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A fab illustration by Tsz Tsing Tammy Tsang, @possiblytammy

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Welcome to the ‘this is happening’ thread!

I’m Natifah & I’m a dance artist inspired by creative processes & work that explore speculative dance futures. My dance practice weaves archiving*, research & performance & within these spaces, I have begun unpacking how these descriptions nourish one another, whether through supporting another artist or my explorations.

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Foot(ish) note:
archiving* - with specific interest in self-archival methods & strategies

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This digi-space is an opportunity* to share more of my thinking with the world on a low-stake & seasonal basis.

It's an outlet & thread of (re)sources* (readings, listenings etc.) that I wish to pass on that have made an imprint on my neuro-spicy brain & artistic practice.

All of these (re)sources belong to their rightful creators/ authors & all I wish to do is continue circulating them.

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Foot(ish) notes:

opportunity* - A huge shout-out to Shy Bairns & their ‘things we liked this month’ zine for the inspiration!!

(re)sources* - a reframing of the word thanks to Kinship Workshop

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I hope this thread will grow in confidence to include a variety of mediums, contributions* & para-practices* to keep the web wide for both you & me as well as explore it as an open resource.

To be continued,

N x

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Foot(ish) notes:
contributions* - It may also mention other projects I'm a part of & creative work from friends, so let’s see what manifests from these digi-experiments!

para-practices* - term borrowed from raqsmediacollective

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Image: Natifah W, Photo Credit: Mariana Machado

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Natifah W in IV Photo Credits - Mariana Machado

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Another fab illustration by Tsz Tsing Tammy Tsang, @possiblytammy

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Sooo it's been a while but I felt a close-out that aligned with the closing of this year into the next* felt right.

I generally like to post a bit out of time as an attempt to befriend my nervous system and manage my capacity, but both of these things need re-evaluating a$ap rocky! Anyway, this year has been something to say the least, but one thing I want to share is a practice update I guess!

A few weeks ago, I was in New York for a research trip exploring embodied and community-centred approaches to (Hip Hop) dance archiving. This trip was made possible through the Lisa Ullmann Travelling Scholarship Fund (applications are now open btw!) and what.a.trip.it.was! (just imagine how strong my claps are here.)

A massive thank you to LUTSF for supporting me and my ideas.

Although my gut and brain are still somewhere airborne (I'm waiting for the moment they sync back up again) I acknowledge this trip is and was a huge privilege and I definitely do not take this lightly.

This trip was pivotal for a few reasons, but for this entry I wanted to focus on the privilege of movement, being able to move and how information about artists, histories, and places moved through a web of relationships (us!). Some of these connections were nurtured before the trip, but many were activated on the ground through chance encounters and conversations.

Sitting with these exchanges made me think about how conversations themselves can become meaningful (third) spaces*; something my sibling Exodus explores in their practice-based research. It also reminded me of what my friends over at Archival Textures call "amplifying practice," where crediting, repeating, and sharing become "strategies of solidarity". And it brought me back to a question I've been working with which is: Whose work are you extending? Where does '(y)ours' begin?

So with that said, this entry is an attempt at that; honouring the people, practices, and places (the 3 P's!) that shaped* my time in NYC and passing on some gems that were so generously shared with me, knowing this is a privilege in itself. These will stay with me for sureeee.

I hope you enjoy reading, browsing, and thank you for continuing to engage with this digi-practice. A special S/O to friends who were guests on entries this year!

Until the next one,

N x

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Foot(ish) notes:

next* - ayaya time?!...

(third) spaces* - Whilst writing this, I looked back at the last entry and saw a snippet from Archival Textures' book, which made me think about how third spaces (what connects to Exodus' work here) can be community-building too or maybe even (inner) world-building?! (S/O: Mariam Adesokan/ Tint Library for this term) And now both are showing up in this entry again - what are the odds!

shaped* - also understanding Hip Hop culture is not in silos to other contexts running adjacent and through it!

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Thank you Tatiana (Desardouin) for your support, time and energy.

Please check out her latest choreographic work: Dimension!!

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Angelique (Rosales Salgado) is a wonderful curator, artist who has a prolific practice*!

I recommend this article they wrote about Harmony Holiday! :)

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Foot(ish) notes:

* - They also work at The Kitchen; one of New York’s oldest nonprofit alternative art centres. It supports the disciplines of dance, film, literature, music, theatre, video, and visual art + and engages/ curates programmes that push boundaries. It first started as an artist collective and was founded in 1971.

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What a wonderful place this is! Thank you OlaRonke (Akinmowo)*! This was where I also attended a writing workshop called: B lack Mythic Muse: Writing into Origins, Oracles & the Unseen facilitated by Magenta. It was great!

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Foot(ish) notes:

* - Here's a great resource of Ola talking more about TFBWL!

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1988 Nassau Bahamas, Essence Writers' Retreat.

Seated (from left) Dr. Julianne Malveaux, Betty Winston Baye, Stephanie Stokes Oliver, Sonia Sanchez, Thulani Davis, Ntozake Shange, Valerie Wilson Wesley, Bebe Moore Campbell. Second row, from left Toni Cade Bambara, Elsie Washington, Barbara Smith, Marlene NorbeSe Philip, Bonnie Allen, Sherley Anne Williams, Cheryll Y. Greene, Ayesha Grice, Phyl Garland, Ivy Young, Elaine Brown. Last row, from left Susan L. Taylor, Lena G. Sherrod, Renita Weems, Jean Wiley, Audrey Edwards, Jill Nelson, Vertamae Grosvenor, Octavia Butler, & Lucille Clifton.

Photo via Octavia E Butler Legacy Network.

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1988 Nassau Bahamas, Essence Writers' Retreat. Seated (from left) Dr. Julianne Malveaux, Betty Winston Baye, Stephanie Stokes Oliver, Sonia Sanchez, Thulani Davis, Ntozake Shange, Valerie Wilson Wesley, Bebe Moore Campbell. Second row, from left Toni Cade Bambara, Elsie Washington, Barbara Smith, Marlene NorbeSe Philip, Bonnie Allen, Sherley Anne Williams, Cheryll Y.

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An amazing space in itself, and also where I attended their event First Fridays - a monthly concert series curated and co-presented with Artists Against Apartheid. This edition featured Lido Pimienta (she's one of my fav artists and was so glad this event aligned with my time there!)

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They have a great series on Hip Hop Histories! +++. Highly recommend!

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Thank you Martha (Diaz) for your generosity!

Please check out her organisation; Hip Hop Education Centre. They are cooking up some very exciting things!

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I went to a workshop called: Collaborative Indexing: Disability Arts and Dependent Textuality facilitated by artist Charlotte Strange and Wendy's Subway.

It was such an interesting workshop and so wonderful to meet Charlotte, Sunny, Mykah and other fellow artists!

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A screenshot Charlotte sent me from IG about the event

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Thanks to Charlotte for plugging because I also went to this film screening curated by a wonderful artist named Zeina and hosted by Arte East/ Millennium Film Workshop.

Below is some words about the screening:

"video works that explore the body as a dancing entity caught between occupation and oppression. From VHS dance tutorials smuggled into post-revolution Iran, to an abstract, glitch-filled glimpse of raves in California and bachelors' parties in the West Bank and finally the Ghost Dance as a kinetic drawing that is preserved through early film in the face of Indigenous resistance. Each work positions dance as more than individual movement, but as a lifeline, a way to remain human, alive, and in motion despite entrenched political restrictions on the body, and as a form of collective defiance that carries histories of survival forward."

<3

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I attended a reading/ discussion where she discussed her research on Black feminism and the role of women in Grenada's Revolution.

She also has a book called Comrade Sister: Caribbean Feminist Revisions of the Grenada Revolution

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I attended his lecture/discussion: Racialising Britain that discussed the history of Black British Caribbean and American political organising and anti-imperialism in the years following WW2.

He also has a book called: Blackening Britain: Caribbean Radicalism from Windrush to Decolonization

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Marcel Rosa-Salas & Isabel Attyah Flower

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Marcel Rosa-Salas & Isabel Attyah Flower

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They are co-authors of: The Nameplate

Jewelry, Culture, and Identity and I went to a panel discussion on the same name.

It was superrr interesting to learn more about nameplates as it was a gateway into an (in)tangible heritage and living history I knew very little about! I would deffo recommend looking more into their work... :)

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'Black Arms To Hold You Up' by Ben Passmore

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'Black Arms To Hold You Up' by Ben Passmore

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Oooo now this one...! I went to a comic reading (first of many!) and discussion of Ben's work and it was so interesting to learn more about his practice and research into Black radical traditions, and his choice to use comics as a way to share/unpick that.

I highly recommend this work and others from him too (such as Your Black Friend And Other Strangers and DAYGLOAYHOLE #1, to name a few).

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Loved this spot!

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Ooph...this one was a hidden gem and I'm so glad I came across it by accident. This film series was beautiful and insightful in so many ways and it was even more great to discover the legacy of William Greaves whose work is being carried on through Liani Greaves and David Greaves.

This was where The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture was plugged more and is an historical space to discover and spend time within itself!

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(7) July 25: Crossover Entry w/ Korantema & Janhavi Sharma

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(7) July 25: Crossover Entry w/ Korantema & Janhavi Sharma

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Although it’s been some time since my last entry, I'm keeping with the spirit of being out of time (and slow living, I guess!) and using this entry to reflect on 'sharing time'.

I’ve been thinking about how to use this digital practice to keep conversations and artistic dialogues alive with fellow artist-friends soooo continuing a collaboration I did with fellow super sibling and visual artist Exodus Crooks on communication*, I decided to reach out to two more friends for another crossover entry! (pew pee pow!)

This wasn’t planned when I did the first crossover with Exo, but as I reached out to these two friends, it felt like Exo and I had started an unofficial series on communication and the many ways it's an anchor and companion.

So here we are, presenting another iteration of this ‘series’...a crossover entry or what Exodus calls a crossover club*!

Introducing two (more) wonderful artist-friends: Korantema and Janhavi!

Korantema is an all round wonder! She's a London-based curator working with dance (she's an amazing jazz dancer btw!) hair, and zines. I first encountered Korantema's practice about two years ago through her zine; The Thing about Swing*. We connected over our shared love for Black social dances, archives, and zine-making, and have stayed in touch since. There’s so much more to her work so I really recommend checking out their artist portfolio!

Janhavi is one of my dearest friends, who I met around 3/4 years ago. She’s an independent artist from India, based between India and Nottingham, working primarily with lens-based media but now experimenting with other materials. We’ve collaborated before, most recently on Angnaa (2024–) which is an evolving and beautiful work. We also enjoy yapping about where else archives might live* in places like food recipes, plants and even choreographies(...?) and I am so happy both of these folx are contributors! <3

So why invite these two wonders and how does it connect?

Over the past year, I’ve also become interested in expanded forms of librarianship and readership. While archives and libraries serve different functions, both focus on holding, preserving, and storing information. What interests me about both librarianship and readership is how they can (for me) reveal the invisible rules (and social choreographies maybe?) that shape how we engage with these spaces and learning materials (both conventional and expansive) that hold and transmit information.

So as I continue on my usual spiral, I’ve been met with creative adjacencies (both familiar and not) that explore and challenge what counts* as an archive, a library, or the hyphen connecting these two concepts. I’m also thinking about which materials get counted as ‘reading’ materials and how we engage with them.

This thread reflects the collaborative efforts of Janhavi, Korantema, and myself and in communication about this, I asked them: In a collective take on what constitutes a 'reading' and a space for readership, what would you include? The following thread are our responses :)

Much much love to Korantema and Janhavi for joining me and thank YOU for reading!

Until next time,

N x

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Foot(ish) notes:

* - see the second entry, c. December 2023

* - Love this saying! Thanks Exo :)

* - this zine is featured in my first thisishappening entry, Sept 2023

* - why not check out the third thisishappening entry? :)

* - ofc this answer will always be incomplete!

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pg. 9 from Amplifying Book by Archival Textures

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Books as Community (ref. Archival Textures, Amplifying 2024)

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Books as Community (ref. Archival Textures, Amplifying 2024)

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I thought these words, beautifully put by Setareh Noorani & Tabea Nixdorff of the Netherlands-based publication Archival Textures, would be a really nice way in to this entry and 'weave' in Janhavi’s, Korantema’s, and I’s (re)sources.

TY Tabea and Setareh for this wonderful book. Check out more of the series hereee x

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Korantema: So I was thinking along the line of librarianship and archiving in non-formal ways and what that looks like. Especially thinking about zine making, alternative cataloguing and oral histories. I don't know if any of you watch doctor who (I do cos I'm a nerd) but there was an episode last week based in a Nigerian barbershop written by Inua Ellams, where storytelling powered up an engine. So this really reminded me of the idea of oral histories and storytelling as important and ephemeral librarianship!

ANYWAY here are a small selection of the things I listed as more 'non-formal' cataloguing in the forms of zines, excel spreadsheets, oral history archives, alt. Archives etc.

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Janhavi: It's wonderful to e-meet you [Korantema] and get acquainted with your practice[!]

A couple initial ideas: One of the professors I was introduced to via NTU, Dr. Emma Cocker, has done extensive work on different forms, patterns and intentions of reading. I wouldn't claim to know her work entirely, but what I remember from the lectures was her attempts at validating different ways to read, that included validating reading of things without the intention of finishing what's written, non-linear directions of navigating words, and even disrupting the idea of meaning as is written.

There's also this wonderful book called Ex Libris by Michiko Kakutani who has compiled an anthology of essays on how people read and how they navigate libraries both personal and public.

I understand these thoughts identify more with the broadly understood ideas of reading...I'm sure I can find and collate ideas that describe reading beyond text, beyond symbols too. Reading of body language, of spaces, of can reading be something that offers both a social and personal experiential spectrum...?

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Natifah*: Nice Nice Noiceee! Okay here's what your thoughts make me think of:

* - Speaking from the future on the past

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Apocalypse Reading Room by Ama Josephine Budge

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SEED archives free library: https://www.instagram.com/seedarchives/?hl=en

https://www.seedarchives.com/

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Seed is a space that celebrates traditional African and Caribbean art, design, and culture through a curated collection of objects and books. By reimagining the concept of an archive, we transform how people engage with cultural objects by offering free educational resources and encouraging a collective approach to learning. Going beyond conventional archival practices, Seed creates an open, nurturing environment that reconnects the diaspora with lost identities and historical narratives.

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Via @dallaekhorsani (https://www.instagram.com/dallaekhorsani?igsh=MXYybmZodWV0ejQwNQ== )

-They're an art project/ alt library based in Bombay started by Indigenous Artist Aqui Thami that celebrates sisterhood, women, liberation, care, and the power of community and storytelling. They have not just curated a beautiful selection of women's narratives including works in various regional languages, they've also managed to create a safe-space for difficult conversations around marginalisation, and intersectionality. It's an emotional, beautiful space and I love visiting them. They also travel! (As all libraries should)

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'healing in community'

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Majazz Project / Palestinian Sound archive

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Majazz Project is proud to present our first-ever solo exhibition! After years of digging, discovering, remastering, we welcome you to the Palestinian Sound Archive, a celebration of music, spoken word, and album artwork. Opening at Southbank Center, this exhibition will run from July 27th-November 1st. An act of reclamation and a site of resistance to colonial erasure, the Archive is an embodiment of Palestinian culture across decades. Weaving tales of joy, grief, love, resistance, and steadfastness, these sounds are bridging generations. Listen to the Palestinian Sound Archive below. These sonic stories have travelled a long way to you, beckoning, a hand held out through time itself.

يفتخر مشروع مجاز بتقديم معرضنا الفردي الأول! بعد سنوات من التنقيب والاكتشاف وإعادة الإتقان، نرحب بكم في الأرشيف الصوتي الفلسطيني، وهو احتفال بالموسيقى والكلمة المنطوقة والأعمال الفنية للألبوم. سيتم افتتاح هذا المعرض في مركز ساوث بانك في الفترة من 27 يوليو إلى 1 نوفمبر. يعد الأرشيف بمثابة عمل استصلاح وموقع لمقاومة المحو الاستعماري، وهو تجسيد للثقافة الفلسطينية على مدى عقود.تحكي حكايات الفرح والحزن والحب والمقاومة والصمود، هذه الأصوات تربط بين الأجيال. استمع إلى الأرشيف الصوتي الفلسطيني أدناه. لقد قطعت هذه القصص الصوتية شوطًا طويلًا لكم جميعًا، وتومئ بيد ممدودة عبر الزمن نفسه.

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Majazz Project is proud to present our first-ever solo exhibition! After years of digging, discovering, remastering, we welcome you to the Palestinian Sound Archive, a celebration of music, spoken word, and album artwork. Opening at Southbank Center, this exhibition will run from July 27th-November 1st.

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Access Questions for Self-Publishing

by Kaiya Waerea

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It provides a framework of questions which aim to deconstruct normative narratives around publishing, and analyse the barriers disabled people experience in trying to access knowledge production and distribution.

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OOMK zine and community: https://oomk.net/publications.html

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'the library is all of these' exhibition

https://eastsideprojects.org/projects/the-library-is-all-of-these/ -

If anyone is around Birmingham (or fancies a trip), this exhibition is on until the 5th July!

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Sister Library!

https://www.instagram.com/sister.library?igsh=MTJsdDlnOWl4MGFheA==

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Black and Gay Back in Day photo archives & podcast: https://www.instagram.com/blackandgaybackintheday/?hl=en

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Archival Sites by Black Archives Sweden: https://www.blackarchivessweden.com/index-of-archival-projects-sites/

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Index of archival projects / sites - Black Archives Sweden

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Index of archival projects / sites This is an index of places Black Archives Sweden has visited and/or been in meaningful dialogue and ex- change with during the period of September 2022—February 2023, with funds from the City of Malmö and Region Skåne. The list includes archival projects, archives, independent project spaces, bookshops and community…

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Black Archives Sweden community photo scanning days: https://www.blackarchivessweden.com/

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On the theme of self-navigations, orientations, doing it ourselves and with others:

Do-It-Yourself Flyer by Julia Marti (pdf can be accessed here: https://bibliothekandreaszuest.net/en/exchange)

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From Janhavi's thoughts earlier on Dr. Emma Cocker doing extensive work on different forms, patterns and intentions of reading +++... https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/618624/618625

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African Style Archives & their reading lists: https://www.instagram.com/africanstylearchive?igsh=Ymo0Y2twdjBmYXV4

- makes me think about the navigations of hair...inscribing in/ out?, unravelling...

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(repost) street libraries - https://www.fehraspublishingpractices.org/filter/Program/Disappearances

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Wellcome Collection's online zine catalogue: https://wellcomecollection.org/search/works?query=%22Zines.%22

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Ex Libris by Michiko Kakutani. An anthology of essays on how people read and how they navigate libraries both personal and public :)

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Sooo in 2025, how to do things with theory? how does this connect to the energies of a new year? what energies do you tap into/ out of in the new year? where does this sit within the world we live in?

I first came across this q via Dutch Art Institute (DAI) and storyteller (+) Samira Ghoualmia.

I was drawn to this question because of its open-endedness and how it both aligned and contrasted my research in how dance archiving can be 'done'.

I felt that the un-syncing comes from where this practice sits with the go go go energy that often comes with the new year and the urgencies that very much need our efforts and attention.

And honestly for me, it's challenging but it's not impossible. In this way, I thought that this entry could attempt to tackle this set-up and offer interesting takes* on how to do things with theory, taking into consideration ways art practice can be a conduit/ medium to carry more important messages and actions.

Thank you for reading and until next time,

N x

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Foot(ish) notes:

* - if anything comes up for you that you would like to share, please feel free to reach out to me as I would love to hear how this odd predicament feels for you!

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Chaos Reading (via IG post)

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Untranslatable Terms of Cultural Practices: A Shared Vocabulary

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Untranslatable Terms of Cultural Practices: A Shared Vocabulary

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This is my current read and I am enjoying being introduced to the idea of a shared vocabulary and the ethics behind choice, selection and explanation/ description. Really recommend :)

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S/O to the bookshop: Good Press who restored my hope in ever getting this book when it was unavailable EVERYWHEREEE x

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IG Posts sharing the sharing back in Nov 24'

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Back in November, I had the opportunity to see this performance live by Autumn Knight when I was in Vancouver.

This work is one that'll stick with me not only for the format but the way it explored audience participation, the collapse between the personal and political, time and the role of the documenter.

What I loved about this work was the way the script was set and un/set at the same time... and I hope this work continues reaching different places + faces (as this informs how the work is experienced to some extend) and for this reason, I really recommend this work :)

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For more references to their work, you can find more here and here :)

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Documentation Action Research Collective (DARC)

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Documentation Action Research Collective (DARC)

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A super interesting read on documenting performance as documentation :)

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#3

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Enjoy your starting point. However, (i) started with parallaxing (i) : a story of a practice by setareh fatehi.

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Can we do philosophy with our bodies? - A really interesting take on 'doing' philosophy and one of the first resources I thought for this entry.

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A great reference for anyone interested in zines :)

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Thank you Lea from EZL for introducing me to their work!

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For a thread representing a year of threads*, it's been interesting to see what this platform is (for now) and what it could be (which is a fizzy thought to sit with).

So to lean into this feeling more and see how this doubles as an un/becoming, here are a few (re) sources that I feel explore this abstract idea differently.

Lately, I have been re-inspired by DIY (and together) practices like zines and other publishing practices* and it's been nice to get excited by these because writing has always been something that I've felt nervous about*. But coming across people with practices who are subverting and expanding writing forms, has been encouraging to say the least so enjoy reading and thank you for your support.

To be continued,

N x

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Foot(ish) notes:

* - Time flies!

* - If you know of other writing practices, please feel free to share! I would love to keep discovering more people/ practices that keep the spiralling aliveee! And I am also here for expanded forms of writing too!

* - ...maybe because of my thoughts around 'form'?...

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How does the stage work? Via UrbanApa

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I really enjoy how this work challenges my thinking not just with the content but how the content is delivered. Really recommend having a read!

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anti-anticipatory aesthetics by alys longley and pavleheidler

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anti-anticipatory aesthetics by alys longley & pavleheidler

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Great read from new friends! :)

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anti-anticipatory aesthetics by Alys Longley

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When reflecting on the notion of anti-anticipatory aesthetic in the broader cultural context, I am consciously reflecting on my own embodied experience. At the age of 31, I am beginning to realise the way in which the observations I am making are really meant to help me personally work out why is it that I am constantly scared of not being able to sustain, i.e., find resources with which to support my ever complexifying and diversifying artistic drives, needs, wishes and wants. Being raised a dancer in Zagreb, Salzburg, Bruxelles, and Stockholm, being raised at least in part by forward-thinking human beings, I am trying to understand why is it that I am still capable of not truly believing myself and the experience I’ve had working with Alys on this book. Working on this book has made me feel like I’m dancing in the way I haven’t felt in a whole long while. Working on this book has made it possible for me to explore the extent of my dancing that dancing alone hasn’t been capable of supporting and hasn’t been capable for a long time. This book is a dance, is an evidence of dancing, is an evidence of embodied knowledge, is more of an evidence of what it is that I know than I can argue for at the moment because it encompasses more than the intellectually affirmable. Why is it challenging to believe in those statements, even though they evidence my actual and physical and shared and shareable experience? In a recent conversation with a friend and a colleague whom I trust and who trusts me, whose identity will remain anonymous, I talked about the challenges I was facing when arguing my practice as a dancing practice even though at the moment it tends to express itself in writing and speaking more than it does in “actual dancing,” quantitatively and formally speaking. My friend followed my argument excitedly, which was encouraging. It was not until we arrived at the end of the conversation, when our attention turned from me to them, that they smirked and decidedly concluded that; yes, sure, everything I was saying was indeed amazing and exciting. Except that at the end of the day they were the one taking morning classes and worrying about injury in the way that I am not––at the moment, they added cynically. Surely that must mean that my dance practice isn’t really a dance practice after all… It took me a while to wrap my head around our conversation. I’ve finally arrived at the following question; why is it difficult for friends and colleagues who are interested in each other’s practices, why is it difficult for them, for us, to support each other’s trajectories in this socio-political climate? Why do we, friends and peers, instead of encouraging and inspiring each other to pave new pathways, punish each other––intellectually as well as emotionally––for not conforming to standards? Here is what I observed: I tend to have conversations that follow the scenario described above with friends and peers who are young professionals, who might identify as dancers exclusively, who might have struggled finding work, who might have struggled with being recognised as valuable contributors to our community. I tend to have another type of conversation that follows somewhat of an opposite scenario to the one described above in which I am indeed encouraged to proceed in my research and almost made to feel ashamed for feeling confused at times––oftentimes confusion “at my age” can be deemed evidence of a childlike naïveté. This type of conversation I tend to encounter when talking to colleagues and friends whose work has been recognised as valuable, who are economically stable, whose work is partially recognised by important institutions, and who are often ten years my senior or more. Now, the conclusion I would like to come to is that the encouragement I sometimes get from my seniors is what I should draw from it in order to gain experience from which to gain confidence. The catch is in that this particular encouragement comes with a warning: in order to succeed, you must learn to play the game. Compromise is essential. Choosing your battles is essential. Anticipation is essential. Those are the qualities that signify maturity, that signify adulthood, that signify professional demeanour, that make you trustworthy in the eye of those who have already achieved those qualities within their own practice. My current hypothesis is the following: what if both of these demographics are evidencing the kind of behaviour, the kind of reasoning developed over time in response to a limited access to and a systemic lack of resources? And how do we, as individuals, create conditions necessary for development of a confident critical study when so much of our experience is conditioned by a limited access to and a systemic lack of resources? For when resources are scarce, and we barely have enough to support those whose work affirms those same standards that justify the labour by subsidising it, why would we ever invest resources in those who challenge the standards by exploring its periphery, its margin, its transitional and transformative capacities? ph 2020 10 27

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PERFORMANCE MAP WITH NO END FOR SOLO OR MANY PARTICIPANTS AT ANY TIME AND ANYWHERE | Moi Tran

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This work is part of a series of co-commissions by performingborders and the project performance, possession + automation. This commission is one of three from our open call for experimental writing. Explore Moi Tran’s PERFORMANCE MAP below, you can find the instruction guide for the artwork here [Password: PerformingCiphers2024], this document tells you more about how

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Subversive Publishing Strategies #6: Archive Books

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Subversive Publishing Strategies #6: Archive Books

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A great podcast (and episode) by Framer Framed!

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Subversive Publishing Strategies #6: Archive Books

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By Mother Tongues: https://www.artscabinet.org/ways-into-knowing/archival-divinations

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mother tongues is an interdisciplinary and research-led project applying decolonial, feminist and queer theory in exploring language and identity.

Acting as a platform for linguistic localities to connect and share knowledge through the art of translation, mother tongues function as space for activity and thought, and a tool for dismantling the power held by dominant languages and hierarchies in creative expression and literary form.

The interactive work displayed below has been created as a response to the Ways into Knowing Editorial project. Please click on the options available at the bottom of the work to navigate your way in.

This content is hidden from view outside of the Squarespace editor. Format (left) and Contributor (right) data should be embedded below

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Via Fehras Publishing Practices

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A very very interesting take/ reflection/ read on our participation in the (un?)making of histories +++.

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'past(present/future)----the present(future/past)----and the future(past/present).

I want to demonstrate how these temporal regimes encroach on one another, so to tell the story of the past means telling the story of the present, which is already where the future resides.' (p.32)

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From 'Experiments in Imagining Otherwise' by Lola Olufemi

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CALL FOR ARCHIVES - SURVIVAL KIT

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Thank you for encouraging me to rethink what the idea of a revival can mean, feel and look like +.

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Oblique Strategies by Matt Ruten

A series of somatic invitations.

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It's a mobile app (preferred experience) but can be experienced through your tablet, laptop or computer too.

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Planet Orbit with Nedda Sou via WorldwideFM

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A great (re)source and radio show - thank you Nedda Sou for this gem and one that is helping me on my journey through different sonic universes that meet the dance 🌌

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To continue on from my last thread that looked into what a 'dance/ing archivist' could be, I want to share some more questions that are keeping the spiralling aliveee.

In addition to the q's:

what is an (archive) without a building?* and where else can archives live?*

There are these two q's:

what is evidence? and how do/ can we document an absence?*

For me, these q's are interesting because I feel that they crossover with the previous two in fresh ways. But instead of looking for a particular outcome or meaning, I am enjoying working with all of these q's as loose compasses/ markers that give my practice some direction when it comes to articulating my thoughts.

So, please enjoy the following group of (re)sources that are voicing and challenging my thinking around 'types'* of evidence and absence :)

To be continued,

N x

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Footish notes:

* - This might grow in/ with time... we'll see!
* - Question rephrased by Ingrid Berger Myhre’s: 'what is a museum without a building?'
* - Asked via a WhatsApp call
* - From the article: Why Am I Not Dancing? (p.79) for Still Life Issue 5: Restraint. Thank you Maxine Leeds Craig for asking this question and inspiring me to ask and borrow it too.

*- I hope to swap this word for a better one later

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What is evidence?

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* - ie: intangible, unintelligible, untranslatable, corporeal +++...

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'Artist as Translator' by Second Practice

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'Artist as Translator' by Second Practice

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Artist as Translator

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* - Thank you Second Practice :)

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Inside Choreocracy* is a 'behind-the-scenes text adventure' written by Ian Abbott that explores the making* of a dance production by Casson & Friends.

What I really like about this resource is the way it explores the idea of navigation through this 'quest-like' structure, embracing the context, tangents and didn't-quite-make-it (?) moments that are key to this creation process.

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* - Thank you Casson & Friends and Ian Abbott for such a great (re)source

* - Not just what was done but who was involved and how the work lives on through the people who activate it.

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Walking Dance Class by Flavourama!* Thank you for these starting (and connective) points!

* - Flavourama's upcoming festival (including this walking dance class) is happening between 1-8 September 2024! Check it out if you can :)

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Some great prompts, invitations and questions :)

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Afrikan Dancers as Embodied Archives: Contemporary Movements as Evolving Archives

Dodzi K. Aveh

JC Niala's essay Afrikan Dancers as Embodied Archives speaks to a phenomenon I find very interesting; performance as an unorthodox archive. A topic that changed the whole direction of my art practice and academic journey. A lot of the history I know about my ancestry comes from my encounters with African performance art. The act of documentation was done through music, poetry and dance and it is this same subconscious practice done by the ancients to preserve and archive knowledge, that still plays out today through our contemporary performances, especially hip-hop dance.

Reading both JC Niala and Temitayo Ince's essays on Krumping threw my mind back to my encounter with the Krump scene two years ago in my country, Ghana. Everything was starting to pick up again after the Covid19 pandemic, but I had been inactive as a performance artist for over a year and now here I was as an artist in residence at Terra Alta, a private experimental theatre space in Accra. During this residency, I met Twitches who was an intern at the same space. We were both graduates from different departments at the school of performing arts, University of Ghana Legon, but we knew each other as familiar faces. One day at rehearsal I saw Twitches Krumping in the dance studio and I stopped a while to watch him; I observed the poetry in his movement and this sparked my interest in Krumping. Afterwards we spoke and explored the possibility of me drawing inspiration from Krumping to work on my solo performance which I was in residence for. Through Twitches I begun to follow the Krumping scene in Ghana and the registered organisation called Krump Ghana that organises events and competitions for dancers.

After reading both essays, my train of thought began to flow in the direction of what Krump might mean to Krump dancers in Ghana who are physically detached from the LA scene and the rest of the diaspora. What are the stories being told in their movement? What does this mean to them? So I reached out to Twitches to have a conversation.

​

I asked him how he got into Krumping, to which he responded that while in high school, he came across videos on the internet from Miss Prissy and fell in love with the dance. He then went on to talk about one particular day in high school: "I met someone on campus in my senior high school who was dancing crazily around 1am... he was dancing at 1am outside, and how he was moving... I said to myself, is this not Krumping? Because earlier I was introduced to Krumping... I was being taught by some street dancers I knew, but what they did was not like the videos I used to see. But I asked myself if what I saw at 1am on that day was Krumping, and then it got intense and I really wanted to know more about the dance. I didn't get to watch Rize early on but once I started dancing I watched it and it boosted my desire to learn more."

I asked what does the dance mean to him?

"To me Krump is freedom and Krump is time, it is like past... present... future, for me every moment I find myself is a revelation, I get a revelation, it's a connection of past, present and even what is about to happen in the future...that is what Krumping means to me. Time in Krumping is my way of letting go."

My next question was around if he had any personal or communal trauma that he expresses through Krump?

​

"I don't really have any personal trauma behind why I Krump. I actually started Krumping based on love, so whenever I Krump it is like love, it is freedom for me, yes, it is freedom for me. The only thing I'll say is... sometimes in case I feel anyway... I go to the lab and Krump... bang bang... I do my Krump, I do my thing and it's like a relief for me."

I asked if he had noticed any similarities between traditional Ghanaian dance movements and Krumping: "I really see the link between them. I'm like wow... Bawa, I used to relate it to Krumping. I feel the connection between Bawa and the Krump chest puff... the chest puff is defined as an engine to keep your Krump going. And in Bawa you have a similar thing, and how they stamp their feet and then their chest is just pumping, they're just breathing in and out... and the chest is just coming out... the second chest puff, it's nice... its really beautiful. There are more coincidences."

​

Our conversation evolved into me asking if he ever does intentional fusions of traditional dance in Krumping? "I don't see it as this being something else I can add, I see it as a point where they both meet, a meeting point for all styles... in Africa we have our own style of Krumping, we call it Afro Buck... it is basically just being yourself, so we flow like that, it just comes and we go."

Inspired by my conversation with Twitches I looked into the Bawa dance which he mentioned hoping to see similarities between the dance and Krump.

​

The dance traditionally belongs to the Dagaaba people of the upper west region of Ghana and was created after a conflict between two warlords, Samori and Babatouri. Samori threw a celebration after defeating Babatouri and through that celebration the dance was created. After this it was turned into a harvest dance and performed every new year to thank the gods for a successful farming season.

Lawra Bawa Group from The Upper West Region of Ghana, published by this week tv, 2012

The dance is led by a dancer signalling a troupe of both male and female dancers with a whistle, the whistle acts as a lead melody over the main melody from both a male and a female xylophone backed by percussion from handheld dondo drums. The movements are very swift and the dancers have rattles on their feet to create a rhythm that stays in sync with what is being played. There is a movement that involves rapidly squatting and imitating the action of squatting to plant sorghum seeds as in common in the farming traditions of the Dagaaba people. This rapid squat movement is quite similar to Krump. There is the chest puff movement that Twitches spoke about which is also backed by arm and torso movements which are also quite similar to Krump.

I was invited by Twitches and the rest of the community to participate in a street performance arts festival dubbed The Art of Independence. It started with performance art workshops throughout the week and then on 6th of March 2023 there was a series of performances on the streets of Jamestown to commemorate our interpretation of Ghana's independence. At this event I met up with the rest of the Ghanaian Krump community and some Krump dancers from Nigeria. Among them was Smack Addy, a pioneer of the Afro Buck style that Twitches had spoken to me about. I saw Smack lead a workshop on Krumping, where he took the team of dancers through a set of different Krump moves and then they pieced everything together in a routine. After the workshop the floor was opened for anyone to freestyle and this is when things began to get intense. I saw different dancers step into the circle to show what they could do, how they danced and got lost in the spirit of the moment. The energy of the crowd began to get intense and the energy in the dancers intensified. In these moments I was able to see and feel a sense of familiarity with the movement of the individual dancers until I saw recognisable dance moves from traditional dances like Bawa, Adowa, Agbadza and Kpanlogo, yet at the same time I realised that the dancers were still Krumping.

The energy was very similar to certain Vodun rituals where dancers offer themselves to be possessed by ancestral spirits and dance possession dances, but this dance was secular and had little religious significance.

My AfroBuck Story with SMACKADDY, published by Addy Daniels, 2023

I spoke with Smack about Afro Buck as I wanted to know what it is and how it is growing.

​

He told me that it was not originally called Afro Buck. He traced it back to contemporary dance ciphers in Nigeria and how the competitive culture pushes dancers involved in freestyle battles to be creative and learn to move to any music played. It is out of this versatility that Afro Buck was born. He mentioned an instance where Tight Eyez (a pioneer of Krump) was battling Toyin, a Nigerian dancer who danced to a song by TerryG and Tight Eyez had to freestyle Krump to her choice of music in the second round. Inspired by that and other freestyle videos he had seen on the internet, he and his friend Nas The Magnificent - also a Krump dancer - decided to do a video Krumping to an afro house song by Niniola, a Nigerian Afro house musician. Their video went viral and trended for days which lead to Niniola reposting it on her page. They were impressed because Krump was not taken very seriously in Nigeria because the dance was detached from its history. After Niniola reposted their first video in 2019 they continued to intentionally post more videos of them Krumping to afrobeats and some of the artists reposted their videos and commented under the videos too. Kwame Kideyez Osei (Kid Tight Eyez) - a German based Krump dancer of Ghanaian decent - was invited to do a Krump workshop in Nigeria which they both attended and then met up with him. Kwame told them he had been seeing their videos on the internet and wanted to join them in doing what they were doing and it was he who suggested the name Afro Buck. The three of them then made a video using the #AfroBbuck hashtag. To Nas and Smack, the name has placed an identity on what it was they had been doing and which people were loving. Then the Covid19 pandemic hit, and for them, during that period, they focused on developing the style and putting out more content. In 2022 Smack was invited to France to participate in the Afropolis festival held in Marseilles where he taught an Afro Buck class - for him this was the big league, the style was starting to go global.

WHAT IS AFROBUCK // NAS MAGNIFICENT X SMACK. Published by NasMagnificent, 2021

In his own words: "I feel like Afro Buck is us being true to ourselves. Afro Buck is like when the western people came they gave us English, but now we have pidgin English."

​

He admits that there are limitations for him and other West African dancers who are embracing and expressing themselves through just Krump, because they are detached from and don't relate directly to the realities that inspired Tight Eyez and the other originators of Krump. They are able to overcome these limitations through the expressive and dramatic performativity that comes to them naturally as Nigerian dancers. And so they began to take inspiration from their community and created movements based on the different emotions they saw being expressed around them in the streets and market places. Smack speaks about taking inspiration to create movements from observing an old woman whose son returned from the city with expensive gifts for her and he wanted to capture the expressiveness of her joy through Krump. "Imagine an old woman, imagine her expression when her son who left the city years ago to go and hustle, he now returns with gifts for her... imagine the cacophonic joy that is beyond what the human eye can see, cos only she can understand where that is coming from. Imagine how she will dance? So we decided to pick expressions like this and put them in the Krump which had already been made by Tight Eyez."

​

Smack sees Krump as a tool and decided to look within himself to find what roots he could express using that tool. For him Krump is bigger than him, it is bigger than Afro Buck, and bigger than even Tight Eyez himself. Afro Buck is about them creating an identity in the Krump space and should not be seen as a pollution of Krump or a change of its narrative because at the heart of Krump he sees the dance movement as having roots in traditional West African dances. Smack mentions Krump movements are very similar to traditional Nigerian Masquerade dances: "If you check the similarities of Krump, it is no different from our own indigenous dance steps... so it is just us tracing back to where we are from... unknowingly. I know this argument is going to come up where people will say how come Krump is said to be a western thing when all the movements and gestures and postures looks like a Masquerade dancing... you need to see the Masquerade dancing. They dance with high intensity, just like how rock is a heavy genre of music, Krump is heavy, Krump is radical, Krump is emotional, just like where we come from... that is our culture, all of this is us tracing back to our fathers and grandfathers."

He likens the Krump spaces in Nigeria where he and his friends and colleagues meet up to dance to the indigenous community squares that his ancestors met up in to tell stories.

IGBANMAWN NDI IGBO ....MY CULTURE.. MY PRIDE .. Published by IKORONDIGBO TV, 2017

In JC Niala's paper she speaks to the fact that the violence that inspired the creation of Krump as a dance form is not just personal to that community but is common across different inner cities across the globe. As such, people all over the world who exist in similar realities are able to draw inspiration from Krump because of their relation to similar stories archived in their dance practice. This phenomenon is not just particular to Krumping, I documented how drill became asakaa in Ghana, in my previous essay The Woo Dance vs Kete: Tradition Recycled or Coincidence? So it was no surprise for me to discover Twitches relation to Krumping.

​

Unlike the creators of Krump, Twitches doesn't have any personal or communal relationship to the dance moves, yet his body and his mind are able to pick up on some of the stories archived in the dance form. Whenever he dances it - even when he is across the globe - once he opens himself up to the dance he starts to feel freedom. The "relief" of which he speaks about and what he finds in the dance is the very thing he saw in the high school on that fateful day at 1am. It is common for artists to enter a meditative state mid performance and the cathartic nature of this is very liberating. As a performer, I am familiar with this phenomenon. Though I'm not a dancer, there are certain moments mid performance, mid rehearsal or even mid production where I could be writing a poem, rapping, or creating a theatrical piece, that once I let myself go into the flow, everything starts to feel euphoric. It's just like how Twitches describes it, the past, present and future seem to become one.

As an African, I have come to understand that this spiritual experience has roots linking it to indigenous griot traditions. On this side of the world, the histories and memories of communities were archived as performances. To those of us who grew up connected to these traditions and seeing them evolve over time, we tend to overlook the fact that though we are actively practicing our artforms outside of a traditional spiritual context, the spirit of tradition is still present in our performances. When we look deep in ourselves we see glimpses of that, it is why people like Twitches can draw and feel connections between two different traditions that are so similar yet were born out of two completely different times.

Smack is able to draw linkages of what he's seen and learned to what is felt and expressed in his community. This is possible for him because he sees similarities between Krump and indigenous Nigerian dances. It is out of this paradigm that Afro Buck grows and it can be seen as an extension of the ever-evolving archive that the performance and the body of Afrikan performers is.

As a student of the performing arts, one lesson I became familiar with quickly was that African performance was deliberately used by our ancestors as a knowledge repository. Among my people - the Ewes of southern Ghana - there is a dance performed every year at the Hogbetsotso festival called Misago. It is done to remind us of how our ancestors escaped the tyrant king Agorkorli of Notsie many years ago. The mythology says that under the guidance of the great Sage Torgbui Tsali our ancestors broke through the walls of Notsie and walked backwards to freedom. It is that backward walk to freedom that was archived as the Misago dance.

Other instances like this are are played out across the diaspora including how slaves in Brazil hid their martial arts in the capoeira dance as a means to pass on tradition without getting killed by imperialists.

To further understand what the connection between Krump and west African traditional dances was, I reached out to Terry Bright Ofosu, a lecturer at the Department of Dance studies at the University of Ghana. Terry was a hip-hop dancer in Ghana in the late 90s and early 2000s before he went into academia where he is noted for doing extensive research work on contemporary dance in Ghana, specifically hip-hop dance. He referred me to a paper titled "Globalization and the Hip-hop cypher" which he co-wrote with Halifu Osumare as part of the recently published The Oxford Handbook of Hip-Hop Dance Studies. The paper explores what it labels as the "global-local problematic" with reference to hip-hop dance. A phenomenon that explores how dance movements originating from Africa evolved into hip-hop dance and how globalisation transplanted this subculture back to Africa and across the globe, thus creating pockets of localised hip-hop dance scenes all evolving differently. The paper closely follows the hip-hop dance scene in Hawaii and Ghana in the late 90s and early 2000s respectively.

​

It links the early hip-hop dance scene in Ghana to the children of the then upper-class citizens who first had direct access and consumed American media - either through television, VCR or later via CD rentals. It wasn't until they replicated these dances in the club that they were copied by people from other classes of society who did not have direct access to the same American media. This led to hip-hop dances like b-boying becoming popular on the streets of Accra and dance battles and ciphers became frequent too.

It goes on to describe the dance cipher as a place of higher consciousness in which the continuation of tradition is developed; that's to say that in a cypher a very creative dancer is able to determine the direction the dance style will go. It is through this process where we see the fusion of traditional dance and hip-hop dance here in Ghana.

In a typical Ghanaian hip-hop cypher the dance usually starts with learned moves, moves that the dancers have picked up either primarily or secondarily from American media. As the cypher progresses and the dancers exhaust their borrowed stories and moves, the need to impress a local audience with new creativity leads them into the realm of translating familiar movements from traditional dances into the hip-hop cypher.

It is this phenomenon that Ofosu and Osumare refer to as Performance and Performativity. How hip-hop dance in Ghana is a merging of the replication of an observed performance, and the indigenisation that goes into the process of executing that said performance with localised references. This makes it relatable to a Ghanaian audience who are detached from the realities that inspired the original dance style and would be needed to fully appreciate the said performance. That is why dancers like Twitches and Smack - who are detached from the realities that inspired Krump - are still able to hop on it, relate and make it their own.

It's through the existence of Afro Buck that we get to see how Krump can evolve into something different under a context of localised performativity in Nigeria and then how that is then exported globally.

​

This theory of performance and performativity isn't just peculiar to dance but music too, and it is because of this that subgenres of hip-hop like hiplife developed. This is where we were seeing hip-hop being fused with traditional music and languages which went on to inspire the contemporary dance scene in Ghana.

Ofosu and Osumare speak on how hip-hop dance itself already has its social identities embedded and codified in its performance before it is globally exported. With the case of Krumping we see it play out through the evolution of Clowning into Krumping, and the new realities we see captured in the film Rize. The dance form is received in West Africa and through the development of its performativity and performance an indigenisation process occurs and it develops into Afro Buck. The hip-hop dancer now becomes a living, evolving archive that carries the documentation of the evolution of the dance form along with pieces of the different stories that inspired the origins and evolution of the form. The hip-hop dancer and the dance are not just a collective archive of the history of the dance but are key to its future. The internet can transport Afro Buck either back to the USA or anywhere in the world and evolve into something entirely new. Ofosu and Osumare attribute this to the room for improvisation offered by the presence of freestyle in hip-hop dance. Improvisation which they themselves describe as a trait of African dance. A point that was also made by Smack in my interview with him.

"It is difficult to fake either performance or performativity in the moment-by-moment improvisational dance cipher. One must represent the soul force implicit in individual dance improvisation as one "reps" one's hood."

​

It is this soul force that Ofosu and Osumare speak of that Twitches describes as the point where the past, present and future become one. The moment of truth where the dancer gets lost in the performance and the different stories archived become one and evolve into something new. It is this same paradigm of improvisation and spontaneity that sparked the flames of Afro Buck and continue to push its evolution in documenting the current localised realities in Nigeria; using Krump as a borrowed tool and now exporting this new dance to the rest of the world.

​

For me it is this moment that the hip-hop dancer in Ghana, Nigeria and West Africa are able to connect with the griot traditions of performance archiving which are preserved through the different traditions and have paved the metaphorical road that the hip-hop dancer now walks on.

Commissioned for Ink Cypher, May 2023

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A response to Afrikan Dancers As Embodied Archives by JC Niala

​

If you value the work we're doing and are able to contribute, then please donate.

Dodzi K Aveh

Dodzi Korsi Aveh, aka Who Is Deydzi, is pathing his own way in the Ghanaian arts, telling stories though spoken word poetry, theatre, film and other visual Arts. As a child he would write his first poems and lyrics as a coping mechanism for his parents' divorce and a crisis surrounding his identity as a Ewe person, since he was struggling with not speaking native Ewe. This coping method soon became a 9 year poetry journey and
would turn into a music career. His sound incorporates his poetry background with traditional Ewe sounds, Hip Hop and Alte influences. Now having released 3 albums, Who Is Deydzi is blooming into an impressive emerging musician, deserving of much more recognition. He&#39;s previously performed alongside Black Sherrif at Afrochella
and set to perform in Accra later this year whilst he completes his Theatre Arts MA at the University of Ghana. Highly ambitious, moralistic and creative, Who Is Deydzi is one to watch in the emerging Ghanaian music scene.

Influences

Kofi Awoonor, Kendrick Lamar, Asakaa

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Afrikan Dancers as Embodied Archives: Contemporary Movements as Evolving Archives | Ink Cypher

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Ink Cypher presents a new work from Dodzi K Aveh - Afrikan Dancers as Embodied Archives: Contemporary Movements as Evolving Archives

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An amazing book by Tara Faheti* exploring the 'intentional scattering' of a family archive amongst many other valuable im/materials!

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* - Thank you Tara for creating a im/material that would be one of my first encounters and para-practices in my archival journey :)

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How do/ can we document an absence?

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* - Q from the article: 'Why Am I Not Dancing?' by Maxine Leeds Craig (p.79) for Still Life Issue 5: Restraint

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"What if we do not need to know the past to know the past, or, indeed, to feel it?"

- Experiments In Imagining Otherwise (2021) by Lola Olufemi

⁻⁻⁻

* - highly recommend this book!!

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Episode 1: The Archive is a Portal for Reimagination

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Listen to this episode from Conversations with Neighbours, Archive of Forgetfulness on Spotify. In this first episode of Conversations with Neighbours, Huda Tayob speaks to Jumoke Sanwo and Ali Al-Adawy on questions of archives, untranslatability and opacity.

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'The Legitimated Body and Navigated Listener' by Hardi & Khabat @ Shubbak Fest 2023

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'The Legitimated Body and Navigated Listener' by Hardi & Khabat @ Shubbak Fest 2023

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The Legitimated Body and Navigated Listener -  Shubbak Festival 2023

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'Series of Disappearances' by Fehras Publishing Practices

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'Series of Disappearances' by Fehras Publishing Practices

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Superrr interesting read on the chronicles and movements of street libraries +

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Tabea Nixdorff on Instagram @readingerrata

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From a friend & their friend @readingerrata

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From a friend & their friend @readingerrata

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Another super interesting intervention on a 'type' of absence.

Thank you Tabea Nixdorff and Monique Ulrich for challenging our passivity towards excluded imagery with intervention, subtext and play :)

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Tabea Nixdorff on Instagram: "What's worth a book full of photos of unnamed women? Consider it part of "wild, funny, and new modes of art making," "provocative," and probably also a critique on consumerism and pop culture... The book "Frauen" looked at us, displayed in one of the shelves at @bibliothekandreaszuest for a while until one night we gave it a new dust jacket. What started as a joke, stayed as one of the paratextual insertions we left behind in books of an eclectic collection accumulated by Swiss artist Andreas Züst in the 1970s till 2000. During our month-long artists' residency, collaborator Monique Ulrich and I approached the library's holdings through a wandering reading of paratexts such as dedications, acknowledgements, colophons or editorial notes. From our statement: "These paratexts account for the labor and collective efforts behind the making of a book. We are interested in unearthing absences and processes of exclusion from literary production. We started to map out the literary network of (queer) women artists and writers in German-speaking Switzerland and beyond, on the basis of the library holdings of Andreas Züst. For women, the art and literary world was for a long time only accessible in the roles of muses, copyists, assistants, editors, or under a pseudonym. Inspired by errata, we inserted paper slips into some library books, as a way of sharing fragments of our research and linking books with each other, allowing future readers to retrace these hidden alliances." - Martin Kippenberger: Frauen, Merve, 1980 - Ilse Aichinger: Wo ich wohne. Erzählungen, Dialoge, Gedichte, Fischer, 1963 - Paula Charles: Go, Josephine, go, Limmat, 1993 - Nina Simone: Meine schwarze Seele. Erinnerungen, Hoffmann und Campe, 1993 (German translation of "I put a spell on you") - Sir Galahad: Mütter und Amazonen. Ein Umriss weiblicher Reiche, Lange, 1932 (Written under a pseudonym by Bertha Diener-Eckstein "Mothers and Amazons. The First Feminine History of Culture") Credits go to our imaginary assistant for never cleaning up the mess, the ever inspiring conversations with fellow resistents @vidarucli @marie.schumann @_vanessahartmann and the amazing @alpenhof.ai trio"

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166 likes, 9 comments - readingerrata on March 8, 2023: "What's worth a book full of photos of unnamed women? Consider it part of "wild, funny, and new modes of art making," "provocative," and...".

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For this round of thisishappening, I wanted to introduce a different approach.

Although it feels quite weird to write this 3 months into 2024* I feel that this is an interesting way to continue running slightly outside of time* and in a way, sits nicely next to this round's theme.

Along with dance/ing being the anchor to what I do, I am at a point where I want to repurpose* and expand my dance practice to include the (body) work a 'dance/ing archivist' could do and allow the asterisk in the 'dance-artist' label to hold more meanings.

So instead of a key word or thread, I wanted to describe (kind-of) the next addition of (re)sources.

They have inspired my thinking and imaginings around some questions a 'dance/ing archivist' may ask if the role was not tied down to one person/ a singular entity but instead seen and done as a reshuffle, sharing and in/complete effort* with others.

Sooo with this in mind, please find some spicy (re)sources and people offer their take on the archival potential of 'Place & Space'.

Where else can/ has/ does archiving (as a verb) and archives (as locations, movements +) live* and be imagined? How could this expand our thinking of place and space?

Those are just a few q's with no a's :)

To be continued,

N x

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Footish notes:

* - Despite this, I do truly hope 2024 is aligning with what you need right now in life x

* - New Years can align with us differently

* - I don't think retraining is the right word in this case because the training I have done up until this point is integral to my growth and is integral to the re-purposing rather than retraining suggesting that I am leaving it behind or it's not longer useful.

* - Meaning the act to archive keeps shifting and changing hands/ people/ minds/ places/ boxes (!) making this in/complete :)

* - Parts of a question a friend once asked me on a Whatsapp Call

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What is an (archive) without a building?*

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* - Question rephrased by Ingrid Berger Myhre’s: what is a museum without a building?

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Tali x Nabil Al-Kinani - Mum. Edit. More. Material Archive

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Exclusion and racial bias are built into our cities. In its debut publication Now You Know, Sound Advice - the platform exploring spatial inequality in architecture - has gathered the thoughts and reflections of more than 50 architects and urbanists of colour in an extraordinary compendium of essays, poems, interviews and, yes, advice on how to address the discrimination baked into our built environment.

Crowdfunded to the tune of £19,500 by 418 supporters, the 180-page paperback is designed by Joel Antoine-Wilkinson and edited by Sound Advice's co-hosts, the urbanists Pooja Agrawal and Joseph Henry. Its contributors range from MBEs to architecture students, artists to urban policymakers - each one accompanying their piece with a concise tip of the kind that has made the Sound Advice Instagram feed such a compelling resource, paired with a music recommendation.

"Through Now You Know we wanted to explore a compelling alternative and more plural vision of the future in our voice and within our own space. The contributors have created an incredible manifesto so we really hope that people engage with the content in the book and don't just leave it collecting dust on a coffee table or to decorate a Zoom background." Joseph Henry, Sound Advice

All photography by Timi Akindele-Ajani

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Exclusion and racial bias are built into our cities. In its debut publication Now You Know, Sound Advice - the platform exploring spatial inequality in architecture - has gathered the thoughts and reflections of more than 50 architects and urbanists of colour in an extraordinary compendium of essays, poems, interviews and, yes, advice on how to address the discrimination baked into our built environment.

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* - There's an audiobook version via Bandcamp! Also highly recommend her book: 'Dance Your Way Home: A Journey Through the Dancefloor'

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Decide on the story Decide on the creative form Start gathering your material

about

Audiobook for new pamphlet Document Your Culture containing exclusive track by Wonky Logic

credits

released September 15, 2020

license

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*Audiobook* Document Your Culture, by Emma Warren

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Audiobook* Document Your Culture by Emma Warren, released 15 September 2020 1. It Begins Within 2. Questions 3. Thoughts 4. The Basics 5. Starting 6. Endless Ways To Tell Your Story 7. Gather and Edit The Work 8. Get It Out There 9. More Questions 10.

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'A dance history game' (2015) by Hamish MacPherson

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An ongoing extraction of cultural property has occurred in colonies outside Europe leading to the objectification of artifacts, humans, tools, sounds, instruments amongst other materials. This harboring of the objects in museums and institutions is unethical and problematic as the so-called objects' are not regarded as objects in an African context. These are historical carriers, spiritual beings, and cultural entities that have been passed over generations and are meant to be learned from and act as reflections of past and future histories. Although these histories are not accessible to whom they belong to and impetus imagined histories of the past. The occident has accumulated most of these archives and continuously reproduces a colonial pattern in this discourse. Considering suppositions proposed by Bonaventur Ndikung, and Kofi Agawu on the archive, [Temporary Stored] questions and reflects on the significance of these sounds, objects, and instruments stored in ethnological museums. These museums and institutions have acquired objects through dubious conditions such as looting, theft, greed, and naivety of sellers, in the spirit of predator capitalism outside former colonies of Europe, eradicating histories, norms, and practices of these communities and countries. Additionally, with the fact that most of the archives have been contextualized from a European bias and an institutional ordering of knowledge, the presentation, descriptions of the sounds and objects often lose the relationship with their/ its inhabitants as the focus has been put primarily on the object and sound' materialities leaving other significances of the archives. [Temporary Stored] focuses on a narrative throughout different sounds from the Sound Archive of Royal Museum of Central Africa repatriated in 2021 and reconfigured in an emancipatory sonic hearing of the archive through fixed media pieces and a radiophonic piece.

'The restitution of stolen art objects is causing heated debates in the European museum landscape. However, the question of how to deal with immaterial heritage is just as pressing. For the sound artist Joseph Kamaru, sounds play a central role: Passed down from generation to generation, they create a connection between the past and the future.

In Temporary Stored Kamaru questions the importance of sound archives for the history of colonial violence. Using synthesizer sounds, field recordings and recordings from the archives of the Royal Museum for Central Africa in Tervuren, he is working on re-appropriating the stolen sounds.'

Special thanks to: Rémy Jadinon, Derek Debru, Daisuke Ishida, Jessica Ekomane, Marcus Gammel, Deutschlandfunk Kultur, UDK SoundS, Royal Museum for Central Africa, DEKKMMA, The Center for Arts, Design, and Social Research (CAD+SR).

released July 15, 2022

cover art design: Joe Gilmore
mastering: Simon Scott at SPS

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Temporary Stored by KMRU, released 15 July 2022 1. MR0 2. MR1 3. MR2 4. MR3 5. MR4 6. MR5 7. Temporary Stored (radiophonic) An ongoing extraction of cultural property has occurred in colonies outside Europe leading to the objectification of artifacts, humans, tools, sounds, instruments amongst other materials.

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'a so-called archive' and 'No Archive Can Restore You'

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* - Very interesting takes on questioning 'the capital A in archives'

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A recent online panel staged by the British Council and Shubbak confronts the idea of preserving collective memory in the face of tangible and intangible destruction. By Rebecca Anne Proctor

The greatest threat to our existence-perhaps even greater than a pandemic- is the disappearance of our past. The revered ancient Roman scholar Marcus Tullius Cicero believed that historiography, the act of recording history and the events that make up our collective memory, is a weapon against oblivion.

"To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child. For what is the worth of human life, unless it is woven into the life of our ancestors by the records of history?"

To echo Cicero, who are we without our past? What becomes of our identity? Our nature of existence and our raison d'être?

Over one thousand years later and we are confronted with the same problematic paradigm, particularly in the Middle East. In a region where the last fifty years of conflicts and historical revisionism, carried out by warring political factions, has destroyed cultural heritage and memory-both of the recent modern and ancient past-we are at a point where we can accurately call this period The Age of Disappearance. That was the title of the first in a series of online discussions about cultural heritage and contemporary culture staged jointly by the British Council's Cultural Protection Fund and Shubbak, London's Festival of Contemporary Arab Culture. The panel brought together experienced artists and professionals from the Middle East and North Africa, including Abu Dhabi-based Baghdad-born artist Rand Abdul Jabbar. Her project on the Minaret of 'Anah reflects on the tragic history of the minaret in Western Iraq when it was dismantled and relocated to a new site during the 1980's due to the construction of a dam. In 2006 the minaret was destroyed by an explosion as part of a terrorist campaign targeting several Iraqi cultural heritage sites. It was then rebuilt again in 2012 by a team of local archaeologists only to be destroyed again in 2016 by ISIS militias who detonated the structure. Also on the panel was Hatem Imam from Samandal or Salamander in Arabic, a quarterly tri-lingual magazine based in Lebanon that collects and publishes comics from the Middle East with the intent of fostering a platform for the alternative expression of cultural and social issues for youths and adults. Iman discusses how regional artists created new comic strips based on archival photographs from the Arab Image Foundation. Lastly, American musician and composer Amir ElSaffar of Iraqi heritage shares how he incorporates elements from jazz, Arabic maqam and other forms in his work.

The artists were joined by host Jumana Al-Yasiri and a range of speakers: architect and co-founder of Daw'an Mud Brick Architecture Foundation, Iraqi architect Salma Samar Damluji discussing post-war reconstruction and rehabilitation work in Hadramut, a region in South Arabia in present-day eastern Yemen, with Prince Claus Fund. Reflecting on the restoration of The Khalidi Library, curator and director of Al-Ma'mal Foundation in Jerusalem, Jack Persekian. Musician and assistant artistic supervisor at Action for Hope in Lebanon, Farah Kaddour highlights how the music school is one example for bringing wellbeing and healing to refugee children.

As the panel underlines, human beings today have a complex history with cultural heritage, namely because it is so crucial to the understanding of our identity and our history. There are also many ways in which cultural heritage can be preserved. There are the archaeologists and the conservationists that have developed inventive methods to preserve historical material from literally and figuratively disappearing from the earth, and the contemporary artists who analyse and interrogate personal narratives, archives and historical sites, offering a fresh perspective on past and present histories.

The panel showcased six examples of artworks in the form of fine art and the performing arts-three from the Cultural Protection Foundation and three from artists who have worked with Shubbak-that capture an interest, a scepticism and a risk-taking with heritage and ultimately, how we can look into the past in order to invent something new. Al-Yasiri began the discussion by posing several crucial questions regarding three Cultural Protection Funds' projects. "From Syrian musical heritage to Yemeni architectural heritage and Palestinian archival heritage, these are initiatives are undeniably acts of resistance against violence and the dangers of disappearance," she said. "What role in your opinion does the preservation of tangible and intangible heritage play in the political landscape of a tormented territory? How do we negotiate with official dominant narratives and even give hope when the future seems so dark and obstructed?"

There is great hope for mankind when it comes to the preservation of cultural heritage. "It's not about reconstruction, restoration or rehabilitation," said Dr Damluji. "The importance of the type of architecture and work that we are doing [in Yemen] is rather about consolidating the importance of the community and the inhabitants attached to their own culture and to their own spiritual beliefs in the case of our buildings related to ancient Wali tombs." As she emphasizes, "once you resuscitate buildings, you are resuscitating lives. You give people hope and aspiration."

Music has a similar effect on refugee children at Action for Hope in Lebanon, explained Kaddour. Their goal is to find and foster talent in children, mostly refugees, living in distressed conditions, who usually do have access to learn about art or practice art. Action for Hope provides the opportunity for young children from Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Palestine to aspire to become professional musicians in the future and also connect these children to their traditional heritage and music. "Due to everything they are living, these children are disconnected from their history, heritage and traditions," said Kaddour.

Yet what is the political importance and role in the preservation of cultural heritage? Persekian agreed with Dr Damluji that "resuscitating a building, means resuscitating life." For him, the confrontation with the Israelis on the ground in Jerusalem where he is located, is about the buildings, the place, the land and heritage. "It's about who gets to control what and ultimately, life," he said. The The Khalidi Library is there as a monument to preserve the collection of manuscripts and books and is there as a monument for the presence of Palestinian-Arab culture and heritage in the city," he continued. "But it's also important that this library becomes something useful from where we can draw knowledge and learn from and this is why it needs these interpretations-interpretations that are taking place more now in contemporary art where artists are able to bridge, connecting different fields be it architecture, education, politics or science and somehow mold their work into projects and tools for us to learn from and for us to use."

Acts of resistance through art and architecture, agreed Persekian and Damluji, are not enough in order to preserve cultural heritage. "It needs to be coupled with clear ideas of what can be done to eventually improve the situation, how can it infiltrate the education system and use it in schools where children will learn more about their culture and their heritage," said Persekian. The Al'Mamal Foundation emphasizes the importance of visual literacy that he believes is paramount in bridging various disciplines, whether they be art, science, architecture or politics.

While these are all intellectual and figurative means by which to extract hope in the preservation of cultural heritage in the face of destruction in the Middle East, the fear of the disappearance of the past still persists and plagues many. "In Lebanon we have this burning need to understand why and how some people call it amnesia or this active act to erase and overcome certain events in the past such as the civil war and even the recent explosions," explained Imam. "But it's not the act of archiving or preservation that matters but it is what you do with the archive."

Clearly, traumatic events often challenge an individual or a collective on how to remember a horrific moment. There's usually an unconscious need to forget and escape the pain of reliving the horror. Yet they are part of the past as much as the joyous moments in history. Thus, the archive, as Imam rightly notes, is not so much about just preserving the documentation of the past but about learning from it, as Persekian also notes, and creating from it.

Through her work Abdul Jabbar revisits destroyed and reconstructed monuments in her homeland of Iraq and gives them new life through her work. "In the case of Iraq there's also the issue of erasure of history with every subsequent political move-an archive is of course a very political tool and it is one that serves a purpose, particularly if it is coming from the state level." As with her Minaret of Anah project, Abdul Jabbar is also interested in documenting personal narrative and oral histories and having them become part of the larger collective narrative of Iraq.

Abdul Jabbar is presently working on a project for the next Shubbak festival titled Every Act of Recognition Alters What Survives that engages women of the Iraqi and Arab diaspora in a project in London in dialogue and discourse around perceptions of identity related to history, place and memory. "How do you feel if you've been erased from the history or the representations of the place that you're from don't match at all with your own experience of it?" she asks, emphasising her focus on memory and personal archives and to try to formulate ways that they can be given a form and a medium. "This way they might be able to serve as a documentation of personal histories and narratives," she added.

Yet maybe, as the panel suggests, the power of history and memory is that they are not static forces-they can adapt and innovate with the present times. The past can be used as a base to create in the present for the future. That's true innovation. For how can we move forward, how can we innovate, as Cicero stated one thousand years ago, if we do not know our past, our identity and where we came from? History, like life and like art, is constantly evolving. It is disrupted at times, knotted up and tied, and then forced open, carrying with it remnants from a former time, a former self, while embedded in the realities and influences of the present moment, which itself is constantly changing.

Iraqi New York-based musician ElSaffar's work with Maqam Iraqi, Iraq's predominant classical musical tradition, is a case in point. "The way I view Iraqi maqam is that it is a repertoire of music that is both hundreds and thousands of years old and some parts of it are very recent. It is a constantly evolving form of music. The Maqam Iraqi is itself an archive. It is an oral archive of Iraq's history. You have these melodies that represent different phases in the country's history." In essence, Maqam Iraqi is an example of the relationship between preservation and innovation and how the arts, through creative means, document and archive the changing nature of history and memory. The arts, via the thread of innovation, ensure that cultural heritage, even in the face of oblivion, never entirely disappears.

You can watch the first in our series of talks Against Disappearance here. The next talk will take place in March and the contributors will be discussing the impact of trade, migration, colonialism and imperialism.

This series is presented by the Cultural Protection Fund and Shubbak Festival. The Cultural Protection Fund is led by the British Council in partnership with the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport.

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Confronting the Age of Disappearance - Shubbak

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Confronting the idea of preserving collective memory in the face of tangible and intangible destruction.

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Where else can archives live?*

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* - Whatsapp calls are the best

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'For ‘Time has fallen asleep in the afternoon sunshine’ a group of people/ performers memorize a book of their choice. Together they form a library collection consisting of living books...Books are read to remember and written to forget. To memorize a book, or more poetically ‘to learn a book by heart’, is in a way a rewriting of that book. In the process of memorizing, the reader for a moment steps into the place of the writer, or rather [they] are becoming the book.'

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Time has fallen asleep in the afternoon sunshine (2010 - )

photo by Document Photography - Sydney Biennale (2016)

For ' Time has fallen asleep in the afternoon sunshine' a group of people/ performers memorize a book of their choice. Together they form a library collection consisting of living books. The books are passing their time in a library, sitting in chairs, walking around, talking together, looking out of the window, reading in paper-books from the shelves, ready to be consulted by a visitor. The visitors of the library choose a book they would like to read, and the book brings its reader to a place or setting in the library, in the cafeteria, or for a walk outside, while reciting its content (and possibly valid interpretations).

The idea for this library of living books comes from the science fiction novel Fahrenheit 451. It is a future vision of a society where books are forbidden because they are considered dangerous, that happiness must be obtained through an absence of knowledge and individual thought. The number 451 refers to the temperature at which book paper starts to burn. As books are forbidden in this society an underground community of people learn books by heart in order to preserve them for the future.

Books are read to remember and written to forget. To memorize a book, or more poetically 'to learn a book by heart', is in a way a rewriting of that book. In the process of memorizing, the reader for a moment steps into the place of the writer, or rather he/ she is becoming the book. Maybe the ability to learn a whole book by heart is relative to what book you choose, the time you invest, and perhaps your skills. But, however much or well you learn something by heart you have to keep practicing it otherwise you will forget it again. Perhaps by the time you reach the end you will have forgotten the beginning. Learning a book by heart is an ongoing activity and doing. There is nothing final or material to achieve, the practice of learning a book by heart is a continuous process of remembering and forgetting.

concept: Mette Edvardsen
with: Aaron Virdee, Adriana Gheorghe, Adriano Wilfert Jensen, Agate Bankava, Alexandra Napier, Alice Monica Marinescu, Amalie Bergstein, Andrea Maurer, Andrea Rodrigo, Angela Goh, Beomgyu Choi, Boing Yuen Hau-Ching, Boyong Kim, Bruno De Wachter, Brynjar Bandlien, Camilla Høg, Caroline Daish, Chloe Fisher, Connie.Y, David Helbich, Dmitrijs Gaitjukevics, Dolores Hulan, Ellie Law Ching Sum, Elly Clarke, Emmilou Rössling, Esperanza Gomez Carrera, Eunkyung Yoon, Ewa Chmielewska, Frøydis Århus, Giota Bibli, Hayeon Kim, Helena Polasik, Ida Katinka Fridan Pedersen, Ilinca Harnut, Irena Radmanovic, Irini Tsava, Isadora Angelini, Iulia Maracine, Jaanika Tammaru, Jan Kühling, Jiyoung Pyun, Joana Ferraz, Johan Sonnenschein, Jon Refsdal Moe, Jude Joseph, Julie Pfleiderer, Justine Maxelon, Kaarel Targo, Kamil Malecki, Kaija M. Kalvet, Katarzyna Mazurkiewicz, Katarzyna Stankiewicz, Kathy Kyunghoo Lee, Katja Dreyer, Kil KyungHa, Kim Boyong, Kim Hayon, Kristien Van den Brande, Kristine Øren, Kristo Veinberg, Kyungha Kil, Laura Niils, Léa Poiré, Lea Vendelbo Petersen, Lee Kyunghoo, Lihua Yu, Lilia Mestre, Lizzie Thompson, Luigi Pignati, Mara Brašmane, Mari Matre Larsen, Marit Ødegaard, Maria Psarologou, Marios Kritikopoulos, Martin Slaatto, Mette Edvardsen, Michelangelo Miccolis, Mihkel Kallaste, Moqapi Selassie, Muna Mussie, Nicholas Von Kleist, Paloma Mecozzi, Pâmela Sarabia, Patricia Woods, Peteris Krilovs, Philip Holyman, Pivinnguaq Mørch, Rasa Jansone, Rauno Polman, Razan Akramawy, Reinis Ivanovs, Rhiannon Newton, Rosemary Lee, Roza Moshtaghi, Sarah Ludi, Sara Masotti, Sébastien Hendrickx, Simon Asencio, Siriol Joyner, Sonia Si Ahmed, Staffan Eek, Thomas Bîrzan, Tiziana Penna, Tom Engels, Trista Ma Ka Yue, Ulf Nilseng, Usama Zurba, Valdis Abols, Veridiana Zurita, Vincent Dunoyer, Violeta Gil, Wouter Krokaert,

production assistant: Hedvig Bergem Søiland
graphic design print: Michaël Bussaer
production: Mette Edvardsen/ Athome
co-production: Dubbelspel - STUK Kunstencentrum & 30CC (Leuven), Dance Umbrella (London), Kunstenfestivaldesarts (Brussels), NEXT Arts Festival (Valenciennes, Lille, Kortrijk, Villeneuve d'Ascq), Wiener Festwochen (Vienna), Oslobiennalen First Edition 2019 - 2021 (Oslo), Museo Reina Sofia (Madrid), Dansehallerne (Copenhagen), 34th São Paulo Biennale (São Paulo), centre chorégraphique national de Caen in Normandie (Caen), Les Laboratoires d'Aubervilliers (Paris)
supported by: Norsk Kulturråd
additional support by: Fond for Lyd og Bilde, Fond for Utøvende Kunstnere, Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Flemish Authorities
special thanks to: Bibliothèque royale de Belgique/Koninklijke Bibliotheek van België, Sarah Vanhee, Els De Bodt
thanks to: Maya Wilsens, Frøydis Århus, Cillian O'Neill, Andrea Skotland for production assistance

title: "Time has fallen asleep in the afternoon sunshine" is a sentence from a book by Alexander Smith appearing in Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury (1953).

PRESENTATIONS:

Ob/scene Festival (Seoul) 17 - 26 November 2023
Exploring Pluralities & Cărturești Carusel (Bucharest) 16, 17, 18 November 2023
La Semaine Bleue, Bibliothèque Robert Desnos (Montreuil) 7 October 2023
Festival Partir en livre & Bibliothèque Elsa Triolet (Pantin) 28 June, 8 July 2023
(O)UTPOST FLØRLI, rimi/imir scenekunst (Flørli) 1, 2, 3, 4 June 2023
Festival Hors Limites & Les Laboratoires d'Aubervilliers (Noisy-le-Sec, Paris) 15 April 2023
Les Laboratoires d'Aubervilliers & residences (Paris) 10, 14 December 2022
Moving in November (Helsinki) 6, 7, 8 & 10, 11, 12 November 2022
Si loin si proche, Les Subs (Lyon) 12, 13 14, 15 October 2022
Movement Festival 2022 – A Void, Eaton HK (Hong Kong) 24, 25 September 2022
Museo Reina Sofia (Madrid) 19, 20, 21 September 2022
Festival EXTRA! Centre Pompidou (Paris) 10, 11 September 2022
Exploring Pluralities (Bucharest) 5, 6, 7 July 2022
(O)UTPOST FLØRLI, imir/rimi scenekunst (Flørli) 3, 4, 5 June 2022
Oslo Internasjonale Teaterfestival, Black Box teater (Oslo) 16, 17 March 2022
Deichman Bjørvika (Oslo) 20 November 2021
Museo Reina Sofia (Madrid) 27, 28, 29 October 2021
Baredans v Det Vilde Ord (Bodø) 14, 15, 16 October 2021
34th São Paulo Biennale (São Paulo) 3 September - 5 December 2021
Dansehallerne & Sundby Bibliotek (Copenhagen) 23 - 27 August 2021
Festival EPOQUE & centre chorégraphique national de Caen en Normandie (Caen) 30 May, 1, 2 June 2021
Norsk Litteraturfestival (Lillehammer) 29, 30 May 2021
Trust & Confusion, Tai Kwun Arts (Hong Kong) 1 May - 29 August 2021
Museo Reina Sofia (Madrid) 12, 13 November 2020
Ob.Scene 2020 (Seoul) 10, 11, 17, 18, 24, 25 October 2020
Homo Novus & National Library (Riga) 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 September 2020
Little Fun Palace Nomadic School (Viote, Mount Bondone) 29, 30 August 2020
osloBIENNALEN, Black Box teater & Deichman Tøyen (Oslo) 17, 18, 19, 20 October 2019
Sur les bords#1/ T2G-CDN (Gennevilliers) 5, 6 October 2019
Today is our Tomorrow, PUBLICS (Helsinki) 12, 13, 14 September 2019
osloBIENNALEN, Black Box teater & Deichman Grünerløkka (Oslo) 12, 14, 15 September 2019
Festival de Genève, La Bâtie & Fondation Bodmer (Cologny) 14 September 2019
Festival de Genève, La Bâtie & Bibliothèque de Nyon (Nyon) 12 September 2019
Festival de Genève, La Bâtie & Château de Ferney Voltaire (Ferney-Voltaire) 11 September 2019
Festival de Genève, La Bâtie & Bibliothèque municipale de la Cité (Geneva) 10, 13 September 2019
Festival de Genève, La Bâtie & Bibliothèque le Balcon de St-Cergues (St-Cergues) 9 September 2019
osloBIENNALEN & Ekebergparken (Oslo) 11, 12, 13, 14, 18, 19, 20, 21 July 2019
Dansand (Ostende) 6, 7 July 2019
osloBIENNALEN & Ekebergparken (Oslo) 25, 26 May 2019
osloBIENNALEN (Oslo) 25 May - 27 October 2019
Wiener Festwochen (Vienna) 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18 May 2019
IMMATERIAL Vol. 3, Material Art Fair (Mexico City) 7, 8, 9 February 2019
Index Foundation (Stockholm) 25 January - 17 March 2019
NEXT Arts Festival, La rose des vents, Bibliothèque Universitaire SHS – Sciences Humaines et Sociales (Villeneuve d'Ascq) 27, 28, 29, 30 Novembre 2018
NEXT Arts Festival, Schouwburg Kortrijk, Art Centre BUDA, Bibliotheek Kortrijk (Kortrijk) 21, 22, 23, 24 November 2018
NEXT Arts Festival, Théâtre du Nord, Médiathèque La Grand Plage (Roubaix) 15 November 2018
NEXT Arts Festival, Théâtre du Nord, Médiathèque de Lille Sud (Lille) 16 November 2018
NEXT Arts Festival, Théâtre du Nord, Médiathèque André Malraux (Tourcoing) 17 November 2018
NEXT Arts Festival, le phénix scène national pôle européen de création, Médiathèque Le Quai (Condé-sur-L'escaut) 13 November 2018
NEXT Arts Festival, le phénix scène national pôle européen de création, Bibliothèque Victor Hugo (Onnaing) 9 November 2018
NEXT Arts Festival, le phénix scène national pôle européen de création, Bibliothèque universitaire du Mont-Houy - Université de Valenciennes et du Hainaut-Cambrésis (Aulnoy-lez-Valenciennes) 10, 12, 14 November 2018
Nordnorsk Kunstsenter& Rana Bibliotek (Mo i Rana) 1, 2, 3 February 2018
De Nacht van Permeke, Bibliotheek Permeke (Antwerp) 6 January 2018
Jugendstilsenteret, Kunstmuseet KUBE & Ålesund bibliotek (Ålesund) 2, 3 December 2017
Nuuk Nordic & The Public and National Library of Greenland (Nuuk) 17, 18, 19, 20 October 2017
Imir Scenekunst, Kapittel & Stavanger bibliotek (Stavanger) 20, 21, 22, 23 September 2017
Kortreist Dansefestival & Inderøy bibliotek (Inderøy) 27, 28 June 2017
Kunstenfestivaldesarts, Ravenstein Gallery (Brussels) 6 - 27 May 2017
Live Arts Week – Gianni Peng VI by Xing (Bologna) 26 April 2017
What is Happening to Our Brain, Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam) 24 March 2017
The Giver, The Guest & The Ghost, OSLO PILOT, Posthallen (Oslo) 17, 18 November 2016
Weld & Stockholms Statsbibliotek (Stockholm) 29, 30 October 2016
Kristiansand Kunsthall & Kristiansand Folkebibliotek (Kristiansand) 21, 22, 23 October 2016
Indiscipline, Palais de Tokyo (Paris) 3, 4 September 2016
Sydney Biennale & Newtown Library (Sydney) 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19 March 2016
Mind the Book, Vooruit & Openbare Bibliotheek (Gent) 9, 10, 11, 12 March 2016
Le Quartz & Bibliotèque Unviversitaire de Lettres de Brest (Brest) 3, 4, 5 March 2016
Keine Disziplin, Gessnerallee &PBZ Bibliothek Altstadt (Zurich) 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 February 2016
Santarcangelo festival & Biblioteca comunale A. Baldini (Santarcangelo) 9-12, 14-19 July 2015
Translate, intertwine, transgress! Moderna Museet & MDT (Stockholm) 11, 12, 13 June 2015
MaerzMusik, Berliner Festspiele (Berlin) 21, 22 March 2015
Ordkalotten litteraturfestival & Tromsø Bibliotek (Tromsø) 1, 2, 3, 4 October 2014
Festival Baltoscandal & Lääne-Viru County Central Library (Rakvere) 3, 4, 5 July 2014
Bonds of Culture festival, Kana Teatr & Public Library Szczecin (Szczecin) 3, 4, 5 July 2014
Sommerszene, Szene Salzburg & Stadtbibliothek (Salzburg) 26, 27, 28 June 2014
Live Arts Week – Gianni Peng III by Xing & Biblioteca Salaborsa (Bologna) 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 April 2014
Bonds of Culture festival, Kana Teatr & Public Library Szczecin (Szczecin) 5, 6 July 2013
Kunstenfestivaldesarts & Bibliothèque royale de Belgique/Koninklijke Bibliotheek van België (Brussels) 4, 7, 8, 16, 17, 18, 23, 24, 25 May 2013
Æ Å Litteraturfestival, Teaterhuset Avant Garden & Trondheim Folkebibliotek (Trondheim) 2, 3, 4 May 2013
A Thing At A Time, Witte de With (Rotterdam) 20 April 2013
MIR festival & National Library (Athens) 10, 11, 12, 13 December 2012
Dansefestival Barents & Hammerfest Bibliotek (Hammerfest) 8, 9, 10 November 2012
Oktoberdans, BIT & Bergen Offentlige Bibliotek (Bergen) 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27 October 2012
Dance Umbrella & Islington Central Library (London) 10, 11, 12, 13 October 2012
In-Presentable, La Casa Encendida (Madrid) 10 - 24 June 2012
Fierce Festival & Central Library (Birmingham) 30, 31 March + 2, 3, 4, 5, 7 April 2012
Marstrand vol. IV, Black Box Teater & Deichmanske Bibliotek Grünerløkka (Oslo) 23, 24, 25 March 2012
Something Raw, Frascati & Pintohuis Bibliotheek (Amsterdam) 15, 17, 18 February 2012
Jerusalem Show, Al-Ma'Mal Foundation & The Educational Bookshop (Jerusalem) 28, 29, 31 October + 1, 2 November 2011
Playground, STUK & Bibliotheek Tweebronnen (Leuven) 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10 November 2010

photos by L. Bernaerts

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* - This exhibition was at The Mosaic Rooms. Highly recommend following the afterlives of this exhibition and SoM's work in general! :)

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Translation as Hospitality - The Mosaic Rooms

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The Mosaic Rooms is pleased to present Translation as Hospitality by The School of Mutants, an installation for learning and knowledge distribution

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The Variable Media Network: a place to preserve works that (might) outlive their OG medium

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The Variable Media Network: a place to preserve works that (might) outlive their OG medium

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https://variablemedia.net/e/index.html

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* - A very rich (re)source shared via the 'Performance Art Archives and Documentation' course I did with ECC/ Anja Foerschner last year - highly recommend!

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Listen to this episode from Black Archives Sweden: Archival Frequencies on Spotify. Do we ever think of sampling as an act of archiving? What is Black music? What happens when we migrate with our sounds? What do we do with the sounds of our ancestors echoed between Africa, The Americas, and Europe?

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the dj/s, dance/s (and its floors)!

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(2) December: Crossover Entry w/ Exodus Crooks

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(2) December: Crossover Entry w/ Exodus Crooks

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For the second thread, I am joined by fellow friend & artist Exodus Crooks* as a guest contributor (woop woop!)

*They are a multi-disciplinary artist based in Birmingham exploring the relationship to self & observing the way fractious domesticity, despair & passion manifest in their work. Their art tends to appear as questions of self actualisation & they frequently comment on the ways religion & spirituality play in the journey to enlightenment.

Together in this thread, we will be exploring 'communication' as a theme that we found runs in both of our thinking, and in particular, we will play with how our contributions will be in dialogue, adjacent and treading in (dis)similar vicinities :)

Again, much love to Exodus for e-joining me on this one!

To be continued,

N x

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Footish notes:
*Exodus Crooks - you can follow them on insta: @exoduscrooks.

* - the second paragraph has been quoted from their website: https://exoduscrooks.com/

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A black and white photograph of Exodus smiling 

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To exist here in this digital space alongside Natifah White and have my thoughts and research exist alongside hers is truly special. So I have to first say thank you, I am grateful for this space and for you and your work Nat.

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I am currently working on a commission for the Ikon Gallery in Birmingham, it is a collaboration between University of Birmingham’s The Exchange and Ikon gallery and their theme for 2024 is artificial intelligence. Now at this point you might be wondering, what does this have to do with communication. Well I am interested in the way in which we converse in this time of technological advancements and AI. My practice explores the human condition so it felt only natural to interrogate how artificial intelligence corroborates, collaborates or is in conflict with humanity, specifically the way we communicate.

One strand of my research involves the work of Stuart Hall. University of Birmingham are currently working to digitise the archive of Stuart Hall, which led me to dig further into the work of one of my intellectual role models.  In attending Stuart Hall’s archive at the Cadbury centre in Birmingham, I became more familiar with Hall’s own commentary on conversation, specifically identity as an ongoing conversation and a series of conversations within other conversations.

As I am nearing the end of the research phase of my process, I am focusing in on algorithms, digital vacuums and the polarisation of society and how that impacts the way we communicate. Even in the way we type, our phones and computers predict what we may wish to say next. Drawing on data and patterns, we are given options that never pose new language or thinking or allow us to create something new but much of our communication is simply reliant on what we have done once or twice and that is then fed back to us in mass. It seems to me that much of the purpose of AI is to make our lives easier and more convenient, saving time and money, so I am interested in what happens to humans as we get groomed by capitalism’s desire for us to spend more time being productive and less time existing/being. How do we connect and converse when we are in such a rush?

To be clear, neither me or my work are taking a particular stance on whether AI is good or bad for society, that doesn’t interest me right now, what interests me is how human conversation exists within a time of AI and how as an artist I can realise this visually. I am going to be using this time/space here on the This is happening platform to  share some reading, watching, listening or general notes on communication, digital practice and humanity. If you are Midlands based (or can/are willing to travel) and reading this, please come and join me in June 2024 for the launch of this new work at The Exchange in Birmingham.

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The front cover of the book British Black English by David Sutcliffe 

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I was reading Familiar Stranger by Stuart Hall before I visited his archives earlier this year, it is a great summary of Hall’s thinking and personal life

I met with a professor at UoB called Adam Matthews whose practice explores AI, specifically chat GPT, he shared with me some incredible thoughts on the discourses around AI

I have recently finished reading an essay by Stuart Hall called negotiating Caribbean identities and another UoB professor Patricia Noxolo shared with me her essay in response to Hall’s essay which is brilliantly titled Locating Caribbean Studies in unending conversation

Some of this led me to dig back into a book I’ve owned for a while called British Black English by David Sutcliffe.

My therapist recently suggested I watch the social dilemma on Netflix as she believes it relates to my work so that is on my weekend watch list.

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One of the things I discovered during my first trip to the Stuart Hall archive. It is so fascinating to see print media from the 90's (1995) and to discover what was being discussed and how.

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Discourse on the Logic of Language by M. NourbeSe Philip

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Discourse on the Logic of Language by M. NourbeSe Philip

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More fascinating and powerful things on language.

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I thought that these set of questions by Alison Kafer were a spectulative link to Exodus' research into conversation:

“How do the futures we hope for determine the relations we create, or the practices we enact now in the present?

How do they determine which pasts we mark as worth remembering?

[When] ...creating liveable lives on a liveable earth what are our commitments to bringing others along with us, ..How can we imagine a future space in revolutionary love?”

Alison Kafer from her lecture 'Enacting Practices to Determine and Design Futures'

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Foot(ish) note:

*Thank you to Holly T. & Kinship Practice Group for this (re) source :)

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Use of use of use of use of use of use of use of use ...

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Use of use of use of use of use of use of use of use ...

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*

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Foot(ish) note:

*Thank you to Frank B. & Katye C. for introducing this as part of a class module

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I am sharing my lecture Queer Use that I have given a number of times over the past two years for Sexual Cultures Research Group, Queen Mary, CLAGS at CUNY, UC Berkeley, qUCL, Melbourne University and most recently LGBTQ+@cam, Cambridge University. The lecture draws primarily from my forthcoming book, What's the Use? On the Uses of Use, which will be published by Duke University Press in October 2019. There are also a few examples from the chapter on Lesbian Feminism in Living a Feminist Life (2017). I have added references but I have not amended the text. I am very grateful to everyone who listened, asked questions and shared stories about queer uses of all sorts of things!

It has been important to me to give this lecture Queer Use to centers and programmes dedicated to LGBTQ studies: we need to have spaces to do our work, to create shelters so that we can be disruptive!

I gave Queer Use as the Kessler lecture at CLAGS in December 2017. I was honored to receive the Kessler Award, which is given to scholars who have "produced a substantive body of work that has had a significant influence on the field of LGBTQ Studies." Queer awards are always for queer communities; field creation is our collective task. It was so wonderful to share the occasion with Chandra Frank, my former PhD student who is doing such important queer and feminist of colour work as scholar and curator; Sarah Franklin, my partner in life, as well as in queer theory and feminist crime (!), and Judith Butler whose work has been such an inspiration to me, and who taught me to think of queer and feminist work as a derailing. There is a video of the lecture (and Chandra's, Sarah's and Judith's generous words) here, which is captioned.

When I gave Queer Use for LGBTQ+@cam, I was very glad my queer family was with me. I dedicated my lecture to them, to Sarah and Poppy, as I did my book. The video of the lecture is here. It is this version I am sharing.
Sara Ahmed, Queer Use, Lecture presented at LGBTQ+@cam, Cambridge, November 7, 2018.
I want to start my consideration of queer use by attending to uses of queer. Queer: a word with a history; a word that has been flung like a stone; picked up and hurled at us, a word we can claim for us. Queer: odd, strange, unseemly, disturbed, disturbing. Queer: a feeling, a sick feeling; feeling queer as feeling nauseous. In older uses of queer - queer to describe anything that is noticeable because it is odd - queer and fragility were often companions. In one of George Eliot's essays, "Three Months in Weimar" the narrator describes the sound of an old piano thus: "it's tones now so queer and feeble like those of an invalided old woman whose voice could once make a heartbeat with fond passion" (1884, 91-2). Feeble, frail, invalid, incapacitate, falter, weak, tearful, worn; tear; wear; queer too, queer is there, too. These proximities tell a story. A queer life might how we get in touch with things at the very point at which they, or we, are worn or worn down; those moments when we break or break down, when we shatter under the weight of history. The sounds of an old piano evoking the sound of an invalided old woman: could this evocation vibrate with affection? Could a queer heart beat with passion for what is wavering and quavering?

That some of us can live our lives by assuming that word "queer," by even saying "yes" to that word shows how a past use is not exhaustive of a word or a thing however exhausted a word or thing. As Judith Butler notes in Excitable Speech: "An aesthetic enactment of an injurious word may both use the word and mention it, that is use the word to produce certain effects, but also at the same time make reference to that very use, calling attention to it as a citation, situating that use within a citational legacy, making that use into an explicit discursive item to be reflected on rather than a taken for granted operation of ordinary language" (1997, 99). We can disrupt the meaning of an insult by making its usage audible as a history that does not decide, once and for all, what a word can do. To queer use might be to make use audible, to listen to use; to bring to the front what ordinarily recedes into the background.

Sometimes words are reused as if they can be cut off from their history, when an insult is thrown out for instance, and reaches its target, but is defended as just banter, as something you can, should, make light of. If we reuse the word queer we hold onto the weight; the baggage. Eve Sedgwick suggests that what makes queer a "politically potent term" is how it cleaves to "childhood scenes of shame" (1993, 4). Queer acquires force and vitality precisely because we refuse to use the word to make light of a history. To recycle or reuse a word is to reorientate one's relation to a scene that holds its place, as memory, as container, however leaky.

Queer as reused; reuse as queer use. In today's lecture I will be drawing on arguments from a book I have recently completed, What's the Use. In the book, I follow use around, the way I followed happiness in The Promise of Happiness, and the will in Willful Subjects. Use is a small word with a big history, a busy word; use has had and does have many uses. Following use has allowed me to connect bodies of work that are usually assumed to be distinct such as literatures in design, psychology and biology that make use of use to explain the acquisition of form. Following use has allowed me to explore how worlds are shaped, as it were, from the bottom up.
Uses of Use
In this section I want to meditation on use as biography, a way of telling a story of things. Use when used as a verb can mean: to employ for some purpose, to expend or consume; to treat or behave toward; to take unfair advantage of or exploit; to habituate or accustom. Use is a relation as well as an activity that often points beyond something even when use is about something: to use something points to what something is "for." Some objects are made in order to be used. We might call these objects designed objects. What they are for brings them into existence. A cup is made in order that I have something to drink from; it is shaped this way, with a hole as its heart, empty, so that it can be filled by liquid. We might summarise the implied relation as "for is before." However even if something is shaped around what it is for, that is not the end of the story. As Howard Risatti notes in A Theory of Craft
Use need not correspond to intended function. Most if not all objects can have a use, or, more accurately be made useable by being put to use. A sledgehammer can pound or it can be used as a paperweight or lever. A handsaw can cut a board and be used as straight-edge or to make music. A chair can be sat in and used to prop open a door. These uses make them "useful objects" but since they are unrelated to the intended purpose and function for which these objects were made, knowing these uses doesn't necessarily reveal much about these objects.
Use can correspond to intended function, but use does not necessarily correspond to an intended function. This not (not necessarily) is an opening. I am not so sure if uses are quite as unrevealing about things as Risatti implies at least here ("knowing these uses doesn't necessarily reveal much about these objects"). I am being told something about the qualities of a sledgehammer that it can used to be a paperweight. That a sledgehammer can be used as a paperweight tells me about the heaviness of the sledgehammer. Something cannot be used for anything, which means that use is a restriction of possibility that is material. Nevertheless there is something queer about use; intentions do not exhaust possibilities. The keys that are used to unlock a door can be used as a toy, perhaps because they are shiny and sliver; perhaps because they jangle. Queer uses, when things are used for purposes other than the ones for which they were intended, still reference the qualities of a thing; queer uses may linger on those qualities, rendering them all the more lively.

Queer use might also be understood as improper use; queer use as perversion. The word perversion can refer not only to deviate from what is true or right but to the improper use of something. We would not call the child who turns the key into a toy a pervert, even if that is not what a key is for; the child is expected to play with things. But a boy who plays with the wrong toy, a toy hoover for instance that is intended for a girl (the fact that toy hoovers even exist is of course deeply concerning), might be understood as perverted or at least as on the way to perversion. Correcting the boy's use of the toy is about correcting more than behaviour in relation to a toy; it is about correcting how the boy is boy. The figure of the pervert comes up as the one whose misuse of things is a form of self-revelation.

Note also Rissati's argument that use makes something usable, which implies that a possibility follows an actuality, a reversal of a usual sequence. Use seems to have a strange temporality. Use can also make something used. When we think of something as being used, we might also think of buying something second-hand. Like this book - it is a book on hands that was handy. A used book is usually cheaper than a new book. The more signs of usage = less value unless the user is esteemed, when the value of a person can rub off on the value of a thing. Marx discusses wear and tear in relation to machines: "The material wear and tear of a machine is of two kinds. The one arises from use, as coins wear away by circulating, the other from non-use, as a sword rusts when left in its scabbard" ([1867] 1990, 528). Marx showed how machinery intensifies rather than saves labour: you have to get the most of the machine before it wears out, a wearing that is passed on to workers, wearing as passing on and passing out; used as used up.

Wear and tear in this economy is the loss of value determined by the extraction of value. To value use might require a change of values. We might value worn things, broken things, for the life they lived, for how they show what they know: the scratch as pedagogy, the wrinkle as expression. To value use would not be to romanticize what is preserved as a historical record: signs of life can be signs of exhaustion, which is to say, signs of life can be signs of how a life has been extinguished. Perhaps we can think of use as a record of the fragility of a life. In writing about use, I have deliberately made use of "used books."
A book on hands that was handy
With this book in my hands I can tell others have been here before. I think of the reader who circled the word grief. I cannot trace you but you left a trace.

Use leaves traces in places.

Something might be in use or out of use. When something breaks, it might be taken out of use rather like this cup, which has lost its handle.
It is a rather sad parting.
When we think of something in use, we might think of a sign on a door: occupied.
This sign tells us that the toilet is in use.
It tells us that we cannot use the toilet until whoever is using the toilet is finished. Use often comes with instructions that are about maintaining bodily and social boundaries. Sometimes instructions are about who is allowed to use what for what. Take this image.
The sign is another kind of use instruction.
It makes a claim that the door is in constant use in order to justify that instruction: keep clear! If you were to park a car or a bike in front of the door, you would become an obstruction. Becoming an obstruction describes the fate that awaits some uses and users.

Or take this image of a post box.
This sign politely asks the would-be poster not to use the post box by posting a letter into the box.
If the toilet was occupied because it was in use, the post box is out of use because it is occupied. Although of course from another point of view, it is in use. The post box has provided a home for nesting birds. Intended functionality can mean who something is for, not just what something is for. This means that: something can be used by those for which it was not intended. Queer use: when something is used by those for whom it was intended.

Can I add here that it was when I was writing my conclusion to the book that I realised that others have used "queer use" in this way : as we can note in this article from 1899 referring to the queer use for cloisters. One wonders if the queer use for cloisters might extend beyond where they store their machines.

If we go back to a post-box that it can become a nest still tells us something about the nature of object; what allows the box to be used to post letters, that slips is how the birds can enter. If a change of function does not require a change of form, a change of function does require a sign, "please do not use," to stop what would be usual: posting a letter through the box. The sign, we assume, is temporary. That box will come back into use as a post box when it ceases to be a nest.

Back into use: use can involve comings and goings. Take the example of the well-trodden path. The path exists because people have used it. Use involves contact and friction, the tread of feet smooths the surface; the path is becoming smoother, easier to follow.

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The more a path is used the more a path is used.
How strange that this sentence makes sense. Without use a path can disappear, becoming overgrown, bumpy; unusable.
Like this path, we know it is a path because of a sign but you can hardly see the sign for the leaves.
Use can be necessary for preservation. Use it, or lose it: this is not only a mantra in personal training; it can become a philosophy of life. Not using; not being.

If not using can mean not being, use becomes useful as a technique. You can stop something from existing by making it harder to use. Use can also be a frame: a pad might appear unused because the pencil marks have been erased. Frames of use have uses. For example, many uses of land were not counted as uses because land use in Western culture was understood in terms of cultivation. The labour theory of property was also a theory of use. John Locke's Two Treatises, made extensive use of use: "it cannot be supposed [the land] should remain common and uncultivated" such that "he gave it to the use of the industrious and rational" ([1689] 1824, 149). Use is defined here as or restricted to agriculture and cultivation. Land that has not been cultivated becomes wasteland, unused, and thus available to be appropriated. Edward Said was attuned to this use of use; he described how Palestine was rendered "a whole territory essentially unused, unappreciated, misunderstood . . . to be made useful, appreciated, understandable" (1979, 31, emphasis Said's).

You can declare something unused or ensure something becomes unused as the grounds for justifying an appropriation.

Used paths have many stories to tell. A path can appear like a line on a landscape. But a path can also be a route through life. Collectivity can be acquired as direction; the more a path is traveled upon the clearer it becomes. A path can be cared for, kept clear, maintained.
Heterosexuality: a path that is kept clear.
That straight path is maintained not only by the frequency of use, and a frequency can be an invitation, but by an elaborate support system. When it is harder to proceed, when a path is harder to follow, you might be discouraged; you might try and find another route.
A consciousness of the need to make more of an effort can be a disincentive.
Just think of how we can be dissuaded by perpetual reminders of how hard something would be. Deviation is hard. Deviation is made hard.

Use can ease the passage of things. William James cites the work of Dumont to make sense of habit: "Everyone knows how a garment having been worn a certain time clings better to the shape of the body than when it was new. A lock works better after being used some time; at the outset a certain force was required to overcome certain roughness in the mechanism."([1819] 1950: 105, emphasis mine). A garment becomes more attuned to the body the more the garment is worn. I will return to the well-used garment in due course. The example of the lock and the key suggests that it is through use that things become easier to use. If use takes time use saves time; less effort is required to complete an action.

The idea that use keeps something alive, or that use makes something easier to use, is supplemented by another idea central to the emergence of modern biology: that use in making something stronger, and disuse, in making something weaker, shapes the very form of life. For example, Lamarck the French naturalist who first used the word biology in its modern sense, offered a law of use and disuse: "a more frequent and continuous use of any organ gradually strengthens, develops and enlarges that organ, and gives it a power proportional to the length of time it has been so used; while the permanent disuse of any organ imperceptibly weakens and deteriorates it, and progressively diminishes its functional capacity, until it finally disappears."These acquired modifications for Lamarck can be inherited, what we called simply use inheritance. Lamarck's famous example is the giraffe's neck, although he only uses this example once. For Lamarck the giraffe's neck grows longer not through volition but as an effect of repeated efforts that become directional. He describes: "efforts in a particular direction, when they are sustained or habitually made by certain parts of a living body, for the satisfaction of needs established by nature or environment, cause an enlargement of the parts and the acquisition of a size and shape that they would not have obtained if these efforts had not become the normal activities of the animal exerting them" (Lamarck ([1809]1914, 123, emphasis mine). When an effort becomes normal, a form is acquired. When such form is acquired, less effort is needed; the giraffe does not have to reach so high to reach the foliage. Use inheritance translates as: the lessoning the effort required to survive within an environment.

We can pause here and pull out some of the queer implications of Lamarck's argument. If norms become forms, forms lag behind norms. Stephen Gould also suggests that the lag between behavioral change and formal change accounts for some of the "oddest" and most "curious" of animal inventions. Gould's examples include Flamingos which dwell in hypersaline lakes: "few creatures can tolerate the unusual environments of these saline deserts" (24). The Flamingos have an unusual way of feeding "with their heads upside down" (25). This "flip flop" is described as "complete and comprehensive" not only in form but also in motion (32). The action is also described as "topsy-turvy" (32). Gould concludes that a "peculiar reversal in behavior has engendered a complex inversion of form" (32). Queer use could also reference such inversions; how things end up the wrong way up: "An organism enters a new environment with its old form suited to other styles of life. The behavioral innovation establishes a discordance between new function and inherited form" (36-37). A temporal discordance between past and present is manifest as discordance between form and function. Forms can be understood as "temporal drag" to use Elizabeth Freeman's (2010) terms: the visceral "pull of the past on the present." When forms drag behind functions that dragging is expressed queerly in "imperfections and odd solutions cobbled together from parts on hand" ( The Flamingo's Smile, 37).

I will return to lingering forms and odd solutions in due course. Lamarck does imply that a use for something would bring it into existence. This was one of the reasons Charles Darwin was rather disparaging about Lamarck's work because of the implication he heard (rightly or wrongly) that organism will what they need into existence. We can find evidence of Darwin's disparagement in another used book; Darwin's personal copy of Lamarck's Historie Naturale. He wrote in the margins: "because use improves an organ - wishing for it, or its use, produces it!!! Oh." Despite how Darwin and Lamarck appear to deviate at least from Darwin's point of view on this question of use, Darwin himself often represents natural selection and the law of use and disuse as working together. And it is interesting to note that Darwin offers a reuse of the architect metaphor, despite how this metaphor risks the implication of design:

Let an architect be compelled to build an edifice with uncut stones, fallen from a precipice. The shape of each fragment may be called accidental; yet the shape of each has been determined by the force of gravity, the nature of the rock, and the slope of the precipice,-events and circumstances, all of which depend on natural laws; but there is no relation between these laws and the purpose for which each fragment is used by the builder....The shape of the fragments of stone at the base of our precipice may be called accidental, but this is not strictly correct; for the shape of each depends on a long sequence of events, all obeying natural laws.... But in regard to the use to which the fragments may be put, their shape may be strictly said to be accidental. ([1859] 2009, 118-9).

An architect can be a builder who makes use of stones without cutting them in order to fit a design. The stones are thrown up, or available, according to natural laws. These stones were not made in order to be used, like a cup is shaped so that it can be filled by water. If the shape of a stone is determined by a long sequence of events, it is an accident that the shape of this stone fits the shape of the hole in the wall. You are more likely to use a stone that happens to fit that space; use as hap, use as happenstance, use as, even, happy. I will return to Darwin's happy use of the architect metaphor in due course.
The Institutional as Usual
My task in this section is to thicken the account of use offered thus far by thinking about the institutional as usual. We learn about the institutional from those who are trying to transform institutions. In an earlier project I talked to diversity workers about their work. And going back to the data I have realised how diversity work requires becoming conscious of use. Diversity workers are trying to transform institutional habits, not to follow the well-used paths; not to go the way things flow.

Of course at another level diversity seems to be the things are flowing, a rather well travelled path.
Diversity can be used as an arrow even, which can be an instruction: go that way!
The ease with which diversity travels might be why diversity work is hard work. One diversity worker describes how diversity "is a big shiny apple" with a rotten core, "it all looks wonderful but the inequalities aren't being addressed." The word diversity is used more because it does less; diversity becomes a sign of the difficulty of getting through. This same practitioner described her own work thus: "it's a banging your head against a brick wall job." A job description becomes a wall description. If you keep banging your head against the brick wall, but the wall keeps its place, it is you that gets sore. And what happens to the wall? All you seemed to have done is scratched the surface.
This is what diversity work often feels like: scratching the surface, scratching at the surface.
Doing diversity work means you collect wall stories; the wall becomes data; condensed information about institutions. Let me share with you a wall story:
When I was first here there was a policy that you had to have three people on every panel who had been diversity trained. But then there was a decision early on when I was here, that it should be everybody, all panel members, at least internal people. They took that decision at the equality and diversity committee which several members of SMT were present at. But then the director of Human Resources found out about it and decided we didn't have the resources to support it, and it went to council with that taken out and council were told that they were happy to have just three members, only a person on council who was an external member of the diversity committee went ballistic - and I am not kidding went ballistic - and said the minutes didn't reflect what had happened in the meeting because the minutes said the decision was different to what actually happened (and I didn't take the minutes by the way). And so they had to take it through and reverse it. And the Council decision was that all people should be trained. And despite that I have then sat in meetings where they have just continued saying that it has to be just 3 people on the panel. And I said but no Council changed their view and I can give you the minutes and they just look at me as if I am saying something really stupid, this went on for ages, even though the Council minutes definitely said all panel members should be trained. And to be honest sometimes you just give up.
It seems as if there is an institutional decision. Individuals within the institution must act as if the decision has been made for it to have been made. If they do not, it has not. A decision made in present about the future is overridden by the momentum of the past : the past becomes a well-worn path, what usually happens, still happens. In this case, the head of personnel did not need to take the decision out of the minutes for the decision not to bring something into effect. I have called this dynamic "non-performativity": when naming something does not bring something into effect, or when something is named in order not to bring something into effect.

The wall: that which keeps standing. The wall is a finding. Let me summarise the finding: what stops movement moves. In other words, the mechanisms for stopping something are mobile, which means when we witness the movement we can miss the mechanism. This is important as organisations are good at moving things around; creating evidence you are doing something is not the same thing as doing something. This is why I have called diversity workers institutional plumbers: they have to work out not only where something is blocked but how it is blocked. In our example, what stopped something from happening could have been the removal of the policy from the minutes; it could have been the failure to notice this removal; but it wasn't. It was the way in which those within the institution acted after the policy had been agreed.

Agreeing to something can be another way of stopping something from happening.

A diversity policy can come into existence without coming into use. I noted earlier how a sign is often used to make a transition from something being in and out of use, such as in this case of the post-box. Institutions are also postal systems. Maybe the diversity worker deposits the policy in the post-box because she assumes the box is in use. The post-box that is not in use might have another function: to stop a policy from going through the whole system. The policy becomes dusty, rather like Marx's rusty sword; from rusty to dusty. A policy can become unusable by not being used.

Consider too all the energy this practitioner expended on developing a policy that did not do anything. The story of how the wall keeps standing is the same story as the story of how a diversity worker becomes shattered; as she says "sometimes you just give up." May be you end up feeling used up, limp, spent rather like this tube of toothpaste.
As if you have nothing left to give.
Or you might fly off the handle, to recall that broken cup.
To fly off the handle can mean to snap or to lose your temper.
Or maybe you feel like you are losing it. To lose a handle on things can mean to lose yourself; you become the one who cannot handle it.

You don't have to say anything to be heard as breaking something. Another practitioner describes: "you know, you go through that in these sorts of jobs where you go to say something and you can just see people going 'oh here she goes.'" We both laughed, recognising that each other recognised that scene. The feminist killjoy, that leaky container, comes up here; she comes up in what we hear. We hear each other in the wear and the tear of the words we share; we hear what it is like to come up against the same thing over and over again. We imagine the eyes rolling as if to say: well she would say that. It was from experiences like this that I developed my equation: rolling eyes = feminist pedagogy.

I think it is important to note that the policy that was stopped by not being used was a policy about how academic appointments are made. Appointment panels thus become places to go, if you want to learn more about how institutions are reproduced; how decisions are made about who is "appointable." A person in a diversity training session I attended shared that people in her department used an unofficial criteria for appointability of whether someone was "the kind of person you can take down to the pub". They wanted someone who can inhabit those spaces with them, being with as being like; someone they can relate to, drink with. I remember one time a woman of color was being considered for a job, she worked on race and sexuality, and someone said in a departmental meeting with concern, "but we already have Sara," is if having one of us was more than enough. There was a murmured consensus that she replicated me, even though our work was different. There was no such concern about other areas. Concern; no concern; how things stay the same by seeing others as the same.

I want to go back to my discussion of uses of use. An institution is an environment. Environments are dynamic; it is because environments change that uses change. An institution, however, is also a container technology. You reproduce something by stabilizing the requirements for what you need to survive or thrive in environment. When a requirement is stabilised it does not need to be made explicit. Use becomes a question of fit. Remember Darwin's use of the architect metaphor? The builder uses the stone that happens to fit. Institutions too are built. It can appear as if the moment of use is hap: that this person is selected because they just happens to fit the requirements rather like a stone is selected because it just happens to be the same shape and size as the hole in the wall. Hap can be used ideologically: as if they here because they happened to fit rather than they fit because of how the structure was built.

A structure: the gradual removal of hap from use in the determination of a requirement. In Lamarck's model, use becomes inheritance, in shaping form it lessens of effort required to do something within an environment. When you fit, and fitting here is formal, a question of form, you inherit the lessening of effort. It is not just the constancy of use that eases a passage. Some have more paths laid out more clearly in front of them because they already fit a requirement. For as before acquires a new resonance here: when a world is built for some, they come before others.
Not Fitting
People do come to inhabit organizations that are not intended for them; you can make the cut without fitting. If you arrive into an organization that is not built for you, you experience this for as tight or as tightening. If you are the one for whom an institution is intended for is loose; the institution appears as open because it is open to you. This is why I think of an institution as an old garment: it has acquired the shape of those who tend to wear it such that it is easier to wear if you have that shape. And this is why I think of privilege as an energy saving device; less effort is required to pass through when a world has been assembled around you. If you arrive with dubious origins, you are not expected to be there, so in getting there you have already disagreed with an expectation of who you are and what you can do, then an institution is the wrong shape.

Annette Kuhn describes how as a working-class girl in a grammar school she feels "conspicuously out of place." She describes this sense of being out of place by giving us a biography of her school uniform; how by the time her ill-fitting uniform came to fit, it had become "shabby" and "scruffy." The word "wear" originally derives from the Germanic word for clothing. It then acquires a secondary sense of "use up, gradually damage" from the effect of continued use on clothes. It is not just that when something is used more it fits better. If you cannot afford to keep buying new clothes, scruffiness becomes a sign of not fitting.

Not fitting can be about the body you have, about your own requirements. When you don't meet the requirements you become to borrow Rosemarie Garland Thomson's important term, a misfit. She describes being a person with a disability in an ablest institution as like being a "square peg in round hole" (2011, 592).(1) Fitting becomes work for those who do not fit; you have to push, push, push; and sometimes no amount of pushing will get you in.

You can be a misfit given what has become routine. An organisation that organises long meetings without any breaks assumes a body that can be seated without breaks. If someone arrives who cannot maintain this position, they do not meet the requirements. If you lay down during the meeting you would throw the meeting into crisis.

A social justice project might require throwing meetings into crisis.

Perhaps because organisations are trying to avoid such crises, misfits often end up on the same committees (otherwise known as the diversity committee). We might end up on diversity committee because of whom we are not: not white, not cis, not able-bodied, not man, not straight. The more nots you are the more committees you end up on! We can be misfits even on these committees. A woman of colour academic describes: "I was on the equality and diversity group in the university. And as soon as I started mentioning things to do with race they changed the portfolio of who could be on the committee and I was dropped." I noted earlier that diversity might be used more because it does less. The word race might be used less because it does more. Any use of the word race is thus an overuse. She added: "whenever you raise something, the response is that you are not one of them." Not one of them: using words like race seems to amplify what makes you not fit, picking up what you are not. Perhaps a not is heard as shouting, as insistence, a stress point, a sore point, an exclamation point.

Sometimes turning up is enough to bring a history up, a history that gets in the way of an occupation of space. A door is closed because of who enters. At other times the door seems to be open, you might even be welcomed. Think of how diversity is often represented as an open door or as a tag line, minorities welcome; come in, come in, tag-line, tagged on; tag along. Just because they welcome you it doesn't mean they expect you to turn up. A woman of colour describes her department as a revolving door, women and minority stuff enter only to head right out again: whoosh; whoosh.
You can be kept out by what you find out when you get in.
The nuclear family, as an institution can appear to be open, perhaps you are the queer aunties, come in, come in. But heterosexuality can also become an occupation, filling the room, water in a cup, full, fuller still, no room, no room; greetings, statements, heterosexuality given casually for children as projections of the future, even my dog Poppy has been given such an assignment (if only Poppy could meet Tommy, they could be boyfriend and girlfriend). It can feel like you are watching yourself disappear: watching your own life unravel, thread by thread. No one has willed or intended your disappearance. They are kind, they are welcoming. Just slowly, just slowly, as talk of family, of heterosexuality as the future, of lives that you do not live, just slowly, just slowly, you disappear.

I think back to our post-box. There could be another sign on that post-box: "birds welcome."
A sign can be a non-performative.
This sign teaches us how we can "not do" things with words. Because if the post-box was in use, the birds would be dislodged by the letters, a nest destroyed before it could be created. You can stop others from using a space by how that space is being used. I noted earlier that use is a restriction of possibility that is material. You can use the paper for some things and not others because of the material qualities of paper. But it is not just that use is a restriction of possibility that is material. Restrictions can also become material through use. What is material to some, leaving you with no room, no room to breathe, to nest, to be, can be what does not matter to others because it does not get in the way of their occupation of space; it might even enable their occupation.

You can turn up and find a space is already occupied. You turn up at a hotel with your girlfriend and you say you have booked a room. They catch you in a glance and they hesitate. A hesitation can speak volumes. This reservation says your booking is for a double bed, is that right madam? Eyebrows are raised; a glance slides over the two of you, catching enough detail. Are you, sure madam? Yes that's right; a double bed. You have to say it, again; you have to say it, again, firmly. I mentioned earlier my equation rolling eyes = feminist pedagogy. I have another one.

Raised eyebrows = lesbian feminist pedagogy

Really, are you sure? This happens again and again; you almost come to expect it, the necessity of being firm just to receive what you have requested. Disbelief follows you wherever you go; still. One time after a querying, are you sure madam, are you sure, madam, you enter the room; twin beds. Do you go down; do you try again? It can be trying. Sometimes it is too trying, it is too much, and you pull your two little beds together; you find other ways of huddling.

Queer use: another way of huddling, of keeping each other warm.

For some to be is to be in question. Is that your sister or your husband? That was a question asked to me by a neighbour once. Who are you? What are you? Where are you from? As a brown woman living in the UK I am used to being asked that question. Where are you from? Where are you really from? It as a way of being told you are not from here; brown, not from here, not here, not. These questions can dislodge you, you come to wait for them; waiting to be dislodged changes your relation to a lodge.

A lodge can be about how you are received. You might walk into a seminar room with a white man; you are both professors. But you feel the gaze land upon him: plop, plop. You don't appear as professor because you are not how a professor usually appears. And he is addressed as the professor. If you were to say "hey I am a Professor too" you would be heard as drawing attention to yourself. Diversity work: how you end up appearing as drawing attention to yourself. You stick out like a sore thumb. It can then be assumed you are talking walls because you are sore. A lecturer who I interviewed for my complaint project describes: "I have been told I have a chip on my shoulder, that I've got a chip on my shoulder because I am Jewish, that I have a chip on my shoulder because I am foreign, living in this country and you're upset about Brexit, or because your gay and you are just looking for the problems. And you start thinking am I looking for these problems, I just turn it inwards is it me, is it my fault: I lie awake at night thinking is it actually a problem with me here." Chip, chip: if we chip away at the old block no wonder they keep finding that chip on our shoulders. The more nots you are the more chips they find!

But it can be hammering and you can end up feeling that the problem is with you. That feeling I would add is a feeling of structure; how you are stopped from doing something; from being something.

What you have to say or do in order not to be passed over can be heard as a complaint about being passed over. And sometimes we do indeed have to complain about what or who is passed over. When I shared the reasons for my resignation, in protest at the failure of the institution to deal with sexual harassment, I became quite quickly the cause of damage, what a mess Sara, look how much work you have created.
I became a leaky pipe: drip, drip.
Organisations will try and contain that damage; public relations works as damage limitation. And this is how diversity often takes institutional form; damage limitation. There is hope here; they cannot mop up all of our mess. One spillage can lead to more coming out; can lead, does lead. A leak can be a lead. After I shared my reasons for my resignation, many people shared with me their own stories, their own institutional battles.

Just loosen the screw a little bit, a tiny little bit, and you might have an explosion. We need more explosions.
Conclusion: Queer Vandalism
Damage limitation: this is how organisations end up using paper, paper as papering over; to paper over the cracks, the leaks; the means by which blemishes on an institutional record are not recorded. Perhaps these blemishes become ours; we become damaged goods.

Paper too can be papered over. In Queer Phenomenology (2016) I called into a question a fantasy of a "paperless philosophy" as part of a critique of how philosophy might be orientated toward a certain kind of body, one for whom materiality would be an unnecessary distraction, one who has time freed for contemplation by how others do the paper work, the domestic work, the care work, diversity work.

Paper matters. Paper can also be queer; paper can be used queerly. I am reminded of Homi Bhabha's discussion of uses of the Bible in "Signs Taken for Wonders." Bhabha cites the Missionary Register from 1817: "Still [every Indian] would gladly receive a bible. Any why? That he may store it up as a curiosity, sell it for a few pice, or use it for wastepaper. Such it is well known has been the common fate of those Bibles distributed in this place. Some are seen laid up as curiosities, by those who cannot read them: some have been bartered in the markets; and others have been thrown into the snuff-shops, and used as wrapping paper" (1985, 163-4), The Bible in not been properly read is willfully destroyed; the Bible becomes a curiosity; reused or usable for other purposes, wrapping paper, waste paper.

Of course the missionaries narrate the fate of the Bible in the colonies as a result of the inability of the natives to be able to digest it: "It is true, that such of the Natives as can read, have leisure enough to read the whole Bible; but they are so indolent, so fond of eating and sleeping, or so lost in their vicious pursuits, that unless something at once brief, simple, and powerful be presented, it will not be likely to be read by them, and, if read, it will not be likely to arrest their torpid and sensual minds" (1817, 186). If racism is used as an explanation of the failure of digestion, rendering the racial other a queer subject ("vicious pursuits" "torpid and sensual minds"), racism is used because of the failure of the colonial mission to transform the minds of the colonized into willing vessels.

The demand to use something properly is a demand to revere what has been given by the colonizer. Empire as gift comes with use instructions. If not to be subjected to the will of the colonizer is to queer use or even to become queer through misuse (perversion as self-revelation), to queer use is to live in proximity to violence. To queer use is to linger on the material qualities of that which you are supposed to pass over; it is to recover a potential from materials that have been left behind, all the things you can do with paper if you refuse the instructions. That recovery can be dangerous. The creativity of queer use becomes an act of destruction, whether intended or not; not digesting something, spitting it out; putting it about.

Queer use in other words can be understood as vandalism: "the willful destruction of what is venerable and beautiful." Earlier I described diversity workers as institutional plumbers. We might from this description assume that diversity workers are appointed to unblock the system. But a blockage can be how the system is working. The system is working by stopping those are trying to transform the system. This means that: to transform a system we have to stop the system from working. When you stop the machine from working, you damage the machine. The plumber might need to be a vandal, or we might have to pass as a plumber (fixing the leak) to become a vandal (making it bigger). We might have to throw a wrench in the works or become, to use Sarah Franklin's (2015) terms "wenches in the works," throw our bodies into the system trying to stop the same old bodies from being assembled, doing the same old things. The "wench in the works" has a queer kinship with the feminist killjoy, a kinship of figures can be a kinship of persons, as non-reproductive agents; those who are trying to stop what usually happens from happening.

We might need to become quite willing to become an obstruction. Protest too is framed as vandalism: not only as damage to property but as motivated by a desire to cause damage.
We have might have to park our bodies in front of that gate.
We can become obstructions by virtue of existing or by questioning the virtue of an existence. Even to open up a question about how to live, how to love, can be framed as damage. Queer as snap, snap: as if you are cutting up the family with a pair of scissors just by arranging your life in a different way.

Not following something as destroying something: no wonder they find us to be destructive.

So much is reproduced by the requirement to follow. Within the academy you might be asked to follow the well-trodden paths of citation; to cite properly as to cite those deemed to have already the most influence. The more a path is used the more a path is used.
The more he is cited the more he is cited.
A path is kept clear through work; occupation depends upon erasure; such and such white man might become an originator of a concept, an idea as becoming seminal, by removing traces of those who were here before. Indigenous feminists, black feminists and feminists of colour have crafted new routes by what or who we refuse to let disappear: I think of work by Zoe Todd (2016), Eve Tuck (2018) and Alexis Pauline Gumbs (2016). Speaking of whiteness in the academy or of colonialism as the context in which Enlightenment philosophy happened is to bring up the scandal of the vandal. Decolonizing the curriculum as a project has been framed as an act of vandalism, a willful destruction of our universals; knocking off the heads of statues, snapping at the thrones of the philosopher kings.

If throwing open the question of how to live or who to read is deemed damaging, we are willing to cause damage, to turn that judgement into a project. And vandalism becomes a tactic when we have to cut a message off from a body, when a message if traced to a source would compromise the source. If organisations try and contain what would damage their reputation, we find other ways to get information out. We might need to use guerrilla tactics, and we have a feminist and queer histories to draw upon; write names of harassers on books or on walls.
Yes, the scratches, we are back to those scratches.
What is treated as damage can be a message sent out: we can reach each other through what seems mere scratch and scribble.

The requirement to be inventive is not just a matter of communication. Audre Lorde in her poem "A Litany for Survival" evokes "those of us," who "love in doorways coming and going in the hours between dawns" (1988: 31). You might have to use the less used paths, turn a doorway into a meeting place; you might have to try to slide by undetected because being seen is dangerous when you are seen as dangerous. Queer use can be a matter of survival, becoming fainter as your best chance of being at all.

And so: there are queer possibilities not only in use, how materials can be picked up when we refuse an instruction, but in not being of use. A much used book might give us a glimpse of other fainter trails. There is a discussion in Origins of vestigial organs, as parts that are no longer useful but linger however dwindled such as the small eye of the blind mole; these parts are sometimes called left overs. Vestigiality is the retention of structures or attributes of ancestral species that have lost their functionality; another version of the strange temporality of use. Let me quote from Origins: "Rudimentary parts, as it is generally admitted, are apt to be highly variable... their variability seems to result from their uselessness, and consequently from natural selection having had no power to check deviations in their structure" ([1859] 2009, 118-9, my emphasis).

Uselessness: it can be a deadly assignment. I think we know this, a history of whom and what is discarded, how the fragments are swept up and away. We can pick up these pieces. We can find other ways of telling the history of use and uselessness, hearing a queer potential in a sentence from a much-used book. That potential: not being selected is not to be checked; to have more room to roam, to vary, to deviate; to proliferate. If queer use can be about survival, followed the less well used path in order not to be detected, queer use can also be about creativity, the variations that are possible when you are not selected or rewarded for going the right way. But: not being selected can also mean not being supported. And so: we create our own support systems, queer handles; how we hold on; how a life can go on, when we are shattered, because we are shattered. No wonder then: the stories of the exhaustion of inhabiting worlds that do not accommodate us, the stories of the weary and the worn, the teary and the torn, are the same stories as the stories of inventiveness, of creating something, of making something.

I think of Lorde. I always think of Lorde. Audre Lorde spoke of herself as a writer when she was dying. She wrote: "I am going to write fire until it comes out of my ears, my eyes, my noseholes-everywhere. Until it's every breath I breathe. I'm going to go out like a fucking meteor!" (1978: 76-77).

And so she did

And so she did

She goes out, she makes something. She calls this capacity to make things through heat "the erotic." Lorde describes : "There is a difference between painting a black fence and writing a poem, but only one of quantity. And there is, for me, no difference between writing a good poem and moving into sunlight against the body of a woman I love" (1984: 58). Words flicker with life, like sunlight on her body.

A love poem

A lover as poem

We can break open a container to make things. We watch the words spill. They spill all over you. I think too of Cherrie Moraga's poem "The Welder." Moraga speaks of heat being used to shape new elements, to create "the intimacy of steel melting, the fire that makes sculpture of your lives, builds buildings" (1981: 219). We have to build our own buildings, when the world does not accommodate our desires. When you are blocked, when your very existence is prohibited or viewed with general suspicion or even just raised eyebrows (yes they are pedagogy), you have to come up with your own systems for getting things through.

How inventive

Quite something

Not from nothing

Something from something

A kitchen table becomes a publishing house

A door-way becomes a meeting place

A post-box becomes a nest

Can this be a queer inheritance; how we inherit from past struggles to exist; small modifications, the widening of a passageway or an opening just enough to enable more to get by or to get through; a sociability as worn as wisdom, secret passages, meeting places, shelters, passing information down a line about where to go, what to do? So much can happen from a struggle to be, from the friction of being rubbed up the wrong way; inversions, beaks that end up the wrong way up, what we cobble together out of necessity from parts at hand.

How odd that from necessity we might become alive to possibility; how odd, how queer.
We can make this image our queer teacher.
It teaches us that it is possible for those deemed strangers to take up residence in spaces that have been assumed as belonging to others. The post-box could have remained in use; the nest destroyed before it was completed; the birds displaced. A history of use is a history of such displacements, many violent, displacements that are often unrecognised because of how things remain occupied. It is because of this occupation, this settling of history, this weight; that queer use requires more than an act of affirming the queerness of use. Queer use is the work we have to do to queer use.

Queer use is work; it is hard and painstaking work; it is collective and creative work; it is diversity work.

This image has something else to teach us: creating a shelter and disrupting usage can refer to the same action. Thank you.

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(1) My book is deeply indebted to Rosemarie Garland Thomson's work on misfitting as well as to other scholars in disability studies who have offered some of the most important critiques of the "uses of use" (and in particular of usability) including Aimi Hamraie, Jay Dolmage, Margaret Price, Tanya Titchkosky and Alison Kafer.
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Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky (1993). "Queer Performativity: Henry James's The Art of the Novel." GLQ: 1, 1: 1-14.

Todd, Zoe (2016). "An Indigenous Feminist's Take On The Ontological Turn: 'Ontology' Is Just Another Word For Colonialism," Journal of Historical Sociology. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/johs.12124. Np.

Tuck, Eve (2018). "Losing Patience for the Task of Convincing Settlers to Pay Attention to Indigenous Ideas," in Linda Tuhiwai, Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang (eds), Indigenous and Decolonizing Studies in Education, New York: Routledge. pp. 13-16.

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I am sharing my lecture Queer Use that I have given a number of times over the past two years for Sexual Cultures Research Group, Queen Mary, CLAGS at CUNY, UC Berkeley, qUCL, Melbourne University and most recently LGBTQ+@cam, Cambridge University. The lecture draws primarily from my forthcoming book, What's the Use?

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In Defense of the Poor Image: Hito Steyerl (Journal #10, Nov 2009)

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In Defense of the Poor Image: Hito Steyerl (Journal #10, Nov 2009)

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A very interesting read on the impact of 'poor images' and what (could) happen when images are used, reused

misused,

underused,

disused,

overused?

unused?

,,

What happens to its value? How does this change the act of authoring? single? multi-authoring? primary/ secondary-authoring?

How does it shift contexts?

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The poor image is a copy in motion. Its quality is bad, its resolution substandard. As it accelerates, it deteriorates. It is a ghost of an image, a preview, a thumbnail, an errant idea, an itinerant image distributed for free, squeezed through slow digital connections, compressed, reproduced, ripped, remixed, as well as copied and pasted into other channels of distribution.

The poor image is a rag or a rip; an AVI or a JPEG, a lumpen proletarian in the class society of appearances, ranked and valued according to its resolution. The poor image has been uploaded, downloaded, shared, reformatted, and reedited. It transforms quality into accessibility, exhibition value into cult value, films into clips, contemplation into distraction. The image is liberated from the vaults of cinemas and archives and thrust into digital uncertainty, at the expense of its own substance. The poor image tends towards abstraction: it is a visual idea in its very becoming.

The poor image is an illicit fifth-generation bastard of an original image. Its genealogy is dubious. Its filenames are deliberately misspelled. It often defies patrimony, national culture, or indeed copyright. It is passed on as a lure, a decoy, an index, or as a reminder of its former visual self. It mocks the promises of digital technology. Not only is it often degraded to the point of being just a hurried blur, one even doubts whether it could be called an image at all. Only digital technology could produce such a dilapidated image in the first place.

Poor images are the contemporary Wretched of the Screen, the debris of audiovisual production, the trash that washes up on the digital economies' shores. They testify to the violent dislocation, transferrals, and displacement of images-their acceleration and circulation within the vicious cycles of audiovisual capitalism. Poor images are dragged around the globe as commodities or their effigies, as gifts or as bounty. They spread pleasure or death threats, conspiracy theories or bootlegs, resistance or stultification. Poor images show the rare, the obvious, and the unbelievable-that is, if we can still manage to decipher it.

1. Low Resolutions

In one of Woody Allen's films the main character is out of focus. It's not a technical problem but some sort of disease that has befallen him: his image is consistently blurred. Since Allen's character is an actor, this becomes a major problem: he is unable to find work. His lack of definition turns into a material problem. Focus is identified as a class position, a position of ease and privilege, while being out of focus lowers one's value as an image.

The contemporary hierarchy of images, however, is not only based on sharpness, but also and primarily on resolution. Just look at any electronics store and this system, described by Harun Farocki in a notable 2007 interview, becomes immediately apparent.In the class society of images, cinema takes on the role of a flagship store. In flagship stores high-end products are marketed in an upscale environment. More affordable derivatives of the same images circulate as DVDs, on broadcast television or online, as poor images.

Obviously, a high-resolution image looks more brilliant and impressive, more mimetic and magic, more scary and seductive than a poor one. It is more rich, so to speak. Now, even consumer formats are increasingly adapting to the tastes of cineastes and esthetes, who insisted on 35 mm film as a guarantee of pristine visuality. The insistence upon analog film as the sole medium of visual importance resounded throughout discourses on cinema, almost regardless of their ideological inflection. It never mattered that these high-end economies of film production were (and still are) firmly anchored in systems of national culture, capitalist studio production, the cult of mostly male genius, and the original version, and thus are often conservative in their very structure. Resolution was fetishized as if its lack amounted to castration of the author. The cult of film gauge dominated even independent film production. The rich image established its own set of hierarchies, with new technologies offering more and more possibilities to creatively degrade it.

2. Resurrection (as Poor Images)

But insisting on rich images also had more serious consequences. A speaker at a recent conference on the film essay refused to show clips from a piece by Humphrey Jennings because no proper film projection was available. Although there was at the speaker's disposal a perfectly standard DVD player and video projector, the audience was left to imagine what those images might have looked like.

In this case the invisibility of the image was more or less voluntary and based on aesthetic premises. But it has a much more general equivalent based on the consequences of neoliberal policies. Twenty or even thirty years ago, the neoliberal restructuring of media production began slowly obscuring non-commercial imagery, to the point where experimental and essayistic cinema became almost invisible. As it became prohibitively expensive to keep these works circulating in cinemas, so were they also deemed too marginal to be broadcast on television. Thus they slowly disappeared not just from cinemas, but from the public sphere as well. Video essays and experimental films remained for the most part unseen save for some rare screenings in metropolitan film museums or film clubs, projected in their original resolution before disappearing again into the darkness of the archive.

This development was of course connected to the neoliberal radicalization of the concept of culture as commodity, to the commercialization of cinema, its dispersion into multiplexes, and the marginalization of independent filmmaking. It was also connected to the restructuring of global media industries and the establishment of monopolies over the audiovisual in certain countries or territories. In this way, resistant or non-conformist visual matter disappeared from the surface into an underground of alternative archives and collections, kept alive only by a network of committed organizations and individuals, who would circulate bootlegged VHS copies amongst themselves. Sources for these were extremely rare-tapes moved from hand to hand, depending on word of mouth, within circles of friends and colleagues. With the possibility to stream video online, this condition started to dramatically change. An increasing number of rare materials reappeared on publicly accessible platforms, some of them carefully curated (Ubuweb) and some just a pile of stuff (YouTube).

At present, there are at least twenty torrents of Chris Marker's film essays available online. If you want a retrospective, you can have it. But the economy of poor images is about more than just downloads: you can keep the files, watch them again, even reedit or improve them if you think it necessary. And the results circulate. Blurred AVI files of half-forgotten masterpieces are exchanged on semi-secret P2P platforms. Clandestine cell-phone videos smuggled out of museums are broadcast on YouTube. DVDs of artists' viewing copies are bartered. Many works of avant-garde, essayistic, and non-commercial cinema have been resurrected as poor images. Whether they like it or not.

3. Privatization and Piracy

That rare prints of militant, experimental, and classical works of cinema as well as video art reappear as poor images is significant on another level. Their situation reveals much more than the content or appearance of the images themselves: it also reveals the conditions of their marginalization, the constellation of social forces leading to their online circulation as poor images. Poor images are poor because they are not assigned any value within the class society of images-their status as illicit or degraded grants them exemption from its criteria. Their lack of resolution attests to their appropriation and displacement.

Obviously, this condition is not only connected to the neoliberal restructuring of media production and digital technology; it also has to do with the post-socialist and postcolonial restructuring of nation states, their cultures, and their archives. While some nation states are dismantled or fall apart, new cultures and traditions are invented and new histories created. This obviously also affects film archives-in many cases, a whole heritage of film prints is left without its supporting framework of national culture. As I once observed in the case of a film museum in Sarajevo, the national archive can find its next life in the form of a video-rental store. Pirate copies seep out of such archives through disorganized privatization. On the other hand, even the British Library sells off its contents online at astronomical prices.

As Kodwo Eshun has noted, poor images circulate partly in the void left by state-cinema organizations who find it too difficult to operate as a 16/35-mm archive or to maintain any kind of distribution infrastructure in the contemporary era. From this perspective, the poor image reveals the decline and degradation of the film essay, or indeed any experimental and non-commercial cinema, which in many places was made possible because the production of culture was considered a task of the state. Privatization of media production gradually grew more important than state controlled/sponsored media production. But, on the other hand, the rampant privatization of intellectual content, along with online marketing and commodification, also enable piracy and appropriation; it gives rise to the circulation of poor images.

4. Imperfect Cinema

The emergence of poor images reminds one of a classic Third Cinema manifesto, For an Imperfect Cinema, by Juan García Espinosa, written in Cuba in the late 1960s. Espinosa argues for an imperfect cinema because, in his words, "perfect cinema-technically and artistically masterful-is almost always reactionary cinema." The imperfect cinema is one that strives to overcome the divisions of labor within class society. It merges art with life and science, blurring the distinction between consumer and producer, audience and author. It insists upon its own imperfection, is popular but not consumerist, committed without becoming bureaucratic.

In his manifesto, Espinosa also reflects on the promises of new media. He clearly predicts that the development of video technology will jeopardize the elitist position of traditional filmmakers and enable some sort of mass film production: an art of the people. Like the economy of poor images, imperfect cinema diminishes the distinctions between author and audience and merges life and art. Most of all, its visuality is resolutely compromised: blurred, amateurish, and full of artifacts.

In some way, the economy of poor images corresponds to the description of imperfect cinema, while the description of perfect cinema represents rather the concept of cinema as a flagship store. But the real and contemporary imperfect cinema is also much more ambivalent and affective than Espinosa had anticipated. On the one hand, the economy of poor images, with its immediate possibility of worldwide distribution and its ethics of remix and appropriation, enables the participation of a much larger group of producers than ever before. But this does not mean that these opportunities are only used for progressive ends. Hate speech, spam, and other rubbish make their way through digital connections as well. Digital communication has also become one of the most contested markets-a zone that has long been subjected to an ongoing original accumulation and to massive (and, to a certain extent, successful) attempts at privatization.

The networks in which poor images circulate thus constitute both a platform for a fragile new common interest and a battleground for commercial and national agendas. They contain experimental and artistic material, but also incredible amounts of porn and paranoia. While the territory of poor images allows access to excluded imagery, it is also permeated by the most advanced commodification techniques. While it enables the users' active participation in the creation and distribution of content, it also drafts them into production. Users become the editors, critics, translators, and (co-)authors of poor images.

Poor images are thus popular images-images that can be made and seen by the many. They express all the contradictions of the contemporary crowd: its opportunism, narcissism, desire for autonomy and creation, its inability to focus or make up its mind, its constant readiness for transgression and simultaneous submission. Altogether, poor images present a snapshot of the affective condition of the crowd, its neurosis, paranoia, and fear, as well as its craving for intensity, fun, and distraction. The condition of the images speaks not only of countless transfers and reformattings, but also of the countless people who cared enough about them to convert them over and over again, to add subtitles, reedit, or upload them.

In this light, perhaps one has to redefine the value of the image, or, more precisely, to create a new perspective for it. Apart from resolution and exchange value, one might imagine another form of value defined by velocity, intensity, and spread. Poor images are poor because they are heavily compressed and travel quickly. They lose matter and gain speed. But they also express a condition of dematerialization, shared not only with the legacy of conceptual art but above all with contemporary modes of semiotic production. Capital's semiotic turn, as described by Felix Guattari, plays in favor of the creation and dissemination of compressed and flexible data packages that can be integrated into ever-newer combinations and sequences.

This flattening-out of visual content-the concept-in-becoming of the images-positions them within a general informational turn, within economies of knowledge that tear images and their captions out of context into the swirl of permanent capitalist deterritorialization. The history of conceptual art describes this dematerialization of the art object first as a resistant move against the fetish value of visibility. Then, however, the dematerialized art object turns out to be perfectly adapted to the semioticization of capital, and thus to the conceptual turn of capitalism. In a way, the poor image is subject to a similar tension. On the one hand, it operates against the fetish value of high resolution. On the other hand, this is precisely why it also ends up being perfectly integrated into an information capitalism thriving on compressed attention spans, on impression rather than immersion, on intensity rather than contemplation, on previews rather than screenings.

5. Comrade, what is your visual bond today?

But, simultaneously, a paradoxical reversal happens. The circulation of poor images creates a circuit, which fulfills the original ambitions of militant and (some) essayistic and experimental cinema-to create an alternative economy of images, an imperfect cinema existing inside as well as beyond and under commercial media streams. In the age of file-sharing, even marginalized content circulates again and reconnects dispersed worldwide audiences.

The poor image thus constructs anonymous global networks just as it creates a shared history. It builds alliances as it travels, provokes translation or mistranslation, and creates new publics and debates. By losing its visual substance it recovers some of its political punch and creates a new aura around it. This aura is no longer based on the permanence of the "original," but on the transience of the copy. It is no longer anchored within a classical public sphere mediated and supported by the frame of the nation state or corporation, but floats on the surface of temporary and dubious data pools. By drifting away from the vaults of cinema, it is propelled onto new and ephemeral screens stitched together by the desires of dispersed spectators.

The circulation of poor images thus creates "visual bonds," as Dziga Vertov once called them. This "visual bond" was, according to Vertov, supposed to link the workers of the world with each other. He imagined a sort of communist, visual, Adamic language that could not only inform or entertain, but also organize its viewers. In a sense, his dream has come true, if mostly under the rule of a global information capitalism whose audiences are linked almost in a physical sense by mutual excitement, affective attunement, and anxiety.

But there is also the circulation and production of poor images based on cell phone cameras, home computers, and unconventional forms of distribution. Its optical connections-collective editing, file sharing, or grassroots distribution circuits-reveal erratic and coincidental links between producers everywhere, which simultaneously constitute dispersed audiences.

The circulation of poor images feeds into both capitalist media assembly lines and alternative audiovisual economies. In addition to a lot of confusion and stupefaction, it also possibly creates disruptive movements of thought and affect. The circulation of poor images thus initiates another chapter in the historical genealogy of nonconformist information circuits: Vertov's "visual bonds," the internationalist workers pedagogies that Peter Weiss described in The Aesthetics of Resistance, the circuits of Third Cinema and Tricontinentalism, of non-aligned filmmaking and thinking. The poor image-ambivalent as its status may be-thus takes its place in the genealogy of carbon-copied pamphlets, cine-train agit-prop films, underground video magazines and other nonconformist materials, which aesthetically often used poor materials. Moreover, it reactualizes many of the historical ideas associated with these circuits, among others Vertov's idea of the visual bond.

Imagine somebody from the past with a beret asking you, "Comrade, what is your visual bond today?"

You might answer: it is this link to the present.

6. Now!

The poor image embodies the afterlife of many former masterpieces of cinema and video art. It has been expelled from the sheltered paradise that cinema seems to have once been. After being kicked out of the protected and often protectionist arena of national culture, discarded from commercial circulation, these works have become travelers in a digital no-man's land, constantly shifting their resolution and format, speed and media, sometimes even losing names and credits along the way.

Now many of these works are back-as poor images, I admit. One could of course argue that this is not the real thing, but then-please, anybody-show me this real thing.

The poor image is no longer about the real thing-the originary original. Instead, it is about its own real conditions of existence: about swarm circulation, digital dispersion, fractured and flexible temporalities. It is about defiance and appropriation just as it is about conformism and exploitation.

In short: it is about reality.

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In Defense of the Poor Image - Journal #10

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Listening to Images: A Salon in Honor of Tina Campt