F I S S U R A
The FISSURA website stems from the ongoing artistic research (AR) of Gab Branco (BR). During the frame of her Master’s studies in Performance Practices (ArtEZ/NL) she developed the “Fissure: trans-(de)-displinary artistic research to break silences on subjugation and exploitation” a 2 year’s artistic research which she formulated a methodology "Actions of Connecting" and de-disciplined her dance practice based on the Klauss Vianna Technique – Brazilian Somatic Technique for improvisation, body preparation and creations and her movement research "Body States Through Memories" deepening onto the Fissure art practice.
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This artistic research expatiates on the FISSURE as a poetic breaking from/of/apart as well as ones’s awakening from the colonial-capitalist-racial supremacist and patriarchal behavioural pattern – the TRIAD Vortex.
LEXICON
The FISSURE strives against the TRIAD of Colonialism, Capitalism and White Supremacy and aims to trigger the breaking of one’s silence about their experiences of subjugation and exploitation. The FISSURE refers to looking attentive, with care and awareness to one’s trauma-wounds inflicted on the body.
The FISSURE research is crossing different areas of expertise, such as performance studies, anthropology, bio-politics, and psychology. I approach the FISSURE emerging from the collision of three spheres which formulates the LEXICON of this artistic research. These spheres are entangled and not fixed in time and space, but rather in a constant choreographic motion which they keep rotating between themselves. Such motion represents the temporality and the relations of these spheres on one's life, which reflects the system one lives in, the behaviour one inherits and the experiences one goes through. Hence, the system refers to the TRIAD, behaviour to SENSITIVE VECTOR, and the experiences to RE-(dis)-COVER that intersect themselves into a fourth core notion about c o n n e c t i o n in order to reach co-adjust/exist together.
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The TRIAD
The TRIAD consists of Colonialism, Capitalism and White Supremacy. Colonialism is the first foundation, and it creates a wound in the unconsciousness of Humanity, a socio-racial one. It pioneers the Eurocentric epistemology, sourcing Europe as the example of civilisation, emphasising Europeans as the holders of knowledge in philosophy, science, arts – the cradle of “Humanity”. The Colonisation’s process enlarged the socio-racial wound through exploitation, opening the slit that has never been closed or ever healed. The white “debts” started a racial hierarchy that never led to an end, but only increased its prejudice. Capitalism is the second pillar of the TRIAD, bombarding life with headlines, duties, loads of work, a patriarchal and heteronormative lifestyle being highlighted to be followed. Capitalism is the actual key for exploitation on the economic and political level. It is the slogan of “no pain, no gain”. It perpetuates hierarchical bias turning discrepancies more visible than never. It fosters the fossil fuel and its commodities through war. Geopolitically it diffuses the colonial mindset of conquering territories, which reinforces Colonialism in the world and undermines people's life through subjectification. The White Supremacy – the white race over any other, strengthen the desire of sovereignty birthed during the Colonisation’s process. It was not only the Atlantic Slave Trade, or the extinction of millions of Indigenous, or the Jewish murderer by Nazi; but it is STILL the white people who have more rights being covered by laws and in practice than any other. It is STILL the white who have access to power to write Law Constitutions. It is STILL the same kinship with its offspring who rule the world in Western Society. And STILL no apology will make people come back to life.
The pattern that conceives the current world order and who holds sovereignty over other nations, I name it as the TRIAD behavioural pattern which defines a remnant spread worldwide. “Behaviour” is not simply something one person learns, but rather inherit and embody it, constantly shaping it based on the multiple process of subjectification of how a person is affected by others, and, according to Agamben, to an entire system of apparatuses, which keep influencing unconsciously the human being - substance and subject to any apparatuses. Throughout the centuries, accordingly to Said’s essay - “Travelling Theory” (1982) among various ideas, and theories have travelled through time leaving traces in each generation, epoch, and therefore remnants that act and keep impacting people’s manners, habits and, therefore, behaviour. This is the seed of behaviours being reproduced, remaining what I call here in this research the TRIAD’s vortex – what triggers the behavioural pattern alive for centuries.
The TRIAD vortex is those unconscious seeds on one’s behaviour that make each axis of TRIAD to feedforward and strengthen themselves through repetition and the behaviour reproduction itself. The TRIAD behavioural pattern is diffused over the centuries, which widespread a mindset of human exploitation based on sovereignty and hierarchical systems that serve as the basis for the Western political system and its society.
The SENSITIVE
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behaviour
The Silenced-burden is an acknowledging process to empower the lived unpredictable, unexpected, unknown, unpleasant and unbearable experiences in ones’ life. I perceive such process as an active engagement with Presence. In sum, it is the mapping and tracing of one’s experiences being reflected upon the TRIAD of Colonialism, Capitalism and White Supremacy remnants. When one’s bridges such personal experiences with the TRIAD Vortex it is possible that one can recognise the series of behavioural patterns, it is discovered the several times one’s has supressed those experiences, causing such Silenced-burden.
In this way, the Silenced-burden revolves around the supressed silence that screams inside a person, generating a dubious potential to survive and to kill from inside. This ambiguous silence(d) and burden might protect and might also reaches a level that the sparks grown into blazing flames, and it starts to burn everything inside oneself, even the paramount memories not related to trauma. “Such silence is the nickname of distortion, of the unknown human factor that a revised public discourse would both undo and reveal” (Spillers, 1987, p.73). The breaking of one’s silence emerges to not comply with power structures that cause such silence in the first place and to claim those experiences. It’s necessary to prioritise the acknowledgment of traumatic experiences to not doubt oneself regarding what one has experienced, and to not repeat the behavioural pattern that the TRIAD Vortex triggered. Most important, it is urgent to not abandon the potential of sharing because exposing those experiences caused by the TRIAD’s system is a way to not comply with it.
The Sensitive Vector consist in the sharing of traumas and wounds which is simultaneously a call for togetherness and an openness to be(come) vulnerable. Moreover, it is the CLAIMING of one’s Trauma-wound, which REVOKES the TRIAD system. As a vector, means it has a precise direction, orientation, and intensity. Engaging with the Sensitive Vector means an active listening, and to perceive and talk with someone through the spectrum of Presence without forgetting that everyone has their Trauma-wounds.
Trauma is understood as a wound inflicted not upon the body, but upon the mind. (…) it is experienced too soon, too unexpectedly, to be fully known and is therefore not available to consciousness until it imposes itself again, REPEATEDLY. Trauma is not locatable in the simple violent or original event in an individual’s past, but rather in the way that its very unassimilated nature – the way it was precisely not known (Caruth, 2016, 3-4).
Thus, Trauma-wound are experiences that expose the TRIAD Vortex since those experiences have happened more than once and they were inflicted upon the body in its wholeness.
experiences
RE-(dis)-COVER
Re-(dis)-cover oneself is a simultaneous process on discovery, recovery and rediscovery of oneself after the acknowledging process on the Silenced-burden that regurgitates episodes, memories and experiences on the realm of Trauma-wound. The screaming flesh escancara[1]-expose all the previous processes of attempting to leave the pitfalls that one has been to, finally, re-cover in the current unmeasurable acknowledging process one is in(to). The flesh is understood and used as the main medium of “mechanisms of torture” in which
lacerations, woundings, fissures, tears, scars, openings, ruptures, lesions, rendings, punctures of the flesh create the distance between what I would designate a cultural vestibularity and the culture (Spillers, 1987, p.67).
Spillers clarifies that the captivity body is associated to the “flesh” regarding “this human and social irreparability as high crimes against the flesh, (..) registered the wounding” (p.67). Adding to that comes the psychological layer as well which dialogues with Caruth’s studies on trauma over History. The recovery of the flesh within the psychological can be understood as the re-(dis)-cover of trauma-wound in one’s life.
Care is discovered as a daily practice from one to oneself. Caring comes as a predisposing factor for HEALING. Caring as a practice is not about arising the ego, but working through it, which means mediating between the conscious and the unconscious. Such process triggers off the Unmatrixed voice, motion, and behaviour. “It is a process of developing awareness and consciousness, while taking a leap into the unknown” (Johnston, 2014, 36). The Unmatrixed voice, motion and behaviour means to expurgate one’s silenced-burden, making concretely in time and space the actual breaking of such silence-burden. The Unmatrixed will be always peculiar through constant mutations which is not fixable and repeatable, therefore, a continuously becoming that happens bringing to light trauma-wounds experiences through awareness and consciousness. This Unmatrixed goes beyond language and knowledge, crossing the threshold into the unknown and seeking out the cracks in-between power structures of the TRIAD.
[1] Escancarar: to make wide open in a visceral way.
co-exist
connection
co-adjust
This is the betwixt amongst the those three Spheres, in other words, the intersection that alludes to the liminal space, which generates the potential for the Liminoid, meaning that
the liminoid remains outside society, retaining a somewhat distanced, critical perspective (..) the liminal may be seen to invert mainstream society, but it is only in the liminoid realm where one may subvert the status quo. The liminal tends to reincorporate or return to the status quo, while the liminoid potentially brings lasting social change (Johnston, 2014, 09).
Hence, the intersection amongst the Spheres becomes the source to launch the Fissure. It is through connecting those three realms that the FISSURE potential turns to be visible to its urgency to strive against the TRIAD.
Connection is a keyword to co-exist with people, which provokes resistance against the TRIAD and insistence to keep nourishing connection amongst people – two primordial relations. The tricky part is that connection and numbness walk together, which by inverting such relation results in insisting on the existence of the TRIAD and resisting people’s co-existence. We can connect in the same way we can get numb, because
Numbness and connection are shades of the same spectrum(..) it is the pushing back, the pushing of ‘our’ norms back out into the society at large that creates counter-culture, that preserves an opportunity for change(..) the closer we focus on our experience, the greater the awareness of the experience will be, the greater the immersion, the greater the possibility for connection (Tempest, 2020, 114-15).
Connection relies in co-existence because “it is collaborative, communal feeling that takes the whole room or none of us” (Tempest, 2020, 101). Most of all, connection is not about changing people or their mindset, it’s about co-adjust to co-exist with them. Connection seeks to listen, to exchange, to share and establishes trust to depict the silenced-burden together in their wholeness. When people engage with connection through the Sensitive Vector, they establish what I call resiliência em frisson, which is the continuously update on adapting and being resilient to survive, to persist, to persevere alongside people that are open to go through their trauma-wounds together in such shared frisson to support each other. In other words, activating the potential to connect, engaging with co-adjustments in order to co-exist.
The FISSURE emergence is generated by the individual intersection from one sphere to another. Thus, between the TRIAD Sphere and the Sensitive Vector Sphere emerges CLAIMING. Between Sensitive Vector Sphere and Re-(dis)-cover Sphere emerges HEALING. Finally, between the Re-(dis)-cover Sphere and the TRIAD one emerges REVOKING. These three verbs symbolise the FISSURE aim when one engages with it in individually and collectively. It is from self-reflection to society-reflection that the FISSURE is sustained and keeps reverberating until it can break the overlapping of the triad system, thus the spheres.
REFERENCES
AGAMBEM, G. (2009) What is an apparatus? Stanford University Press.
CARUTH, C. (1996). Unclaimed experience: Trauma, narrative, and history. Johns Hopkins University Press.
DERRIDA, J., & BASS, A. (1982). Margins of philosophy. Chicago, University of Chicago Press.
FOUCAULT, M. (1995). Discipline and punish: the birth of the prison. New York, Vintage Books.
JENKS, C., (2003). Transgression. London & NewYork: Routledge.
JOHSNTON, E. (2014) Between Liminality and Transgression: Experimental voice in avant-garde performance.
SAID, E. (1983). Traveling theory (from the world, the text, and the critic).
SPILLERS, H., (1987). Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe: An American Grammar Book. Diacritics 17.2: 65-81.
TEMPEST, K. (2020). On Connection. Faber & Faber Limited: Bloomsbury House.
VIANNA, K. in collaboration with M. Antonio de Carvalho (2018) A Dança. 8th edition. São Paulo, Brasil: Summus.