#012. Game pollination

Lauren Alexander

After-effects of a multi-disciplinary, multi-cultural performance workshop

Performance as an artistic medium, can be perceived by visual artists, as it did to me, as vague and unfamiliar territory. With my everyday work and mode of production being executed behind a computer screen, and tools of production being connected to software packages and USB sticks. I tend to forget that my mouse clicking fingers are connected to hands, arms, a beating chest, and a large living, moving organism. More importantly I forget that my own body may indeed have the potential to function as part of, and an extension of, my research and work as visual artist and designer.

I was reminded of this during a week-long workshop which took place in Enschede this month. The workshop called, Ritual, Reality and Performance was organised in collaboration with a music, theate and dance festival called “The Other Sudan” held in the Netherlands this month and the Dutch Art Institute, Fine Arts Masters in Enschede. The workshop, a spin-off of the festival, was lead by Indian, Amsterdam based performance artist, Monali Meher and Sudanese choreographer, Stephen Ochella.

Monali and Stephen provided polar perspectives on the topic of performance. Stephen’s dance performances are lively interpretations of traditional African dance combined with contemporary dance elements. He focuses specifically on the connection and sometimes disconnection between different types of traditional dance forms from different areas in Sudan. Although his performances are based on specific Sudanese elements they, are enjoyable for an international audience, because of their explosive sense of movement and rhythm.

Monali, on the other hand uses references from her own Indian background, but uses performance as a conceptual medium to speak, amongst other concepts, about her own cultural hybridity. She uses her body in her work, usually performing solo ritual activities, for hours at a time.

The contrasting methods of working of the two artists were interesting to compare. During the workshop we took movement and dance classes from Stephen. While Monali gave a demonstration of breathing exercises and combinations taken from elements of yoga and other traditional rituals. For both very different sessions we were asked to create our own sequence of movement, sound and gesture in an attempt to create our own small ritual performance. Participants were then asked to combine rituals, in order to form a larger performance sequence.

Finding myself, a South African in a group together with two Sudanese artists and one Georgian artist, we quickly came to sharing stories about how performative actions in our various cultures are able to function as story telling ways of communication. We found interesting similarities and connections in the way that childrens games are used to communicate often without the use of language. We decided to perform these games as they would be played in the playground, as a working process. We included the South African ritual witch doctors, or “sangomas” use to tell the future, a bone throwing action. We used a Sudanese game, which is played at night, when a bone is thrown to an opposing team in the hopes that they will not find it in the dark. And a Georgian rhythmic counting and clapping game. We merged these various games in order to form a looping sequence of movements, rhythms, including clapping, counting and bone throwing. Our combined ritual was performed as the Rijks Museum in Enschede on the 6th of November, a personal, and rather subjective account was published by a journalist from the local Enschede newspaper.