What Remains
photo by Sahand Mohajer
What Remains was my first performance of the show, scheduled to begin a few hours prior to our opening and move into the opening itself, but was halted by intense guttural surges that shouted, No! Don't do it! Don't do it!. So, I listened to that. Normally, my nerves before a performance are a good sign, general ticks of anxious anticipation and excitement. Sometimes those nerves become fears perforated with my insecurities or lack of confidence - but that is normally when I haven't given 100% to the preparation leading up to the performance. But this. Shit. My body splintered with darting emotions ping-ponging inside my stomach and nerve endings until I finally called it and said, No, this isn't the right time.
I felt simultaneously horrible and relieved. Relieved because I had listened to my intuition, and horrible because I felt like I was letting down my co-curator and friends who had come out to support me. That quality of disappointment is jarringly metallic in taste and sulphuric in odour, until I remembered that my friends are fucking excellent humans; they are people who have chosen to love me and support me and show that support in multitudes whenever I'm making sure that self-care is a primary priority. Once I was brought into the security of my good friend, Breathe, Mal. Do it with me, mirroring her intake and release of breath as she guided me through three of them, I began to feel the ease that lives inside the comfort of my friends. Fuck I am blessed to have these people in my life.
Love is finally beginning to disintegrate the chunky cartilage around my heart and its shape is transforming...
Tentatively, I rescheduled the performance for the next day, but the audience remained unresponsive, more maybe...unresponse-able, and my curatorial cap of responsibilities took precedence. After that, I didn't set another time for What Remains and cancelled In-Separable completely.
I was disappointed and wanted to fall into a regime of negative self talk to see if that would get me into performance mode. It didn't. That strategy doesn't work for me anymore. And I'm glad for it. After three years at ECUAD, intuition is setting in as Rule #1 in the creative process.
So, one night, at random, my partner returned home from work and I asked her to join me at school while I did What Remains in the privacy of late evening, when I knew the school would be nearly empty of people, its concrete floors silent and open. I spoke with Nhyira about what I would be doing, and that I'd address her as needed and we proceeded in the space together in a natural fluidity; bending down to the floor, I began writing what I re-membered.
What Remains - the performance
It wasn't easy. It hurt, the process.
Some parts went slower than others
The words scraping like thorns in my side
My hand guiding them out from between my ribs as I wrote them
Some went fast, the words bloated with anger and aggression
They screamed at me inside my head as I wrote I am no example of truth, only a cadaver of insult, dogmas of prejudice, colonial codas singing "this is the song that never ends"
Some words were personal things told to me, some I read from social media, read in books at our school, heard in interviews with politicians.
My partner quietly watching over me, distinguishing the nuances of my hesitation
When it was pain
When it was a word that i forgot, and subtly whispering
The next word to me and I would continue
A splintering fire seared into my arm half way through the performance. My hand cramped and stiff, I let go of the charcoal for the first time to take a moment to rest and it slowly expanded into an open palm.
If I'm glad for anything, it was the pace and intimacy. It was slow time and I so appreciate that.
What Remains - the preparation
Building up to the performance
I struggled immensely to prepare
Knew that I had some things memorized - traumas
Lodged in my right shoulder, the back of my neck, my liver and small intestine
Knew I could call them forward, when it was time, but knew I needed more
Knew which "more" I would choose to fill the Concourse with, but didn't have it memorized
It felt strange, to know that I had to memorize something that hurt
In order to have it heal by its visual erasure
and I was filled with anger and profound agitation whenever i thought about preparing for the performance
which i projected onto the performance itself.
I don't want to do it! I'm just not invested anymore!
but I was. deeply.
but the hurt I felt went deeper.
after years of acting and performing poetry
my strategies for memorization are simple and quick: write it.
but I didn't want to write it, because then it would stay stored inside of me
for who knows how long
who knows how long
i thought about that for a long time.
A friend said, isn't it contradictory to memorize the things that are painful when you want to forget them, doesn't it go against what you're trying to accomplish?
I thought about this. After a long pause, i responded, i think, going to the source of the pain and not the symptom is necessary to heal.
it was in my reflections of other creative processes
the time i allowed myself to sit with the fear and discomfort
and this exchange with my friend
that my anger opened up and spoke to me
as it did, the caverns of my trauma relaxed
and i began to do the work.
What Remains - reflections/feedback from the audience
Responses from well-to-do, well-done, high-end-Vancouver-curators:
- "well you need to consider documentation, because as a curator, all I'm wondering is 'how do i market you, how do i promote this and have a product in the end'.
"and who was your audience"?
"where do you think the work was in this - the performance, the writing, or the erasure or all of those things". (all of those things, duh, man).
"you were writing politically charged slogans"
...oh the rhetoric of fucking contemporary art enthusiasts. Honestly, this interaction has affirmed and concluded my relationship with contemporary art. Ah, the liberation! Finally, freedom to express myself!
A conversation with my friend and artist, Sahand Mohajer
Occupying the main area of the institution to make a work for yourself with only your girlfriend and one friend watching, that's the dream, in my opinion. There was something special and calm in the air, it felt cathartic to watch you.
Yeah, you know, it felt unlike any other “performance”, because I didn’t wholly consider it one. It was more like...as a performance artist, I have a creative process, too, and I was choosing to make that process public. In the end, it doesn’t really matter, but being in that main space, at that time, in the way that I did, created something profoundly intimate when normally a performative work is the exact opposite. There was a different quality of vulnerability, its quiet nature allowed for a tenderness that became integral for me to actually be able to do that work specifically.
Most performances tend to be not intimate because of the strange authority they have even when they're supposed to be vulnerable.
Definitely. That has come to really turn me off, actually, and that authority is heightened by the gallery space, because it serves as this awkward buffer between the artist and audience. When the work is in the public, though, there’s much less of that, sometimes the “authority” or... “who is the artist” completely blurs. Mainly, to create a performance that doesn’t perpetuate a kind of social entertainment or isn’t ego-centric “look at me!” Bull Shit, feels really fucking great.
Re-calling my conversation with filmmaker Pia Massie:
Mallory! This is AMAZing. Look! Do you SEE what you did? I mean, like, wow, you planned where you wrote these things PERFECTLY
Huh, what do you mean, Pia?
Come here, look. See, all of these that say 'holding to account is not shaming, anger is not abuse', all of the 'nots' have been erased, it's right where people have been walking so now it says what it really means.
Oh yeah. Total fluke. I put these ones here specifically, because i knew people would be walking here, but i definitely didn't plan for any of that.
Well your inner creative intuition was doing the work here, because wow.
and she went on snapping up photos and my heart smiled as i felt it stretching in comfort.
My partner, Nhyira's moving written reflection:
What Remains for me was a powerful expression of both vulnerability and strength. The act of filling a space with words alone is so significantly beautiful, because not only does it remove all other mediums of interaction, it forces the audience and any one who encounters the space to become quiet and attentive, making them engage with the fear, pain and relief that your words exhibit. While the written text on the ground may have been the core of the performance for some, what I found to be incredibly moving was the fact that you asked people to walk all over it. The final healing stage in an unfortunate but worthwhile process. Taking agency of the racist slurs, the insecurities of others, ignorance thrown at you, and asking everyone, regardless of whether they are Native, settler, ally, perpetrator, racist, to join you in erasing the negative experiences of the past/ immediate present and presenting each person involved with a clean slate forces me as a viewer to question what my next move will be. What do I do with this new opportunity? The act of erasing doesn't affirm the content of the text, but rather tells me to deeply consider what comes after. When I think about the title " what remains", I immediately go to thinking in terms of the tangible presence of something or lack there of. But in watching you intimately perform, being able to experience your vulnerability makes me wonder; what remains within you? What will remain after the injustices against Indigenous people has been resolved and corrected? I think of text like somewhat of a scar. Yes, its gone now, but the reminants of it is still present. When a scar fades, the only time you think about it is when you remember something in relation to it. Is this what the performance will do for me? Will I be reminded of the words on the ground when I come across injustices against Native people? It definitely will, because I participated in the erasure, taking on responsibilty to ensure that no other Indigenous person will have to go through the same painful experience. It will force me to take responsibilty of what it means for me to be a immigrant in Canada and an ally to Indigenous people on this land.
photo by Sahand Mohajer
