Score #3: Becoming One With a Bag

Misplaced, Score #3: Becoming One With a Bag, 2021, Millennium Bridge, London, performed by: Dagmara Bilon & Dyana Gravina. Mis(s)placed Women? Performance Weekend and the Community Gathering in Belgrade, October 17 2021, via Zoom. Photo: Mia Bilon.

DAGMARA BILON

Score #3: Becoming One With a Bag, 2021

Around 30 minutes, with or without preparation, two performers

Location: busy city bridge

About:

This score is sort of a combination of the Mis(s)placed Women? Score#1 and Score#2 by Tanja Ostojić. Becoming One With a Bag is a metaphor of displacement, objectification and detachment from humanity, in which the viewer on their way to work crosses the busy city bridge and unexpectedly spots legs coming out of a bag, without a face, without an identity. Next to the bag on legs, there is a second person (co-performer) holding a MISPLACED sign (Score #2). (The bridge here is a symbol of a transient place, in-between two different locations, when one migrates from one place to the other, on the bridge is ‘in between’.)

Instruction:

1. Select a busy city bridge.

2. The main action takes place on the pedestrian area toward the middle of the bridge.

3. The performer wears a dress and high heels, walking over the bridge toward the middle, carrying the ‘refuge bag’ on her shoulder. She stops and steps inside the bag until her upper body disappears inside the bag. The second performer zips the bag and positions herself aproximately one meter away.

4. Both of them stand still as a kind of juxtaposed, obscure attraction and provocation at the same time for about half an hour.

Important: The co-performer needs also to look after the person in the bag who can not see its surroundings.

Misplaced, Score #3: Becoming One With a Bag, 2021, Millennium Bridge, London, performed by: Dagmara Bilon & Dyana Gravina. Mis(s)placed Women? Performance Weekend and the Community Gathering in Belgrade, October 17 2021, via Zoom. Live streaming: Robin Harvey.

Note:

It is interesting to find out to whom this action speaks to and how are the people passing by responding. Reflect upon your motivation to perform this score and from which perspective you speak. (For example, as a non-UK citizen, based in London, I travelled recently back home to unite with my family after having been away for two weeks. Two days ahead of my flight, I received an email from the Home Office stating that if I am not able to present my Settled Status at the border, I won’t be able to enter the country. After 20 years of living in the UK, I would have never thought that I had to fear being stopped at the borders… This experience made me think about the people who struggle daily with this issue.)

Crediting and Publishing:

Mis(s)placed Women? project by Tanja Ostojić, live action by Dagmara Bilon, performed by: your names…

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Dagmara Bilon (1981) is a London based performance and interdisciplinary artist, creative producer and activist of Polish/German origin who conducted various community-led art projects engaging young people in the discourse of gender, sexuality and identity. She is active member of the The Purple Ladies collective since its establishment, and the Mis(s)placed Women? community since 2016.

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Edited and first published by Tanja Ostojić in the Mis(s)placed Women? exhibition catalogue, KCB Belgrade 2021

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Please visit the related posts:

Tanja OSTOJIĆ: Score #1: Unpacking a Bag of Your Own, 2009

Tanja OSTOJIĆ: Score #2: Holding the Misplaced Women? Sign, 2012

HOANG TRAN HIEU HANH: Score #4: spread and reflect, 2021

Earlier contributions by Dagmara BILON:

Dagmara Bilon realised 3 performances on gentrification, home and identity in the frame of “Misplaced Women?” workshop hosted by LADA London, December 2016

Teresa Albor’s and Dagmara Bilon’s continuous collaboration

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Earlier blog posts for London:

The following artists, activists and researchers developed their new works or performed some of the “Misplaced Women?” scores in the frame of the Tanja Ostojic’s “Misplaced Women?” London Workshop. I would like to invite you to please check out Participants Contributions in text, photos and videos, that I edited partly in collaboration with Danyel Ferrari and published on the project blog:

Tanja Ostojic

Elena Marchevska

Teresa Albor

Camilla Canocchi 

SM

Cherry Truluck

Seila Fernandez Arconada

Alice Tuppen

Hilary Williams 

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Teresa Albor’s and Dagmara Bilon’s continuous collaboration

Teresa Albor and Dagmara Bilon both took part in “Misplaced Women?” Workshop by Tanja Ostojić, 13-14 December 2016, hosted by LADA at their studio/office in Hackney. Teresa brought objects left behind by people in the process of migrating from Syria and Afghanistan to Europe from a collection she has been working with via a project called “The Things We Leave Behind.”  During the workshop Teresa experimented with calling out the names of people who have made this journey. Dagmara focussed on her own migration history and work she had made in the past using a suitcase as a prop as well as other objects from her earlier performances. They got to know each other in this inspiring workshop and started a collaboration soon after.

Teresa Albor and Dagmara Bilon: “Solidarity not charity”, at The Purple Ladies, Peckham, 2017. Photography: Lais Pontes

Dagmara Bilon: “Solidarity not charity”, at The Purple Ladies, Peckham, 2017. Photography: Lais Pontes

Peckham: Dagmara invited Teresa to join her making work for the “Solidarity not charity” event, hosted by The Purple Ladies, held 17 March 2017 at MARKET, to benefit refugees. This time Dagmara had replaced the suitcase with a large “migrant” bag made from woven plastic and added women’s heels adorned with the British Union Jack. Teresa had made a sound piece of names to play in the background.  Although the two were meant to perform separately, they chose to perform in the same space.  Teresa handed people objects or set them next to a candle in the space while Dagmara navigated the space from within the bag wearing the heels. 

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  Teresa Albor: “Solidarity not charity”, at The Purple Ladies, Peckham, 2017. Photography: Lais Pontes

Pimlico: Teresa was asked to make work for a public market —Tachbrook Market in Westminster — through the Rufus Stone project, during refugee week (17 June 2017).  She invited Dagmara to perform with her.  Because this was a public space, the two took care to engage the public, via a handout or through conversation.  Teresa placed objects on a pedestal, the soundtrack of names was played and Dagmara attempted to make her way across a thoroughfare to the stall. 

Dagmara Bilon, performing during refugee week 2017, Pimlico. Photography: Rachel Cherry

Teresa Albor performing during refugee week 2017, Pimlico. Photography: Rachel Cherry

 Dagmara Bilon, performing during refugee week 2017, Pimlico. Photography: Rachel Cherry

Richmond: Teresa invited Dagmara to perform at an exhibition of “The things we leave behind” at the One Paved Square Gallery in Richmond 24 Jan – 3 Feb, 2018.  The performance was 24 January, 2018.  Teresa used a torch instead of candles and used boundary tape to mark off sections of the space. Dagmara incorporated getting undressed, into the bag, movement and emerging from the bag into the performance.  Once again the soundtrack of names was played. 

Dagmara Bilon, performing at “The things we leave behind”, One Paved Square Gallery, Richmond, 2018. Photography: Sisi Burn

Dagmara Bilon performing at “The things we leave behind”, One Paved Square Gallery, Richmond, 2018. Photography: Sisi Burn

Teresa Albor performing at “The things we leave behind”, One Paved Square Gallery, Richmond, 2018. Photography: Sisi Burn

Bethnal Green: Dagmara invited Teresa to take part in a full day workshop as part of her involvement with the “I am not a village” project residency at Guest Projects in Bethnal Green.  The two experimenting with various ideas, including incorporating elements of Tanja Ostojić ’s “Naked Life” (2004-2016) performance series into their performance.  A week later, on 28 April, 2018 they performed a version of “Naked Life” — foregoing all of their previous props and gestures.   This time they entered the space, stood on a pedestal, dressed in layers of clothing.  They took turns reciting short stories of people who have been forced to move—a woman living in London dealing with domestic abuse; a woman moving from Sudan to a camp in Uganda; and so on.  With each story they removed a layer of clothing.  Once they were both naked and vulnerable, in solidarity with those whose stories they had recited, they dressed in their own clothes and told their own stories of relative privilege and security.  

Dagmara Bilon and Teresa Albor, performing at Bethnal Green, 2018, Photography: Camilla Canocchi

Dagmara Bilon and Teresa Albor, performing at Bethnal Green, 2018, Photography: Camilla Canocchi

Dagmara Bilon and Teresa Albor, performing at Bethnal Green, 2018, Photography: Camilla Canocchi

 Text by: Teresa Albor

Editied and published by Tanja Ostojic

Photography: Lais Pontes, Sisi Burn, Rachel Cherry, Camilla Canocchi

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Teresa Albor is London based performance and visual artist interested in how different groups of people negotiate the world. Her work is research-based and often involves broad collaboration. It can involve video/moving image, performance, installation, publication, community-based workshops, and forms of artist-led curation.

Dagmara Bilon is a London based Polish/German freelance Performance Artist, director and teacher, working nationally and internationally. Her multi-disciplinary practice orbits around embodied investigation and making the unconscious conscious. Central for her practice are dialog and collaboration, with self, others, materials and sites. She is passionate about art that inspires change. Over the last decade she has produced a diverse body of work which belongs to the borderlining realms of experimental performance and installation, as well as community based  projects.

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Some of the earlier blog posts for London:

The following artists, activists and researchers developed their new works or performed some of the “Misplaced Women?” scores in the frame of the Tanja Ostojic’s “Misplaced Women?” London Workshop. I would like to invite you to please check out Participants Contributions in text, photos and videos, that I edited partly in collaboration with Danyel Ferrari and published on the project blog:

Tanja Ostojic

Elena Marchevska

Danyel Ferrari´s Article published in ArtSlant

Teresa Albor

Dagmara Bilon

Camilla Canocchi 

SM

Cherry Truluck

Seila Fernandez Arconada

Alice Tuppen

Hilary Williams 

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“Misplaced Women?” project @ the BE.BOP 2018 in London, ABP Autograph & Tate Britain, on June 12

I will be presenting the “Misplaced Women?” project at the BE.BOP 2018 in London, on a panel hosted by ABP Autograph & Tate Britain, on June 12. For information on dates, venues & programming, please visit the following website:

via London

#bebop2018 #coalitionsfacingwhiteinnocenc

 

 

The Displaced & Privilege: A Study Room Guide on Live Art in the Age of Hostility by Dr Elena Marchevska on Misplaced Women? + Errata Sheet

Within this study guide that we warmly recommend you may between others reed about the brother context in which the “Misplaced Women?” Workshop by Tanja Ostojic has been produced, reflected a pone, distributed and publicised. With the “Misplaced Women?” project we pay special attention to credit everyone properly as far as possible. In that light I am pleased to share with you an Errata Sheet to The Displaced & Privilege: A Study Room Guide on Live Art in the Age of Hostility by Dr Elena Marchevska published by Live Arts Development Agency, LADA, London, in 2017, that may be download for free under this link.

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This is the ERRATA SHEET to the The Displaced & Privilege: A Study Room Guide on Live Art in the Age of Hostility by Elena Marchevska published by LADA, London (2017):

1) The drawings on the front and back cover and inside the guide by David Caines, have been mostly inspired by performances from Dagmara Bilon, Teresa Albor, Sophie Cero and Elena Marchevska developed in the frame of the ‘Misplaced Women?’ workshop led by Tanja Ostojić.

2) On page 1:

5. ‘Misplaced Women?’ workshop by Tanja Ostojić: documentation and participant’s responses

3) On page 3:

2. ‘Misplaced Women?’ Reflective Section, where you can find documentation of the workshop by Tanja Ostojić that I hosted with LADA in December 2016.

As part of the ‘Misplaced Women?’ workshops Tanja Ostojić encourages all participants to reflect in written form about their experience with the workshop, performances they developed and on the topic of the project, and she is publishing those voices regularly on the project blog. For this Study Guide, I selected from there and republished four responses to illustrate the outcomes of the workshop that she led.

For a full version of the responses and the reflection on the London iteration of the ‘Misplaced Women?’ project, please see the originally published material that has been edited by Tanja Ostojić and Danyel Ferrari:  https://misplacedwomen.wordpress.com/2017/03/07/misplaced-women-performance-workshop-in-lada-london/

4) On page 9:

For more information on Ostojić’s work please see her books:

Strategies of Success, ed. Tanja Ostojić, La Box Bourges and SKC Belgrade (2004), and

Integration Impossible?: The Politics of Migration in the Artwork of Tanja Ostojić, eds. Marina Gržinić and Tanja Ostojić, argobooks, Berlin (2009)

5) On page 65:

Note: These reflective articles were originally edited and published by Tanja Ostojić and Danyel Ferrari in January 2017, for ‘Misplaced Women?’ blog section dedicated to London’s workshop. You can see all the entries on the following link: https://misplacedwomen.wordpress.com/category/london/

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The end of the Errata Sheet.

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Drawing by David Caines of the performance by Teresa Albor in the frame of the “Misplaced Women?” performance art workshop by Tanja Ostojić in LADA, London, December 2016.

Misplaced Women? Performance Workshop in LADA London

I am delighted to share with you many amazing new contributions of the London itinerary of the Misplaced Women? workshop hosted by Live Art Development Agency and Dr Elena Marchevska in December 2016. Including videos, drawings, texts, photos and reviews. Please enjoy many active links below.

https://vimeo.com/225566772

Please see this short video about the “Misplaced Women?” performance workshop by Tanja Ostojić in London. The 3:50 min long video has been made by Dr Elena Marchevska and produced by LADA. People talking in order of appearance: Tanja Ostojić, Nicholas Harris, Teresa Albor, Dagmara Bilon, Camila Canocchi and (voice over) Elena Marchevska.

Drawing by David Caines of the performance by Sophie Cero in the frame of Tanja Ostojic´s “Misplaced Women?” performance workshop in LADA, London, December 2016.

Drawing by David Caines of the performance by Dagmara Bilon in the frame of the “Misplaced Women?” performance workshop by Tanja Ostojic in LADA, London, December 2016.

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The following artists, activists and researchers developed their new works or performed some of the “Misplaced Women?” scores in the frame of the Tanja Ostojic’s “Misplaced Women?” London Workshop. I would like to invite you to please check out Participants Contributions in text, photos and videos, that I edited partly in collaboration with Danyel Ferrari and published on the project blog:

Tanja Ostojic

Elena Marchevska holding the Misplaced Women? sign on Heathrow Airport 

Danyel Ferrari´s Article published in ArtSlant

Teresa Albor´s performance interventions

Camilla Canocchi 

SM

Dagmara Bilon

Cherry Truluck

Seila Fernandez Arconada

Alice Tuppen

Hilary Williams 

Jasmine Lee, Nicholas Harris, Sara Zaltash, Sophie Cero, Miki Zea..

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The Displaced & Privilege: A Study Room Guide on Live Art in the Age of Hostility by Dr Elena Marchevska published by LADA, in 2017, can be download for free under this link. 

Note: And please reed the related Errata Sheet to it.

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Misplaced Women?

LADA was delighted to host a London iteration of Misplaced Women? in December 2016. The Misplaced Women? workshop by Tanja Ostojić took place as part of a LADA residency being undertaken by the artist and researcher Elena Marchevska exploring Live Art practices and methodologies on working with issues of displacement. Tanja Ostojić ’s practice and the ideas at the heart of the Misplaced Women? project are so central to Elena’s thinking, and so vital to current issues, that it was a wonderful and timely opportunity to be able to invite Tanja to London.

Participants for the workshop were selected by an open call for proposals, and we were thrilled with the level of interest in the workshop from such a wide range of artists, activists and thinkers. Over two days the sixteen participants created a new community, and, following excursions into the badlands of East London, inspired a gathering of interested…

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Hilary Williams´s performance interventions in Hackney Wick and Stratford London, in the frame of “Misplaced Women?” performance workshop by Tanja Ostojić, hosted by LADA

Hilary Williams created several performance interventions on December 13th and 14th of 2016 in Hackney Wick and Stratford London, in the frame of “Misplaced Women?” performance workshop in the public space lead by Tanja Ostojić, hosted by Live Art Development Agency, London.

Tuesday 13^th December 2016, Performance in locality of LADA, Unit 7, Queens Yard, White Post Lane, London E9 5EN UK.

Wednesday 14^th December 2016, Performance in Olympic Park.

 

As a self directed solo performance/live artist I had previously made work around homelessness and refugee issues in Dublin and the frustration of watching the Syria conflict from news reports. I made a work entitled Cumulator which involved being “homeless” in a tent locally in Dublin, from mountains, to parks to shore line, 9 sites in one day with 9 hours writing live in the hour of each site.

(This work was made in tandem with live work being done at the same time by other artists in Belfast and elsewhere, the idea coming from James King with Support from B, Beyond Northern Ireland Performance Art Group, realized in December 2016 with 12 artists working live for 12 hours.)

This time I set off across the Irish sea in order to take part in the “Misplaced Women?” performance workshop in the public space lead by Berlin based artist Tanja Ostojić, hosted by Live Art Development Agency London, with vague plans in my head. I knew we were to bring a case, where we would empty the contents and not much else was I really aware of. I had a fairly heavy rucksack and with a bit of arthritis, I prefer to keep my loads light when travelling. So, after the initial workshop introduction we all set off “on the hoof,” as it were, to explore the possible sites and do some interventions.

Hilary Williams performance interventions on December 14th of 2016 in the Olympic Park, London, in the frame of “Misplaced Women?” performance workshop by Tanja Ostojić

Various people chose sites and did interesting work in unloading and reloading, dressing and undressing, displaying, revealing and sharing, items, memories, short physical snapshots of themselves, their lives, others lives, others stories, all done live in differently moving ways. I was captivated by all of the works. Some were long and durational, others brief; done publicly, the whole scape of live action comes into focus.

I find myself watching not only the performance but also, other events nearby, two swans alighting to land on the river Lee, three people walking by not even glancing at a woman emptying out her bag’s contents. London is that huge cosmopolitan jungle that I find, as a Dubliner, both awesome and massive; I feel like an ant.

So the moment came, I chose a site, mainly as it had a seat, in the middle of a small lane junction, made of concrete with a bike stood up nearby a railing, a small triangle of space. I tend to work with a plan of sorts but instinct and reactions to my own action come into play. So, if I get into a tangle I give myself boundaries where I must try to resolve physical constraints; succeed or fail, I must go through that self made boundary.

I had wrapped my head in white opaque material so was unable to see, but knew where everything was. I wrapped some black and yellow boundary tape around the seat and around myself. I hoped to move a bit further but got caught by a knot so with it around my shoulders I pushed the force of my self towards the road. I knew it was risky but also knew that it was where I had to go so eventually I could feel the tape stretch. I thought it would snap suddenly and I was literally going to be hurled onto the street, so I lowered myself and when it did go, I did not land out on the road;  somehow it was not the tape that broke but, I had shifted the actual concrete seat a bit off its plinth. So ended my first performance. I think we moved swiftly on so no one could see the damage I had done to the street furniture.

The next day we walked to Olympic Park; I choose a children’s playground and a bench. I thought about the previous performance and felt I needed to present a different feel: a softer use of body and space and maybe some improvisations too.

There was a circular wooden stage nearby which I simply ran around 7 times and did some shoulder stands, a mischievous warm up/showing off. Then, I got up on a bench and waved the cloth around; with a slight breeze, it obliged. I then moved the tape around some tree like structures and also around the audience and finished by tying myself around with the last end of the tape, so concluded that performance.

I was not sure if it was good or bad but when I saw the photos after it pleased me to no end. I must have instinctively imitated the sculpture behind by Anish Kapoor, a form with winding shapes, spiralling.

Throughout the two days I was interested in the many conversations and discussions around Misplaced Women? Coming from another time and cultures I would, myself have had those issues: inequality of salary, loss of earnings, no maternity leave, etc.; but all are in my past now, so at this stage I am maybe freer than most artists –  by fact that I am totally in control of what I do.When one is amongst 15 or so individuals all from different cultures, experiences, etc., you can’t but benefit. I found those that had actually volunteered in refugee camps, giving of themselves to help others by just been there, using circus skills, mime and befriending children who need a friend as much as food and shelter, commendable. There was a level of academic speak from some that although I struggle with is a good learning curve for yours truly. So I believe it all helps.

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This reflexions have been written, on invitation by Tanja Ostojić, by Hilary Williams, on December 19^th 2016.  Edited by: Tanja Ostojić and Danyel Ferreri

Photos: Misplaced Women? performance workshop participants

Hilary Williams performance interventions on December 14th of 2016 in the Olympic Park, London, in the frame of “Misplaced Women?” performance workshop by Tanja Ostojić

Hilary Williams performance interventions on December 14th of 2016 in the Olympic Park, London, in the frame of “Misplaced Women?” performance workshop by Tanja Ostojić

 

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Hilary Williams (b.1945 in Dublin) was Physical education teacher from 1967–2000. She received BA and MA in Fine Arts at IADT Dublin in 2005 and 2007. Last ten years she is self taught performance artist who works live and performance to camera. www.mutantspace.com  Diary of an Irish Performance artist.

Dagmara Bilon realised 3 performances on gentrification, home and identity in the frame of “Misplaced Women?” workshop hosted by LADA London, December 13 & 14, 2016

In the frame of Tanja Ostojić´s “Misplaced Women?” workshop hosted by Live Arts Development Agency London, on December 13 & 14, 2016, Dagmara Bilon realised 3 performance interventions which she has called “embodied investigations into home and identity; a protest against becoming a silenced and isolated as wallpaper, dedicated to the ever-changing landscape of London in the mist of gentrification.” 

For my first intervention I chose to unpack my heavy back-pack on  a street corner in Hackney Wick near the neighborhood’s formerly longest occupied squat. I took of my heavy rucksack from my back and start to unpack. It’s full of various objects, accumulated over time: my childhood toys, my children’s toys, things I need for work, such as gaffe-tape, iPad, mobile phone, cigarettes, wire, lots of stones to ground me, so as not to fly away, a black fabric sphere that symbolised the veil of grief for the loss of my father, white pieces of fabric that I use to collect my menstrual blood, pens, pencils, a toy-snake. As I unpack my bag it feels never ending. Bits and pieces of glitter, receipts, notes… Lots and lots of junk, but to me – a trail of my existence. All the objects are bare on the wet concrete floor. While I see them, I feel uncertain of my survival, slightly embarrassed, like a public emptying of the bowels, spilling of my organs. I don’t dare to look into anyone’s eyes;I start to pack my bag as quickly as I possibly can, stuffing things back inside my dirty old rucksack. But there is always something more, always something else spilling out…

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My second performance featured a surreal procession of a displaced female body in a red suitcase, walking in black high heels and black velvet tight leggings over a Bridge in Olympic Park, that leads to London’s biggest shopping mall,Westfield Stratford. In the morning on that day, I took my large red suitcase from my room that contains all my dresses and props from previous London performances. This is when the performance started. I carried the suitcase from my room in South East London to Hackney,down the stairs, down the road, and on public transport. While walking I’m reminiscing of my immigrationat the age of three with my mother from Poland to Germany, with one and only suitcase filled with our possessions. In my associations of a single woman standing by a bus stop with a big red suitcase, symbolises vulnerability danger, but also power. The power to move on. As I travel I notice the eyes of people peeking and then quickly shifting back onto their daily newspaper or smart phone.

Then,  standing by a bridge together with the group of participants from the “Misplaced Woman?” workshop. I open my suitcase and hand my items one by one to individuals in the group. To me this is a most humane and kind experience. To have my items held by others. I take off my golden sandals and step inside my black high heel shoes and through the two holes I have cut in the red suitcase. I squeeze my body into the suitcase and ask a volunteer from the group to lock the suitcase and point me straight over the bridge. I’m inside now, locked in. I can’t see where I am going. My legs are wobbly. The core of my body contorted. I want to speak: “am I going into the right direction?” — but I  don’t have a voice ‘in there’, inside the suitcase. Spontaneously, a member of the group directs me how to walk forwards. I feel even more powerless, cut off and disorientated. I have no choice but to follow instructions and to focus on my feet, to stay on the ground and continue moving forward.

Dagmara Bilon performing “Misplaced Women?” in the Olympic Park, London, in frame of Tanja Ostojic´s workshop (December 2016)

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For my third performance, I shared an intervention with three women from the “Misplaced Woman?” workshop at Hackney Wick Overground Station. I chose to locate myself on the other side of the platform. It was not ideal for documenting the action. I deliberately wanted to experience the gap between us and the feeling of loosing side of each other as trains move in and out of the platform.

The last time I saw my father was on the other side of a platform in 1985.

I place my red suitcase on the floor and slowly unpack all my dresses and props from previous London performances. Each of them with a story to tell, the dust of previous locations, the smell of sweat or dump, and leave a trace of these items around me that for a sort of island.

I’m standing in the middle of the island and at last pull out a huge Cunt Sculpture. I stand up on the bench “on my island” and hold up my Cunt up high. A train comes into the platform. People are going in and out. A man takes a picture from within the train. The doors are closing. The train moves out again.

I step off the bench, pack up my suitcase again and as I walk over to the other side of the platform to join the others, a mother with a baby looks at me beaming and asks if it was a vagina that I was holding up?

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Text written by Dagmara Bilon

Edited by Tanja Ostojić and Danyel Ferreri

Photos featured in this post taken by the “Misplaced Women?” workshop participants, London, and Aleksandar Utjesinovic

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Dagmara Bilon (b.1981) is a London based Polish/German Performance Artist, Co-Founder of The Purple Ladies Performance Collective, Artist Mentor on The Talking Gender Project and Project Manager of The MotherHouse. Since graduating in 2003 from Trinity Laban with a degree in Dance Theater she has worked as a performer for companies such as Punchdrunk, Psychological Art Circus, The Bones Theater, Marissa Carnesky, Ear Cinema and Lundahl&Seitl. Simultaneously she created and produced her own independent performance projects including staged works, sight specific interventions and one to one performances. More recently she focused on developing performance actions that challenge the notions of motherhood and identity and exhibited work alongside The Desperate Art Wives. She has also conducted various community arts led projects engaging young people in the discourse of gender, sexuality and identity. www.dagmarabilon.com

Alice Tuppen-Corps unpacked her suitcase on December 14 2016 and created the “Wherever I Lay My Hat That’s My Home” Performance in Hackney Wick London

Alice Tuppen-Corps unpacked her suitcase on December 14 2016 and created the Wherever I Lay My Hat That’s My Home Performance in Hackney Wick London, in the frame of “Misplaced Women?” performance workshop lead by Tanja Ostojić, hosted by LADA.

Wherever I Lay My Hat That’s My Home, Solo Performance for Film (Private). White Post Lane. 5.30am – 6.30am and Solo Performance for Film (Live Audience) LADA 14^th December 2016.

Alice’s research investigates how specific forms of encounter with individual stories and personal objects can act as enabling agents, transforming the emotional, psychological and creative experience of worlds. In this piece, ‘Wherever I Lay My Hat That’s My Home’, the artist took possessions from her own home to include: a portrait of herself aged four years old, an Eiffel Tower gifted to her in Paris by a lover, her broken wedding ring, two lion hats, a whip, a box of matches and a spikey golden hedgehog.

Foremost a filmmaker, (as well as and significantly here a divorcee), Alice experienced the first day of the workshop with Tanja as a ‘watcher’. She absorbed the performances of others whilst waiting for the moment it felt right for her to perform. That moment came in the early hours of the following morning, inspired by the place she encountered as her ‘home for the night’, an artist’s squat in the East End of London.

‘Alice walked in. She was welcomed, perturbed even, by a new world of waiting objects: a guillotine, two dressmaker’s dummies, broken pots, old papers, a crumpled bed. Placing her suitcase on the floor she took off her hat, coat, shoes and she dressed the two dressmaker’s dummies that confronted her. Arranging her portrait amongst the other pictures on the wall she laid out her own vessels, four little dishes and a Van Gogh teddy bear. Alice infiltrated the space through the slow positioning of her objects. She embodied the space as she integrated her objects with those of the absent ‘host’, in this way she re-storyed herself into a new place of belonging. Alice made the squat her home. The two dummies became her ‘animated’ roommates. She re-worked these characters as symbolic of others she had, lost, left, displaced by her leaving her own home and former relationships. Seeing the characters before her, changed and enlivened by her interventions, she saw others and herself more clearly. As the dummies spoke back to with such autobiographical agency, Alice accessed and activated memories that allowed her to reposition herself. She became placed.

Alice Tuppen-Corps Intervention With Portrait

Alice Tuppen-Corps ‘No Portrait’

Alice Tuppen-Corps: Live Performance with Portrait, Photo: Shannon Mulvey

Alice Tuppen-Corps: Live Performance with Hat

Alice documented the process and re-performed the ‘unpacking’ of the suitcase to a live audience at LADA that evening and in dialogue with onscreen photographs of the objects when in-situ at the squat. In the live, audiences were dressed by Alice and given offerings from the case to ‘care for’, one audience member said that ‘she felt a transformative wave flow over her, issuing out from the performer, touching the audience and drawing them into the co-generation of a [third space], simultaneously journeying inward to self, outward towards performer and across to the screen’.

Alice Tuppen-Corps: Seeing Woman

Alice Tuppen-Corps: Blind Man

Video: Wherever I Lay My Hat That’s My Home

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Alice Tuppen-Corps is a practice-based Ph.D. Researcher and Digital Performance Lecturer at De Montfort University. She was trained at Goldsmiths College and The Slade School of Fine Art with a background in Broadcast and Media Production, Higher Education and Arts Psychotherapy.  She is a Ph.D. practice-based researcher and artist based in the East Midlands.

She is principally investigating ‘Digital Performance and the Feminine: Transformational Encounters’. In her artistic practice she filmically re-stages individual stories within augmented, networked and tactile environments in order to generate new qualities of reflective space that empower transformation, contemplation and connection. Bracha Ettinger’s concept of ‘Carriance’ is theoretically foreground, allowing ‘the other’ to be ‘within me [him/her] charged’. Alice adopts Ettinger’s concept of ‘Thinking (M) otherwise’ (2006) and performatively facilitates her participants to co-create within matrixial spaces of technological, sculptural, filmic and relational aesthetics. Like a ‘Mobius Strip’, her artworks reciprocally and affectively touch back and within such artistic carriance structures, a hopeful and restorative dance is activated in self and other regardless of sexual or gender identification. www.alicetuppencorps.com

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Text: Alice Tuppen-Corps

Video: Shannon Mulvey
Photographs: Alice Tuppen–Corps, Shannon Mulvey

Email: alicecharlotte(AT)myself.com

Misplaced Women? Performance Workshop in LADA London

People talking in order of appearance: Tanja Ostojic, Nicholas Harris, Teresa Albor, Dagmara Bilon, Camila Canocchi and (voice over) Elena Marchevska. 

 

Drawing by David Caines of the performance by Dagmara Bilon in the frame of the “Misplaced Women?” performance workshop by Tanja Ostojic in LADA, London, December 2016.

Drawing by David Caines of the performance by Sophie Cero in the frame of Tanja Ostojic´s “Misplaced Women?” performance workshop in LADA, London, December 2016.

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LADA was delighted to host a London iteration of Misplaced Women? in December 2016. The Misplaced Women? workshop by Tanja Ostojić took place as part of a LADA residency being undertaken by the artist and researcher Elena Marchevska exploring Live Art practices and methodologies on working with issues of displacement. Tanja Ostojić ’s practice and the ideas at the heart of the Misplaced Women? project are so central to Elena’s thinking, and so vital to current issues, that it was a wonderful and timely opportunity to be able to invite Tanja to London.

Participants for the workshop were selected by an open call for proposals, and we were thrilled with the level of interest in the workshop from such a wide range of artists, activists and thinkers. Over two days the sixteen participants created a new community, and, following excursions into the badlands of East London, inspired a gathering of interested parties with presentations of the works they had each created in such a short space of time.

It was an honour and a privilege to work with Tanja Ostojić and to host Misplaced Women? in London.   

Lois Keidan, LADA*

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Tanja Ostojić:

I am grateful that I had great opportunity to lead two days long intensive performance art workshop hosted by Live Art Development Agency London, on invitation by Dr Elena Marchevska who also organised and facilitated our program including the final presentation.

Misplaced Women? Performance Workshop is one of important formats under the umbrella of the  “Misplaced Women?” Project (ongoing since 2009) that I have developed in the past several years.  Many participants of diverse nationalities, professions, genders, age and backgrounds have went though it so far Europe wide. Workshops are made in small and mid size groups with four to sixteen participants. Workshops have been hosted by high schools, universities, art schools, (performance)art spaces and festivals. My role within it is to initiate sensibility, dialogues and thinking about issues of displacement, migration, public space, security, exposure, gentrification, sensitivity to the issues of gender in the context of migration, between others; to initiate people to try out performative acts in the public space, and further more to give them space, support and encouragement to realise performances. And as well to facilitate them to participate in group public presentations of their workshop activities and to produce afterwords written reflexions or further interventions related to it, that some of them I edit and publish on the project´s on-line blog. Occasionally processes of healing related to deep personal, legislative or family traumas are occurring as well. Some of workshop participants produce as well at later stage works or writings that have been inspired by creative processes in this workshop.

The London iteration of the Workshop was of high quality thanks to the good organisation and pre scouting of the neighbourhood and high motivation and quality of the participating artists, activists and writers selected via open call, most of whom have been already working with issues of migration and / or have been experienced performance artists themselves. So we had very dynamic and inspiring exchange between ourselves.

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Tanja Ostojić. Photo: Danyel Ferarri

I´ve also done one small performance intervention myself, to “brake the ice” at the beginning of the outdoor part of the workshop, at 1pm on December 13, 2016 in the closest vicinity of LADA. My intention was to memorise the 3 years long fruitful existence and one year time of displacement of the ]performance s p a c e [  due to the gentrification processes raging in Hackney Wick. Along with physical changes of the neighbourhood came increased rents and the inevitable loss of arts spaces, including the important venue ]performance s p a c e [, which moved to Folkestone following complaints from residents of newly built condominium complexes.  

And so in front of the entrance of what used to be the important performance art venue I was thinking of how many amassing performances have been realised there in three years of its existence, while emptying all the contents of my hand bag and my pockets, turning every single item inside out.. At the end of this cycle, standing in socks without coat on a cardboard on a wet London December day, in front of the former location of the ]performance s p a c e [, I read a poem from a book that I purchased a day before while scouting the Westwood Shopping Mall in Stratford Station. It was a powerful poem from Adrienne Rich´s book “The Dream of a Common Language”. Then came the cycle in reverse and I turned back and packed one by one all my stuff…

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The following artists, activists and researchers developed their new works or performed some of the “Misplaced Women?” scores in the frame of the “Misplaced Women?” London Workshop. I would like to invite you to please check out Participants Contributions in text, photos and videos, that I edited (partly in collaboration with Danyel Ferrari) and published on the project blog:

Elena Marchevska holding the Misplaced Women? sign on Heathrow Airport 

Danyel Ferrari´s Article published in ArtSlant

Teresa Albor´s performance interventions

Camilla Canocchi 

Shannon Mulvey 

Cherry Truluck

Seila Fernandez Arconada

Alice Tuppen

Hilary Williams 

Dagmara Bilon

Jasmine Lee

Nicholas Harris

Sara Zaltash

Sophie Cero

Miki Zea

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Please see this 3:50 min long video about the “Misplaced Women?” performance workshop by Tanja Ostojić, in London, that has been made by Elena Marchevska and produced by LADA.

Note: Artists and activists talking in order of appearance: Tanja Ostojić, Nicholas Harris, Teresa Albor, Dagmara Bilon, Camila Canocchi and (voice over) Elena Marchevska.

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The Displaced & Privilege: A Study Room Guide on Live Art in the Age of Hostility by Dr Elena Marchevska published by LADA, in 2017, can be download for free under this link. 

Note: And please reed the related Errata Sheet to it.

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Drawing by David Caines of Elena Marchevska holding the”Misplaced Women?” sign at Heathrow Airport London, December 12, 2016. in the frame of Tanja Ostojic´s performance workshop in LADA.

Drawing by David Caines of the performance by Teresa Albor in the frame of the “Misplaced Women?” performance workshop by Tanja Ostojic in LADA, London, December 2016.

 

 

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Learn more about the Misplaced Women? project and the artist Tanja Ostojić

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Lois Keidan is a co-founder and the Director of the Live Art Development Agency. She was Director of Live Arts at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London from 1992 to 1997 where she devised a year round programme of new performance and initiated numerous new ventures for established and emerging artists. Prior to the ICA, she was responsible for national policy and provision for Performance Art and interdisciplinary practices at the Arts Council of Great Britain. She contributes articles on performance to a range of journals and publications and gives talks and presentations on performance at festivals, colleges, venues and conferences in Britain and internationally. She sits on a number of Boards and Advisory Panels, including Artsadmin (London) and Performa (New York).

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Seila Fernández Arconada created her Sketches of Distance on December 14 2016 by river Lee at the border of Hackney Wick and Stratford London, in the frame of “Misplaced Women?” performance workshop

Seila Fernández Arconada created her Sketches of Distance on December 14, 2016 by river Lee at the border of Hackney Wick and Stratford London, in the frame of “Misplaced Women?” performance workshop in the public space lead by Tanja Ostojić, hosted by LADA.

An sketch of distance I (51.544613 -0.022445) Durational performance 45 minutes       

An sketch of distance II  (51.542082, -0.020953) Durational performance 15 minutes

Those two performances were developed in response to the Misplaced Women? workshop led by Berlin based artist Tanja Ostojić. Both actions were presented as spontaneous performances in the public space in two “in between spaces”, a pedestrian bridge and the river Lee bank, both located between Hackney and the new developed Olympic Stadium Park area of Stratford London.

The workshop and this location became context of my actions. Asked to work with my belongings to “interrogate some of the realities of displacement such as travelling, identity, illegality, security, and the private/public”, I began to think of what my personal possessions are and what they mean to me as a migrant, as a woman, as an artist, etc.

In the last years, travelling became part of my working methodology that I consider and work with at many levels including environmental foot print, political and social borders. Belongings, both personal and professional, became a companion mostly connected to functionality. However, as time goes by there are some special items that hold memories and stories that I told in this performance.

The first item that I took out of my backpack was a compass. When this present was given to me in China 10 year ago, I was told: “Carry this compass with you and you will be able to find your home”. Since then I have been carrying this compass with me. The stories told connected to all those items are resonating experiences to the places where they come from; including a scarf given to me in Spain more than 15 years ago, a pair of handmade earrings I never wore that hold the story of an encounter in Medellín (Colombia), a booklet with drawings made with children in Peru, a T-Shirt bought in the central market of La Paz (Bolivia) that contains a conversation with the seller, among others.

I placed all the items, one by one, around the compass to locate them in space, drawing a map out of stories while representing distance. 1.217km away from where I come from, about 2 days and 9 hours duration (Google Maps walking+ferry suggestion)

Distance (Oxford Dictionary)   noun, BrE /ˈdɪstəns/

• the amount of space between two places or things
• being far away in space or in time
• a point that is a particular amount of space away from something else
• a difference or lack of a connection between two things
• a situation in which there is a lack of friendly feelings or of a close relationship between two people or groups of people.

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Seila Fernández Arconada is an independent artist—researcher based in Bristol, UK. She is currently a Moore Institute Visiting Fellow (Ireland) with the project Moving while doing, nomadic artistic perceptions in socio-environmental transitory times. She is a collaborator at the “Art, Research and Feminism” research group (Spain). Recently selected by Gasworks London to join the residency “Migration, Identity and Belonging” (Mauritius). Seila has delivered numerous cross-disciplinary workshops and interventions including Communities Development in Post-Crisis Regions (Ukraine) and exhibited internationally, recently in Imagined Landscapes (RWA, UK), In Between Storage (Latvia) and ENCLAVE Land Art (Spain). Her work focuses in exploring artistic methodology, its boundaries and new social approaches.    www.seilafernandezarconada.net

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The text was written by Seila Fernández Arconada

The photographs were taken by Sophie Cullinan