Rethinking Collective Artistic Production

Queer/ing: The artistic process queering Abhinaya

In conclusion, I would like to briefly outline our artistic process titled Queering Abhinaya to illustrate the above discussions about collectivity, collaboration, coalition, and opening an interstitial space via artistic engagement and dialogue.*17 *(17) Queering Abhinaya exemplifies the collaborative interstitial space that is opened via mutual (artistic) engagement, via translation and via looping insights emerging from the collective’s scholarly activities and organizational insights into our artistic practice. Queering Abhinaya picks up from theoretical investigations co-written by Cynthia Ling Lee and I, in which we have been thinking about the intersections between queer theory and the South Asian performance technique abhinaya (expression of emotional intent) (cp. Chatterjee and Lee 2013),star (*5) as well as the notion of cultural queerness/ing, which we have been developing in the course of scholarly comparisons between contemporary “Indian” dance in Germany and the US.*18 *(18) A working definition of “cultural queerness” served as the basis for the first assignment of this process:

Cultural queerness refers to the disruption of a dominant essentialized cultural norm in a way that complicates notions of cultural authenticity, cultural appropriation and identity-based representation.  It aims to undo the easy equation between nation, race, and cultural/artistic production without ignoring uneven power hierarchies or histories of inequality.*19 *(19)

However, within the collective different, conflicting notions of queerness collide and have been negotiated in this process, which, as Shyamala points out, of all the collective’s processes, has had the most fundamental disagreements around definitions, specifically around “queer” and “queerness.”*20 *(20) Our conflicting and incompatible notions of queerness range from asserting queer/ness as a term referring exclusively to identitarian categories such as gender non-conformity and sexual orientation (particularly relating to North American formations of identity politics) to a desire to expand “queer” beyond sexuality and gender-(non)-conformity-based identity politics and pushing the limits of queer as oblique to the norm, going against the grain, for example connecting to the German etymological roots of queer in the word “quer” meaning “oblique.”*21 *(21)

The assignments—each of which was an opportunity for each collective member, given a particular assignment, to emphasize their particular approach/point of view on “queering abhinaya” evoked various levels of challenge and discomfort, which were, for example, related to not personally identifying as queer, and hence feeling trepidation around dangers of unduly representing queerness by engaging with it artistically and pushing its limits, or, conversely, feeling constrained by the narrowness of queer as an identity category. An important aspect, spearheaded in our final discussion by Cynthia, centered on distinctions of queer as a noun or adjective/identity marker vs. queering as an active process. While the disagreements and discomforts around queering (as a verb) were not as disparate and intense, there was also no agreement on the meaning of queering in relation to, for example, subverting, the political and manifestations of activism (Sandra and Meena).*22 *(22)

Looking back at the process in our final dialogue/reflexion, it became apparent, as Shyamala in particular points out, that the challenging engagements with disparate notions of and approaches to “queer/ness” (contingent on our commitment to pushing our comfort zones and engaging with each others’ points of view) opened up a particularly productive artistic space.*23 *(23) This in-between space was opened by assignments that articulated the individual members’ approaches to the project’s main tenets—“queering” and/or “abhinaya”—informed by their geographical, identitarian, political, and artistic positionalities. This, at times, meant confronting each other’s positions, pushing each other to explore beyond our comfort zones and limits and translating the assignment articulated from one member’s positionality vis-à-vis queer/ing into a response articulated from each of our own positionalities and/or cultural contexts. The responses to the assignments at times, led us on paths that went beyond abhinaya as well as beyond queering, or required processes of cultural translation, such as, for example in assignment 3 („Queer Pairings“ – Abhinaya and Indigeneity”), which—formulated by Meena in relation her familiarity with indigenous communities in North America—inspired Cynthia, who is Taiwanese American, to begin an exploration of issues relating to her Han Chinese and Taiwanese indigenous heritages and challenged Sandra to investigate the notion of indigeneity in a German cultural context.*24 *(24) Acknowledging the fact that the process, through and beyond our disparate approaches and discomforts with the topics we explored yielded productive explorations in our concluding discussion we refrained from evaluating the assignments in terms of their relationship to queer/ing or abhinaya, as well as attempting to come to a conclusive agreement about a shared notion of queering or abhinaya. In the same vein, I will conclude this essay with a selection of responses to some of the assignments, in order to give a glimpse into the process.

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Chatterjee, Sandra/Ling Lee, Cynthia (2013): Internet, Intermedia and Consensual Collaboration: Blogging Choreography by the Post Natyam Collective.  In: Digital Proceedings: Canadian Society of Dance Studies’ Conference 2012. http://csds-sced.ca/English/Resources/ChatterjeeLee.pdf

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Chatterjee, Sandra/Ling Lee, Cynthia (2012a): Choreographing Coalition in Cyberspace: Post Natyam Collective’s Politico-Aesthetic Negotiations. In: Zobl, Elke/Drüeke, Ricarda (eds.): Feminist Media: Participatory Spaces, Networks and Cultural Citizenship. Bielefeld: transcript, pp. 146–157.

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Chatterjee, Sandra and Cynthia Ling Lee (2012b): Initiate, Transform, Sustain, Reach Out: Post Natyam Collective Members Reflect on Long-Distance Collaboration. In: p/art/icipate – Kultur aktiv gestalten # 01, https://www.p-art-icipate.net/initiate-transform-sustain-reach-out-post-natyam-collective-members-reflect-on-long-distance-collaboration/ (accessed 15/6/2015).

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Ziemer, Gesa (2012): Komplizenschaft: Eine kollektive Kunst- und Alltagspraxis. In: Mader, Rachel (Ed.) Kollektive Autorschaft in der Kunst: Alternatives Handeln und Denkmodell. Bern: Peter Lang, pp. 123–139.

Cynthia Ling Lee and I have dialogically retraced this development (2004–2012) in a previous issue of this ejournal (Chatterjee and Ling Lee 2012): https://www.p-art-icipate.net/initiate-transform-sustain-reach-out-post-natyam-collective-members-reflect-on-long-distance-collaboration/)

Currently members are Shyamala Moorty (Los Angeles); Cynthia Ling Lee (Greensboro/Los Angeles); Meena Murugesan (Los Angeles/Montreal); and I (Munich/Salzburg/New Delhi).

Martin Niederauer’s article in this issue discusses Becker’s notion of art worlds.

“Kollaboration hat in Kontinentaleuropa keinen guten Ruf” (Terkessidis 2015: 7).

Here we encounter a parallel moment of untranslatability: Ziemer focuses on the German noun Komplizenschaft, which translates into English as complicity. The English noun complicity, however, resonates differently than the German Komplizenschaft does, as it has already been redefined beyond the legal realm for critical contexts of resistance and is used to refer to various modes of participation in the perpetuation of hegemonic structures. In a recent article on female complicity, Guiliana Monteverde provides the following definition for herself, which resonates with my understanding: “The definition of complicity advanced here refers to the broad notion of participation in a practice, belief, behaviour, or understanding that can lead to oppression, discrimination, or exploitation of your own or another group (group here is a loose term referring to identity politics; I acknowledge that all people cross several identity groups).” (Monteverde 2014: 63-64).
The English accomplices and “partners in crime” are similar to the German “Komplizen”—but do not describe the state of the relationship that is discussed in Komplizenschaft.
In my considerations I will hence use the invented translation “accomplice-ship.”

These reflections on the collective draw extensively on materials that were written prior to 2014, when there was a change in membership: Anjali Tata is at the moment not a member of the collective, and Meena Murugesan joined since then. The extensive citations of co-written material come out of an effort at creating a text that is infused with multivocality.

All the members of the collective have studied at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Los Angeles, UCLA, and the grassroots (politicized) art scene of Los Angeles are part of the context out of which the collective emerged. Geographic dispersal happened over time.

Taiwanese-American, mixed heritage Indian-American, Indian-Canadian, and mixed heritage German-Indian; queer and allies/accomplices. Meena Murugesan has pointed out the shared identity category “of color” in the process of revisiting our manifesto with her as the most recent member.

Exploring the (identity political and historical) differences of notions of community, collectivity and collaboration in the transnational contexts Post Natyam operates in (USA, Germany/Austria, [South] Asia, Taiwan), will be important and necessary, but goes beyond the scope of this article.

In a recent internet “provocation,” which Cynthia has pointed out to me while reading a draft of this paper, the term accomplices is proposed to substitute “allies” in a critique of the “ally industrial complex” (Accomplices, not Allies: Abolishing the Ally Industrial Complex, 4 May 2014. Online at: http://www.indigenousaction.org/accomplices-not-allies-abolishing-the-ally-industrial-complex/ (accessed 20 August 2015). The critique targets allies, who “advance their careers off the struggles they ostensibly support  [… ] in the guise of ‘grassroots’ or ‘community-based’” work (Ibid.). Accomplices, on the other hand, share the risk. The provocation defines accomplices:
Accomplices listen with respect for the range of cultural practices and dynamics that exists within various Indigenous communities.
Accomplices aren’t motivated by personal guilt or shame, they may have their own agenda but they are explicit.
Accomplices are realized through mutual consent and build trust. They don’t just have our backs, they are at our side, or in their own spaces confronting and unsettling colonialism. As accomplices we are compelled to become accountable and responsible to each other, that is the nature of trust (ibid.).

See Chatterjee, Sandra with contributions from Cynthia Lee, Shyamala Moorty, and Anjali Tata (2009), “Case Study: The Post Natyam Collective—Towards sustainable, transnational, collective practice,” in Gesa Birnkraut, Karin Wolf (ed.), Kulturmanagement konkret: Interdisziplinäre Positionen und Perspektiven, 03/2009, Hamburg: Institut für Kulturkonzepte Hamburg, e.V., Eigenverlag), 101–107.

In Chatterjee, Sandra and Cynthia Ling Lee (2012b) we extensively quote and contextualize the relevant part of our manifesto

http://postnatyam.blogspot.com.

See Siglinde Lang’s article on participatory spaces in this issue

Page numbers in Xie refer to Bhabha 1994.

“Dies räumliche Zwischen ist der Erscheinungsraum im weitesten Sinne, der Raum, der dadurch entsteht, daß Menschen voreinander erscheinen und in dem sie nicht nur vorhanden sind wie andere belebte oder leblose Dinge, sondern ausdrücklich in Erscheinung treten“ (Arendt in Rogoff 2002: 58)

Participants in process were Cynthia Ling Lee, Shyamala Moorty, Meena Murugesan, and I.

We have first developed our thoughts around “cultural queerness” in the joint conference presentations: Chatterjee, Sandra and Cynthia Ling Lee, “Decentering Nationalist Discourses and Remapping Identity in Contemporary (Indian) Dance.” SDHS/CORD Conference, Riverside, CA, USA. 15–17. November 2013. Presented by Cynthia Ling Lee. We are further discussing and developing the notion in our forthcoming article: Chatterjee, Sandra and Cynthia Ling Lee (forthcoming): “’our love was not enough’: queering desire, gender, and cultural belonging in contemporary abhinaya,” in Clare Croft (ed.), Meanings and Makings of Queer Dance. Under contract with Oxford University Press, projected publication date: 2017.

http://www.postnatyam.net/work/queering-abhinaya/ (accessed 27 June 2015)

Final Queering Abhinaya Skype-conversation between Cynthia, Meena, Shyamala and myself, 14 July 2015.

Final Queering Abhinaya Skype-conversation between Cynthia, Meena, Shyamala and myself, 14 July 2015.

Ibid.

Ibid.

See note 26 for the full assignment.

Assignment One: Queering Cultural Memory

“We (Cynthia and Sandra) have been formulating a theoretical concept, “cultural queerness,” which we’d like to use as the inspiration for this assignment.  Here is a working definition (still in process): “Cultural queerness refers to the disruption of a dominant essentialized cultural norm in a way that complicates notions of cultural authenticity, cultural appropriation and identity-based representation.  It aims to undo the easy equation between nation, race, and cultural/artistic production without ignoring uneven power hierarchies or histories of inequality.”
Think of a personal memory of feeling uncomfortable with a dominant essentialized cultural norm.  For instance, Cynthia might address how it feels to be a non-Indian classical kathak dancer, while Sandra might reflect on a “relegation to Indianness” and the resulting exclusion from Germanness.
Explore this memory through a 10 minute free-write. Translate the memory into a subversive artistic or embodied product (such as choreography, writing, dance-for-camera, photos, etc…).”
http://www.postnatyam.net/work/queering-abhinaya/ (accessed 27 June 2015)

Assignment Two (created by Sandra): Abhinaya as a Tool for Queering

“This assignment focuses on utilizing techniques and compositional strategies associated with abhinaya for queering beyond a Indian/South Asian context. Therefore, I would like you to focus on an aspect of your work, which explores a context/content/form that is not Indian/South Asian. This could, for example, be a study inspired by a specific cultural context (i.e. in my case the German context of the integration debate), by a narrative set in a specific cultural context, or a formal/aesthetic exploration/deconstruction (i.e. in the German context: a deconstruction of conceptual dance).” http://www.postnatyam.net/work/queering-abhinaya/ (accessed 27 June 2015)

Assignment Three (created by Meena): “Queer Pairings” – Abhinaya and Indigeneity

“This assignment is inspired and informed by a talk I went to given by Professor Gayatri Gopinath at UCLA on April 17th, 2014 as part of Professors Anurima Banerji and Sue-Ellen Case’s course “Queer Performance and Politics.” Gopinath used queer theory as a tool of analysis (not as a term of identity) to connect diasporic communities and indigenous peoples as part of the same colonial expansionist project that among other things, attempts to contain and police racialized bodies (often literally i.e., low income housing projects and residential schools were mentioned). Gopinath analyzed the work of visual artists Tracey Moffatt (Australian Aboriginal) and Sehar Shah (Pakistani US) to develop a strategy that was termed as a “queer pairing” in order to talk about braided histories and non-normative bodies. For this assignment: 1) Choose an indigenous artist (the artist identifies as indigenous) that works with any medium – photography, sculpture, movement, performance, film, sound, poetry etc. I am most familiar with indigenous communities in North America so First Nations, Native, Aboriginal. However, please invite into this assignment what indigenous might mean in relation to places you have lived – Germany, India, Taiwan, Hawaii or other places. I am interested in this idea of home – who used to (and still) call the places we now call home, home?” http://www.postnatyam.net/work/queering-abhinaya/  (accessed 20 August 2015)

Sandra Chatterjee ( 2015): Rethinking Collective Artistic Production. In: p/art/icipate – Kultur aktiv gestalten # 06 , https://www.p-art-icipate.net/rethinking-collective-artistic-production/