performingborders 2021
Throughout 2021, the performingborders team spent a big part of our time reflecting and changing how
we work, what the intentions of the work are and what we, as curators
and culture workers want to explore.
Internationalism, solidarity and
horizontality were some of the new ways we have started to look at not
just how we operate but how we collaborate with our partners, our
friends and the artists we commission.
We got a new team member, Anahi
Saravia Herrera, who is a brilliant writer and has changed PB from the
inside out. With this new dynamic, we were able to commission some of
our favourite artists to create new performances to camera, bi-monthly
newsletters, our own reflections, interviews and our very first
e-Journal - the first of its kind for migrant artists.
Below is a breakdown of the work we released this year. If you’d like to get more familiar with performingborders, please visit our website and sign up to our bi-monthly newsletter.
Commissions:
- Spells for a border town (retrocedare) by Diana Damian Martin (LINK)
Long term collaborator of PB Diana dives into the entanglement between a receding process and de-colonial practices in Eastern Europe, paying attention not only to the territorial but to the temporal. Her collaboration with Rusanda Curcă, Mihaela Drăgan, and Iulia Mărăcine gifts us the wonderful “Spells for a border town (retrocedare)” with interviews and a series of spells against fascists, against the states, for independence, for the future, and much more. Text and audio. English, Romani and Romanian languages.
- Recipes for Autonomy by Syowia Kyambi (LINK)
Our friend Syowia (based in Nairobi, Kenya), shares an episode on ‘Unthethered Magic’ by Sauti Msituni, an independent radio station hosted by Kibe Wangunyu and Dennis Kiberu, as well as gifting us an advice booklet from the collective ‘what the hEll she doin’ where we hear from the artists Usha Seejarim, Immy Mali, Sonia E. Barrett and Kyambi herself. The issue closes with an ongoing conversation between Syowia Kyambi, Kijo Agacuand, and Sibonelo Gumede titled ‘(In)Formal Frission: Another Conversation’.
- Shifting Landscapes by Xavier de Sousa, Alessandra Cianetti and Anahi Saravia Herrera (LINK)
Coming together to explore our own researches together, we digested ideas of collectivity, horizontally, and open language through four reflections: Alessandra wrote A journal, Un diario, Xavier interviewed choreographer Dinis Machado in On temporalities and process of transformation, and Anahi wrote Entre acá y allá, Encuentros Solitarios. We were also joined by Istanbul Queer Art Collective who reflected on “automation and possession in live art and performance” in their text Whatever Possessed You To Perform? as a part of an ongoing collaboration and conversation that performingborders is having with the Performance, Possession & Automation project.
- performingborders e-Journal #1: fragments for borderless futures (LINK)
We hope that this will be the first in a yearly series, creating a space to collectively reflect on borders, live art, community, and resistance. We want these journals to be a space that centres embodied knowledge and artist perspectives and we are launching the first issue with text contributions from Elena Marchevska, Syowia Kyambi, Jade Montserrat, Vijay Mathew, Jemima Yong and Sagar Shah. These sit alongside new commissioned works, including a place to sit, a performative reflection by Tara Fatehi Irani as well as a visual essay titled urgent images by Manuel Vason. To be experienced as a whole. Curated by Xavier de Sousa, Alessandra Cianetti and Anahi Saravia Herrara.
This new performance to camera thinks through hydrofeminism and reflects on water as an agent that connects all watery bodies - living, creature, hydrogeological and meteorological. In this work, Lu considers the relationship between water, life-giving, and menopause as liquid processes of change. There is a leakiness to all borders: between each other, between humans and the environment, between humans and creatures, and in our own watery selves. Conceived, written, narrated & performed by: Lynn Lu; Directed, filmed, edited by Ana de Matos; Second performer: Satsuki Lu-Sharpe
performingborders is curated by Xavier de Sousa, Alessandra Cianetti and Anahi Saravia Herrera. Supported by Migrant Actions Productions, Necessity Fund and Arts Council England.