Additions:
Marcia aims to make a ‘live cinema’ (special audio visual performance) about women in funk in Rio.
Lottie aims to make a ‘street training’ (participatory performance) that changes and is changed by the ways we move through the streets. The forms of both of these outcomes are intrinsic and entwined with the content.
- The dance: Marcia wants to propose a deconstruction of models that is only possible when art is displaced from the mind to the body. A polarity exists between the intellect and the body. "I want to talk about the body as an influx of spirit, life and erotic sensual meaning, I want to incorporate the ways women in funk use their bodies. The choreography invented in the moment with its gravitational limitations is both barbaric and uplifting. When the funkeira is lifted up through her body to ancestry and ritual how do I represent her without reinforcing the aspect that is spectacle and commodity? How do I match the fluidity of her dance with my filmmaking?"
- What is sexy, what is ancestral and what is spectacle in “funkeiras” (funk girls) from Rio de Janeiro?
Context
Carioca Funk music and the favela context: violence in favelas, houses with no privacy, etc.
Carioca Funk lyrics and the subject of the lyrics contain unprecedented female expression – “a porra da buceta eh minha (my fucking pussy is mine)” / “vira o cu e pede dedinho (give me your ass and ask me for my little finger)” / “agoar eu sou piranha, ninguem vai me segurar (now I’m a slag and nobody will hold me down)” / “me chama de cachorra que eu faço au au, me chama de gatinha que eu faço miau (call me bitch/slag and I will bark, call me cat and I say meow)”,..
We watch bundas’ photos in any place on the streets in Rio. The bundas’ images are really ordinary. The important point of our meeting (Marcia and Lottie) was in the moment that these girls were teaching lottie to dance funk and I could observe all their bodies moving and shaking. With Lotties’ classes I observe each detail of their bodies and when I take my camera I don’t shoot their bundas as usual but I have interest in all parts of their bodies, including their eyes.
Story Lottie
When I was at a party in a record store in Lapa and the funk kids crashed the party. “Suddenly just as a carioca funk track came on, loads of kids in tight Lycra and covered in glitter crash the party, they bump and grind and spin me up, I move with them in their wild exuberance. The moves are exciting, energising and uninhibited.” How do I create the conditions for other people to feel and to express this embodied exuberant pleasure?”
Story Marcia
I wasn’t comfortable with this generation of females in Rio and the gender relations. I began researching Brazilian feminism and made a movie about the top Brazilian feminist. In this movie my questions were: what did the witches have that was so strong that they had to be burnt in fire? Why have women been so repressed? One of her insights is that when our sexuality is repressed we are ill, like Freud’s hysterical women. Since then feminism has developed and contraception pills changed things, but in Brazil???????? We were in a dictatorial system and in this time the women made really important work in the underground (together with workers struggle) and as a consequence of this laws have been made in brazil that are exemplary. But at the same time feminism is very unpopular. Brazilian women have prejudice against feminism; it is associated with non-sexual women. In spite of this women in Brazil are not respected, abortion is illegal (catholic country), and it is not a question for most of them.
And then I saw women at Funk parties – when I first heard female mc’s expressing themselves in intimate and politically incorrect and sexual and gender question ways I thought they would intrigue contemporary feminists.
Edited on 2010-01-28 03:32:03 by LottieChild
Additions:
Hope that people will have suggestions, dreams, creative ideas and insights that will help us to take our work to the next stage. We’re looking for guidance and we want this opportunity to think with other’s minds and share strategies.
Marcia aims to make a ‘live cinema’ (audio visual performance) about women in funk in Rio. Lottie aims to make a ‘street training’ (participatory performance) that changes and is changed by the ways we move through the streets. The forms of both of these outcomes are intrinsic and entwined with the content. This is what we’re aiming to do but we are open and as a result of the discussion we’ll change the ways we work.
Questions
- How do I create the conditions for other people to feel and to express this embodied exuberant pleasure?”
-
- Finding and following our desires in relation to our environment. When people move from our own physical, sensual desires in public does it positively shape our surroundings?
- Modelling behaviour and making shifts in cultural norms that in turn shape our environment.
- Participatory performance as a way to highlight and disseminate behaviours that make changes in place and our experience of place.
- Learning from girls in Rio feeling pleasure in one’s own body, understanding and sharing expressions of desire.
- How to map, navigate and shape Gendered space
- Does our education/physical conditioning disable Lottie and Marcia? “Poor beautiful English girl, she doesn’t know how to be safe and sexy”. What is lost? Who has power? Young women feel their sexual power and enjoy it vs. having a job and education. What is self-realization? What we ascribe value to and what feels good?
- Culturally specific views of movement/dances/music
- Culturally specific views of sexuality and desire
- Who or how are these represented?
- And then Who and where is the work shown?
- Are women in funk making a spectacle of them selves or it is some strong and real female expression?
• Everybody for coming
- Ali Zaidi from motiroti
- Maria Helena Bastos
- Caroline Menezes
- Christian Topfner
- Richard Dedomenici
- Amy Sharrocks
- Michael Asbry
- Lady lucy
Deletions:
• Everybody for coming
Edited on 2010-01-28 03:25:18 by LottieChild
Additions:
Edited on 2010-01-28 03:18:18 by LottieChild
Additions:
Embody Exuberant Gestures
Thank you
Key Words
Deletions:
Embody Exuberant Gestures
- THANK YOU
KEY WORDS:
Edited on 2010-01-28 03:17:37 by LottieChild
Additions:
- THANK YOU
• LADA: Lois, Andrew
• British Council/Artist Links
• Everybody for coming
List of urls for video clips on youtube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgoj-kmyGHw&feature=related∞ - tati quebra barraco
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=viaKwjffWzM&feature=related∞ - gaiola das popozudas
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNdJliM-iyI∞ - surra de bunda
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPsRK7wboK8∞ - buraka som sistema feat deize tigrona
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQbYojnDYQA∞ - love and liberty
www.streettraining.org
www.livecinema.com.br
KEY WORDS:
- BUNDA – bum, ass
- CARIOCA – a person from Rio
- CARIOCA FUNK – Brazilian electronic music from Rio, this music is known simply as funk in Rio.
- BAILE – the parties where the funk music, dancing and mcing take place the workd baile comes originally from the word ball
- PIRANHA - slag
- CACHORRA - bitch
Oldest known version of this page was edited on 2010-01-28 03:12:50 by LottieChild []
Page view:
Embody Exuberant GesturesMarcia and Lottie met in Brazil in 2009 on a British Council funded Artist Links programme. They are undertaking a short residency in the Live Art Development Agency’s Study Room in January 2009 to continue their collaborative research project.
As part of this residency we hosted an informal gathering of artists who are exploring similar issues and approaches in their own practice. Marcia and Lottie have cited some of their key research questions below, and from these they have identified two issues they would particularly like to discuss with you at the Study Room Gathering: the link between the lived experience and the perceived effect, and the line between self expression and making a spectacle of yourself
Marcia Derraik’s research questions: what is sexy, what is ancestral and what is spectacle in “funkeiras” (funk girls) from Rio de Janeiro?
“Funk comes from poor communities. The sensual expression of women in funk could intrigue any contemporary feminist. Carioca Funk is perceived as being from violent and sexualised environments. I want to propose a deconstruction of models that is only possible when art is displaced from the mind to the body. A polarity exist between the intellect and the body. I want to talk about the body as an influx of spirit life and erotic sensual meaning, I want to incorporate the ways women in funk use their bodies. The choreography invented in the moment with its gravitational limitations is both barbaric and uplifting.
Do the words of the women in funk make changes in their bodies and do the ways they move their bodies allow for new ways of thinking and speaking?
When the funkeira is lifted up through her body to ancestry and ritual how do I represent her without reinforcing the aspect that is spectacle and commodity? How do I match the fluidity of her dance with my film making?”
Lottie Child terms her research Street Training, it begins with the premise that our environment shapes our behaviour and proposes that we can equally use our behaviour to shape our environment it uses the foci of safety and joy as guiding themes. She guides people through cities in ‘training sessions’ to induce playful improvised interaction with the environment.
Lottie undertook three months of research in the streets of Rio, she sought out diverse people to learn from and through behaving in ways motivated by desires made shifts in her own and other's conscious experiences of places.
She asks: when women move from our own physical, sensual desires in public does it positively shape our surroundings?
During her research in Rio she encountered Carioca funk
“Suddenly just as a carioca funk track came on, loads of kids in tight Lycra and covered in glitter crash the party, they bump and grind and spin me up, I move with them in their wild exuberance. The moves are exciting, energising and uninhibited.” How do I create the conditions for other women to express this fluidity?
The place of intersection between the two areas of research raise these questions:
The link between the lived experience and the perceived effect
The line between self expression and making a spectacle of yourself
Lottie’s Links:
www.streettraining.org<http://www.streettraining.org/∞>
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQbYojnDYQA∞
http://www.solarassociates.net/lottie-child-latest∞
Marcia’s Links:
www.livecinema.com.br<http://www.livecinema.com.br/∞>
www.antenna.com.br<http://www.antenna.com.br/∞>
Live Art Development Agency
http://www.thisisliveart.co.uk/∞
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