Two becomes one and then two again, and many, many more

Thanks to some serendipity and a whole lot of sharp intelligence (looking at yous LA and RO), the simultaneity of If + Trust, aka the glitter handshake, being re-performed at the Van Nelle factory in Rotterdam, and the soon-to-be Woahmanchester project in Manchester Street, Ōtautahi/Christchurch, has raised some important and crucial questions for us in relation to coming from and working in postcolonial contexts:

- What is our position in relation to colonial histories and postcolonial contexts?  

- How is / or / is this being addressed in our work? 

-  How does our position in terms of postcolonial questions intersect with the queer and feminist agenda of our work?

- Are these questions relevant to specific contexts for which we develop work, or is this positionality one that exists or we desire to see in our practice more generally?

- What does it mean to have moments (like If + Trust) when postcolonial questions are more explicit and others where it is not so urgent for us that viewers read postcolonial questions in the work? 

As a way to try and see these questions through the prism of the positions we have created for the Stunts in our work already, LA suggested that we could try and do a 'read' of If + Trust, to see what from that experience could feed into the Woahmanchester work.

So, here goes my attempt at a summary and to start some reflectioning.

To start on If + Trust, there was some context given by LA for the Van Nelle company here:
http://woahmanchesterstreet.blogspot.be/2016/01/glitter-handshakes-review.html
And here:
http://woahmanchesterstreet.blogspot.be/2016/02/were-talking-about-lavender-how-do-we.html
And links for a great film and more info on the Indonesian occupation of West Papua by RO here:
http://woahmanchesterstreet.blogspot.be/2016/02/were-talking-about-lavender-and-west.html

The Van Nelle building where we re-performed If + Trust was a former factory owned by the Van Nelle company, that would process raw materials imported from the plantation they owned in Java -- this was during the Netherlands' colonial occupation and exploitation of Indonesian people, resources and land.

The Van Nelle factory is now a protected building, and has been restored and repurposed as offices for the 'creative' sector, and large events, of which Art Rotterdam (the art fair) and the Intersections event are part. As LA pointed out in the first post above, the part of the building complex where Intersections was held still retains certain image and text elements from the Van Nelle company's colonial industry.

As part of the re-performance of If + Trust, we decided to incorporate a plastic bag into the performance scenario, from New World, the NZ supermarket chain. It was filled with glitter, and was our glitter-handshake refill zone for the duration of the performance. It looked kinda like this:

The "New World" has its counter point in the "Old World", with the new being new in the eyes of the old.  It's a designation of periphery and marginality made at a time of imperialist and colonial exploitation -- with all the implied hierarchies of history, knowledge, occupation, 'civilization', ownership, autonomy, self-governorship, wealth, culture. 

As a supermarket chain, New World both names it's geography through a link to imperial histories, but also taps into and promises the same rewards through $$$ as were motivations for the exploitation of colonised lands and peoples. 

Our use of a New World bags for If + Trust (bags that were transported due to the generosity and upward mobility of a NZ friend travelling between Wellington and Brussels) was, I think, a stitch between the building that we performed in, its histories and its contemporary uses and legacies, and those of the Stunts' home country. 

So, we used the bag (we placed it in the building) and we put 5 kilos of glitter in it:

At first it looked like this:

Then after some of this:

and a few days of public interaction, like this:

We used the bag to hold the glitter that we would coat the insides of our hands with and do this:

We stood at the entrance of Intersections, opening the door, and welcoming people with a handshake as they entered the building. We also provided information on Intersections, told people where the toilets were, answered questions about the bar, and held the doors open for caterers.

A building in Rotterdam, commissioned by a colonial company and designed in the style of Dutch Modernism, now no longer a factory, used as work space by creative companies and entrepreneurs, was occupied by an art fair, which, in turn, played host to exhibitions and events by non-profit art spaces grouped together as Intersections. 

Four New World supermarket bags were brought from Wellington to Brussels, travelled on to Rotterdam, and were placed on the floor of the Van Nelle factory building, each one was fitted inside the other, in the space designated as an exhibition area for SYB, and a 5 kilo bag of lavender-coloured glitter was placed inside.  

Three Pākehā women (and one more there in spirit) from Aotearoa/New Zealand, coated their hands in moisturiser, and dipped them inside the glitter bag. They opened the doors to Intersections, offered a formal welcome, were interpreted as workers, artists, tricksters or spreaders of pleasure, and performed after dark for three nights in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. 

The glitter, going from the New World bag, to our hands, to a handshake, to a visitor's hand, travelled around Intersections and into the larger art fair. 

There are so many layers of subtext in this performance it's hard to know where to start. The four narratives above could easily be reordered or reversed and still describe some of the elements and narratives of the work accurately. And I think we were quite aware that these subtexts would be accessible only to some -- for example, the name "New World" was only clearly readable in a URL under the logo, and almost disappearing under the bulk of the glitter; some visitors did not notice the glitter at all, or had hugely diverse relationships to it, only some of whom acknowledged a queer reading of this element; the New World bag link to the former use of the building needed a certain understanding of the building, Dutch colonial history and the URL to be seen. Oh, and I almost forgot about the contribution to the booklet, which tied together labour, dance, economic transactions, currencies, digital layers of obscurity and clarity....:

I read a web of threads in the work that all intersect with each other in a way where each element has its language -- and that this language is heard and interpreted when its own tongue mingles with a viewer or vistor's tongue. A meaning pash!



What do you all read?