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Loving Strangers Swollen & Inflamed (2021)

Performance, 11 min.

Informed by the Resilience Toolkit created by Nkem Ndefo and conveyed by Char Kasza as part of the Ecologies of Transformation, and by Inflamed: Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Injustice by Rupa Marya and Raj Patel, the 11-minute performance is a research into nervous system shifts and co-regulation within the audience of a performance piece.
 

Sound, music, spoken word, text, body, and a three-meter tall puppet.

The puppet’s anthropomorphic form becomes a companion to the human body on stage.

It acts as a medium of transference between performed action and its layered implications: care, violence, violation, pain, love; and the nervous system responses they evoke in the witnessing audience.

What unfolds between the puppet and the human reverberates somatically through the viewers’ bodies.

Credits, Inspiration & Lineage
Ecologies of Transformation, Camille Barton.
The Resilience Toolkit by Nkem Ndefo, conveyed by Char Kasza.
Alice Sparkly Kat on the third house.
Inflamed by Rupa Marya & Raj Patel.
Sara Ahmed, Strange Encounters: Embodied Others in Post-Coloniality.
Oeuvre of David Graeber.
Report on covid deaths of Turkish & Surinamese:
Centraal Bureauvoor de Statistiek (CBS).
Si/Lo, (QT)BIPOC Not-Contact Improvisation and other offerings by
Joy Mariama Smith.
Ecologies of Transformation friends.
The Politics of Trauma: Somatics, Healing, and Social Justice, Staci Haines.
I Hope We Choose Love, and deeper understanding of conflict, by
Kai Cheng Thom.
Pleasure Activism, adrienne maree brown.
Then of course; Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power by Audre Lorde.
Embodied Activism (Embodied Social Justice Summit), Nkem Ndefo & Rae Johnson.
Finding Our Way podcast, Prentis Hemphill.
Non-Violent Communication course by Meenadchi.
Theatre of the Oppressed, Augusto Boal.

 
Sound Material
Sharon van Etten, “End of the World” lyrics appropriated.
Lana Del Rey, “Yayo” lyrics appropriated.
Lady Gaga, “Paparazzi” live on Capital FM.
Sara Parkman, “Ing-Maries vals”.

Photography documentation by Dora Lionstone
doralionstone.com
@doralionstoned 

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