Feminismos Antipatriarcales and Poetic Disobedience
9 and 10 June 2021 via zoom, with invited speakers: Lukas Avendaño (Mexico), Paola Marugan (UAM-X, Mexico), Bertha Diaz (Ecuador), and Carolina Rocha/Dandara Suburbana (Brasil).
This event was a collective exploration of different acts, techniques, postures and spells actively affirming feminist resistance against patriarchy and extractive colonialism. It was inspired by practices of knowledge production and artistic creation developed by contemporary artists based in Latin America.
The event was conceived in a collaborative mode over a series of conversations attended by a transnational group of artists and researchers, including the invited speakers. This project moves across different languages and forms of knowledge-sharing, with the aim to challenge monolingualism and experimenting with embodied and situated approaches to translation and writing.
Organised by Giulia Palladini, Giulia Casalini, Helena Botto and Cristina Fernandes Rosa (University of Roehampton, UK) in conversation with Paola Marugan (UAM-X, Mexico), Bertha Diaz (independent researcher, Ecuador), Carolina Rocha/Dandara Suburbana (Brasil). Translation provided by Calu.
A list of suggested readings and resources can be found at this link.
‘La Utopía de la Mariposa’
In conversation with Lukas Avendaño – 9 June 2021
Screening of the documentary ‘La Utopía de la Mariposa’ (directed by Miguel J. Crespo, 30 mins, 2019) around the life and performance work of muxe artist Lukas Avendaño, followed by discussion.
Lukas Avendaño is one of the most internationally recognised artists in the Muxe community. Poetry, dance and anthropology are the tools they use to enunciate and express themselves. On the 10th of May 2018, their brother Bruno disappeared in Tehuantepec, Oaxaca, Mexico. Since then, finding justice for the more than 83,000 missing people in Mexico has been Lukas’s utopia.
Conversation from Oaxaca, Mexico, with Lukas Avendaño and further contributions by Miguel J. Crespo, moderated by Dr. Giulia Palladini. Translation Spanish-English provided by Calu.
‘Laboratory of poetic emergence / Laboratório de emergência poética’
with and by Carolina Rocha/Dandara Suburbana and Paola Marugan – 10 June 2021
This session hosted an experiment in collective translation of a series of poems performed live by Dandara Suburbana. They were framed by an introduction by Paola Marugan and a presentation of the theoretical and political work of Dandara’s practice, which is rooted in the tradition of Candomblé and in a radical reclaiming of the epistemological uses of magic. Exploring the practice of collective note-taking, the session was a laboratory of ‘poetic emergence’ with the aim of allowing words to be passed on, be transformed and resonate within a space of collective care and invention.
‘To activate the act of writing: Approaches to the sense from the senses / Activar(se) (en las) escrituras: Aproximarse al sentido desde los sentidos’
with and by Bertha Diaz – 10 June 2021
What if we provoke the advent of writing from its sensitive antechamber?
This workshop consisted of a pre-text (and a text in progress) to share tools that accompany us to get out of the dominant ways in which our acts of hearing, observing, tasting and perceiving operate in the broad sense. These tools connect us otherwise with the reality that we inhabit, and allow us to question and expand our usual modes of writing.
If we conceive writing as choral spaces, a visual and spatial potency and an expanding aural power become tangible in them. We will approach the act of writing as a way of weaving that makes visible invisible threads by proposing alternative forms of treating files and sources.
This workshop provided a space to explore acts of writing as poetic-political body practices, where writings are always extension-expressions of particular bodies, capable of provoking precise affections-resonances. Blurring boundaries between practice and theory, in this workshop we practiced exercises to de-automate the senses and activate experimental writing processes. These ultimately build bridges with and between the participants’ research.
Translation provided by Calu.
Biographies:
Lukas Avendaño’s contribution to Mexican performing arts (recognised by their status as a member of Sistema Nacional de Creadores de Arte) focuses on issues of ethnicity, gender, sexuality and human rights. They call their choreographic work ‘anthropology applied to the stage’. Among their most relevant performance works: El Corral (2001), Madame Gabia (2005), Réquiem Para un Alcaraván (2012), No Soy Persona. Soy Mariposa (2012) and Buscando a Bruno (2018). Lukas has presented their work internationally in festivals and academic contexts. Their work conjures spaces of thinking across non-hegemonic epistemologies, exploring stubbornness, the archaeology of memory, and the performance of everyday life.
Helena Botto is a performer, a maker and PhD candidate at University of Roehampton (FCT studentship holder). In her practice-as-research thesis she has been exploring the performativity of acts of populist political rhetoric (post 11/9), ways of fictional writing, and the thinking of democracy as an ‘improper’, monstrous and dissonant space for radical inclusiveness. She is currently part of a Norface Network funded research project on populism, entitled POPBACK.
Calu is a gender fierce Latin American activist passionate about decolonising identities, anti-oppression work, inclusive intimacy and creative pleasure. They have been facilitating queer events and spaces for personal and communal growth for more than 10 years. Their story has been shaped by internal and external migration journeys that have led them to advocate for body autonomy, LGBTQ+ rights and intersectional feminism which explores perspectives from community and indigenous based movements. Calu also brings awareness to power and privilege dynamics and brings a decolonising approach to the spaces they facilitate.
Giulia Casalini is an independent curator-artist based in London, currently a PhD candidate at the University of Roehampton. Her study analyses artists and collectives from across the globe whose live art practices have been informed by queer-feminist politics, aesthetics and ethics beyond the Anglo-American canons. She is the co-founder and artistic director of the non-profit arts organisation Arts Feminism Queer (CUNTemporary, 2012-2020).
Born in Ecuador, Bertha Díaz is a researcher in the field of performing arts. She holds a Master’s degree in Performing Arts from the Université Libre de Bruxelles, Seville and Paris VIII and a PhD in Research in Arts, Humanities and Education (University of Castilla-La Mancha). She investigates the relationship between body(s)-writing(s)-thinking. With Andrés Santos, she co-directs the theatre collective RodezAlhampa, based in the city of Cuenca, Ecuador. She is co-editor of the journal Sycorax and a member of the Ibero-American research group ‘Artea’ and the ‘Artea Archive of Live Art’. She has also been a member of ‘El Sótano-colectivo teatral’ since 2009. She has participated as a curator, educator, rapporteur and critical observer in several festivals/venues in Mexico, Panama, Colombia, Cuba, Spain, Canada and Ecuador. Since 2010, she has also worked as a lecturer at several universities. Her publications include Cartografía de la Danza Moderna y Contemporánea de Ecuador (II volumes, 2015) published by El Apuntador, where she is co-editor and author of several essays.
Dr. Cristina Fernandes Rosa is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Roehampton’s department of Dance and a member of its Centre for Dance Research. She also serves on the editorial board of DSA’s Studies in Dance: Theories & Practices and the board of PoP Moves network. Born and raised in Brazil, Rosa earned her PhD from UCLA’s department of World Arts and Culture/Dance, then taught at various universities in the USA, namely UC Riverside, FSU Tallahassee, Tufts University, Reed College and CalArts. Rosa was also a visiting professor at Universidade de Brasilia (Brazil, 2011) and a research fellow at Freie Universität’s IRC Interweaving Performance Cultures (Germany, 2012-13). Rosa’s scholarship has been published internationally in peer-reviewed journals, edited volumes, and the monograph Brazilian Bodies and their Choreographies of Identification (2015). Her current research projects, Movements of Sustainability, explores intersections across diverse bodily arts, epistemologies of the South and cripistemologies.
Paola Marugan is a researcher, curator, educator and independent cultural producer. Her research is dedicated to feminist epistemologies, cultural studies and whiteness studies. She is currently a PhD student in the Feminist Studies programme of Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana -Xochimilco -UAM-X (Mexico City). She is a member of the ‘Feminist Network Red Feminismo(s) Cultura y Poder. Diálogos desde el Sur’ and of the research group ‘Epistemologias, narrativas e políticas afetivas feministas’ of the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul (Brazil) – PUCRS. She has worked as visiting professor at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya – UOC, and curated projects at Museo Universitario del Chopo (Mexico City), Museo de la Ciudad de México, Caixa Cultural (Rio de Janeiro), Goethe Institute (Salvador de Bahia), Filmotecas in Madrid, Barcelona and Valencia, Caixa Forum (Barcelona), Mercat de les Flors Theatre (Barcelona). Web: https://paolamaruganricart.net/
Dr. Giulia Palladini is a researcher and critical theorist, currently working as Senior Lecturer in Drama, Theatre and Performance at the University of Roehampton. Her research addresses the politics and erotics of artistic production, social and cultural history from a Marxist and feminist perspective. Her most recent work explores social reproduction, political imagination and the idea of militant abundance. She has worked as a theorist and dramaturg in a number of critical and artistic projects in Europe and Latin America: among them work with the Colombian group Mapa Teatro, the critical platform Experimenta SUR (Bogotà), Museo Universitario del Chopo (Mexico City). She is the author of The Scene of Foreplay: Theater, Labor and Leisure in 1960s New York (2017) and of Lexicon for an Affective Archive (2017, co-edited with Marco Pustianaz).
Carolina Rocha is Dandara Suburbana and vice-versa. Writing has enabled her black existence and ancestral recollections since she was a child. She is a black woman, daughter of Xangô, nourished by black magic and forged at the crossroads. She is an anti-racist militant and an educator; a historian and a sociologist. Her research draws on religious racism and written language as a potential for self-knowledge and political affirmation. She is the author of the book O Sabá do Sertão: feiticeiras, demônios e jesuítas no Piauí colonial (Paco Editorial, 2015) and has published in several anthologies: Mulherio das Letras (short stories and chronicles) Volume 1 (Mariposa Cartonera, 2017); Lâmina (Arte Sabali, 2018); Inovação Ancestral de Mulheres Negras (Oralituras, 2019); Ser Prazeres: transbordações eróticas de mulheres negras, bilingual Portuguese/English edition (Oralituras, 2020); Elas e as letras: insubmissão ancestral (In-Finita, 2021) among others. She conceptualised the project ‘Ataré Palavra Terapia’, which works with creative writing, black literature and self-care. She is a PhD candidate in sociology at IESP/UERJ, in Brazil. IG and FB: @atarepalavavraterapia and @adandarasuburbana.
Event information:
This event was funded by Techne and supported by the Research Centre for Performance & Creative Exchange, and the Research Group in Sex, Gender & Sexuality at University of Roehampton.
More information about the ‘Queer Feminist Currents’ Techne Conflux can be found at https://queerfeministcurrents.wordpress.com/. More information about the Techne Confluxes can be found here. If you have further enquiries about this series please contact the organisers at queerfeministcurrents@gmail.com.
queerfeministcurrents.wordpress.com 