Spring 2021
Introducing AGITATE! Volume 3: Stories, Bodies, Movements
Vol. 3 Editorial Collective
There’s Something in the Water
Tia-Simone Gardner
In her book A Billion Black Anthropocenes or None, Kathryn Yussof (2018) describes a thick relationship between extractive capitalism, geologic time, and (anti)Blackness. She writes, “As the Anthropocene proclaims the language of species life – Anthropos – through a universalist geologic commons, it neatly erases histories of racism that were incubated through the regulatory structure of geologic relations.
Dreams as R-evolution
Coral Bijoux
Dreams as R-evolution—a visual art and single-use plastic installation of sculpture, drawings, and found objects—is an installation originally created in the University of KwaZulu Natal’s Westville campus plant nursery that now speaks to dreaming as a r-evolutionary act in an old colonial gallery, the IZIKO National Gallery in Cape Town.
Apertures
Ritika Ganguly and Alia Jeraj
Apertures: A creative portrayal of domestic violence for SEWA-AIFW is a bricolage of stories and art forms. It draws on a variety of artistic disciplines to represent a spectrum of lived experiences of domestic violence in our societies, and the specter of patriarchy that shapes them. It tells four survivor stories from Minnesota through the lens of survivor stories in New Delhi and Chennai.
Baggage
Setareh Ghoreishi
Waháŋpi!
Agléška Cohen-RencountreLa Règle Des Trois Unités
Beaudelaine PierreVellai Mozhi
Marappachi Theatre, A. Mangai, A. Revathi, and Tamilarasi Anandavalli
We live in a time when conflict and destruction are no longer the exception but the norm. It often feels like a dark cloud is looming over us. However, those of us who have chosen to live with the purpose of changing the world to the best of our ability always see a silver lining to these clouds. Here we feature a performance of A. Revathi’s Vellai Mozhi directed by A. Mangai as well as a bilingual (Tamil/English) panel discussion on the role of art in queer activism. We also include written comments from Mangai and Revathi on how art, theatre, and Vellai Mozhi have presented issues of sexuality in Tamil Nadu.
Kaatru
Tamilarasi Anandavalli, A. Mangai, Marappachi Theatre
On June 7, 2020, a show rehearsed completely through Zoom was presented by Tamilarasi, a theatre student at the National School of Drama and a member of Marappachi. A video of this performance is shown below. The performance features a 20th Century poem by Bharathiyar (a modern poet in Tamil) titled Kaatru (Wind).
“In the dark times, will there also be singing?”
Ponni Arasu, Marappachi TheatreThe Labor of Political Theatre as Embodied Politics: A Conversation
Richa Nagar, Anna Selmeczi
What follows is a letter exchange between Anna and Richa. Richa’s book, Hungry Translations: Relearning the World Through Radical Vulnerability, underwent significant revisions during the course of this letter exchange. In addition to mediating on the labor of political theater and embodied politics, this exchange underscores the making of conversations and relationships as continuously unfolding journeys that cannot be contained by fixed words on the page.
Telling Dis/Appearing Tales (Script and Performance)
Stories, Bodies, Movements' Class, Spring 2017
Telling Dis/Appearing Tales: Re-membering, Re-calling, Re-wor(l)ding
Richa Nagar, Sara Musaifer, and Maria C. Schwedhelm
In Spring 2017, the three of us became part of a semester-long journey through ‘Stories, Bodies, Movements’, a course co-facilitated by one of us (Richa) with Tarun Kumar, a visiting theater artist from Mumbai who joined us at the University of Minnesota. Here we reflect on our ever-unfolding relationships and experiences together.
Fractured Threads (Script)
'Stories, Bodies, Movements' Class, Fall 2017
A Letter to the Stories, Bodies, Movements Team
Surafel Wondimu AbebeUnlearning and Relearning the Self and Other: The Pedagogical Potential of Stories in the Classroom
Esmae Heveron
Each one of us has a unique way of making sense of our life experiences. The exchange of stories, in many different forms, allows us to develop and negotiate how we perceive ours and others’ identities, what we come to know as right and wrong, ethical and just. The way we think of power and privilege, oppression and freedom, and our wants and desires, are shaped through our individual interpretation of the stories we have received throughout our lives and continue to receive daily.
Fracturing Threads, Again
Keavy McFadden
Over two years after the formal close of my own participation in the course, I sit at my desk pouring over the material documents produced by the multiple iterations of Stories, Bodies, Movements, attempting to think about what my own contribution to this volume might look like. In returning to the course in the context of AGITATE!, I seek not to preserve the journey or archive the experience but rather to think about what it means politically, theoretically, conceptually to revisit and extend the work at the heart of Stories, Bodies, Movements. What is the afterlife of the embodied pedagogical commitment of the class?
Between Academic Time And Crisis Time: A Conversation With Mona Bhan And Celina Su
Celina Su and Mona Bhan
So much has happened since we met for the first time via Zoom in early May 2020. On a hot summer afternoon in August 2020, we met via Zoom again, spending two hours thinking through the interview questions presented by the AGITATE! Team. We took turns answering each question; each time, we excitedly pointed out joint commitments and overlaps in our responses.