Introduction
Lxs Kolombias: Guacharaca Política
Making America, Great, Again
Performance of the Dictator
Representing the Labor
Poly-PoLitics
Guns Up: El Estado Opresor Es Un Macho Violador
Epilogue
Introduction
“These intimate and predatory forms of exploitation are introducing calculation through rhythms into new arenas of every day life. The question is therefore how to bridge—analytically and politically—the relationship between newer and older(re)configurations of rhythm, power, and everyday life.”
-Emily Reid-Musson, Intersectional Rhythmanalysis: Power, rhythm, and everyday life
The relationship of political performance to systems of power is one that aims to create different forms of affect as it constructs new perceptions of “the real” and opens new possibilities that go beyond political discourses. As we acknowledge that the repetition of gestures carries political power, we highlight here the forms of body expressions and the meaning of these that accompany political discourses, creating an affect that enables different emotions on populations as fear and confusion that become in new forms of post-truth. In this project, we are paying attention to the repetition of gestures and speeches, as we believe they are intrinsically connected to political spectacle.
As part of our project, we have decided to use Instagram as a way to share images that will help us compile the repetition of these gestures in a repeatable and re-postable method. We believe that the power of the digital and the assemblage of images speak to the speed of global circulation as it also plays an important role in political spectacle.
Repetition reiterates. Repetition is a mode of circulating re-enactment. Repetition is the production of recollection. Repetition is a crucial tool in political performance. Repetition is used by political actors to perform time manipulation via the repetition of gestures, slogans, images, words, and outfits. Repetition exists individually and in assemblages. Repetition is always present.
Camila Arroyo Romero
This project is a study of how gestures and actions circulate in our contemporary world via images that travel through digital media. As we focus on repetition, we search for patterns in the way we communicate with the space of appearance. We echo Ranciére in acknowledging that: “An image never stands alone. It belongs to a system of visibility that governs the status of the bodies represented and the kind of attention they merit.” We highlight a variety of forms of repetition which range from hand gestures that have become fundamental in the formation of political leaders to the movement forms that create political potential within the space of appearance. It is, as netizens of this digital era that we pick Instagram as a platform in a desire to “examine the role of the media in globalizing practices that construct new subjects.” We aim to mimic the way these images circulate while simultaneously creating an archive of gestures and actions, a repertoire of repetition.
Lxs Kolombias: Guacharaca Política
Prelude
The backs curve, the knees bend, and the footwork shuffles to the swaying melody of the accordion. The hands twist into sharp and angular signs representing la cruz de sus parroquias: M for Monterrey, I for Colonia Independencia, V for Villanitas. In el baile de gavilán, whether your hands show affiliation to the city, a neighborhood, or a gang, you will be moving to the right, pasito a pasito, following the footsteps of other Kolombias, while others follow you. One after the other we shuffle to the right, led by the chik-chika-chik-chika-chik of the guacharaca, creating a large circle of bodies in motion. The hems of oversized Dickie’s caress the floor, as they drip over old Converse sneakers. Their names rest on the square fabric of the escapularios, which hang from their bent necks. The letters sway slowly in the eyes of the MC who reads them out loud, shouting out names that glide on the lyrics. The one thing that is not moving is the hairstyle. Ese no, eso si que stays in place.
The dance floor is now an ocean, and at the center, like a school of fish, bodies are gracefully tossing, turning, and shuffling in unison riding the slow tumbado of the cumbia rebajada. Rebajada, watered down, we take it a step back. If for Hannah Arendt the political realm, where power and the space of appearance come into being, rises directly out of the “sharing of words and deeds” for the Kolombia’s it rises out of communing in motion, out of the collective pride de ser kolombia.
I.
In the 1950’s and 1960’s Colombian cumbia and vallenato vinyl records landed in Monterrey, Nuevo León by way of Mexico City. Due to Monterrey’s geographic position which marks it as a crucial migratory point, más pa’ allá que pa’ acá, Colombian vinyls carrying this rhythm found a home on their way to Houston, El Paso, and other U.S. border cities. Networks of transnational commerce, both legal and illegal, transported these records which made their way everywhere from recording studios to house parties. Simultaneously, street party DJ’s known as Sonideros (translated to “sound makers”) became increasingly popular in Mexican nightlife, and in turn they quickly popularized Colombian hits found in these records such as La Cumbia Sampuesana and La Pollera Colorá. Colombian music found a strong foothold in the marginalized communities in Monterrey, particularly in the neighborhoods of Loma Larga such as La Colonia Independencia.
Choreographically, traditional social dance began to mutate from the hetero-couple dancing as a unit to a large circle of bodies moving together. As the culture has transformed, so have the gestures that Colombia’s hold dear to their practice. These range from hand gestures, to partnering practices, to the formation of the dance circle, as well as to the repetition of the practice in private, semi-private, and public spaces. In an attempt to practice solidarity, admiration, and respect, I will reflect on these gestures and their patterns of repetition in order to understand their contribution to Colombia/Kolombia politics and aesthetics.
The fascination for Colombian cumbia and vallenato led to an idealization of the South American country. As many listeners had no economic means to travel outside the country, a market for Colombian souvenirs emerged. Colombia became fetishized, and any kind of object that showcased once alliance to Colombia became a coveted commodity. Around the city in small stores and in the local markets one can find stickers, t-shirts, keychains, postcards, hats, but most importantly CD’s, and vinyl records of everyone from Aniceto Molina to Lizandro Meza. In the period from the late 90’s to the early 2010’s, young members of the Colombia community, mostly composed of teenagers, transformed the aesthetic and sartorial practices and traditions by creating a unique aesthetic expression. Greatly influenced by the internet and other forms of new media which allowed the circulation of images of West Coast rappers, and Chola, Colo, Cholx communities in Los Angeles, California. As well as by re-interpreting objects and clothes dedicated to catholic devotion such as escapulario necklaces and Virgen de Guadalupe t-shirts. I refer to this specific period as Kolombia to honor the teenage internet writing practices of the time in which many C’s were exchanged for K’s. Likewise, I seek to echo the way Kolombias denominated themselves as they established forms of identification and communication mediated by their internet presence.
The Kolombiano movement language is based on grounded movement, bent-knees, rhythmic foot-shuffling which follows the guacharaca, and hand gestures which showcase gang signs or initials of a neighborhood, gang, or an M for Monterrey. The dancing happens in couples or individually. The practice always happens within a circumference, which unlike most dance practices which include a “dance-circle” the objective is not to open a space at the center for virtuosic display, but to move in unison, like a school of fish. These forms of dancing happen in a social context, and can be repeated anywhere from parks and playgrounds, markets, plazas, cantinas, and private homes. Although some nightlife spaces can cater more to teenagers and adults, the constant repetition of this practice allows the participation of everyone from children to older adults. All you need is people and music, and nothing else. As Judith Butler notes “forms of assembly already signify prior to, and apart from, any particular demands they make.” The repetition of these gatherings carries significance not only as a practice of resistance but as a practice of pleasure and enjoyment. The choreographic gesture is public, communal, and political. It is the embodiment of collective political practice. The choreographic structure of the circle allows everybody to claim individual identification, which is expressed via hand signs and shout-outs while remaining within a collective structure. This choreographic practice reminds us that: “No one body establishes the space of appearance, but this action, this performative exercise, happens only “between” bodies, in a space that constitutes the gap between my own body and another’s. In this way, my body does not act alone when it acts politically. Indeed, the action emerges from the “between,” a spatial figure for a relation that both binds and differentiates.”
After all, its power lies in its repetition. As long as the chik-chika-chik of the guacharaca lures us into movement, we will keep dancing to ese cumbión.
To powerfully assert one’s identity by claiming prideful ownership of aesthetic and choreographic forms of expression which have been classified as less important and relevant than other forms of expression is to appropriate the assertion and delineation of one’s difference. The understanding of identity I posit here aligns with Etienne Balibar’s understanding of identity as a transindividual formation, meaning its construction depends on both the individual and the collective. These practices, which are always profoundly bound to practices of resistance and politics of excess, tend to be originated within communities that have historically created cultures that are first rejected and then appropriated by hegemonic cultural producers. The aesthetic choices of the Kolombia’s, which I understand mainly as their sartorial and choreographic practice, have facilitated the creation of an alternative polis. “The polis, properly speaking, is not the city-state in its physical location; it is the organization of the people as it arises out of acting and speaking together, and its true space lies between people living together for this purpose, no matter where they happen to be.” This process of identification and recognition must be understood as a fundamental political practice of marginalized communities that use their self-fashioning and self-choreographing as a form of claiming visibility and occupying public space which is often denied from them.
In 2011, Mexico, and specifically the northern city of Monterrey, saw an extreme increase in violence given the rise of the Drug War. Kidnappings, shootings, murders, and femicide became rampant. Kolombia youth had long withstood a history of stigmatization and discrimination against due to their socio-economic origins and musical and aesthetic practices. However, discrimination increased during this violent period, and the Kolombia’s were largely targeted by law-enforcement and local organized crime. Eventually, social life died out, and with it so did Kolombia culture. However, although a specific iteration of Kolombia aesthetic practices is now gone, Colombia choreographic practices are still thriving. Colombias transform and mutate but never disappear. Dancehalls, plazas, cantinas, and living rooms all over Monterrey are still filled with joyful circles of shuffling feet, and dancing hands. After all, its power lies in its repetition. As long as the chik-chika-chik of the guacharaca lures us into movement, we will keep dancing to ese cumbión.
Making America, Great, Again
“Make America Great Again,” or MAGA, has lived under many umbrellas: rallying cry, campaign promise, political action plan, nostalgic signifier, epoch of white nationalism, to name a few. Most frequently, it has become the tag line for President Trump’s successful 2016 run for office. It has been repeated and reiterated on behalf of his followers as a symbol of power and continues to be a consistently reproduced marker of not only the folk-hero president himself but the ideologies he represents. It has become a history recreating, self-fulfilling, and circulating ideological marker that has utilized performance practices to change the way that politics is performed through repetition.
“History is written by victors”
-Unknown
The MAGA as slogan is a constantly referencing time, or the wish to return to a previous time, and it appeals to a force to bring the past back. It harkens to a past where the “victors” were white people who never had to live at the bottom of the social ladder that was inhabited by the people of color they created systems to oppress. MAGA is, then, a historical meme whose circulation in the mainstream begs the question of what really lies behind the hat and how much hatred can be masked so easily. The phrase started as the slogan for President Reagan’s 1980 run for president, and was featured on buttons and memorabilia throughout that campaign. It was later co-opted by George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton before being adopted by Trump. In its proliferation, we see similar tactics on the highest level of governance from all sides, and see the power of the repeated phrase carries grow with time. Repetition, here, is a tactic of community-building and helps create an organizing principle from which folks can declare their allegiance. What is Trump “rehearsing” when he uses the phrase “Make America Great Again,” and in what ways does this create a self-fulfilling prophecy where he rewrites the history as he speaks it?
Repetition, here, is a tactic of community-building and helps create an organizing principle from which folks can declare their allegiance.
In MAGA’s function as a rallying cry, it dredges up the past as it builds a future, all with the goal of forgetting. Functionally, it aligns Trump with Reagan and a history of conservative politicians while setting up an action that is vague enough to allow folks to fill in the plan with their own imagination. In the repetition of the phrase, a kind of affective excess is produced that is uncontainable. Drawing upon the old adage “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” (ironically, cited as one of the most misquoted “remarks” of all time), Rebecca Schneider asks us to consider repeating as a form of remembering. The goal, eventually, in Schneider’s description of performed repeating, is forgetting:
“…a momentary forgetting might take place, where time and space seem to come undone or overlap and touch to the point of confluence. To the point, perhaps, of habit […] Forgetting is oddly a kind of prize at the of the day—a skill, the hard-won step in the work of learning that enables becoming.”
Rebecca Schnieder, “Reenactment and Relative Pain.” 41.
Through this repeated performance, Trump is able to forget that he is the son of a billionaire real estate developer and a failed businessman, he is able through his own rewritten and repeated history of MAGA to become the folk hero that his base imagines him to be. Schnieder speaks to the “affective imprint (not just its impression) on the social imaginary,” and in this way, Trump has utilized affect and reimagined the social entirely to include him at the top of the pyramid.
As Boal outlines in his Theatre of the Oppressed, the spectacle is created to soothe an audience out of action and into a state of inaction. Through the configuration of the audience as spectators of the spectacle, one loses the ability to create change, and thereby the audience becomes a tool of ruling classes to keep oppressed in a perpetual state of inaction. It is enthralling and controversial in order to keep your eyes on the screen and wondering what will happen next, so you are not thinking of potential ways out of the chaos. Trump creates his own kind of spec-actors by making his audience such a crucial element of his rallies. The affect he produces supersedes fact, and his participants take part in the performance through chanting, singing, and cheering. With the power of repetition of MAGA, he empowers and includes the audience in a manner that not only transfers affect but brings them into a community and allows them access to exclusionary policy and tactics. In many ways, he is taking the lessons of Boal’s work and implementing them to his own benefit.
Another aspect of Boal’s work has to do with time (albeit indirectly), in thinking of Boal’s use of “rehearsal.” A rehearsal is practicing of behavior to perform again, producing what Schechner describes as the “twice-repeated behavior” of performance. In performance, then, is already an appeal to the past, a premedited act. Trump is rehearsing a version of history with each repetition, and through his performance from a place of political authority, he is able to produce that reality. “Make America Great Again” as not only a performance but a rehearsal for the future then implies a need for reiterability. We need to make America great again and again and again and again and again… as a rehearsal, it will continue to need to be repeated until the desired result is achieved and until the performance is complete. But for Trump and his followers, the performance of making America great is an eradication of undocumented immigrants, criminalizing and jailing of black folks, and a consolidation of power and assets to the very top earners. The question becomes how to break the chain of “Make America Great Again and again and again” in order for a new political world to begin to be built.
Project by Hans Haacke presented at the New Museum. Photo by Cati Kalinoski. 
Project by Hans Haacke presented at the New Museum. Photo by Cati Kalinoski. 
Project by Hans Haacke presented at the New Museum. Photo by Cati Kalinoski. 
Project by Hans Haacke presented at the New Museum. Photo by Cati Kalinoski. 
Project by Hans Haacke presented at the New Museum. Photo by Cati Kalinoski. 
Project by Hans Haacke presented at the New Museum. Photo by Cati Kalinoski. 
Project by Hans Haacke presented at the New Museum. Photo by Cati Kalinoski.
Finally, I’d like the discuss the issue of circulation of MAGA hats. As the iconic figure of the movement, the red hat has become the signifier of Trumpism. Red hats riddle my home in Iowa as a declaration and at some times a threat- alluding to the damage that Trump’s followers have caused and threatening everyone around to challenge theirsauthority. It ties them to power in a way their white skin can no longer solely do, as Caucasians become closer to a minority group every day. In a recent exhibition at the New Museum, a Hans Haacke tackled the image of the MAGA hat and presented a piece called “Make Mar-a-Lago Great Again”. It consisted of ads for red MAGA hats in various languages (notably, Russian) printed, with a screen in front that scrolled the most recent Trump tweet. In front of the screen, there lay on the ground Lady Liberty dolls with their heads separated from their bodies. While the message was not subtle, what I found most interesting was the emphasis on the circulation of Trump’s message. MAGA and the red hat is no longer simply an American phenomenon, it is an international symbol. While it was only recently that footage of world leaders laughing at Trump’s tactics at a NATA reception were uncovered, the symbol (in its uneven affectiveness) is undeniably recognizable. MAGA has a reach, image, and an easy reiterability that ought to be considered seriously and combatted effectively.
The Performance of the Dictator
Introduction
The dictatorship of Alberto Fujimori spanned during the years of 1990-2001. A big part of his permanence in power was the total control of the state, especially after the presidential coup of April 5th, 1992. The autogolpe signified the closing of the congress and the intervention of different independent mass media that opposed the new regime. This ended in the total control of the information that the population received through the management of tv channels and newspapers. Fujimori explained the coup as the only way to “accelerate reconciliation” when in reality was a way to gain power and control of the military, legislative and judicial power. During his government, Fujimori committed numerous human rights crimes, the ones that were part of his strategy to defeat terrorism and to reach the pacification of the country. His government was also involved in the biggest scandal corruption after the release of the “vladivideos”, another example of political spectacle. Among the crimes committed during the years of dictatorship were the Cantuta and Barrios Altos massacre, the 300,000 forced sterilizations and the creation of the death squad Grupo Colina. Fujimori is currently in jail for these crimes, except for the eugenics practice of forced sterilizations that has been recognized as the biggest crime against women in the country.
Political spectacle and the construction of fictitious narratives were an important part of the construction of the image of Fujimori and how he came to build the systems of power in his government. From the beginning of his campaign in 1990, he presented himself as the only person that could save the country from terrorism and the economic crisis. As the outsider, opposing to writer Mario Vargas Llosa in the elections of 1990, he was edified as the man that could put order. He earned the image of the only person that was able to manage the country as his discourse repeated the idea of “mano dura” ideology. Along with this image, was the presence of his family as a strong and well-constituted marriage with four kids. This image of the family deteriorated as Fujimori’s wife, Susana Higuchi revealed some of the corruption on donations from Japan and was later tortured by the National Intelligence Service (SIN). In 1994, Keiko Fujimori, the oldest daughter of the marriage, assumed the role of First Lady as her parents got divorced. This was the beginning of Keiko’s political career during the dictatorship and her posterior participations as a presidential candidate with his current political party Fuerza Popular.
The theatricality of Fujimorismo politics is a practice that continues to now. Fujimori staging of extreme situations started with the declaration of emergency in the country, his continuous trips inside Peru, many times in the company of his kids, and his populist practices that included the construction of schools, donating free computers in places that had no electricity. Keiko and Kenyi Fujimori, who are now political figures that have used the same populist images, repeated these spectacular appearances. This repetition includes visits to the outskirts of the city, the repartition of tuperware and food in the most economically disadvantaged places in the country in order to gain votes. These props prepared the stage that, according to sociologist Francisco Durand (i) was the connection with the most disadvantaged populations that Alberto Fujimori constructed and that later served Keiko Fujimori.
Repetition and staging: The Fujimori family
In the images presented in our Instagram, we can see that part of the populist mechanisms were always the presentation of Fujimori as the president that traveled to every part of the country and was close to the population. As Diana Taylor explains, performance entails a wide range of social behaviors that aim to “create effects and affects.” The political performance can also create then a new sensation of the real Part of their populism was to go around towns, dressing with typical costumes as a way to show closeness with the population. The figure of the strong man and the family father was also reinforced during the years of his dictatorship.
These images aim to separate the political figure of Fujimori that include the crimes he committed, from his identity as a citizen, a family member, father, and grandfather.
Leticia Robles has explained how the staging was a strategy well known and utilized by Fujimorismo since the construction of false scenarios is still an ongoing practice for their congresspeople. We have seen in the past episodes of surreal actions and staging like the presence of Fujimori at the Embassy of Japan and the search for his assessor Vladimiro Montesinos, after this one escaped. Robles also explains how Fujimorismo, as in the past controlled the mass media, utilizes now social media and platforms like Twitter and Facebook to make viral images. They have also a strong presence in Instagram. These images aim to separate the political figure of Fujimori that include the crimes he committed, from his identity as a citizen, a family member, father, and grandfather. Edwards has signaled the importance of mass media in political spectacle and how the use of Twitter creates a form of intimacy. Intimacy, affect and an appeal to the emotions, beliefs and certain construction of values is what we see in a photograph taken October 13th, 2012 where Fujimori is laying in a hospital bed. The image was published on Twitter by one of the Fujimoristas congressmen next to the phrase “Una imagen vale más que mil mentiras.” The staging started the campaign for the exoneration of Fujimori and in the image we can see a dying, vulnerable old man. Fujimorismo here understands the power of social media to make images go viral and appeal to the population’s feelings, as well as to create the idea of political persecution and victimhood. In the images where Fujimori appears in bed and with his kids, we see a vulnerable old man, as opposed to the image of the strong leader that commanded the country and committed human rights crimes. This is intentionally trying to divorce reality with the past image and represent a current vulnerability in all the Fujimori family.
After the release of Fujimori and before the cancellation of his exoneration, he posted another video in his hospital bed where we can see Fujimori repeating the phrase “please, don’t kill me” referring to his imminent return to prison. Robles has also noted how part of the strategy of the return of Alberto Fujimori and the exoneration of his crimes was the construction of the filial love and the image of patriotism. As fujimorismo intrinsically related and defended conservative pro- family groups as “Con mis hijos no te metas”, the population had the strongest sense of the fujimorismo in defense for the family. Similarly, we have seen in the past weeks the campaign for Keiko Fujimori freedom started by his husband, Mark Vito, and political members of her party Fuerza Popular. Vito’s figure has been central to divorce the figure of Fujimori’s past, as he represents the “gringo” that is not related to the criminal history of the family. Vito recently went on a hunger strike that was theatrically staged as he slept in a tent and was constantly monitored by doctors. At the same time, the family also released the letter of Keiko’s child asking the judges for the freedom of her mother. This campaign ended up with the release of Keiko Fujimori after the scandals of corruption. The idea of the family, a new opportunity and era keeps getting repeated as after being released from jail, Keiko Fujimori went to visit her father to prison and declared “My family is my priority” as looking for the unity of the family.
Conclusions
The theatricalization of politics and the performatic power of the staging to gain population votes and support is a practice that has been continued by Kenji Fujimori and Keiko Fujimori, as both are now political actors. It is crucial to analyze these images and to dismantle the fictitious character of fujimorismo, as well as to put in evidence how these aim to manipulate the population. The appealing to compassion, family values is a new way that fujimorismo keeps utilizing to regain power. It’s important to highlight that these mechanisms of spectacular rhetorics do not only happen from the perspective of the Fujimorism, but have also been recovered by the citizens as a way to protest and to access the state of appearance through the arts.
Representing the Labor
1, Prelude: The story of Spring
The Story of Spring is a folk song inspired by Deng Xiaoping’s southern tour speech. The lyric sings: “It was a spring in 1979, an old man drew a circle on the South China Sea and mythically rose up tons of cities; it was another spring in 1992, the old man wrote a poem on the South China Sea, and the tide was rolling between heaven and earth……”The southern tour speech is a series of speeches delivered by Deng during his inspection tour of southern Wuchang, Shenzhen, Zhuhai, and Shanghai in early 1992. Deng puts forward some new viewpoints on a series of crucial issues, such as the core of Marxism, the essence of socialism, the market economy, and how to emancipate and develop productivity, in order to clarify confusion among some scholars and executing officials about the country’s reform and development. The significant speeches outlined the path of the country’s further reform and opening-up and have directly affected issues such as the establishment of factories in China by international companies and the mobilization of labor forces to southern China.
In the past three decades, The Story of Spring has become synonymous with economic reform and transformed into the national myth which is centered on Deng Xiaoping, the reformer and politician mentioned as “the old man” in the original song. Deng is a mythical figure who decides the destiny of the nation, he became a legendary figure in the past thirty years. On some shrines in rural areas, besides Mao Zedong, we can also see portraits of Deng. Richard Schechner claims that in the theater of everyday life, including religious rituals and political performances, “When these kinds of make-believe actions create a belief、a reality, they reinforce a substratum of belief even as they create it, which people are not at all in doubt for.” The Story of Spring as an act of make-believe is like a stone thrown into the river, the ripples keep on spreading in the reform history of China, especially when it comes to the narrative of mobilization of the labor.
2, From singular to plural:
In 2003, Shanghai-based artist Yang Zhenzhong completed a video installation called The Story of Spring (2003), he cuts Deng Xiaoping’s southern tour speech into countless words and asks each of the people who worked in Shenzhen Siemens AG (around 1500) at that time to speak out one word, and in turn, reconstitutes the speech through the editing. The video is constituted by the workers’ close-up shots, with their gazes directly into the audience. From the early 90s to 2003, the predominant media in China has changed from radio to TV. The majority of people first heard the speech from the radio broadcast in 1992, ten years later, the artist turns the voice into a somatic expression.
Unlike the song of the same name, the embodiment of political speech is not simply the replication of the original performance, it is repetition with differences. Not only because of how the speech is cut, but also because of how it is reconstituted. The content is the same, but as the video goes, the audience cannot ignore the mechanic sound when it jumps from one clip to another, which could be a strong implication about the assembly lines they work on, and also the dehumanized nature of modern factory.
Like other narratives in Marxism, the original speech has a premise about what is “good” or “beneficial” for the subjugated working classes and makes only the political actor visible. Unlike the empty propaganda of the politician, the laborers change the political gene of speech in the form of individuals; by reiterating the performer from singular to plural, they make a solid action, without being silenced. Furthermore, the plural form of the speech also changes the original meaning of this speech: As Mouffe refers, to build up the structure of politics, there needs to be a distinction between “us” and “them”. In the original speech, the politician refers to the majority of the workers as “us”, and calls those who are from the capitalist country as “them”. In the video installation, the performers are from all over the world, including “the westerners” who represented capitalism back in the 90s, when they address the speech in the first person, the boundary between “us” and “them” is dismantled. The artistic piece as an action redefines the concept of citizenship, let immigrants who were considered as labor rather than political actors to have a chance to take action and claim their citizenship.
“History can become a science by remaining history only trough the poetic detour that gives speech a regime of truth”.This video installation as a re-enactment of the political performance makes a detour and reveals what is shielded by the representative regime. If the song is an uncritical repetition of the speech, then the video installation makes the uncritical tone ambivalent by adding an inscription of difference within identity and disrupts the original integrity of the speech.
The story of spring (2003), yangzhenzhong.com
3, Representing the Invisibles
In his video installation Disguise (2015), Yang Zhenzhong still focuses on the labor force, he goes to another port city Shengzhou, scans the faces of 50 workers with 3D technology and asks the workers to wear masks while working. In the video, each worker still has his/her face, but their expressions freeze as they are working on the assembly line as usual. As the faces are hidden behind the masks, the working bodies of those workers are signified, their gazes behind the masks become confrontational, it seems like “us” has become “them”, as the labor force (Min gong) are marginalized and silenced in the development of late capitalism.
The artist uses high-speed cameras to enhance the theatrical sense of this video by presenting these workers’ daily life in slow motion. This technique adds a dignified and solemn attitude to the labors as if they were actors with Noh masks. Furthermore, the live sound has also been distorted into the effect of echo in the nightmare because of the speed change. The solid perception of the labor scene, combined with these simple artistic treatments, presents a limited absurdity and strangeness, and therefore an uncanny sensation.
According to the artist, he wants to disturb the symbolic order of reality and let the worker reveal their individuality in this art piece. Those workers’ body movements are inseparable from the familiar assembly line, but they are liberated through alienation into dance movements. The masks reproduce the facial features of the employees as they are, yet push their emotions to an extreme as their expression is frozen.
And the masks could always be interpreted in alternative ways. As in the case of Zapatistas, the representative theatrical gesture is also the use of mask: the identical black ski masks announce an insistent, collective politicized presence, at the same time they make visible the neglected anonymity to which the indigenous peoples of Mexico. In Marco’s terms, it is “the mask that reveals” The mobilization of the labor and the imbalance of urban and rural development which are important consequences of the story of spring, have caused the silent group of migrant workers. When Zapatista utilizes the mask to “transform the body of the multitude into a collective agent of revolution”， the artist uses it as a very strong display of mobilization and creates spaces for marginalized groups in a society.
From singing to reiterating and embodying, the story of spring is channeled from a kitsch national myth to the avant-garde untied narrative, the representation of sovereignty is put into doubt and the marginalized people are made visible.
4, Conclusion:
From the uncritical tone of the folk song to the somatic, plural expression of the voice without a body, to the 2015 piece where the sound is turned off and the right of expression is taken away, as the repetition of the storytelling goes, it reconstitutes identity of the labor in the country. It blurs the boundaries between such venerable opposition as original/copy, primary/secondary, inside/outside, us/ them.
As Schneider claims, the repetitions mark performance “simultaneously indiscreet, non-original, relentlessly citational, and remaining” From singing to reiterating and embodying, the story of spring is channeled from a kitsch national myth to the avant-garde untied narrative, the representation of sovereignty is put into doubt and the marginalized people are made visible.
PoLy-Politics
meter repeats, rhythm renews
a proposition for a polymetrical Fantasy
Look harder and longer. This simultaneity, up to a certain point, is only apparent: a surface, a spectacle. Go deeper, dig beneath the surface, listen attentively instead of simply looking, of reflecting the effects of a mirror. You thus perceive that each plant, each tree, has its rhythm, made up of several: the trees, the flowers, the seeds and fruits, each have their time. […] In place of a collection of fixed things, you will follow each being, each body, as having its own time above the whole. Each one therefore having its place, its rhythm, with its recent past, a foreseeable and a distant future.
Henri Lefebvre
Prelude
Roland Barthes: “There is an inextricable link between power and rhythm. What power
imposes in the first place is a rhythm (rhythm of everything – life, time, thought,
discourse).“ When looking at how rhythm emerged as a transversal concept across theory,
the arts, poetics, philosophy, and social science, it has often been used as a symbol for the
repetition of regularity. I am suggesting to rather consider the link between power and meter
and how the concept of polymetricality can open possibilities to abolish the hegemony of
meter that is imposed upon us as constraint and make space for multiple idiosyncratic rhythms
and change. Metrics subjugate, not rhythm, therefore the notion of polymeters can become a
critical tool to approach the collective as well as the individual body for becoming less
predictable- to escape anticipation and control of political strategies and to make space and
time for creating “rhythms we ought to produce and embody if we are to act upon our
collective individuation“. A proposition for a socio-political fantasy, with desires drawn
from music, foremost Jazz.
A flowing pulse
It is important to first explain the three basic modes of temporal organization in music –
pulse, meter and rhythm (see The rhythmic structure of music by Cooper and Meyer.) In
theory pulse is one of a series of regularly recurring, equivalent stimuli that mark off equal
unites in the temporal continuum. Meter is the measurement of a number of pulses, putting
them into a frame. Within meter pulses become beats, like the ticks of a metronome or a watch. In most compositions, we find a hierarchy of metric organization. Aspects of temporal
organization which measure are metric. Foucault: “The mechanisms introduced by biopolitics
include forecasts, statistical estimates and overall measures.” Rhythm is the way in which
one or more unaccented beats are grouped in relation to an accented one. Crucial is, that pulse
is necessary for the existence of meter, bur rhythm can exist without meter! Rhythm is
independent of meter and theoretically even of a constant pulse, it can happen in any type of
metric organization. What are the structures that organize or standardize our different life/
biological rhythms through imposing repeated meter? In her book Ricanness- Enduring Time
In Anticolonial Performance, Sandra Ruiz notes: “In Ricanness, I reshift our normative
assumptions about linear time (…) I am interested in what the aesthetic teaches us about
bearable ways of “doing time” with our own bodies under subjugation.” Could polymeters
promote polyrhythms of individuality, collectivity and interdisciplinarity? Henri Meschonnic
proposes to get back to the ancient meaning of rhythm: Rhutmos (rhéin to flow and –(th)mόs
a way, a manner) is the pattern of a fluid element (a letter, a peplos, a mood), an improvised,
changeable form.
Music and Measure
Bojana Cvejic wrote a summary of our thoughts and discussions we had in her course at
P.A.R.T.S.: “When rhythm is wrested from the established notion of measure in music, a
perplexing diversity of terms, instruments and practices unfolds, situating it between a
manner of flowing (ruthmos) and an order of movement, proportioned figure (metron), in
“the gray gap between black beats” (Nabokov).” The consolidation of the bar line became a
part of western music only during the 17th century. In the beginning of the 14th century the
first notation that determined the exact length of sounds, the so called mensural notation, had
been developed in Italy, at the same time as clocks on churches and city towers had been
placed. [iii] French contemporary music composer Girard Grisey (1946 – 1998) worked on the
relationship between change, predictability, order and disorder. “One can also imagine an
oscillating rhythm in which the meter itself would fluctuate constantly.”
Link to Tempus ex Machina by Girard Grisey (Music)
Grisey denies the periodic considered as an ideal point of reference, the basis of a hierarchy
which is for him linked to “maximum predictability” and order. He refers to Abraham Moles
that says “the notion of rhythm is linked to that of expectation (1966)”. There is a value of
recognition through the repetition of rhythmic cells, nevertheless the fulfillment of the
expectation might rather be linked to metric control and metronomic pulse. Meter imposes
clear resolution points (constantly resolving towards an arrival; end; death).
Just keep swinging
The blues used to be an open form with the duration needed for the story a musician was
about to tell and did not necessarily have the now common 12 bars. “The swing is one of those
subcutaneous rebellions against the tyranny of the bar line.” Swing is a drive, to swing
from a rhythmical perspective means to fluctuate and float from 2 to 3, to be closer to one or
the other, or to be both at the same time, to give a feeling of stretching time. (A queer
approach to time?) Fred Moten: “(…) that rhythmic disruption that animates swing, out of
which swing emerges, before meaning.” Breaking down all rhythmic elements into ‘twos
and threes’ (8th notes, 16th notes and triplets) has its roots in nearly all folkloric traditions
from Gnawa music of North Africa through the Balkan to Colombian Bata. “Sunny Murray
and Albert Ayler did not merely break through bar lines, they abolished them altogether.”,
John Litweiler referring to Free Jazz. My choreographic work has ever been inspired by
how Jazz musicians are able to treat time and become unpredictable in their playing through
that; the push and pull of time, to speed up and slow down time within time, even within
metric constraints and by communicating through that. Polyrhythms and multiple subdivisions have become part of the natural musical vocabulary, as well as (hopefully) the
ability to swing.
Musical example: swing- Oscar Peterson, Take the A train
Musical examples in Jazz – Polyrhythmic / Polymetric:
Brad Mehldau, When it rains
Otis Sandsjö, YUNG
Vienna Art Orchestra, Graffiti in Stockholm
“(…) but if you’re counting like a metronome and everything is
like Bamp, Bamp, Bamp just like the second hand, that is extremely dangerous. That means
your body is not responding. It must respond. You cannot walk across the street in military
march, you know on the beat per second on a major highway where traffic is coming. (…)
your tempo is going to change. That’s what the body expects. (…)“.
Drummer Milford Graves
Conclusion
Polymetrics* as I am using the term in this text, allow not only for different simultaneous
rhythms but for the possibility of shifting and changing time and restraints. I am not
suggesting to get rid of meters as it is important for the possibility of communal organization
and collectivity, but of its hegemony. Osip Mandelstam (“Government and Rhythm” 1920):
“Solidarity and rhythm are the quantity and quality of social energy. Only the collective can
have rhythm. (…) Rhythm demands a synthesis, a synthesis of the spirit and the body, a
synthesis of work and play.(…)” We do not need one meter that keeps a measured amount
of beats controlled, but to share a pulse that allows for interdependency through the possible
plurality of individual rhythms shared within polymetric space and time.
“Meter, whether regular or not, assumes a coded form whose unit of measure may vary, but in a noncommunicating milieu, whereas rhythm is the Unequal or the Incommensurable that is always undergoing transcoding. Meter is dogmatic, but rhythm is critical; it ties together critical moments or ties itself together in passing from one milieu to another. (…) It is the difference that is rhythmic, not the repetition, which nevertheless produces it: productive repetitin has nothing to do with reproductive meter.”
Deleuze and Guatarri
How do we free ourselves from the prison of meter opposed on us in order to be more easily
controlled through the therefore established possibility of expectancy? What would it mean to
live in a polymetric society, on a society based on space for polyrhythms and the result of less
predictable poly-dictability? Could it also influence the power of dictator’s unpredictable acts
upon us? “The dictator must never be predictable.“ We still are. But we can start
forgiving. And dancing.
HOME- a constructed place with and by contemporary dancers and musicians
a piece by Naïma Mazic and William Ruiz- Morales
el cierbo encantado, Havana, Cuba 2016
In HOME the idea is to not not repeat, but to always be in the present; rhythm and repetition as a manner of flowing, open for change and unpredictability as the notion of polymeters suggest.
Excerpt of the Lecture of HOME
The Last demonstration is about the possibility of repeating oneself
Two days ago I’ve developed a technique for always coming back to the same place
for repeating myself constantly
For reproducing myself constantly
It`s about loosing any contact with the exterior
Repeat myself
Reorder myself constantly
1 and 1
each moment is the repetition of the previous
the exact copy of the previous
the repetition of myself
to reduce the distance between 1 and 1
to repeat myself in time
Change and to be the same
In that repetition to reach home
Inhabit that repetition
Home becomes then a matter of unperceived time
Of keeping that repetition
Two days ago I’ve developed a technique for each movement that I make to be absolutely unpredictable
Constantly I have the ability of re-locating myself in an absolutely unpredictable place
Like a house over the coast
Or a boat across
Or a small rectangle of burned grass
Home is where that repetition is possible
Like a house over the coast
Or stairs
Or a bridge
Or a theater
Home is where it is possible to keep that repetition
Of oneself
Of myself
To repeat
William Ruiz-Morales
I want to recommend the website RHUTMOS by Pascal Michon for any research regarding rhythm.
https://rhuthmos.eu
Guns Up: El Estado Opresor Es Un Macho Violador
“The tradition of the oppressed”, German Philosopher Walter Benjamin once wrote, “teaches us that the “emergency situation” in which we live is the rule.” His final essay, written when the author tried to cross from Spain to Portugal while escaping the Nazi persecution – an event that culminated in his suicide on September 26th, 1940 -, calls out for “a real state of emergency” in the fight against Fascism. The essay, “On The Concept Of History”, is dedicated to a careful analysis of the importance of history in securing humanism during authoritarian political times. For Benjamin, history offers “a revolutionary chance in the struggle for the suppressed past”, and the ultimate subject of historical cognition is necessary “the battling, oppressed class itself.”
It is still uncertain whether calling Brazil’s new government an authoritarian regime would be premature or inaccurate. However, the challenges posed by the political agenda carried out during the first year of Jair Bolsonaro’s administration confronted Brazil with its own suppressed past, a thread that started to take shape during the 2018’s presidential campaign, in the context of an intense dispute of narratives between the spectacularization of the “Bolsonaro myth” and the opposition that would not dare speak his name, a denial manifested in the hashtags #EleNão and #EleNunca. On one side of the political dispute, Brazilians encountered a spectacle of nationalism and a wish for the comeback of the military regime, the reinforcement of the “racial democracy” thesis, the persecution of historically subaltern subjects and a hand raised high in the shape of a gun. On the other, a political class astonished after numerous accusations of corruption, unable to articulate neither its public or juridical defense and especially slow in perceiving the here-and-now of the political atmosphere taking shape before it.
The opposition strategy to “unname” Bolsonaro by the use of the aforementioned hashtags during the campaign proved to be mistaken since social networks’ algorithms select what content we have access to by measuring its quantitative presence on the web. Every time the opposition would refrain from mentioning Bolsonaro’s name, it left a wide and free space to be occupied by his followers’ narratives, a tendency best observed by the recent studies on data manipulation and social media. During most of his campaign, Bolsonaro was able to manage his presence on the Internet as he pleased, since so little “bad content” was reaching his potential voters.
Once in office, Bolsonaro pushed against all previous notions of what political “agonistic struggle” stands for, violently going after everyone that would dare to oppose his administration. His act was not new, of course. Bolsonaro came to power amid a perfect storm, in the precise moment when far-right politicians were surging to power around the globe based on platforms of ethno-economic nationalism, Christianity, and patriarchal family values — Vladimir Putin in Russia, Recep Erdogan in Turkey, Abdul Al-Sisi in Egypt, Donald Trump in the US — rendering Bolsonaro as a mere reproduction, a repetition in the far-right storm of hate and populism that gives legitimacy to otherwise authoritarian politicians. After all, as Marx had warned us a long time ago, “great world-historic facts and personages appear…twice,” “the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.”
In this presentation, I would like to argue that the far-right storm that paved Bolsonaro’s path to the presidency seeks, first and foremost, to eliminate solidarity as a political affect; and why we should pay attention to the patriarchal mechanics of his strategy and its relation to neoliberalism.
Bolsonaro’s “guns-up” rhetoric is not strange to what Sayak Valencia calls “hetero-necro-patriarchy” and its reliance on the neocolonial governance, “where death is a kind of civilizing technology that persists until today and connects the current context with colonial intermittency.” Through the suppression of certain people produced as disposable or unwanted, the neocolonial governance also radically denies their “right to appear.” Violence and death become common elements, where necropolitics creates a state of emergency in which minoritarian becomings have to survive. If historical and normative frameworks of gender, race and class have operated to condition life and to enhance the precarity of certain lives who are unrecognizable within white-dominant scripts of living; that means that when intelligibility is at risk, the possibility to live a livable life is reduced. As Achille Mbembé has been arguing for a while now, this thread follows the universalization of the becoming-object position – a condition previously restricted to the bodies of enslaved people – under a neocolonial economic reason which extracts not only the land but also the underpaid and uncared for bodies. The immediate resonance of this logic, as Mbembe sees it, is a world that has become black, where being human occurs as a virtual imposition of becoming-object, a commodity relation that’s fuses animate life, digital life and late capitalism, the reversal of life into thing which have now become the norm’ for subaltern populations under neoliberalism.
The only need is to create the fantasy, the spectacle of choice, and change.
The becoming black of the world, as Mbembe puts it, has not come unnoticed. Looking back to a world before this far-right storm, a reflection on the popular movement in 2011 that came knocking on Wall Street doors, the wave of occupations and riots that took most of Europe by surprise in that same year, the massive protests in Brazil in 2013 and the Arab Spring in 2015 were, in many aspects, part of a popular awakening, a response to the intensification of neoliberalism and the precarization of life, straight-forward addressing the conditions of systemic oppression, the way in which entire populations are excluded from the opportunities of life, such as education, employment, housing, health, and supply.
The rise of authoritarianism in politics that followed these protests could be argued to be an equal response, a display of force orchestrated by financial capital to secure the conditions of possibilities to its reproduction in the face of popular revolt.
The appearance of political actors such as Trump in the US and Bolsonaro in Brazil, but also Marie Le Pen in France and Abdul Al-Sisi in Egypt, serve as to provide the ideological background for neoliberalism advancement, the legitimization of its ultimate goals. Each political character carefully chosen and crafted to fit according to its countries own suppressed history, being it colonialism, white supremacy, military dictatorship or all of them combined. By conjuring back the ghosts of the past, no new idea has to be assimilated, no true revolution has to take place. The only need is to create the fantasy, the spectacle of choice, and change. As Marx writes:
“Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living. And just as they seem to be occupied with revolutionizing themselves and things, creating something that did not exist before, precisely in such epochs of revolutionary crisis they anxiously conjure up the spirits of the past to their service, borrowing from them names, battle slogans, and costumes in order to present this new scene in world history in time-honored disguise and borrowed language.”
-Karl Marx
Going back to Bolsonaro’s signature, a hand in the shape of a gun, this is a sign that interpellates the present, while acting as a constant reminder of the state’s biopower, the power to ‘make’ live and ‘let’ die; That is, our inescapable vulnerability. It aims to the individual, to the inevitability of this interpellation, never to the common. It seeks your attention, to stand in the way and to block you from seeing outside of his spectrum. It wants you to know that he can shoot at any moment. But what would happen if we refuse to watch it? If we try to dodge the bullets? If we pointed it back at him?
Since the beginning of September, protests have been roiling through Algeria, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Egypt, France, Germany, Guinea, Haiti, Honduras, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, the Netherlands, Spain, Sudan, the UK, and Zimbabwe. Women, “the battling, oppressed class itself”, have taken front lines, especially in Latin America, inspiring a viral response to “hetero-necro-patriarchy” and its allies. As if echoing Audre Lorde, “the master’s tools cannot dismantle the master’s house”, because “El estado opresor es un macho violador”, and this State is patriarchal. That is to say, the revolution that will topple neoliberalism and its far-right storm needs to be feminist or no será.
Epilogue
On my school notebooks
On my desk and on the trees On the sands of snow
I write your name
On the pages I have read On all the white pages Stone, blood, paper or ash I write your name
On the images of gold
On the weapons of the warriors On the crown of the king
I write your name
On the jungle and the desert On the nest and on the brier On the echo of my childhood I write your name
On all my scarves of blue
On the moist sunlit swamps On the living lake of moonlight I write your name
On the fields, on the horizon On the birds’ wings
And on the mill of shadows
I write your name
On each whiff of daybreak
On the sea, on the boats
On the demented mountaintop I write your name
On the froth of the cloud
On the sweat of the storm
On the dense rain and the flat I write your name
On the flickering figures On the bells of colors On the natural truth
I write your name
On the high paths
On the deployed routes
On the crowd-thronged square I write your name
On the lamp which is lit On the lamp which isn’t On my reunited thoughts I write your name
On a fruit cut in two
Of my mirror and my chamber On my bed, an empty shell
I write your name
On my dog, greathearted and greedy On his pricked-up ears
On his blundering paws
I write your name
On the latch of my door
On those familiar objects
On the torrents of a good fire I write your name
On the harmony of the flesh On the faces of my friends On each outstretched hand I write your name
On the window of surprises
On a pair of expectant lips
In a state far deeper than silence I write your name
On my crumbled hiding-places On my sunken lighthouses
On my walls and my ennui
I write your name
On abstraction without desire On naked solitude
On the marches of death
I write your name
And for the want of a word I renew my life
For I was born to know you To name you
Liberty.
Paul Elúard
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