New York, Performa, White Box, November 21, 2009, 5 p.m.

Misplaced Women?

Performed by Valentina Medda

I started 45 minutes long performance Misplaced Women? from the White Box Gallery, from where I went to the near by park, and returned back to the gallery. It was important to me that the point of departure and arrival were the same place, while changes were occurring to my identity. Once you’ve left, it’s impossible to ever “come back home” even if you go to that place you still call home. But you never come back, and it’s not home anymore.

I wanted my woman to be beautiful and feminine in order not to be confused with other inhabitants of the street: tourists, citizens, homeless… I wanted her to be “something else”, someone who can’t be immediately defined. I wanted to preserve her dignity, that we all as immigrants are often forced to loose while getting accepted by a foreign country. I wanted my woman to get slowly undressed in her process of packing and unpacking. Gently and slowly, the clothes she was wearing became part of the luggage she’s been caring around, as a metaphor of what she’s loosing on the way, but she’s been keeping in her memory, somewhere. Something hidden that could come out any time…

www.valentinamedda.com

New York, Performa, White Box, November 21, 5 p.m.

New York City, Performa

You are invited to perform delegated performance Misplaced Women? while mapping New York City in another way during the entire month of November, and to share your experience on the web.
Locations for performances suggested by the artist include: train stations (inside and outside); women’s house, (in front or inside); refugee camps for illegalized people, shopping malls/market places; ports, airports, underground (inside metro while driving, underground stations)
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New York, Performa, White Box
in the frame of: White Noise III: Pandora’s Sound Box, November 2-22, 2009

On Saturday November 21, 5 p.m. there will be Misplaced Women? performance at White Box and around it. Please join in and take part in performing on the spot.

White Box
329 Broome Street
New York, NY 10002

http://whiteboxny.org

Tanja Ostojic would like to hear from anyone performing this delegated piece: Please post your contributions in the form of images, notes or texts to this blog, or upload your video clips to Misplaced Women? account at Vimeo. For further guidelines please send a mail to: misplacedwomen[at]yahoo.com

Misplaced Women? is a delegated performance in which women volunteers carry packed suitcases in the public spaces repeatedly pausing to pack and unpack as they move about the city.
In this project, Tanja Ostojic enacts an everyday life activity that signifies a displacement as common to transients, migrants, and disaster refugees, as it is to the itinerant artist traveling the world to earn her living. Ostojic’s street performance continues themes of migration, desired mobility, and relations of power and vulnerability in regards to the mobile female body, found in much of her previous work.