RIP Stacy Doris, 1962-2012

an excerpt from The Cake Part, for my dear friend Stacy.

New printing of THE SHUNT derailed (literally)

At the request of Bookmobile, this notice alerts you delivery of the following shipment has been rescheduled.

Important Delivery Information

---

Tracking Number:	1Z5668X10364862002
Exception Reason:	TRAIN DERAILMENT

Shipment Detail

---

Ship To:
Small Press Distribution
1341 Seventh Street
Berkeley
CA
947101409

UPS Service:	GROUND
Weight:	7.8 LBS
Reference Number 1:	84663
Reference Number 2:	The Shunt
Reference Number 3:	54855

 

Surround Sounds

Occupy Oakland Raid, 4:14 am Tues 10/25, Oscar Grant Plaza. Some sleepers still getting rousted from tents and arrested before tents destroyed. This is about 30 seconds before riot cop in front of me dropped his/her gun at me feet.

WORDS & DEEDS

Art Workouts presents….. 

WORDS and DEEDS
Experiments with Language in the Physical World

Mondays, February 21 – April 18 @ Kunst-Stoff Arts (929 Market St., San Francisco)

 

WORDS AND DEEDS is a workshop series crafted to explore how live art is informed by language, and how language is rooted in physicality and movement. WORDS AND DEEDS will consist of 7 Monday night workshops led by different artists whose work illuminates this intersection. To enrich the series, there will be a study group and final dinner + discussion. Come to all the events or join in when you can. We invite a core group to fully attend.

Featuring workshops with:
David Buuck + Jessica Tully- February 21
Petra Kuppers + Neil Marcus- February 28
Sarah Shelton Mann- March 7
Margit Galanter- March 21
Edris Cooper-Anifowoshe- March 28
Nita Little- April 4
Violet Juno- April 11

Monday nights February 21 – April 11, 6:30 – 9pm (no class 3/14)
Sunday, March 6, 5-7 pm- Study group (location TBA)
Monday night, April 18- Final discussion and potluck dinner 

Register by 2/14 for best prices!

$110 for the series (seven classes + final discussion)

$18 single class
$16 per class with two or more classes pre-registered
$21 DROP IN RATE AFTER 2/14

Please contact bri.skellie@gmail.com for any further information, with any questions, or if you would like to register.

For more information go here or to facebook.

ART WORKOUTS  is an ongoing dialogue/experiment between Margit Galanter, Abby Crain, and whatever and whoever crosses our path. We engage with the world around us for artistic revelation and inspiration, culling what seems relevant, problematic, brilliant. We are primarily movers so the work comes through the body, performance, ideas, and that mysterious assemblage, presence. We periodically arrange workshops so that we can meet and explore with groups of people. This is when the work starts to really hum. Margit Galanter is a movement investigator and dance poet living in Oakland. Her fascination with the construction and value of movement has drawn her to embodied research and performance for decades. Abby Crain enjoys art that is awkward, difficult, and transformative. She teaches frequently, and creates solo and collaborative performance experiments when the mood seizes her.  Past credits include dancing with Miguel Gutierrez and the Powerful People (NY), David Dorfman Dance (NY), and Bay Area luminaries Sarah Shelton Mann and Kneejerk Dance Project.

 

The Treatment (“Walking”)

The assignment was to take a walk, during an episode of severe lower back pain, listening in one ear to an audio recording of Thoreau’s lecture “Walking,” while repeating each word aloud. I stuck the earbud in my ear, attempted to stretch my back and stand fully erect, and set out for my treatment… (video here)

Ongoing protests at SFAI

I’d suggest turning the sound off, but check out the Student-Alumni Action Group for more details. The forced bleeding by the administration this last year stands alongside the crises in the UC system & the more general adjunctivizing of the cognitariat here & elsewhere…

Upcoming Readings

Philly Sun Mar 29 : Night Flag reading with CA Conrad & Erica Kaufman, at L’Etage Cabaret : 730 pm

 

NYC Mon Mar 30 : Poetry Project with Michael Cross : 8pm

Zimbabwe Re-enactment: reflections

THE NEWS FROM ZIMBABWE: A RE-ENACTMENT

“But the writer sometimes defiantly asks the prison officer locking his cell: ‘Why are you locking yourself out?’ as one Zimbabwean asked, before he was declared insane and released…”                            — Chenjarai Hove

Maybe less a re-enactment as much as a ready-made, maybe less a ready-made as much as a docu-drama, less a docu-drama as much as a staged thought-experiment. Trail-runned (ran?) at SPT’s Poets Theater.

Background: In 2007, Anthony Tongani and Silvanos Mudzvova were arrested while performing their satirical play “The Final Push.” They were taken to the Harare Central Police Station, locked up, and forced to re-enact their play again and again (over 48 hours) for the police and Central Intelligence Organization officers, who walked in and out, interrupting & arguing over what punishment the performers should get (for treason &/or inciting a riot). (The CIO are the secret-service – the notorious ZANU-PF ‘enforcers’…)

For our versioning, we attempted to re-stage a condensed version of these events.

On stage: police/CIO officers drinking, smoking, napping at table. “Narrator” standing at table with various implements (tape, handcuffs, kitchen utensils, floggers, etc.). Two performers in “jail cell”. 

The premise was to run a number of looped repetitions of the ‘play’, enacted within the cell within the police station, while the police/CIO interrupt, add constraints/’punishments’, & make the performers begin the play-within-the-play again, etc. Each time a new officer would arrive onstage, the play would be stopped & the seated officers would explain the situation to the newcomer, who would then in turn ask to see the play re-started. Then the newcomer would be told that they like to ‘add a twist’ to each version, and s/he’s handed a stack of cards to choose from. The newcomer picks & reads the card, and asks the narrator:

“Is it really okay that I do this?”

to which the Narrator responds some variation of “you’re just following orders”/”it’s just a play”/”You’re just following the script”/”I don’t see anyone out there stopping you…”

Then the newcomer takes one or two of the implements, and restrains the prisoners/performers (cuffing ankles together, duct taping arms together, etc.) & administers some form of physical punishment (slapping, beating with paddle, spitting in face, etc.). There is a brief exchange between officer & prisoner (“I thought you writers liked the poetics of constraint” etc.). Then s/he poses in front of prisoners/performers for the photographer (another officer who’s onstage the whole time). The performers/prisoners are then told to begin again, at which point the loop starts again.

The play within the play (“The Final Push”) takes place within an elevator. The two characters are Mugabe & the opposition leader Morgan Tsvengari. The actors are thus playing imprisoned performers who in turn are performing as Mugabe & Tsvengari.

Reflections & self-criticisms on trail run:

The question of race was never directly addressed. The performers were mostly white. Audience as well.

It was under-cooked & under-rehearsed – I wrote up the concept 5 days before & the play-within-the-play the day before & we had one meeting to practice. Given that I certainly wasn’t aiming for some kind of proper ‘theater’ experience, but as it is not a ‘typical’ (?) poets theater piece it could’ve maybe benefitted from more practice.

My fellow performers were super helpful, patient, & game. The process of thinking the piece through in a limited amount of time & space meant that each performer brought their own questions & interpretations (rather than just ‘playing the role’ or whatever) into each loop. 

It felt too condensed. It would be interesting to see how it ran/felt if stretched out over 30, 40, 60 minutes, with more loops &or more time for each loop to develop, for the play within the play to develop, for physical exhaustion & stamina to be tested, for the audience to be ‘tested’ more, for the potential boredom/banality of having to watch the same scene(s) over and over again to settle in, knowing that a desired break in the action would also require violence against the performer(s).

I have no idea how long it actually went on for. I don’t know if this is simply because when you’re performing in a ‘play’ you lose track of time, or if because this was a looped piece it’s easier to lose one’s ‘place’ or sense of time, or it was some reaction to the physicality of the piece (I apparently have a very low pain threshold & very little stamina). 

Someone asked if I made the whole thing up – i.e., was it a ‘true’ story. Good question in that context. A different version of the question: “Was that real?” Maybe that’s a different question.

Someone said that when the narrator said “I don’t see anyone out there stopping you” that she suddenly worried that it would be left to the audience to stop the loop/cycle/play. This made me realize that though we performers knew how many cycles we were going to do, the audience did not. Without conventional plot or narrative, how do you sense time/progress in a performance?

The play within the play is never finished, never fully performed, never ends. It’s still happening, still beginning again.

The violence, though ‘real,’ was brief enough not to push anyone’s buttons too hard. It still felt ‘safe’ & perhaps more ‘gestural’ than it could’ve been.

Lots of questions about other possible variations:

What if we just kept repeating the loops until an audience member actually intruded? to put that burden/question of complicity – “I don’t see anyone out there stopping you” – onto the audience?

What if the cards on the table contained a wider range of punishments, and/or were truly mixed-up & chance-based? Such that each performer playing a cop would not know what s/he was expected to do until reading the card onstage, and having to choose to follow the script/order? What if performers were then given the choice to take a different card?

What if the performers in the cell had no idea what might be on those cards? Would not know what was coming at any given point?

What if audience member(s) were asked to take the photos?

What if audience members were asked (or required) to take a card & follow the instructions? to become active participants? 

Were audience members already active participants, by virtue of not stopping the punishments?

What if the performers did not already know one another?

What if the performers were black/of color, in front of a typical (ie almost exclusively white) poets theater audience? 

A few days after the performance, Morgan Tsvengari joined Mugabe’s government in a power-sharing agreement.

This weekend

I helped organize the SPT Poets Theater Fest, which begins tomorrow:

http://smallpresstraffic.blogspot.com/2009/01/this-friday-116-poets-theater-fest.html

& am performing at this on Sunday:

TAXT/21GRAND

Bunker Archeology @ Marin Headlands 10/25

Wish I could make it to this event this weekend. Reports welcomed…

as well as the Edwin Torres & Al DeSilver reading & Dodie & Cedar’s reading & the Martha Rosler talk …