The Body As Site

The body is a place. We think of our minds and bodies as separate containers, but in fact, the mind is a part of the body. The body, in fact, is a place in which we store our memories and associations. We often think of a place as a site to encounter or experience. The same can be said about the body:

How do I encounter my body?

When do I experience my body?

For many, the answers to these questions are limited to a handful of experiences. Often we disassociate from our bodies in order to rationalize and live in a world that celebrates thinkers and in which the mind is allowed to lead. Much of the world associates the mind as the primary used muscle. In many of these cases, the answers to the above questions are left at, "Never".

The reality is that due to a series of circumstances in human history, such as patriarchy, colonization, white supremacy, heteronormativity, humanity has learned to support top-down thinking, and this, over generations, creates the belief that our minds do all the work and our bodies just tag along for the ride. Our bodies are the site of the impacts of patriarchy, colonization, white supremacy and heteronormativity. When we begin to connect the mind to the body, we can begin to sense the triggers and memories we hold in this vessel of ours. We begin to see the full site.

I struggled for a number of years, thinking that thought and ideas were the way of the future. I stumbled over articulating ideas as fully conceived concepts. Little did I know that the way my body works is in sensing and experiencing, Therefore, I can't promise that every time I open my mouth something smart is going to come out. Often times, my mouth is part of an elaborate process that my body needs in order to understand itself. It usually starts with a simple thought, that initiates my mouth speaking in real-time consciousness, while my body experiences what my thoughts are attempting to formulate. Only after I have spoken the words, do I feel. Only after I feel, do I understand. This is very different from this idea that anything coming out of our mouths has to make sense right off the bat.

This idea that the most articulate are the ones that are most celebrated is an output of patriarchy, colonization, white supremacy and heteronormativity. Hence why we get so much fragility when power is met with a request to unlearn. The unlearning requires us to experience this through the body, not just the mind. Deep in our bodies, we can all find memories of abuse of power. What would happen if we began from that place as we all attempt to unlearn patriarchy, colonization, white supremacy and heteronormativity?

All in all, this requires processing. We have assumed that the mind must learn immediately. That it is at the forefront of who we are as individuals. In fact, the body is the site of our experiences. And these experiences, are in process. Just like our words. Just like our thoughts. Just like our bodies -- ever encountering; ever activating; ever experiencing.

The Tyranny of Planning

I am preparing for my upcoming performance creation residency of "Cruising at 30 km/s and Attempting Not To Crash". Anxiety has set in based on my inability to make decisions about what the show will look like. Ever since the development of The End, the show I created last year, I have been attempting to embrace a certain level of unknowing. I feel I have made some terrible work in the past because the audience, artistic programmers and marketing staff demand a certain level of what I call 'arrival' (this attempt at knowing what the show is about before you've even made the show; removing the true liveness from the live art), I am compelled to stay in this state of unknowing and move through a performance creation residency without making a firm plan, but this doesn't always work when audiences, programmers and marketing staff require this level of knowledge.

I've been examining this tyranny of planning for over 7 years now. Last year I was invited to participate in a queer performance residency as part of CANdance (a partnership between Springboard Performance (Calgary) and Studio 303 (Montreal)). The residency was titled This Is Actively Built and featured 4 queer Canadian artists (Kevin Jesuino, Melina Stinson, Winnie Superhova and Nuiboi). The residency was the idea of contemporary dance artist Nate Yaffe. Nate had established similar residencies in the past with other queer artists. At the beginning of the residency he reminded me of queer theory texts such as Jose Esteban Muñoz' "Queer Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity" and Jake Halberstram's "The Queer Art of Failure". Both of these texts provided me with a strong inspiration towards the unravelling of these expectations on me as a performance creator to know what I will do in a performance before I even know what the show is. Munoz suggests that the future relies on the queering of systems (very similar to offerings suggested by Afro-Futurism); an idea that is grounded in examining pluralistic, diverse and anti-fragile systems or ways of being that come when we open a system up to all future possibilities once the mainstream has dissolved. Halberstam, in The Queer Art of Failure, suggests that anyone born queer (or marginalized in any way) is destined to fail from the onset. This is best exemplified in the online videos that have been coming out around the game of privilege. Certain folks, based on their privileges (and this is always intersectional) have a head start in what society calls 'success in life'. However, those with less privilege start the race further back and, in many circumstances, are destined to fail or lose the race. Halberstam suggests that queer folks are destined to fail. It is in this failure that we can find resilience, opportunity and a difference we can offer the world. In this 'failing' we, queer humans of this Earth, can offer up different ways of knowing thus leading to a pluralistic future of possibilities.

Both of these texts grounded me in developing a show that never arrives at a complete finish. By 'finish', I mean that is never overly planned that the sense of liveness is removed from the performance. I am interested in the bits of the show that provide opportunities for failure. It's in this failure that the show breaths life and true liveness. And, when examining the role that queer performance makers have in this world, I am interested in examining this failure towards possibilities within my queer lived experience, exploring where I, the ensemble, and the show go when we remove the veil of planned cues and set choreography/blocking, and use the space of live performance to offer a laboratory to explore difference, failure and anti-fragility for the real world outside of the performance.

And so, I sit here, attempting to make decisions about my upcoming show that requires me to be courageous in not knowing what will happen, but also requires a certain level of planning when it comes to casting an ensemble, describing my ideas to the artistic programmer and providing material upfront for any marketing and promotion that is needed; it is a constant internal tug-of-war and often the mainstream can't see any other path then the planned path.

I offer up the question to any performance makers and programmers out there -- what is liveness if we don't allow for failure or unknowing?