I need a metrocard to move from A to B. I buy one from a lady. She gives me the card. She explains that I can only use the card together with certain other things. I start reading the descriptions. For this route required: an octopus. For this route required: a pelican. For this route required: a catfish. For this route required: a dove. I get confused, but as an adapting human being, I make sure I arrange a 8 legged beetle, because that is what I need for the next route. I go out and search for this specific beetle. I finally encounter the beetle, catch it, and hold it. Before I know it, it bites in my ear lobe. It puts its huge beak tight around my ear. It hurts so much I start to scream and panic. Someone comes and takes the beetle. When it comes back it gives me a piece and says: here, now you can travel. I ask where is the rest? The man laughs, this laugh that butchers can have when they see a little child being scared by all the death meat in the shop, butchers can put their evil smiles. They sometimes seem to laugh to intimidate and overpower the little ones, by showing how cruel they are and that the kid is silly being scared by the act of just a little violence. Just a little act of killing. The once colourful beetle, lays now on a cutting board into pieces. The pain in my earlobe is gone, I can travel now, but the beautiful beetle is death. Again, a little act of violence.
(A scene of one of my dreams)
Gloria Anzaldua. “The struggle is inner: Chicano, indio, American Indian, mojado, mexicano, immigrant Latino, Anglo in power, working class Anglo, Black, Asian--our psyches resemble the border towns and are populated by the same people. The struggle has always been inner, and is played out in outer terrains. Awareness of our situation must come before inner changes, which in turn come before changes in society. Nothing happens in the "real" world unless it first happens in the images in our heads.” She was an American scholar of Chicana cultural theory, feminist theory, and queer theory.
How to be right in time? Not past my time? Not in front of my time? But exactly in the middle of the time I live in? “There is a conversation that only these people at this time can have. Find it!” To be specific Adrienne Maree Brown wrote this quote, in the book Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds. This quote made me move through my topics. How can I find the topics that only can be talked about at this time?
Inspired on her I have been researching “Is it possible to show the rhythm of the feminine body to the world? How to make ears really listen? Would this make the world a more soft and solid place?” I’m realising I am hiding behind a wall of comfort, surviving of daily life and society. How can I stop my own hiding, and with that the hiding of many other people? Hiding behind little acts of violence? How clean are my own hands? Is the feminine rhythm a little less violent than the masculine rhythm?
We extend a warm invitation to all women and men to disobey the patriarchal commands that have limited and repressed bodies, spaces and time, and have contaminated movements and social organisations with machismo erasing from the memories of both women and men, that we are born different but equal, born to live in community.
The previous period, I realised that a big group of artists and creators move from place of drama, pain and trauma. As a framework to understand trauma better, I used Bessel van der Kolk his book “The body keeps the score”. He stated “Being able to feel safe with other people is probably the single most important aspect of mental health; Safe connections are fundamental to meaningful and satisfying lives.” He inspires me a lot because making works and share them with the world I need to be safe. This is still often an exception for many people in this world. This made me questions: How can I make works that breath safety and bravery?
This period I have been working on
1. The ancient buzz of nature
- Insects inspiration. The cricket house project
2. Lumps
3. Weather forecasts: high, low and under pressure
4. The Loofa ceremony
5. Open Studio
6. Dead Sea Recovery
7. Sesame open now!
How do the projects relate to each other?
In the processes of the previous months I could experience a trend. The hiding, the biting and then deciding. When a challenge comes I tend to hide, research, make things alone, develop first my ideas and material alone. Then I show it to my surrounding. I share pieces. I bite “back” with an answer to the things that the worlds throughs to me. I fight back in a peaceful way, sometimes not so peaceful. After the showing. I get feedback, people bite me back. I get questions. It is thrown back to me again. I use it to in the end show well thought decisions to the world.
I also see this tendency in things that are still outspoken in this world. Also how many social movements start. First the hiding, then the biting then a new way of deciding is offered to the world.
The feminine bug that hides. The feminine bug that bites. The feminine bug that decides.