MASTER (THESIS) OWN NOTES
NOTES ON THE DISAPPEARANCE OF RITUALS - BYUNG CHUL-HAN (see link to notes)
NOTES ON DECOLONIAL ECOLOGY - MALCOM FERDINAND specifically the chapters 14 ( ‘a world-ship - politics of encounter’), Ch 15 ( ‘forming a body with the world: reconnecting with mother earth’), Ch 16 ( ‘Interspecies alliances’) and Ch 17 ( ‘a wordly-ecology’) (see link to full notes)
- Ferdinand asks the following questions (p 200)
- ‘how do those who left and returned open themselves to a relationship with those who stayed and are already there?
- ‘for those to whom the world was refused, those who were expelled from Noah’s ark, those who were confined in the slave ship’s hold, how do they ground a self that is capable of opening up an encounter and maintaining the relationship with those who once abandoned and abused them?
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SOME NOTES ON THE FOLD - LAURA U. MARKS (see link to notes)
-Images, which I define as all perceptibles, cycle through time and space to reach our body and our senses. As they cycle, they collect noise, interference, augmentation and diminution. In the method of enfolding-unfolding æsthetics, by comparing what you perceive with the interface that shaped it, you can get a sense of where it has come from and what it has passed through.
-most philosophy privileges what actually exists (...) however as Deleuze and Guattari emphasize, the relevant category is not Being - what exists- but Becoming - what changes. Enfolding-unfolding aesthetics helps us to be alert to the seemingly nonexistent as it rolls into being. (paraphrased from p 6)
every being, from a person to a particle to a star- and humanmade things too, like spoons, software, and movies- is alive, as I will argue, and has experience: it receives from and acts on the world. Peirce’s well-known statement that what appears from the outside as object, feels from the inside as consciousness, is accurate to the situation I’m describing. (in reference to Peice ‘man’s glassy essence’, collected papers, 6.268. P 10 (USE IN THE CONTEXTUALISATION REFELCTIVE NOTE)
-’consciousness’ is a freighted term, given its deep connotations of a self-awareness exclusive to humans, which this cosmology doesn’t need. It is not necessary to declare an entity to be conscious to say that it has experience. I give deference to panpsyichist worldviews, including animism and other Indigenous thought systems, tht equate being and consciousness. If we redefine consciousness as enjoying one’s own process of being, as Whitehead and Raymond Ruyer do, then yes, all entities are conscious
as Glissant argues, a model of the world that does not seek depths but respects the complexity of folded surfaces best expresses the colonial and postcolonial reality of inextricably mixed heritages. Where clarity serves a colonial or dominant way of thinking, glissant’s style multiplies folds, as a creative and political strategy of writing and thinking within the colonizer’s language (in reference to Wing ‘translator’s introduction’, xii) p 28
THOUGHTS ON MANIFESTO, DECOLONISATION, CONSTELLATIONS AND MY CONTEXT 16.10.24
-first obvious link: not belonging, being made to feel like I don’t belong as a result of ways of thinking about identity inherited from colonialism = plants that are displaced (made unbelongable) or made extinct (?)
- my way of deconstructing this/methods
- through ritual
- inspired from yearning as method jemma desai? and affecting/becoming with to understand these feelings of not belong (for example) as a method?
- bringing in people who are already on the path to deconstructing in their own ways?
- Joanna Rivera (herbal medicine, colleague of Mari, Puerto Rican, mother, lives in Norway)
- Maritea (writer/storyteller/artist, not from the Caribbean but lives in Mexico and Norway, Cameroun, mother(?))
- Genevieve (half dominican, half french (?), doula/translator
teacher, mother, lives in Norway)
- parakeets in London parks = mixed people. this speaks to hybridization (creolisation Aime Cesaire, Edouard Glissant, Frantz Fannon etc..). it could be like a trinidadian tree and a french tree were grafted together and made a new species of trees. use of imagination is also part of my practice, is it in storyform that this decolonisation is supposed to happen?
- adaptation of what comes to mid when reading poem.
- keep an eye out for Kristian Pedersen’s dancing words from ‘Faen i helvete’ poem
- idea for workshop: samle visual associations of words when reading a text then putting the words together (similar to the idea for the upcoming Oslo Zine Fest workshop). but do it for Guardian of forest project, make a storyboard of everyone’s pictures of words.
-Forest library, Forest Council, Forest Assembly, Forest Coalition: what is a collective space of knowledge called? the very form of library is a very conlonial thing too.
- Tropical trees that were planted in big European estates to make the gardens ‘look’ pretty: they created new relationships with the soil, nature around and adapted, and have become part of the landscape (literally and figuratively), another type of hybridization. that newness is that a metaphore for mixed people?
UKS WORKSHOP - ‘DECOLONIZING OUR QUEER IDENTITIES’ with UNCIVILIZED COLLECTIVE - 04.10.24
- act of mobilizing, revolution can be ‘discussion’
- shapeshifting - having to adapt, when a white person came into the room, it felt like the situation was zoomed out, like we were being observed, since they’re not part of it (they can’t share similar experiences) they’re observing. (experience shared by Jasmine)
- everything around me is westernized, colonised.
- sense of collective experience
- this creation of binary was to divide
- it is a political act of resistance to hold on to that heritage
- heritage is something we practice to connect with our ancestors
- community is a fragility because it relies on people being together.
- we need to do the work for ourselves, take what we have and build on it, make sure that our future generations have something to build on.
- with or against: because you don’t identify as the queer in your community then you are with them, you identify as something they thought was given by them (this can also be applied to a mixed person)
- link to my spirituality as who I am (atunement to surroundings) in my work
- grounding to physical leads to grounding to non-physical
Thoughts/writing after the talk - sent in to ‘Uncivilized Collective’
This discussion space was my introduction to feeling at home in a different way. Feeling at home has always had different meanings throughout my life, mostly feelings of not feeling at home, not being accepted for who I said I was. In the small comments and looks, because of where it looks like I come from. It's not enough with me saying who I am and how I identify, where I look like I come from trumps. Or used to, I don't know anymore, I haven't allowed myself to have that discussion with myself, the pain is just annoying, not to mention obviously painful, your own people saying 'you don't belong here, go look over there'. Only for those people over there to say the same thing, and those other ones the same thing. I felt at home in Norway at first, precisely because for the first time in my life I was accepted for who I said I was. and naturally, having never been accepted by my own people, that felt like a breath of fresh air. Here at least they accept me for who I say I am. It helps when I'm not from Norway. It also helps, I later realised, that I didn't look 'threatening': I am a mixed European-Caribbean woman of colour. I 'look' European enough to fit in the 'expat' box and not in the 'immigrant' box as Norwegians tend to (sub)consciously differentiate. I also 'look' exotic enough (and you can read all the stereotypical elements in the word as you want, Norwegians also do) because I come from the Caribbean. 'How exotic! Why did you move to Norway of all places?' At least it was a good ice-breaker, Norwegians are stereotypically known for being extremely talkative (not). Here we are with looks again, how one is perceived. And I now want to come back to the word 'threatening': I look European therefore I'm safe, I don't belong to those other identities with those colonially constructed narratives that are deemed 'threatening' (read 'too different from what the majority population knows').
Being accepted in this community which this discussion space provided felt like a different breath of fresh air, more real, more inclusive of me and who I say I am, more accepting, and without judgement. These feelings associated with my identity were pushed away ('too complex to think about', 'there's worse traumas, think of all your privileges'), while I still constantly lived with them, their paradoxes and traumas (however small they were). and yes, even though trauma is trauma, the constant shame of being made to feel that the trauma I received and inherited from past generations is nothing compared to others, still makes me denigrate it (hence 'however small they were'). Coming to this space, being accepted in this community, allowed me the safe space and understanding needed to start putting words to the 'worms' in this can of worms. There should be more spaces like this, and they should also occur more often. Decolonization of our own mental slaveries can also happen through discussion and sharing, leading to awareness and further decolonization. The act of mobilising through discussion is a revolution in itself. We just have to keep talking to each other, constantly.
SASHA HUBER LECTURE - 11.09.24
Reparative Interventions: Renegotiating Archive, Memory and Place from a Decolonial Perspective.
- politics of memory, care and belonging in relation to colonial residues left in the environments.
-connecting history and the present
-performance-based reparative interventions, video, photography and collaborations
- change of methodology - IT’S OK TO CHANGE METHODOLOGY
-making the link between the atlantic middle passage and the mediterranean middle passage more obvious
- Leukerbad Lit festival switzerland
- stranger in the village, james baldwin
-Rentyhorn petition website: it became an archive of its own
- Tamara Lanier connection: giving his (Renty) humanity back that was stripped from him.
- my practice is narrative and participatory-based:: collaborations, publications, film and scenography-like installations. Explore the relationship between ecology, time and identity in relation to humans and more-than-humans. Interested in collective learning through discussion and exchange as seen in the education populaire movement, and looking at how this collectivity be useful in imagining sustainable futures together with humans and non.
- order vs disorder: Frantz Fanon decolonizing which sets out to change the order of the world is a program of complete disorder. Robyn Maynard: disorder implies a radical rupture from the dominant order, the creation of an order that at least includes everyone.
Thoughts after lecture
-relief to hear ‘it’s ok also to choose not to do it’ in relation to responsibility towards healing process. Putting words on something I’m struggling with in relation to my mixed heritage and own identity. ‘Trauma’ growing up with not belonging to any of my heritages. Like her I am mor einterested in connecting with my mother’s heritage, maybe because it’s been the most ‘denied’ of my heritages, moving to one of the whitest places in the world to finally feel accepted for who I said I was, only to once again not feel accepted by the mixed/black communities in Norway. So I’m not ready yet to question/research/take my practice in that direction, even though I already have a perspective on colonialism I’m interested in (plants and colonization). It’s too difficult and makes me feel small, unwelcome and makes me feel like I’m culturally appropriating something which is not my heritage entirely (being only half trinbagonian). Are there other mixed people out there who feel the same?
HVORDAN KAN RITUALER VÆRE EN DEL AV HVERDAGS LIV?
Samtale Holistisk Forbund 15.09.24
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rituals in relation to season (sometimes bring in four elements under ceremony)
- rituals in relation to people + desires(eg of the couple who really wanted a child)
- a wish for transformation
- depends on how one defines rituals: repetitive action in time for me.
- WHEN ONE NEEDS IT?
I picked up on the period of transformation (period being also a keyword for time), also, rituals are for making oneself aware of the transformation, grounding of us in relation to our surroundings. OVERGANG IN LIVET
other takeaways:
- mer ritualer for å beholde det dypt følelser
- frihet på at man kan gjøre det
- setter tid for å få ressurser, for å være sammen
- take a step back and look at a bigger picture, grounding. ta tilbake øyeblikket for å få meninger.
- for å roer seg ned
- RITUALS FROM NATURE, THAT WE’RE INVITED TO FROM NATURE, THAT WE’RE NOT AWARE OF.
- about passing on communication, information, when one needs to inform (goes back to what Byul Chu Han was saying, and Victor Turner).
- mer bevigsthet til her og nå.
- barnesblikk, lek, importance of lek.
- a way to ramme inn dagen men ikke en tvang
- what gives meaning to your everyday life? simple things.
depends on the intention, what ritual and for what. alle som har intensjon om et intensjon.
new definition of space: (in relation to the workshops?) the people in the space (physical or not), make the space with all that they bring to the space. so ‘space’ is unique everytime. when people samles, but everyone also has a relation to the physical space they are in!
- jeg kan skape rom akkurat hvor jeg er
- man kan lage ritualer hvor som helst.
PRE-RESEARCH ON REFERENCES RELATED TO RITUALS AND ART
- NeoIndigenA, Kaha:wi Dance Theatre based in Toronto, 70min solo performance Santee Smith
https://www.kahawidance.org/neoindigena
_ portals to Skyworld, Earthworld and Underworld. ‘... charting through a ritual of renewal that took her through Skyworld, Earthworld and Underworld, embodying all the forms of creation by way of the sacred female Indigenous body’. p 84 Knowles R. ‘Because it’s ritual and we’re living: Living Ritual International Indigenous Performing Arts Festival’, Canadian Theatre Review, 2018-04, vol.174, p 83-88.
- Conversations with the land, Jaime Black (Métis)
https://www.jaimeblackartist.com/portfolio/conversations-with-the-land/
_ ‘(...) incorporates land art, performance, and installation to explore ‘how the land holds memory, history and ceremony, and how the body responds to that (...) led a lively participatory workshop involving blankets, bodies and group improvisation’ p 85. Knowles R. ‘Because it’s ritual and we’re living: Living Ritual International Indigenous Performing Arts Festival’, Canadian Theatre Review, 2018-04, vol.174, p 83-88.
- Honanga, Hawaiki TU Productions, Maori company specializing in Kapa Haka, dance and thetre (Beez Ngarino Watt + Taane Mete).
_ ‘Mete’s ‘performance lecture’ (...) represented a different version of Maori gender roles. Less demonstrating than sharing, his workshop began with a moving account of serving his mother by helping to transport her to ‘the other side’, then shifted into a fluid solo dance based on that experience, before concluding in a workshop in which he choreographed all of us, as participant-performers, in a delicate exercise of connecting Sky and Earth worlds through a bucket and a cloud’ p 85. Knowles R. ‘Because it’s ritual and we’re living: Living Ritual International Indigenous Performing Arts Festival’, Canadian Theatre Review, 2018-04, vol.174, p 83-88.
https://www.kahawidance.org/neoindigena
_ portals to Skyworld, Earthworld and Underworld. ‘... charting through a ritual of renewal that took her through Skyworld, Earthworld and Underworld, embodying all the forms of creation by way of the sacred female Indigenous body’. p 84 Knowles R. ‘Because it’s ritual and we’re living: Living Ritual International Indigenous Performing Arts Festival’, Canadian Theatre Review, 2018-04, vol.174, p 83-88.
- Conversations with the land, Jaime Black (Métis)
https://www.jaimeblackartist.com/portfolio/conversations-with-the-land/
_ ‘(...) incorporates land art, performance, and installation to explore ‘how the land holds memory, history and ceremony, and how the body responds to that (...) led a lively participatory workshop involving blankets, bodies and group improvisation’ p 85. Knowles R. ‘Because it’s ritual and we’re living: Living Ritual International Indigenous Performing Arts Festival’, Canadian Theatre Review, 2018-04, vol.174, p 83-88.
- Honanga, Hawaiki TU Productions, Maori company specializing in Kapa Haka, dance and thetre (Beez Ngarino Watt + Taane Mete).
_ ‘Mete’s ‘performance lecture’ (...) represented a different version of Maori gender roles. Less demonstrating than sharing, his workshop began with a moving account of serving his mother by helping to transport her to ‘the other side’, then shifted into a fluid solo dance based on that experience, before concluding in a workshop in which he choreographed all of us, as participant-performers, in a delicate exercise of connecting Sky and Earth worlds through a bucket and a cloud’ p 85. Knowles R. ‘Because it’s ritual and we’re living: Living Ritual International Indigenous Performing Arts Festival’, Canadian Theatre Review, 2018-04, vol.174, p 83-88.