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Dar Cuerpo al Cuerpo II
Sensorial instructions for feminist political declarations. Quebec
Activity free of charge and open to everyone with limited capacity
How might feminist political action be when it is not overtly revolutionary? Not even public? How is the body valued in this kind of political action, particularly as a site for learning? And how does the environment (in its material and symbolic dimensions) provide a source for embodied practice and for diverse forms of personal and social engagement?
Celia Vara has curated this programme from research-creation with an embodied methodology, closely linked to the notion of kinaesthetic empathy, to show that our sense of bodily position and movement relates to our awareness of the space we occupy.
Kinaesthetic empathy allows us to relate to another person's movement or sensory experience of movement (Sklar, Reynolds and Reason, Foster). This allows for the experimentation and creation of new bodily routines and thus a form of agency that allows for subtle somatic resistance under varying conditions of bodily repression. The forms of feminist liberation that we can observe in the works selected in this programme emphasise the body in the intimate and public environment as a central aspect of agency (McNay, Meynell, Coole, Sheets-Johnstone). In their work, it is precisely through movement (and thus kinaesthesia) that the body engages with its environment to gather knowledge about itself and the world as well as to intervene in it. These artists engage in perceptual practices that offer explorations of space and how the body occupies it. This allows for a subtle observation of the somatic emphasising different ways of liberating and situating the body. These forms of feminist liberation emphasise the body as the central aspect of agency. They are sensory instructions for feminist political statements.
Program Dar Cuerpo al Cuerpo II: Quebec
A selection of videos (1977-1998) by Quebec artists showing, on the one hand, a clear activist purpose against abuses of power that deconstructs the role of women in Quebec society through 2000 Bonnes Raisons de Marcher (1998) (Petunia Alves and Ryofa Chung) where the focus is on women's bodies occupying public space. On the other hand, this programme has a more intimate and introspective somatic approach that explores bodily agency through movement and kinaesthesia in different spaces. The 1990s are interesting in Quebec in terms of a form of reaction against the centrality in explicitly revolutionary and activist forms of feminist demands in the 1970s.
The selected works are: 2000 Bonnes Raisons de Marcher (1998) by Petunia Alves and Ryofa Chung, Ruelle en perspective (1977) and Janet see herself (1977) by Marshalore; and "Vice, vertu et viceversa (1993), Oublier (1994) and Parc d'amussement (1992) by Manon Labrecque.
Links of interest:
By Celia Vara
Celia Vara is a postdoctoral researcher at the Moving Image Research Lab (MIRL) at McGill University. She holds a PhD in Communication (2019) from Concordia University (QC, Canada). She is a psychologist since 1997, and her master thesis ("Videoarte feminista en los años 70 en España") won in 2013 the 1st Prize in Gender and Research at the University Jaume I of Spain. She is a visual artist and curator. Her writings and art pieces have been published in Journal feral feminisms, Institute for Research on Women (Rutgers University, NJ), McGraw Hill, Arte y Políticas de Identidad, entropy and humanities in MDPI, and Performance Research (Routledge Journal, Taylor and Francis). Her research explores the use of the sensory body in feminist art and performance in the 1970s and its relationship to bodily agency and feminist resistance in today's cultural and political context. She develops experimental methods that employ kinaesthesia and kinaesthetic empathy as creative and research methodologies. Her research interests include the processes of consciousness, perception and bodily agency. She reflects on this through body movements in performance, curation and research-creation from a feminist perspective.
Petunia Alves (Brazil / Quebec, 1959). Of Brazilian origin, the Quebecois artist Petunia Alves has lived and worked in Montreal since 1983. Involved in the world of independent video, she has been co-director of Groupe Intervention Video GIV since 1990. She has been involved in the women's movement, and has directed and co-directed videos on the personal, social and political trajectories of women. In her latest videos, she is interested in memories, remembrance and forgetting.
https://vucavu.com/fr/artistes/a/petunia-alves
Ryofa Chung (Quebec, 1969) has directed and co-directed documentaries and written the scripts for short videos. She has worked in distribution and special projects for several groups, including Groupe Intervention Video (GIV) and the National Film Board of Canada (NFB). She is currently on the management board of GIV and works as a subtitle editor.
marshalore (USA / Quebec, 1946). Multidisciplinary artist from Quebec. Co-founder of Vehicule Press and Vidéo Véhicule (PRIM). She was also director of Véhicule Art Montréal, one of the first artist-run centres in Canada. Her work is inspired by environmental studies, social behaviour and symbolism. Her current research focuses on the intersections between language and culture, an area that encompasses language, symbols and images. She has also worked with Aboriginal women on the symbolic representation of post-diaspora self-identification. Her work has been presented in North America, Europe and Japan.
https://vitheque.com/fr/producteurs/marshalore
Manon Labrecque (Quebec, 1965-2023). Multidisciplinary artist with a background in contemporary dance and visual arts. She created videos, performances, video installations, drawings, photographs and kinetic and sound installations. His creative work was based on an interest in the body, physical sensations and movement. He paid special attention to the relationship between the body and the environment, the exterior and the interior of the body in order to observe the relationship between the physical and the psychic, and to embody the poetic.
https://manonlabrecque.com/
