A queer tamil body

A queer tamil body bends like the trees when they want to dance.

A queer tamil body paints black ink on their skin to mark out the landscapes of her travels and the routes for his sisters. A queer tamil body opens the small tin dabba which belonged to her deceased paati and places the tip of their right index finger gently in the pottu turning his fingertip red. Then the queer tamil body touches her forehead firmly, as to imprint the red mark. The mark of a woman, of a married woman, of a tamil woman, of her paati, of a woman stripped of her dignity by white and tamil men alike, a woman raped, a woman kidnapped like her son, a woman who isn’t really a woman but a creature sulking in the corner of the cave while the other children play until it is safe to come out. A woman who was a queer tamil child who loved mud and all things messy. A queer tamil child who shared their dhal and thayir sadam with a white girl and was rewarded with a kick to the stomach. A slap to the face. The slap of a friend, like when thatha slapped paati or when paati slapped me.

It is all pain and love really, but sometimes a queer tamil child would confuse the two.

Love is not always good.

Ash is pain, ruins and bruises. It is heartbreak in war but it is also memory. The remains of a body can be captured in a handful of ash. The ash holds devastation and loss; it brings the truth to the surface. A soft material which children play with on the streets of Chennai. An abundant material made of children from Jaffna. Combining flesh and paper into ash, the burning of our bodies and our language. As Meena Kandasamy says, “When the day dawned, I saw my daughter; and beside her a handful of sand from the island next to ours.” This describes a Tamil girl in Tamil Nadu holding the sand from Tamil Eelam. The sand of her sister. Ash is when you can’t tell the difference between sand and ash.

2 : shelf / break

the place where the shallows drop into the deep ocean. shelf break is sudden irreversible change, a moment where a landscape suddenly alters. the place beyond what we can see, but we know is out there.

—
shelf / break combines the live art practices of jane morris and néa ishana ranganathan.

we work in iterations and cycles, drawing from our liberatory lens of reframing and repurposing spaces as living archives.

we work in transitional spaces and non-traditional performance settings such as corridors in old buildings or hidden tree canopies.

our work is methodical and inviting, guiding participants through experiences using tools like questions, dreaming, objects and intimacy.

there is a cycle of seven scores and if you do them often enough, the world changes shape.

a hiker dance-sculpts with clay, string, chalk and sticks.

a woman in white is haunting the trees.

slowly, cycle by cycle, a stone becomes a mountain.

WAOTBOS is a site-specific and semi-durational piece designed and performed by jane and néa.

The piece consists of 7 scores arranged in a sequence. Each score represents a step in the process of organising an action building towards community and the possibility of freedom. Our first iteration of the piece was 1 hour andtook place outdoors, on the grass opposite Lamorbey House at Rose Bruford Institution. It was performed three times in a row, each loop ending with one audience exiting and a new audience entering. We performed at 3PM, 4PM, & 5PM. The show was designed for a maximum of 10 audience membersat a time.

we are on the brink of something //

We repeat the performance because we believe actions build towards community through iteration and rehearsal; that you cannot make community without growing through constant repetition of these actions. We want the experience to feel cyclical, and for the environment to change and grow over the iterations.

. . .

During this time when all we want to do is sleep, and breathe and cry and scream.

We are still mapping the path to the future.

We are still carving the river to the horizon.

We are still seeking sunsets.

We are still swimming towards the spot where the ocean turns from light blue to deep black, the shelf-break, the Brink.

To build, you have to have blueprints. To construct you need a map. And if we want to build tomorrow, we will need a map for that too. A map of flour for bread, and earth for land, and silence for peace.

Imagine a place where the earth is clay.

Imagine a strip of land, where the earth is soft and supple clay. Strong, held together by fibres, but malleable, porous. You could almost swim in it, sink into it. And Imagine that your enemy is the sky herself. Or not the sky, but the creatures buzzing in it. What do you do when the sky betrays you? The only way to win against that sort of enemy is by becoming part of the land. Imagine that in this strip of land where the earth is clay there are no mountains. There are no forests.

But there is clay.

This piece is material based including clay, red string, chalk, rope, sticks, flowers, and teabags.

The landscape consists of three curated community spaces:

The Assembly Point : where we gather and invite the audience in our show.

The Base : where we hold space and startegise for our upcoming action.

The Battlefield : where we do the action as a community.

. . .

The audience will leave the performance environment with a booklet of 7 Scores to enable them to enact liberation and community building in their own lives. We are building one version of what a community could look like, and handing people the exact tools we used.

A booklet of 7 scores //

Score 1 : An invitation in leaves and flower petals

Score 2 : Inventing impossible horizons

Score 3 : Everything is a mountain

Score 4 : Blueprints of a landscape

Score 5 : The stuff of change

Score 6 : Doing the damn thing

Score 7 : A definition of community

Our vision of liberation is grounded in our chosen ancestors such as Tamil Tigers, Black Panthers, PAIGC, and STAR. It is also influenced by our work in the anti-colonial collective and campaign, Built On Blood.

ELAgabalus //

ELAgabalus is a one-to-one performance exploring trans intimacy and boundaries. Across two spaces, the trade and the trick, the audience are invited to explore the story of Rome's lost trans empress through cards, contracts, lipsticks, and temptations.

ELAgabalus is about the relationship and solidarity between a trans feminine 'not quite a sex worker' and their genderqueer/masc partner. It is important to show the ways trans people build queer intimacies with one another, while also holding space for others to experience intimate moments. It is for trans and queer people to have a space to reflect on our shared histories, and how we may negotiate the boundaries of our bodies together.

undeveloped //

undeveloped is a weekender development and residency opportunity for 12 artists over the course of 12 months. Each artist will have to chance to R&D a piece like a scratch night, in the living room of our flat. We will then document their performance with a disposable camera which will never be developed. The piece will be performed to an intimate audience and the memory will remain between the people who experienced the moment and the camera.

At the end of a 12-month trial of this project, we will apply to do another 12 moths, culminating in a public exhibition of the 24 disposable cameras.