In-separable 3.0

In-Separable didn't happen over the course of reading week due to the lack of interest, engagement, or support from fellow student peers. My peers always remind me how important it is to ask the question "who is my audience".

Re: In-Separable 2.1:

So, potentially scrapping my initial idea entirely re: documentation...

I'll put an emphasis on exploring multiple iterations...

and alter the ways I (must) choose to consume this product...

Yes, scrapping ideas seems to be a trend for me these days...part of me has been wondering if it's because I'm loosing interest in being an "artist", or if I am becoming agitated by the expectations and functionality of art and yearn for something more intimate, something that works against modernity.

Obviously...the latter is my current preoccupation.

Though, this new (and somewhat renewed) relationship to art-making and performance wouldn't have come about had it not been for the shitty audience that my school tends to promote. So, in a way, I'm glad to have felt so starkly disappointed.

Since my What Remains performance and feedback, I've really come to question the role/agency of performance art and the direction I need to move forward to feel good about that. For me, working in a predominantly non-monetized art form has always been compelling, but the documentation of the work still pigeon-holes performance into this product-based, consumerist culture that I am uncomfortable perpetuating.

Now, some of my questions like "what is the role of documentation", have been reformed to "how can documentation exist without reifying the power of "product" demands? Or a question like "where is the work" has been answered to some degree, but the ambiguity of not having a concrete answer becomes integral and compels me to question: how can i make as much room for interpretation as possible as to emphasize the experience over the product?

For me, I'm asking things like:

What are the role(s) and responsibilities of art that I believe are necessary? Why?

What are the possibilities of a performance that emphasizes intimacy, privacy, conviviality and the collective? What was performance for me, before all of these?

How can the "work" be extended/continued, without a concrete "ending"? Why is that important?

Since the tragic election results in the United States, its undulating effects have put me in a state of nurturer and caregiver. My priorities have shifted and I've found myself over the societal stoves, brewing a cauldron of deep love and feeding it to every moment. The rest of my responsibilities as a student of 21st century debt-driven money-making mentality is rapidly slipping from my thoughts, the Acadian Mi'kmaw Woman Small Human peripheries have collided into cataclysmic star showers and the conversations of intersectionality, diversity, and equality have stopped being conversations to me, and everything is just that, is. They need to be. I've felt this way for a long time with respects to being a lesbian, feeling that so long as I keep my gayness as a thing that is a part of "the other", and continually support and participate in the conversations that keep it in the realm of "other"...my sexual orientation will never simply be me in relationships, loving. This isn't some kind of subtle racism, making claims like "I'm not racist, I don't even see colour!" bullshit, but it's about acknowledging our inherent differences, but understanding that this kind of acknowledgment is made strictly (and quite literally) on the surface, and so, let's go deeper than that. I love my differences and the inherent contradictions that roost inside of me, without them...wow, bland.

Here's a quote from Lee Maracle's book, Memory Serves that explains what I'm getting at more succinctly:

“Once memory is stored, it is up for discussion by the community. We share with others what we have heard and it is discussed by other members of the community, evaluated and committed or not committed to. Each person struggles to build upon the thought/memory of every other person. Two speakers may re-present the same story from opposing points of view and both are considered valid, just as the listener’s interpretation of the memory is valid despite the fact that it may be different from another listener’s version. At the same time, the individual is expected to find a collaborative point of understanding with the whole. This leads to a tremendous diversity of understanding a single event or memory or thought. It also leads to new thinking” (43).

So a question for me now is something like:

That bolded bit: How can performance do that? How can I as an artist, create an experience that consciously brings together difference as the foundation to interrogating a specific subject, where the topic of the conversation isn't the difference itself, but is the columns of support that allow thoughtful, complex and critical inquiry. How can experiential learning allow difference to be a unifying of strength, rather than a "othering" of disconnection and distension.

I adore the simplicity of something so complex and beautiful when Maracle says "diversity of understanding...leads to new thinking". The intense curiosities I've held dear since childhood quiver in utter excitement and anticipation when I hear statements like that.

So, some of the questions I asked earlier about In-Separable re: what I don't know, I'm wondering if those can be answered through conversation, rather than researched in isolation. This is process as public and I'm beginning to learn how the transparency and vulnerability of that is so fucking important in our current social time. And finally, this brings me to Inseparable 3.0, a performance dinner where the only physical document is the invitation, but the documentation will be the story that leaves with each attendee.

I can't give much away, because it hasn't happened yet. So, In-Separable 3.1 will be on its way soon.