At the moment the project is called 'Sacri/$/Body'.
I have distributed a letter which I have sent out to about 25 friends to ask for their input into my process. Some performance 'actions' suggested so far have been (first 2 are from facebook suggestions).. I have also sent them to men:
- I wonder how I can share my account with you?
- Got an idea....I'll ponder a little further and get back to you.
21 SeptemberMelody Watson- hmmm....will have to have a bit of a think about this!
22 SeptemberDaniela Gast- thanks for sharing and inviting....yes a bit of a think about and a thought coming soon
24 SeptemberEdward Clendon- sounds amazing... I like dancing as payment for things... good idea.
24 SeptemberAlexa Wilson- great, thanks!
TuesdaySharlene Ferguson- Thank you for including me x this sounds exceptional! I will have a think for you too xxx Awesome to hear you're embracing such interesting and emotive topics xxx
TuesdayAlexa Wilson- Awesome Sharlene, thanks! There's no big hurry too - those who have written above, as I will do some 'actions' this year while it is still warmish (not snowing) and finish up my written research over the winter (Jodorowsky research)- then re-emerge for next year with more performance actions to try out. I have been suggested 5 so far, which is pretty solid. I'm really interested in the conversation/dialogue too between us. I will also be in Montreal for a week end of nove and New York for december so there is the possibility of me also doing something in these places.. as well. I am also open to doing something alongside you- like with one person we are doing something at the same time from a distance.. so this is a possibility also- or for those in the same city as me- you are welcome to join or watch! it is quite flexible and open. I am loving reading Jodorowsky's healing psychomagic vision, it relates a lot to what I already have been exploring for many years!
TuesdayAlexa Wilson- Also this research will develop into my thesis project more extensively- for the second year with many more theorists in the mix (original proposal).
- Beautiful Alexa
about a minute agoAlexa Wilson- Thanks Michelle
it is quite flexible and open. I am loving reading Jodorowsky's healing psychomagic vision, it relates a lot to what I already have been exploring for many years!
- Hmmmm interesting premise.
I am strangely fascinated by the act of Men putting cash into the knickers of strippers. Stripping can be a beautiful thing but the money in the undies is such an extreme of power play for me.
I'd like to see a reversal of this.Taking' notes' out of knickers and bra but not money (male energy) but somehow transforming the sex and money into nurturing and giving...perhaps IOU's for what women can really offer of value...way beyond monetary worth.
Q:Would strangers take $ from your undies??
Q: Where has $ been before it get into your hot little hand? If you know it had been up someones twat would you want it more or less?
Just what thoughts came to me from reading your notes. Dunne if this is of any help but there ya go!
Good luck with it Gab
Hi Alexa, So i am annoyed I lost my elaborate email to you. am on my old lap top after my new one decided to not go online so its really slow.
just had a thought in response to your project.
Along the lines of identity as a mother a home maker a performer an eco warrior, a nice person, being out side money systems as an activism and in actual fact if I got paid it would alter the integrity of all of these female past times.Also that most of these identities at least the domestic are quite non erotic, at least this is how I have felt or at least invisable and non valued in society. So performance idea might be the revaluing of the domestic in the public, ie sponging your clothes, offering sandwiches?, perhaps adding erotisism and fetish to 'add value' to them ( from male gaze). Or using them as valued systems, such as caring for others or baking as a valued action for a bus ticket. Similar to some ideas on your blog? and tips for sustainable living of course, how to get things for free or recyclingTo reveal what you will pay for sex? home cooking? someone to bare your children?xx christina houghton
All I know is that I have often felt like/conceived of the work I did for money as prostitution. Anyways, perhaps a collective brainstorm will help... will keep thinking on it.. Yeah brainstorm and filming sounds good! i think for me, it always comes down to whether I feel the work is important or not. It often most feels like prostitution when it"s done "just for money" for example, i used to accept work from a big corporate company doing transcription work and they sent me this inane recording of marketing executives discussing god knows what and i spent HOURS with my ear pinned to it to make 500 bucks and it hurt my ears so bad at the end that i wasnt even able to transcribe the last part properly so i didnt get paid a cent, nothing I could do. I remember joking about having been an "ear whore" to friends. Cx
Ideas of my own so far: I have a photographer friend from NZ based in Berlin, Elsa Thorpe, who is interested in collaborating to document many of the below ideas in photos or videos, particularly dancing on the train at night and sleeping on the street.
*Meditating in front of a bank wearing red.
*Sitting in a bath of money; bathing, cleansing, washing, relaxing, nudity. These are all things which have somehow a mundane, private and sacred relationship to the female erotic body. In public, in a bath, maybe not naked, but implied, perhaps fully clothed, bathing in money (fake money, or the allusion of money) somehow, IOUs perhaps, is an image I like. I will need to get permission for this, through the german authorities. A street performance permit from the Bürgeramt. The fine is between 40 and 5000 euro for illegal street performance. I wonder if this is only for work which is asking for money. I will find out.
*Leaving underwear near ATM machines in the U-bahn stations which have notes in them, messages which are more like some kind of encouragement. The act of putting a card into a machine is quite penetrative, while as Gabi suggests above, putting money into underwear is also a power play. While giving encouragement and nurture is a supportive feminine action (feminine as opposed to women- at the risk of essentialising). Taking money out of underwear- removed of the body is an installation performance provocation. I could film or photograph people from afar much as artist Sophie Calle tracks people at ATMs. An extension could be having some kind of 'box' in which people put a response to the underwear and the message?
*Sleeping on the street- sleeping is a very sacred, private action, for women, sometimes attacked in this place, it also references poverty, homelessness and the occupy movement. Lying on the street with a pillow and sleeping bag- I am thinking at Alexanderplatz, a common commercial square and 'centre' for Berlin where buskers play and art installations art staged- next to 'Alexa' mall, I could leave a box or sign asking for people to write down their dreams for me. I dreamt this actually (Jodorowsky style) that i was sleeping in the pavement. Somehow transforming the action of sleeping in the street into a 'safe action' for a woman in broad daylight and documented and drawing attention to 'dreams' takes us away from the overly commercialisd female erotic body, within a commercial context and puts the power into the inherently erotic body, asleep.. lying down. Resting. Rejuvenating.
*Doing yoga in front of Parliament, the Reichstag. Yoga I am realising is inherently sacred for the female body, it opens the body, in tantric ways it is highly sexualised if not erotic to the outside gaze - 'the open body'. However it is about inner peace, spiritual mind body connection and evolution. On a matt here next to the queue for tourists going to visit this parliament building could be an interesting and strange juxtaposition. This is the most direct 'cultural' juxtaposition and opposition.. an Indian 'appropriated' spiritual body technique in the context of German/Berlin history, also as a NZer. Playing with cultural stereotypes of tourism, money, the body within a tourist/historical setting. 'Displacement' and relocation of the individual are empowering. The internal act becomes a 'spectacle' - public private.
*Some kind of experience of 'preparing the body' like putting on make up, dressing, washing, cleansing, soaking, also putting on sun cream and shaving, plucking, these actions are for me not erotic but culturalised but in their own way fetishistic and very ritualistic. Paint onto the body also, food. A mix of these things in public, near a bank, an insurance company. Could be interesting.
*Simultaneous dance with a friend from Berlin in Austria playing an instrument as I move through the underground train late at night, dancing between former East and West as my 'payment' as she is from the former East of Berlin. As in below correspondences.
Alexa Wilson
wow that sounds aaaawwwesome. the music vibrations of love and the instrument you have discovered! do tell me- what is it?? perhaps your task for me could be related to the instrument, we could even orchestrate somehow you playing it and me dancing to it- from a distance..!!! in the same time??
somehow... i really like the sacred female body/inherently erotic.. as being very spiritually connected to music and dance. reclaiming this..
Daniela Gast
i think thats a greaaaat idea... in real time, we should try it out and see if thats a go oooo.... the instrument is psaltery with bow " . It is an ancient instrument is seen in many forms ( mine is ash tree wood in a shape of a fish- )..... psaltery: It is thought to be about three thousand years old, only slightly younger than the oldest stringed instrument, the harp. .... and ha: Due to its reference in the bible and its ancient history, some scholars believe, the psaltery like the harp were acceptable for ladies of court to play. haha ok but all that came after .... i just love how it sounds ...
that reminds me a friend said about one of my performances it reminded him of jodorowsky, i haven't studied him and i probably should check him more out. vero and i haven't made it to paris for the tarot yet....that would be so great, we should go one day ...so would love that!!!!
*Repeating this action, but listening to music is a private act, a sacred embodiment of music, dancing on the train at night a public action, sharing the female body with others, but as a payment for using the train system.
Alexa Wilson
i have been brain storming things to do for my project in public spaces also working toward a theatrical product.. and dancing on the ubahn *underground in berlin- which is a snakey thing.. listening to your music on ipod is one i want to do!
Lucy Beeler
- yes i think you are the most progressive in nz. While sean has done really great things and this is going to sound silly but I think the fact that he is a man means he can do less and get away with more where as being a woman you do way more and it's shocking! Which is great. And this is not me validating the patriarchal hegemony but only acknowledging its existence and prominance even in something like experimental performance (which still is overlooked by instututions)
But that all soundsreally great what you are doing. I've made like 3 more tracks, there's on called "Stay With Me" I think you might like.
- Revised ideas:
Tarot cards on the train as payment for using the system as suggested below by Karin Hofko.
Dancing complaints for people (as in the post by Daniela Silva.
Also the potential for some kind of massage offer. Or offering to massage people's complaints or objects... ? A new idea.
No comments:
Post a Comment