Jun 11, 2020
Bttm Manifesto collaboration with Richard Orjis
Our long-overdue invitation to you all to participate in the Bttm Manifesto open-source doc (as link to google doc in the webpage below):
Bttm Manifesto was co-created by artists Richard Orjis and val smith in 2018 during PhD studies at AUT (Tamaki Makaurau, Aotearoa). The manifesto takes many forms, including public readings and a rotting paper version that was buried for three nights under a ring of colonial oak trees in Albert Park. Bttm reflects an emergent collaborative practice that underpins the conception of a number of projects, including Queer Pavilion.
This version of Bttm Manifesto is an open-source document. Your contributions are invited with excitement for how it might travel. Feel free to add, share, edit or shuffle at will. We also welcome any feedback, critique or suggestions on the manner in which we offer this.
You can contact us on valvalvalsmith@gmail.com, richard@richardorjis.com or as comments here
nga mihi!
Untitled performance, Arts Foundation Ball 2019
Arts Foundation Ball 2019 performance, smoko section with Richard Orjis. Just before bar staff told us that "those drinks are not for us, they are for the guests, so please do not take any more." Apologies to the bar staff who were not briefed properly on what this performance would involve. (Damn though Bollinger tastes delicious!!) #DoNotDisturb #classclash
queer walking
I graffiti-ed a 2x4 area of pixels in the middle of a digital photo that witnesses a colonial tree twig resting on top of a discarded used lube sachet. The twig and lube lay together in the hidden grassy margins of a suburban recreational park space frequented by pram pushers. A cluster fuck of material-discursive issues. And yet still they shine.
That particular twig is now part of a growing confederation of witch-sticks, wands utilised for their magical powers to transform the fucked-up-ness of judging, shaming and belittling queer sexualities.
The graffiti includes a knee jerk thought-feeling—gays are good—a gesture to counteract my own #gayshame; a marking that wishes to make my presence known; and a mapping of that iteration of queer walking through Te Wai Ōrea Western Springs Lake Park, drawing-moving with encounters, relations and ideas in flux.
Feb 26, 2018
Queer Dating Sites - locationlocationlocation
Queer Dating Sites
When:
28 Feb 12-2pm
1 March 5-7pm
2 March 12-2pm
Reminder:
This event could involve getting down on the ground, which could mean you get 'dirty'. Given this, please wear clothing and footwear which is comfortable for you.
This letter regards details of the event's locationlocationlocation.
If you looked up 412 Titirangi Road in Google Maps it would show you an image of the block of toilets that sits on the corner of Titirangi Road and South Titirangi Road. If you stand on the sidewalk outside these toilets you might be gifted with a magnificent view out to the Manukau Harbour.
This image is useful in the task of locating Queer Dating Sites. Let’s call these toilets a key marker in the search. Behind them you would see a carpark that is entered by car off South Titirangi Road. It has 21 marked spaces for vehicles. If you had been intending to drive to Queer Dating Sites you might have looked for a space to park in there. If you had been arriving by bus, train and/or foot you most likely would have entered the carpark a different way from up on the Titirangi Road Village footpath via a neat little set of stairs to the side of the toilet block.
One possible outcome though, if you had driven to the location, is that all of these 21 parking spaces may have already been taken. In that case, I would have recommended driving a bit further down South Titirangi Road and pulling in left at the Library/War Memorial Hall carpark. This carpark is listed as 500 South Titirangi Road on Google Maps. Which is interesting. Interesting in terms of property division and numbering, which is only really interesting if you are thinking about the politics of land, ownership, and this performance site. In any case, where I had hoped you would end up for the start of Queer Dating Sites (until about half an hour ago) was pushed up against the back of the Titirangi Village retail strip in behind the toilet block and next to the carpark. Does that make sense?
My plan was to be standing around the back of the Titirangi Village retail buildings to welcome you all to Queer Dating Sites. I would have been wearing a long baby-pink sequinned throw to flag myself as ‘queer’ (as an aside that feels relevant, the throw has stains and holes and has been performed in many times in Oakland CA, Dunedin and Tāmaki Makaurau). I thought that in wearing this sparkly pink throw you couldn’t possibly miss me, or miss Queer Dating Sites. After all there is nothing worse than getting lost when running late and looking for a queer performance event you plan to attend in unfamiliar suburbia (from experience). Driving the creation of these location details was a strong desire that not one of you would get lost, miss the event or feel unsafe in hostile homophobic territory. But Google Maps had complicated the numbering system for the area which was ironically invisibilising the site I wanted you to find. Argh.
In the interests of precise directions then, I was going to tell you that if you had met with a family of chickens in your search for Queer Dating Sites you would know that you had gone too far. With the chickens in check, I would have warned you to back up the metal driveway a little bit and wait for me in the carpark until the exact starting time. As it turns out all of this information regarding the location of Queer Dating Sites is no longer current. So, there is no need for you to click on the following links to find me. Unless you want to look closer at the image of the toilet blocks. Which would be perfectly relate-able. In that case click away.
412 Titirangi Road, Titirangi
500 South Titirangi Road, Titirangi
Before addressing what occurred half an hour ago, and with further regards to the location of Queer Dating Sites, I want to tell you that after welcoming you all I had planned to lead you past the chicken whanau and past the lease holder employee carparks. I was going to invite you all in behind and underneath the retail spaces, buildings that would extend two stories above us, to experience the invisibilised b-side of the affluence of Titirangi Village. As part of our time together in that semi-covered dark and damp site I had prepared for encounters with security guards, wild cats, and homeless residents. I had intentionally not asked permission of the retail space lease holders or the property owners as I was interested to see what would happen in terms of enforcement, boundaries and transgressions (sorry Lydia and Fringe, I know I have been bad).
I had wanted to reflect on our embodiments and experiences in this ignored, excluded and forbidden(?) suburban space. I wanted to consider places like this in predominantly white rich neighbourhoods that are mostly hidden, and generally considered to be dirty, ugly, gross, filthy, and not yet* worthy of attention, touch, affection or care (yet* in the sense that the space is not-yet seen to be potentially profitable). I had become particularly fond of the things that had been discarded in this dusty space, thrown ‘away’ as ‘rubbish’. If you are friends with me you will probably know I am not ashamed of my love of detritus, a marginalized subgroup of >>> things <<<. I’ve always had a softening touch for the underdog. I am pointing here to a perceived correlation between conventional perceptions of how things and bodies relate, normative pedestrian behaviours in urban spaces, and the socio-psychic-physical patterns of homophobia, transphobia, racism and misogyny. So, yeah, I was curious about how it might feel for us all to hang out together in that particular site with its' pretty little piles of cigarette butts, cans, glass, weeds and wheelie bins, cracked chairs, dripping pipes, flourishes of tagging and bright security lights.
I guess you are still wondering though what happened half an hour ago that led to the irrelevancy of the location information. That story begins a couple of weeks ago when I made contact with Te Kawerau ā Maki to consult over an acknowledgement of the site, check in about whether my plans for this event were tika with tangata whenua, and make sure I wasn’t going to interfere with the rāhui over Waitākere Ranges. In visits to the site I had noticed a number of kauri trees nearby to where I planned for Queer Dating Sites to take place. Some of the site floor was concreted which I knew to be safe for the trees in terms of walking, but most of the terrain consisted of dry earth that led out to the forest floor, a strip of bush where numerous kauri stood in between the Village buildings and the Titirangi Library and War Memorial Hall.
In the leadup to the event I had been thinking about the relationship between kauri dieback, manawhenua, and the concepts of ‘property ownership’ and ‘retail investment’. I was also thinking about what it means to be a pākehā artist creating work on this contested ‘property’ site. One particular aspect I was considering, was an ethics of accountability and the Coleman family who ‘owned’ 408-416 Titirangi Road and 490 South Titirangi Road from 1947 until recently, when they sold the site to Rotcol Enterprises Titirangi for ‘development’.
Titirangi retail investment for development or long term hold
This is not the end of the half-an-hour-ago story, but let's jump back into my imagined forthcoming event anyway. Maybe we could have admired the space and >>> things <<< together, as a kind of ‘queering’? Perhaps we might have even moved towards the possibility of an intimate encounter with the site?
I imagine these intimate encounters as dates. Maybe a romantic date if those kinds of feelings arose, but not necessarily. Maybe the site would end up friend-zoning us anyways. I wouldn’t be surprised given my flirtatious presumptions. In any case, I had hoped to announce whatever happened in the encounters to be a collective queering of space. And in this same line of thinking, I also wanted to name the site a Queer Space, where queer behaviour was welcomed. But these kinds of anticipatory desires brought me right back to contemplating the ramifications of the event in terms of respect, kauri dieback, manawhenua, ‘property ownership’ and ‘retail investment’, my own whiteness, and the very colonial implications of naming this event as a queering of space, and the site a Queer Space. You see my predicament, right? My event is problematic. Whichever way I look at it, my practice in association with this particular Titirangi site invites the shady histories of the crown's land deals, dodgy Auckland City Council transactions, the impacts of colonization on local iwi, local ongoing racism and enforcement of Western ideals, AND the current urgent environmental situation of kauri dieback.
Most notably, my decision to park my physical association with the sitetonight was cemented when Waitākere Rāhui confirmed half an hour ago that walking through there is not safe for the kauri nearby since their roots extend up to 30 meters underground (!). All hail the power of tendrils!
I want to reiterate the sensitivity and vulnerability of the whenua and taiao of the Waitākere ranges that Waitākere Rāhui and Te Kawerau ā Maki are working to protect and care for. I don’t want to be part of a pattern of disturbance, where the land is being damaged by folks like me who might think that what I do won’t harm anything because I am just one person, or I am a harmless eco-liberal hippy or whatever (read whiteness). Cos yeah, that's a BS irresponsible and short-sighted pov.
So I’m writing to you to let you know that Queer Dating Sites is not going to be performed where I thought it would be and that I am yet to confirm another site. But likely it will be inside an institutional space, probably a concrete walled room at AUT on St Pauls Street in city central where I am currently enrolled as a PhD student in the Art and Design department. Hopefully that is not too depressing a vision and hoping you still attend the event ;). Stay tuned for confirmations on Queer Dating Sites' locationlocationlocation in the next 48 hours.
Kia kaha
#RespectTheRahui
Waitākere Rāhui video
x val
This image is useful in the task of locating Queer Dating Sites. Let’s call these toilets a key marker in the search. Behind them you would see a carpark that is entered by car off South Titirangi Road. It has 21 marked spaces for vehicles. If you had been intending to drive to Queer Dating Sites you might have looked for a space to park in there. If you had been arriving by bus, train and/or foot you most likely would have entered the carpark a different way from up on the Titirangi Road Village footpath via a neat little set of stairs to the side of the toilet block.
One possible outcome though, if you had driven to the location, is that all of these 21 parking spaces may have already been taken. In that case, I would have recommended driving a bit further down South Titirangi Road and pulling in left at the Library/War Memorial Hall carpark. This carpark is listed as 500 South Titirangi Road on Google Maps. Which is interesting. Interesting in terms of property division and numbering, which is only really interesting if you are thinking about the politics of land, ownership, and this performance site. In any case, where I had hoped you would end up for the start of Queer Dating Sites (until about half an hour ago) was pushed up against the back of the Titirangi Village retail strip in behind the toilet block and next to the carpark. Does that make sense?
My plan was to be standing around the back of the Titirangi Village retail buildings to welcome you all to Queer Dating Sites. I would have been wearing a long baby-pink sequinned throw to flag myself as ‘queer’ (as an aside that feels relevant, the throw has stains and holes and has been performed in many times in Oakland CA, Dunedin and Tāmaki Makaurau). I thought that in wearing this sparkly pink throw you couldn’t possibly miss me, or miss Queer Dating Sites. After all there is nothing worse than getting lost when running late and looking for a queer performance event you plan to attend in unfamiliar suburbia (from experience). Driving the creation of these location details was a strong desire that not one of you would get lost, miss the event or feel unsafe in hostile homophobic territory. But Google Maps had complicated the numbering system for the area which was ironically invisibilising the site I wanted you to find. Argh.
In the interests of precise directions then, I was going to tell you that if you had met with a family of chickens in your search for Queer Dating Sites you would know that you had gone too far. With the chickens in check, I would have warned you to back up the metal driveway a little bit and wait for me in the carpark until the exact starting time. As it turns out all of this information regarding the location of Queer Dating Sites is no longer current. So, there is no need for you to click on the following links to find me. Unless you want to look closer at the image of the toilet blocks. Which would be perfectly relate-able. In that case click away.
412 Titirangi Road, Titirangi
500 South Titirangi Road, Titirangi
Before addressing what occurred half an hour ago, and with further regards to the location of Queer Dating Sites, I want to tell you that after welcoming you all I had planned to lead you past the chicken whanau and past the lease holder employee carparks. I was going to invite you all in behind and underneath the retail spaces, buildings that would extend two stories above us, to experience the invisibilised b-side of the affluence of Titirangi Village. As part of our time together in that semi-covered dark and damp site I had prepared for encounters with security guards, wild cats, and homeless residents. I had intentionally not asked permission of the retail space lease holders or the property owners as I was interested to see what would happen in terms of enforcement, boundaries and transgressions (sorry Lydia and Fringe, I know I have been bad).
I had wanted to reflect on our embodiments and experiences in this ignored, excluded and forbidden(?) suburban space. I wanted to consider places like this in predominantly white rich neighbourhoods that are mostly hidden, and generally considered to be dirty, ugly, gross, filthy, and not yet* worthy of attention, touch, affection or care (yet* in the sense that the space is not-yet seen to be potentially profitable). I had become particularly fond of the things that had been discarded in this dusty space, thrown ‘away’ as ‘rubbish’. If you are friends with me you will probably know I am not ashamed of my love of detritus, a marginalized subgroup of >>> things <<<. I’ve always had a softening touch for the underdog. I am pointing here to a perceived correlation between conventional perceptions of how things and bodies relate, normative pedestrian behaviours in urban spaces, and the socio-psychic-physical patterns of homophobia, transphobia, racism and misogyny. So, yeah, I was curious about how it might feel for us all to hang out together in that particular site with its' pretty little piles of cigarette butts, cans, glass, weeds and wheelie bins, cracked chairs, dripping pipes, flourishes of tagging and bright security lights.
I guess you are still wondering though what happened half an hour ago that led to the irrelevancy of the location information. That story begins a couple of weeks ago when I made contact with Te Kawerau ā Maki to consult over an acknowledgement of the site, check in about whether my plans for this event were tika with tangata whenua, and make sure I wasn’t going to interfere with the rāhui over Waitākere Ranges. In visits to the site I had noticed a number of kauri trees nearby to where I planned for Queer Dating Sites to take place. Some of the site floor was concreted which I knew to be safe for the trees in terms of walking, but most of the terrain consisted of dry earth that led out to the forest floor, a strip of bush where numerous kauri stood in between the Village buildings and the Titirangi Library and War Memorial Hall.
In the leadup to the event I had been thinking about the relationship between kauri dieback, manawhenua, and the concepts of ‘property ownership’ and ‘retail investment’. I was also thinking about what it means to be a pākehā artist creating work on this contested ‘property’ site. One particular aspect I was considering, was an ethics of accountability and the Coleman family who ‘owned’ 408-416 Titirangi Road and 490 South Titirangi Road from 1947 until recently, when they sold the site to Rotcol Enterprises Titirangi for ‘development’.
Titirangi retail investment for development or long term hold
This is not the end of the half-an-hour-ago story, but let's jump back into my imagined forthcoming event anyway. Maybe we could have admired the space and >>> things <<< together, as a kind of ‘queering’? Perhaps we might have even moved towards the possibility of an intimate encounter with the site?
I imagine these intimate encounters as dates. Maybe a romantic date if those kinds of feelings arose, but not necessarily. Maybe the site would end up friend-zoning us anyways. I wouldn’t be surprised given my flirtatious presumptions. In any case, I had hoped to announce whatever happened in the encounters to be a collective queering of space. And in this same line of thinking, I also wanted to name the site a Queer Space, where queer behaviour was welcomed. But these kinds of anticipatory desires brought me right back to contemplating the ramifications of the event in terms of respect, kauri dieback, manawhenua, ‘property ownership’ and ‘retail investment’, my own whiteness, and the very colonial implications of naming this event as a queering of space, and the site a Queer Space. You see my predicament, right? My event is problematic. Whichever way I look at it, my practice in association with this particular Titirangi site invites the shady histories of the crown's land deals, dodgy Auckland City Council transactions, the impacts of colonization on local iwi, local ongoing racism and enforcement of Western ideals, AND the current urgent environmental situation of kauri dieback.
Most notably, my decision to park my physical association with the sitetonight was cemented when Waitākere Rāhui confirmed half an hour ago that walking through there is not safe for the kauri nearby since their roots extend up to 30 meters underground (!). All hail the power of tendrils!
I want to reiterate the sensitivity and vulnerability of the whenua and taiao of the Waitākere ranges that Waitākere Rāhui and Te Kawerau ā Maki are working to protect and care for. I don’t want to be part of a pattern of disturbance, where the land is being damaged by folks like me who might think that what I do won’t harm anything because I am just one person, or I am a harmless eco-liberal hippy or whatever (read whiteness). Cos yeah, that's a BS irresponsible and short-sighted pov.
So I’m writing to you to let you know that Queer Dating Sites is not going to be performed where I thought it would be and that I am yet to confirm another site. But likely it will be inside an institutional space, probably a concrete walled room at AUT on St Pauls Street in city central where I am currently enrolled as a PhD student in the Art and Design department. Hopefully that is not too depressing a vision and hoping you still attend the event ;). Stay tuned for confirmations on Queer Dating Sites' locationlocationlocation in the next 48 hours.
Kia kaha
#RespectTheRahui
Waitākere Rāhui video
x val
Sep 28, 2017
Enough - whY Chromozone Tempo Dance Festival
I was invited to participate this year in whY Chromozone, a "Variety Showcase" for Tempo Dance Festival. I'm not quite sure if I fit the context though, as the programme explicitly asks these questions, which I find perplexing and intimidating and annoying:
What does it mean to be male? What does masculinity look like? And what does that one Y chromosome have to do with it anyway?
But I guess I wanted to contribute my current thinking around non-binary genders and queerness anyways, and see what comes of it all.
I would love to see you there!
I'm a non-binary queer femme btw!
Saturday 07 October 830pm
Sunday 08 October 630pm
Enough Is Enough – Donna Summer & Barbara Streisand
Am I Not Pretty Enough - Kasey Chambers
Never Enough – The Cure
Never Enough – One Direction
Just Can’t Get Enough – Depeche Mode
Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough - Michael Jackson
Ain’t No Mountain High Enough - Tammi Terrell & Marvin Gaye
You’re Enough - Carpenters
Are You Strong Enough To Be My Man – Sheryl Crow
Can’t Get Enough Of Your Love Baby – Barry White
Can’t Get Enough – J. Cole ft. Trey Songz
Can’t Get Enough – Supergroove
Can’t Get Enough – Bad Company
Queer Enough For You? – Mukilteo Fairies
Is That Enough – Sons of Zion ft. Aaradhna
I Am Enough For Myself – Sinead O’Connor
Cast
they/them/theirs
Music
Anonymous vaporwave track pirated from a gay porn site
Credits
Choreographic Thinking – Sarah-Louise Collins, Caitlin Davey
Design Consultant – Leyton Glen
Thought Contribution – Creek Waddington
Oct 3, 2016
Meiosis
Conceived by val smith, developed in collaboration with Kristian Larsen
Performance by valvalval smithsmithsmith and Krstn Lrsn
12 - 4pm, Saturday February 13th 2016
Te Uru Gallery, Titirangi
Meiosis can be divided into nine stages, separated
in half through the first time the cell divides and the second time it divides.
1.
Interphase
2.
Prophase I
3.
Metaphase I
4.
Anaphase I
5.
Telophase I and cytokinesis
6.
Prophase II
7.
Metaphase II
8.
Anaphase II
9.
Telophase II and cytokinesis
During these nine stages we might see cells,
or their chromosomes and chromatids, pairing up, lining up, pulling apart, or
pinching in the middle.
-
Sourced from www.yourgenome.org/facts/what-is-meiosis
As part of a
live art festival ‘They Come From Far Away’
which ran from 10-13th February at Te Uru Gallery in Titirangi, myself,
as valvalval smithsmithsmith, and fellow choreographic artist, as Krstn Lrsn, engaged
in a 4 hour process of comprehensively transitioning to become each other. The intention being honest and whole-hearted, that
Krstn Lrsn would become valvalval smithsmithsmith, and valvalval
smithsmithsmith would become Krstn Lrsn. With this intention we were exploring an kinaesthetic engagement with the question: How might we
become each other?
Meiosis is not representation, pretending,
reiteration, documentation or demonstration.
Meiosis is act/acts/acting.
Meiosis is social signs and
symbols through the body.
Meiosis travels through time to understand
who the other is / is not.
Meiosis is strictly a response to
invisibility and a feeling of lack.
Meiosis is dance. Meiosis is not
your dance. Meiosis is micropolitical.
>excerpt from performance manifesto/handout<
In the lead up to the event, Kristian and I discussed strategies that might be useful in a 4-hour process of becoming each other. We predominantly
talked about somatic and performance methodologies, but also fielded other ideas such as swapping
Facebook accounts / identities (for research purposes), and explored reading text sent to us from other people, and i.e. in order to practice being each other.
I was interested in how Krstn’s process
and methods for becoming me, might be quite different from my own. Would this reflect our separate (and shared)
histories of improvisation, dance and movement forms?
In order to know and become Krstn, I was thinking of dropping into an embodied listening practice to trace his feeling tones, anatomical personalities and other complex stylistic features. A practice that perhaps hopes to better understand who he is, in order that I might embody that ‘who’. I was imagining a kinaesthetically focused practice of empathy to comprehend the subjectivities of ‘Krstn’, sensing identifiers and signifiers as they emerged in the moment. Before the event took place, I was completely convinced that this task to comprehensively become each other was absolutely possible.
I am interested in how this video documentation reads. When I watch it, I see Krstn and I working with quite different strategies. We approach the task with distinct tones and tempos. Due to the overlapping programme of events, the video documentation only occurred for the first 10 minutes and then again towards the end of our 4-hour process, so the video misses other ways of working that we engaged with. Over the span of time we worked in relation to various different spaces and people we encountered. The video shows how we started together, and some opening propositions that emerged between us. Over time these shifted and developed.
In order to know and become Krstn, I was thinking of dropping into an embodied listening practice to trace his feeling tones, anatomical personalities and other complex stylistic features. A practice that perhaps hopes to better understand who he is, in order that I might embody that ‘who’. I was imagining a kinaesthetically focused practice of empathy to comprehend the subjectivities of ‘Krstn’, sensing identifiers and signifiers as they emerged in the moment. Before the event took place, I was completely convinced that this task to comprehensively become each other was absolutely possible.
Te Uru's video documentation of the work
I am interested in how this video documentation reads. When I watch it, I see Krstn and I working with quite different strategies. We approach the task with distinct tones and tempos. Due to the overlapping programme of events, the video documentation only occurred for the first 10 minutes and then again towards the end of our 4-hour process, so the video misses other ways of working that we engaged with. Over the span of time we worked in relation to various different spaces and people we encountered. The video shows how we started together, and some opening propositions that emerged between us. Over time these shifted and developed.
I am wondering about the ethical implications of the given task.
It is interesting for me to
consider the various normative and gendered assumptions potentially embedded in
a process that relies on the body and its senses as the sole source of information when
considering who another human being is. What kinds of identifying impressions might
emerge through an osmotic process of sensing, listening and tuning? How real
and concrete will these impressions be? Will they align with the self-identifying
language used by the other person to describe themselves? In reflection,
I am thinking about the potentiality of the non-typical neurological activations
that some somatic practices present, as a pathway that might lead into non-normative
identity-forming/unforming socialisations. What are the metaphysical implications
of getting to know someone else through kinaesthetic means?
“Osmosis is the spontaneous net movement
of solvent molecules through a semi-permeable membrane into a region of higher
solute concentration, in the direction that tends to equalize the solute
concentrations on the two sides.”
During the event we shifted
between sensing and talking. Sensing through touch, closeness, being-with; talking
through noticing, awareness and the sharing of insights and embodied experiences.
This shift between sensing and talking unintentionally invited a certain kind of
engagement from exhibition attendees. People stood and watched, sat and listened,
asked questions, came and went, took photos, and came in close or stayed at a
distance. We responded to these spatialized engagements in various ways
depending on our mood in the moment; verbal invitations to join
us, walking away, looking at or seeing with, asking questions, staying with, and
hiding from.
I was interested in the 4 hour
time frame we had given ourselves to do the task. How long will it take to become
you? What durations and stages would emerge? Can we sustain interest and energy
in the process over time? How would we navigate everyday human needs through the
time? Would we measure time, and how would we experience time from within the
process?
We started our performance
process in Te Uru’s main floor bathrooms complex where there is a wide wooden bench in a
kind-of-foyer outside of the designated male, female and disabled toilets. From
there we had decided to not put any restraints on where the process might take
us physically (as well as psychically, emotionally and philosophically), and
ended up moving through the gallery to occupy various spaces for lengths of time including the
platform at the top of the back stairwell, and the cafe next door.
 |
| photo by Christina Houghton |
Thankyou, we had lovely moments with
people as they came, went and drifted past our 4 hour long distance. In
particular, I enjoyed our time with Katherine Tate. It was super lovely, connected and felt
expansive in terms of how we were dealing with the question of performance
engagement. And, I will never forget our shared experience of Sean Curham's
work - Gentle Lying on the Bonnet of a Popular Car - it was super erotic, and deeply relaxing! Rrrrrmmm rrrrmmm.
Unfortunately, I truly failed to become Kristian, yet I feel like I know him in my body a little more microperceptually and intimately, which I think is, in itself, a small success.
;)
Unfortunately, I truly failed to become Kristian, yet I feel like I know him in my body a little more microperceptually and intimately, which I think is, in itself, a small success.
;)
As
I write above, in a text to a friend who wasn't able to make the
physical performance, I failed the brief. I failed it utterly. Not in
any one moment did I feel like I was becoming, or had become, Krstn.
Rather, I felt like, in attempting to become Krstn, I had managed to
become more myself. I had managed to better understand who I was,
or perhaps more accurately, I had managed to feel more of myself
through the process. This is regardless of whether those embodied
experiences of myself are defining of valvalval or not. Perhaps in a
small yet significant validation of this outcome I might add another val
onto the end of my name - to become valvalvalval.
:)
 |
| Photo by Christina Houghton of Krstn and valvalval participating in Sean Curham's Gentle Lying on the Bonnet of a Popular Car |
Postscript:
Whilst drawing heavily on post-structuralist, feminist
and queer philosophies of performativity, becoming and affect from theorists such as
Judith Butler, Eve Sedgwick, Jose Munoz, Gilles Deleuze and Brian Massumi, Meiosis is
firmly rooted in technologies and techniques of dance, somatics and postmodern
performance practices. Meiosis advocates for an addressing of HOW we might
become each other (or more of ourselves) through the technologies of embodiment and
choreographic thinking. I repeat; this is not a demonstration or an idea.
“I have been studying Krstn Lrsn’s profile page on Facebook
in order to suck his humour and gendered being into my nervous system and fluids.
Later into the process, I will retrieve all of this digital and electronic data and reconstitute
it through my entire self."
Do
signifiers applied to who we are, in the form of names, adequately capture
the ‘wholeness’ or ‘reality’ of who we 'truly' are?
Disclaimer:
'val smith' is a self-described gender. val smith and Kristian Larsen are in no way
stable identities, rather they are in a constant and fluid state of reinterpretation of
themselves through daily acts of sexual repetition.
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