Test for patriarchal (and other) dominant structures of monuments (inspired by Seghezzi):
- What dualisms/binaries do you find in the narrations of this monument? Are they exclusive and extreme? Or is it more a fluid scale?
- Is there some “other” made responsible for someone else’s good or bad luck?
- Is there a hierarchy between “good” and “bad”? What attributes does the hierarchy focus on? (gender, race, class, religion, …)
- What behaviour is considered as “good”? What is considered “bad” or “evil”? Who decides what is “good” and what is “evil”? Who benefits from this?
- Do you feel that you should orient yourself here on the opinions and wishes of others? Of whom?
- What hierarchies can you detect here? Where do you see yourself in that hierarchy? Do you put yourself over or under others? Over whom? Under whom?
- Do you feel powerful or powerless? What evokes these feelings?
- Do you feel that you can act flexible and free in this place? What thoughts are limiting you?
- What rules do you follow here? Who’s rules do you follow here? How do you know about those rules?
- Do you feel shame? About what? What makes you feel that way?
- Do you have a guilty conscience? About what? What makes you feel that way?
- Do you feel fear? What are you afraid of? What makes you feel that way?
My prayer of love
You are a Monument of Patriarchy.
I am a woman of patriarchy.
I am a feminist. I am a symptom of patriarchy.
I am an extreme
And I am the deconstruction.
I am the pen to write a counter narrative.
I play with the fire,
But I don’t want to burn us.
I test the extremes
But I am searching for balance.
I am a self and
I am a structure
I left the ego to return to it later.
I am now open for the collective that we are.
I am here to write with my body and my voice
To write with my art stories of change
To create a chaos of layers of meaning
To deconstruct through extremes
To smash binaries with the deepest understanding of our longing for love.
I AM A LOVER
(not a sinner)
I AM A LOVER
(not a fighter)
I AM A LOVER
(not a ruler)
I AM A LOVER
(not a victim)
I AM A LOVER
I AM A LOVER
I AM A LOVER
Ritual Protocol N°1
Transmedia Performance Art Ritual N°1
Chapel of Marian Apparition in Bildstein
Some theoretical background to patriarchy as a form of domination, to help me to detect the forms of domination (patriarchal structures):
Patriarchy is a form of domination (Herrschaft), of domination of male humans over not-male humans (sexism). Other forms of domination are classism and racism. The domination over nature through culture is another form of hierarchy and domination. All forms of domination serve the benefit of the ruling elite and not humanity or earth as a whole. (see Seghezzi 2012, p. 426)
This leads to several aberrations (see Seghezzi 2012, p. 427-430):
- Separation of the poles into extremes: the poles are separated into mutually exclusive extremes, this is dualism.
- The extremes are being assessed into good and bad. The extremes are assessed in a good and a bad pole, into good and bad people etc. The power of definition lies with the dominators.
- Extremes are fixed: into fixed hierarchies, fixed gender roles, property fixed to an owner, god fixed as being male etc.
- The domination creates “the Evil” by itself: random definition of “the Evil for the benefit of the domination, e.g. the pagans are the evil, the “others” are the evil etc.
„Solange ich ohnmächtig, neidisch oder selbstzerstörerisch denke, fühle und handle stütze ich Herrschaft und führe das fort, unter dem ich leide.“ (Seghezzi 2012: p.434)
(As long as I think, feel and act impotent, jealous or self-destructive, I support domination and continue and support the structures under which I suffer.)
Source:
Seghezzi, U. 2012. Macht Geschichte Sinn - Was uns mitteleuropäische Mythen, Sagen und Bräuche über unsere Zukunft erzählen. Triessen, Van Eck Verlag.
RITUAL PROTOCOL to use on site for transmedia performance art ritual
- PREPARATION – SETTING THE STAGE
- Set up cameras and the audio recorder. Start recording/filming.
- Mark the ritual space, the space of the counter monument next to the patriarchal monument (wooden sticks, string, natural materials)
- Prepare the materials: put your materials (recorder, camera, painting and drawing materials, ritual protocol, notebook etc.) into the ritual space.
- CLEANING: first: cleaning of the ritual space (remove trash and what you consider as dirt in this place or what you don’t like to have in the space). Second: cleaning of the artist, clean feet, hands and face with water (go to the nearby stream). Third: fumigate artist and ritual space with salvia.
- Prepare Artist: put on costume.
- ENTRANCE
- Circle, feel and touch the monument of patriarchy.
- Stand outside of the border to the ritual space.
- Close your eyes. Breath three times deeply. Feel your feet, feel your whole body, be fully present. Open your eyes.
- Enter into the ritual space of the counter monument. Walk around the ritual space and make it your own.
- Say the prayer of love, loud with full intention, facing the monument.
- DECONSTRUCTION
To deconstruct patriarchal structures, you need to detect them first.
Test for patriarchal (and other) dominant structures of monuments (inspired by Seghezzi):
- What dualisms/binaries do you find in the narrations of this monument? Are they exclusive and extreme? Or is it more a fluid scale?
- Is there some “other” made responsible for someone else’s good or bad luck?
- Is there a hierarchy between “good” and “bad”? What attributes does the hierarchy focus on? (gender, race, class, religion, …)
- What behaviour is considered as “good”? What is considered “bad” or “evil”? Who decides what is “good” and what is “evil”? Who benefits from this?
- Do you feel that you should orient yourself here on the opinions and wishes of others? Of whom?
- What hierarchies can you detect here? Where do you see yourself in that hierarchy? Do you put yourself over or under others? Over whom? Under whom?
- Do you feel powerful or powerless? What evokes these feelings?
- Do you feel that you can act flexible and free in this place? What thoughts are limiting you?
- What rules do you follow here? Who’s rules do you follow here? How do you know about those rules?
- Do you feel shame? About what? What makes you feel that way?
- Do you have a guilty conscience? About what? What makes you feel that way?
- Do you feel fear? What are you afraid of? What makes you feel that way?
Answer the questions by talking into the recorder. Answer as direct and honest as possible. You can use all materials to find your answers (drawing, painting, writing, moving, talking, playing with material)
- write those answers, that touch you most (or maybe also the most obvious ones?), onto a piece of paper. Shout them out loud. Repeat them in different ways and connotations, until they “fall apart” in their meaning and intensity. Then destroy the paper.
- LIMINAL PHASE
You are now in the space in-between. The old destroyed, the new not yet here. This is a space of chaos, dreams, ideas, fears, visions and crisis.
- Create new answers; answers that you would like to give to the test-questions above while facing the new counter monument.
- Play with the genders: exchange the gender of the figures of the monument and its narratives. What changes?
- Move your body and try out different ways to create a counter monument with your body and language. What does your body narrate with what movements and postures? What would you like to narrate? Ask yourself: does this have connotations of domination? How can I create something beyond dominant structures? If you are unsure, repeat the test for domination for whatever new narrations you found.
- If needed, use painting, writing and installation materials to find new feminist counter narrations. Think and talk through the artistic means. Question yourself, question everything. This is the liminal stage.
- TRANSITION INTO THE NEW - EXIT
Find minimum one sentence/picture/movement/idea, which you consider as feminist counter narrative to the patriarchal monument from your experiments in the liminal stage. Repeat it three times (talking, moving, drawing, whatever form it has). It is okay if it varies, it is not being fixed. (put it in any form onto your costume?)
- Feel if there is something else you want to do. And do it.
- Decide if you want to leave something in this space or if you take everything with you.
- Then stand at the border of the ritual space (inside). Close your eyes. Breath deep three times. Feel your body. Be fully present.
- Recite the prayer of love, loud and full with intention.
- Step out of the ritual space. Take your costume off. End.
- take your materials with you. Leave there, what you decided to leave there.
The Test for Patriarchal Structures
You chose a monument in your town or city and you are standing in front of it.
Explore it from all sides, touch it, look at it, listen to the stories it tells you through its appearance.
What does it tell you in relation to your body, to your identities and to your experiences? What is your ‘point of view’, your body, in terms of privileges, discrimination and experiences of marginality? Who is questioning this monument?
What is the aim of this monument? What does it commemorate of or worship? What does it communicate?
Who is at the centre of this monument / of its narration? Does the monument differentiate between genders? Is one gender more visible than the other?
What characteristics are worshipped with this monument? Characteristics could be bravery, strength, intelligence, nationalism, sacrifice, being caring…
Are the characteristics represented by this monument directly connected to a gender, like ‘for the brave sons of the fatherland’? Would you in general see these characteristics (as defined by patriarchal thought) as male or female?
What forms of power and/or domination does the monument represent or symbolise?
What forms of male power are represented through this monument and how?
What forms of female power are represented through this monument and how?
What does the monument state as ‘the norm’ or as ‘something to be worshipped and elevated’?
How does this monument consider and/or represent female experiences? (e.g. directly or indirectly through their absence, women are the ones who are visiting the monument, it represents only a specific female experience like motherhood, or only considers experiences of white hetero cis women of the social elites)
How does this monument consider and/or represent male experiences?
What human experiences are left out by the monument? (thinking about race, class, age, religion, body form, physical and mental (dis)ability, nationality…)
What does all of this tell you about social structures, about hierarchical structures, structures of dominance and power? Who has power in the social narration of this monument? Who is subordinated and marginalised?
Re-read or re-listen your own answers. Condense your answers into statements, as if patriarchy is talking out of the structure behind the monument. (e.g.: men are important. It is the norm for men to be strong and brave fighters. Women are not important. Women are white, pretty, caring mothers.)
Transformance Protocol N°2
Dr. Anton Schneider Statue in Bregenz (A)
Preparation in the studio:
- choose a costume and clothes that you take with you.
- Record the statements of patriarchal structures and layer and arrange them. Take them with you on a device and with a loudspeaker.
- Pack all the material, load the batteries of your devices.
- PREPARATION – SETTING THE STAGE
- Set up cameras and the audio recorder. Start recording/filming.
- Mark the Transformance space, the space of the counter monument next to the patriarchal monument (wooden sticks, string, natural materials)
- Prepare the materials: put your materials (recorder, camera, painting and drawing materials, ritual protocol, notebook etc.) into the Transformance space.
- Warm up: warm up your body through moving, shaking, clapping
- CLEANING: first: cleaning of the ritual space (remove trash and what you consider as dirt in this place or what you don’t like to have in the space). Second: cleaning of the artist, clean feet, hands and face with water. Third: fumigate artist and ritual space with salvia.
- Prepare Artist: put on costume, paint hands and face – get into the role of the “Transformer”
- ENTRANCE
- Circle, feel and touch the monument of patriarchy.
- Stand outside of the border to the ritual space.
- Close your eyes. Breathe three times deeply. Feel your feet, feel your whole body, be fully present. Open your eyes.
- Enter into the ritual space of the counter monument. Walk around the ritual space and make it your own.
- Say the prayer of love, loud with full intention, facing the monument.
- DECONSTRUCTION
Play the audio file with the patriarchal structures (statements) of the monument (which you extracted in the Exploration Experiment).
Feel the patriarchy. Move your body, feel the emotions, hear the words, feel the words, feel the structures in your body and mind. Talk along with the recording and mix the statements up, play with them, turn them into opposites. Deconstruct the statements/structures through writing them down as the opposite, or in new constellations.
- LIMINAL PHASE
You are now in the space in-between. The old destroyed, the new not yet here. This is a space of chaos, dreams, ideas, fears, visions and crisis.
- Play with the deconstructed and transformed statements of patriarchal structures. Play with them in “What if…” sentences.
- Play with the genders: exchange the gender of the figures of the monument and its narratives. What changes?
- Move your body and try out different ways to create a counter monument with your body and language. What does your body narrate with what movements and postures? What would you like to narrate? Ask yourself: does this have connotations of domination? How can I create something beyond dominant structures?
- If needed, use painting, writing, clothes and installation materials to find FEMonumental Practices. Think and talk through the artistic means. Question yourself, question everything. This is the liminal stage.
- TRANSITION INTO THE NEW - EXIT
Find minimum one sentence/picture/movement/idea, which you consider as FEMonumental from your experiments in the liminal stage. Repeat/perform/test it out (if that is possible) and or write it into a worksheet “FEMonumental Practice”.
- Feel if there is something else you want to do. And do it.
- Decide if you want to leave something in this space or if you take everything with you.
- Then stand at the border of the ritual space (inside). Close your eyes. Breath deep three times. Feel your body. Be fully present.
- Recite the prayer of love, loud and full with intention.
- Step out of the Transformances space. Take your costume off. End.
- take your materials with you. Leave there, what you decided to leave there.
Test für Monumente & Denkmäler
Betrachte und erkunde das Monument/ Denkmal. Welche Assoziationen löst es in dir aus? Welche Bedeutungen haben Symbole und Darstellungen die du daran entdeckst? Was erzählen sie dir, ohne genaue Hintergründe zu kennen? Monumente werden gebaut um an etwas/jemanden zu erinnern oder etwas/jemanden zu (ver)ehren.
Was erzählt das Monument? Woran wird mit diesem Monument erinnert, was wird verehrt/geehrt?
Wovon handelt die Geschichte, die dieses Monument erzählt? Wer sind die Hauptfiguren in dieser Geschichte? Welche Haupt-Eigenschaften haben die Figuren?
Welche Eigenschaften, Themen, Lebensumstände, Ereignisse, Personen (Geschlecht, Herkunft, sozialer Status) werden hier erinnert, geehrt und auf ein Podest gestellt? Sind diese geschlechtsneutral oder einem männlichen/weiblichen Rollenbild zuzuordnen?
Was für Werte, Verhaltensweisen und Eigenschaften sind laut diesem Monument ehrenwert und erinnerungs-wert? Würdest du diese eher als neutral, männlich oder weiblich einstufen?
Was verrät dir das über gesellschaftliche Strukturen, über Strukturen von Hierarchie, Dominanz und Macht? Wer hat in der Erzählung dieses Monumentes Macht und wer hat keine?
Wer oder was ist abwesend in der Erzählung dieses Monumentes?
Fühlst du dich von diesem Monument angesprochen? Fühlst du dich von diesem Monument mitgemeint/repräsentiert?
Was löst es in dir aus? Freude, Traurigkeit, Ärger, Scham, Ohnmacht, Macht, Hilflosigkeit, Hingebung, Liebe, Verzweiflung, Wut, Vertrauen, Desinteresse, Sicherheit, Angst, Verunsicherung, Ruhe, Aufregung … ?
