Dedomenici (UK), Miao Jiaxin (China/US), and VestAndPage (German/Italy).

Workshops

In her Embodied Movement for Social Change workshop, Camille Barton used ‘somatic exercises and dance to explore how oppression is rooted in the body and how we can shift its hold on our lives using mindful attention and movement’.

Workshops were taken up at Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts & Depford Lounge

Final Event

Curating Borderless Spaces, the programme’s finale was generously hosted by the Live Art Development Agency featuring a day of participatory key note on decolonial practices by Raju Rage, exhibition of the commissioned works, talks, food, and an open conversation peppered with provocations by Bojana Janković, Dana Olărescu, Kai Syng Tan, Helena Walsh. The day’s writer in residence was Season Butler who responded to the stimuli of the day through a durational live writing (here her original text) and a final performance that closed the day.

MORNING

Inc key note, introductions, premiere and panel discussions on commissioned works

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AFTERNOON

Including open conversation with Bojana Janković, Dana Olărescu, Kai Syng Tan, Helena Walsh

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FINAL PERFORMANCE by Season Butler

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All documentation, reflections and artworks created during performingborders | LIVE 2019 are accessible online for free here (https://performingborders.live/2019/08/14/alessandra-cianetti-xavier-de-sousa-on-performingborders-live-2019/)

performingborders | LIVE 2019 was funded by Arts Council England. Produced by performingborders and Foreign Actions Productions in collaboration with Live Art Development Agency (London, UK), Contact Theatre (Manchester, UK), Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts (Brighton, UK), Artsadmin (London, UK), Deptford Lounge (London, UK), Beyond the Wall/Más Allá del Mur Festival (Nogales, US/ Mexico), and the Centre for The Study of Sexual Dissidence (University of Sussex, Brighton)

#performingborders #liveart #curator #curators #events #art #performance #performanceart #borders #migration #belonging #race #class #uk

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xavierdesousaofficial · 6 years ago

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performingborders | LIVE | 2019

Curated by Xavier de Sousa and Alessandra Cianetti for performingborders

Watch full videos of talks, commissions and performances here: https://performingborders.live/pblive2019-programme/

From February until July 2019, performingborders presented its first programme of live events and artist commissions that brought outside of the online realm urgent conversations and extraordinary artistic practices happening within the UK experimental live art sector around notions of cultural, juridical, racial, gendered, class, physical, and everyday borders.

As an attempt to make sense of an ever-developing present that hugely impacts on minority and oppressed communities, performingborders | LIVE brings those discussions into venues in Manchester, Brighton, London (UK) and Nogales (Mexico) to widen the conversation and create a broader inclusive discussion that will also be freely accessible online.

Participants artists and curators: Anti-Cool, Camille Barton, Burong, Season Butler, Critical Interruptions, Tuna Erdem, Tara Fatehi Irani, Istanbul Queer Arts Collective, Bojana Janković, Dr. Anna Marazuela Kim, Annie Jael Kwan, Marikiscrycrycry, Dana Olărescu, osborn&møller, Raju Rage, Nima Séne, Sim Chi Yin, Kai Syng Tan, Helena Walsh.

Presented by performingborders and Foreign Actions Productions in collaboration with:

Live Art Development Agency (London, UK), Contact Theatre (Manchester, UK), Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts (Brighton, UK), Artsadmin (London, UK), Deptford Lounge (London, UK), Beyond the Wall/Más Allá del Mur Festival (Nogales, US/Mexico), and the Centre for The Study of Sexual Dissidence (University of Sussex, UK). Supported by the Arts Council England.

PROGRAMME (February – July 2019)

Nima Séne & Tuna Erdem

Sat 9 February 2019 |1.00pm-2.00pm | performingborders | LIVE | Manchester Queer Contact Festival at YES Theatre A conversation between Glasgow/Berlin-based live artist Nima Séne and curator and artist Tuna Erdem from the Istanbul Queer Arts Collective.

Read Xavier de Sousa’s reflections here

Sim Chi Yin, Annie Jael Kwan & Dr Anna Marazuela Kim

Tue 19 March 2019 |7.00pm-9.00pm| performingborders | LIVE | Brighton Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts A performative reading by Nobel Peace Prize photographer and artist Sim Chi Yin, who will be in conversation with curator Annie Jael Kwan from Something Human and Asia-Art-Activism. The Q&A was chaired by academic, thinker and activist Dr. Anna Marazuela Kim.

Embodied Movement for Social Change Workshop dates:

Thu 21 March 2019 | 6.00pm-9.00pm| performingborders | LIVE | Brighton Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts (SOLD OUT)

Sat 6 July 2019 | 1.00pm-4.00pm| performingborders | LIVE | London

Anti-Cool & osborn&møller

Wed 24 April 2019 | 7.00pm-9.00pm | performingborders | LIVE | London Toynbee Studios

A conversation between interdisciplinary artist Anti-Cool and curators osborn&møller (UK/Denmark), presenting the UK premiere of Anti-Cool’s three-screen video installation On Returning, which explores the history of several British families and couples, separated and disrupted by current immigration policies.

Since the financial requirement was introduced in 2012 for those with family members from outside of the EU countries, 20,000 families who cannot meet the threshold have been facing separation from their family members. Many of them can only speak to their children on Skype. Using raw and often blunt interview footage of participants who are in the middle of such disruptions, On Returning investigates their true feelings about borders, human rights and families. Although highly prevalent in today’s political climate, such stories are still unknown by the majority of the people in the UK. While investigating the difficult issues of immigration the work also uses experimental visual elements of the British landscape and physical/performative actions to explore the highly emotive side of the subject matter.

Más Allá del Muro Festival

Sun 5 May 2019 | performingborders | LIVE | US/Mexico border wall Nogales Arizona/Sonora performingborders | LIVE conversations and performance to camera commissions will be presented as part of the second edition of the Más Allá del Muro / Beyond the Wall Festival.

Más Allá del Muro / Beyond the Wall, which is run by a coalition of local and international artists, aims to showcase authentic, diverse, local perspectives on life at the US/Mexico border through local artists and youth. We know there is more to life at the border than the wall: our work offers locals a chance to celebrate and reconsider the narratives around local life, and non-locals an invitation to connect to authentic local stories and reconsider their perspective on life at the border. In 2019, we are hosting a binational pen pal program with high school students, and hosting the 2nd annual Beyond the Wall Festival, a binational art and culture festival in Nogales AZ/SON, where the wall bisects the city. The festival centerpiece is a performance of 15-foot tall puppets of children created with local youth; the puppets come together at the wall, reframing it as an object of play.

performingborders | LIVE | Curating Borderless Spaces

Date: 22 June 2019 | 12:00 - 17:00 | Live Art Development Agency, The Garrett Centre, 117 Mansford Street, London, E2 6LX

Tickets: FREE (booking essential)

After a series of pilot events across England and Nogales (US/Mexico border wall), the first performingborders | LIVE concludes with a day of performances, commissioned premieres, talks, food, and provocations at the Live Art Development Agency in London.

Curated by Alessandra Cianetti and Xavier de Sousa, and starting from the cue ‘Curating Borderless Spaces’, the day will focus on highlighting and platforming urgent voices and discourses within the Live Art sector on how we can work together in creating collaborative borderless, anti-racist, non-binary, feminist, non-ableist, post-colonial spaces.

Kicking off the day with a keynote by interdisciplinary artist, educator, and activist Raju Rage, the event will see the premiere of commissioned performances-to-camera by Istanbul Queer Arts Collective and Tara Fatehi Irani, along with new digital conversations on Live Art and borders by Burong and Critical Interruptions. Everyone is invited to participate in a communal live group conversation dotted by the interventions and provocations of guest artists Bojana Janković, Dana Olărescu, Malik Nashad Sharpe, Kai Syng Tan and Helena Walsh.

Writer in Residence Season Butler will respond to the discussions and exchanges of the day through live writing and she will close the event with a performative response to the day’s proceedings.

Curating Borderless Spaces is part of Antiuniveristy 2019

A vegan lunch (with no nuts) will be offered to everyone including a selection of drinks.*

SCHEDULE:

12pm: Keynote by Raju Rage + Presentation of commissions by Istanbul Queer Art Collective & Tara Fatehi Irani followed by Q&A with performingborders | LIVE curators and the audience

1.45pm: Lunch (during this time and throughout the day, the commissioned works by Burong, Critical Interruptions, Tara Fatehi Irani, and Istanbul Queer Art Collective will be accessible to the public)

2.30: Live group conversation and provocations by Bojana Janković, Dana Olărescu, Malik Nashad Sharpe, Kai Syng Tan, Helena Walsh

4pm: Final performance by Season Butler

4.30pm: Drinks and social time

Please note that all tickets are free and access information is below.

ACCESS:

Everyone is welcome!

To make sure as many of you can join us on the day, BSL interpretation will be provided, a T-loop system will be in place for those hard of hearing, the space is wheelchair accessible, your animal friends are welcome, and we can provide childcare for up to 7 children aged 1+**

Please get in touch if you have access requirements and we will be happy to support.

*Ingredients will be written down however if you have allergies we strongly advise to bring your own lunch with you.

**If you require childcare please tell us by writing to [email protected] by the 7th of June so we make sure we can book it on time. Thank you!

Presented by performingborders and Foreign Actions Productions in collaboration with Live Art Development Agency (London, UK), Contact Theatre (Manchester, UK), Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts (Brighton, UK), Artsadmin (London, UK), Deptford Lounge (London, UK), Beyond the Wall/Más Allá del Mur Festival (Nogales, US/Mexico), and the Centre for The Study of Sexual Dissidence (University of Sussex, UK). Supported by the Arts Council England.

For more information on the programme and the artists involved visit - https://performingborders.live/performingborders-live-2019-programme/

#migrants #immigration #pbLIVE19 #performance art #performance #performingborders #liveart #london

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