"My stance with all gender politics is intended to be radically inclusive, deconstructing the gender binary and taking queer and transgender experience as the basis for how all gender functions, including the most apparently normative." --Ben Spatz in What a Body Can Do
Healing
Resilience
Community support to move past trauma
Service animals
SELF LOVE >>> Then having the ability to help other people recognize the power they have to then empower them to make communal change >>> COMMUNAL LOVE
RELATIONSHIPS:
improve when we act with self-love and move away from self-interest and preservationism. The outcome is different when you move through life with a mindset of fear/deficit VERSUS love/compassion.
In many cultures, especially the Western world, body and mind are characteristically held separate as ways of understanding.
USA M I L I T A R Y
Defense Contractors
Hierarchical Model
Paternalism / Savior Complex / American Exceptionalism
MYTH: lack of Humanity (interviews with S.)
***MODE: self-preservationism, defensiveness, opportunism***
G E N D E R
Pressure to conform to behavior labeled as "masculine" makes it challenging to sit with emotions like fear and uncertainty, thus reinforcing power paradigms like patriarchy and heirarchical strcutures like militarism. -J.
Gender binary highlights relationship of the individual to collective notions of what is acceptable at any given time.
Status quo
Feminist notion that the individual embodies change: though our actions we create emergent strategies, each person as a fractal.
Military training and rewiring of internal coding: to fight and not flight. Skinner / Pavolovian systematic desensitization & body as a machine.
"Occupations don't result in democracy. What results in democracy is people's movements--not military movements."
Mirror neurons: how we emulate the behavior and techniques of others we admire. Gender is a “stylized repetition of acts” and both a habit and performance
Ritual / symbolism; how humans construct individual and collective meaning
BODILY AWARENESS & BODY AS TOOL FOR RESEARCH
Entry point as outsider to the academic mainstream of Performance is through the relationship with one's own body - J.
***Providing an opportunity for audience to make somatic, psychological, subconsious, and nuero-connections*** -J.
Relationship to audience as an ecosystem, everyone comes with thier own expectations. -J.
In the arts we sometimes forget about the CULTURAL CAPITAL of our trade. Ephemeral practices question this capital.
Metabolic Rift: the abstraction of resources (Marx)
C I V I L I A N L I F E
**Soft foundations** Instant gratification, extreme comfort, thoughts/ideas narrowed by algorithms -J.
"Freedom untethered from social/civic responsibility"-J
Freedom is separation from the commodity chain (metabolic rift), foreign policy and capitalism's exploitative mechanisms
Why is freedom in America so analogous to a cosumeristic fantasy/fallacy? Recent protests to reopen the economy amid the pandemic highlight the interconnectedness between freedom and unfettered capitalism. Is staying home patriotic or continuing to work and spend $$$$$$?
Experience is embodied, existential, and multisensorial: veteran artists use performance practice as both a research tool and a way of navigating civilian life.
V E T E R A N L I F E
Lack of resources and comprehensive support stems from defunding state services that help readjust veterans to civilian life. Meanwhile, defense department funding stays healthy and robust. DIVESTMENT VS. INVESTMENT
"Thank you for your service and now go away" -S.
"I love my country" -S.
Lack of honor and respect for service members
Suicide
Stigma around PTSD
“The world is not what I think, but what I live through. I am open to the world, I have no doubt that I am in communication with it, but I do not possess it; it is inexhaustible.” -Maurice Merleau-Ponty
Facing uncertain supply lines in Iraq, Sergeants Wanzek and Quam decided to plant corn, carrots and beans. Using growing techniques learned from locals on growing food in a climate that gets as hot as 140 degrees, they had enough surplus to share beyond their troop. Article.
