La Obsidiana, or Myth intersecting Reflection intersecting Sacrifice
Made in London during the global pandemic between the months of August and October, 2020
This 16 min film was shot in 16 mm by Alexandros Pissorious capturing performances of the project La Obsidiana, or Myth intersecting Reflection intersecting Sacrifice by Carlos Maria Romero with artists from the MA in Expanded Dance Practice from London Contemporary Dance School / The Place.
The music of the film ‘Tau Nostre Pie D’Assau’ is by Architecture of Friendship – Santiago Latorre & Colin Self with Els Joens Arrosecs de Laruns singing A la claror deu rève, a song in occitane that is considered a hymn of a transnational sentiment to the mountain regions of the Pyrenees, a territory conformed by a land that transcends national state borders and divisions.
La Obsidiana, or Myth intersecting Reflection intersecting Sacrifice
This project radicalises dance in a time where the arts lack support, worsening their existing precarity. This five-week project developed by multidisciplinary artist Carlos Maria Romero in collaboration with the MA students of Developing Artistic Practice from London Contemporary Dance School, reclaims dance and its importance, at a time when performing arts are amongst the last priorities for the Conservative government.
The project process dialogues with the flexibility required by constantly changing circumstances (in a time of crisis) rehearsing care, accountability and honesty; and happens in the form of a guerrilla art/takeover of outdoors public space, blending in with the natural environment’s rhythms, elegance and complexity, decentering humans as primary addressees and performance as the ultimate aim of artistic practice. It reminds of the joy of dancing together, and how people moving in unconventional ways helps us to expand the ways we interact with ourselves and our surroundings, and helps us understand ourselves in ever more complex ways.
The title refers to Obsidian, a smoky volcanic glass, central to culture and politics by Mesoamerican societies before their demise by European colonizers. Its capacities of mirror and cutting were praised in ritualistic practices of divination and bloodletting. Shamans and rulers connected to their ancestors and deities through the smoking mirror, and prophesied what was to come by deciphering its images. They pierced with obsidian knives their own flesh in sacrificial public performances to demonstrate their commitment to maintaining the wellbeing of the social structure by giving their blood to empower the gods in return for giving them life, mirroring their sacrifice of their own body parts to give life to humankind.
The two-faced obsidian mirrors of the Aztecs and Mayans served both “to see” as “to be seen (seeing)”; being understood as devices “to self reflect” and “to reflect others reflecting on reflecting”; they were carried as pendants and were depicted on deities representing “the act of reflection” and “the reflecting as performance”. Through complex levels of abstraction these civilizations held Obsidian as a performative material, departing from its use and connotations, its hypermateriality (meaning its immaterial properties beyond its material capacities) and its virtuality (capable of being in another space and time).
Referencing this cultural device and its performative uses, the enabling of prophetic and mythical thinking, the self reflecting act and the practice of sacrifice, and its resonance on political discussions of the current moment, this project borrows that framework to process and build knowledge on issues of privilege and responsibility; the extremely polarised political arena we are living; the solidification of the politics of hate and totalitarianism around the planet; the climate emergency; the frictions of the cohabitation of multiple ways of understanding and living in the world in close proximity; neoliberal capitalism; white patriarchal hetero cis supremacy; colonialism; the pandemic; and how bodies exist and navigate this array of complexities, finding ways to survive, connect, thrive and don’t loose hope in a culture that prioritises individualism, competition, separation, exploitation, hate and the death of some for the life of others.
La Obsidiana also channels the ripples that flow from 1960s and 70s artistic body practices and political action. These centred the relationship amongst humans and between humans and their environment. They dealt with the uncontrollable and unpredictable, made connections to liberation movements, human rights and fairness, ecology, politics and a wide spectrum of anti-hegemonic narratives. Here we find black feminism, protest, performance art, land art, feminist performance, improvisation, political art, happening, theatre of the oppressed, grassroots and community art, ritual, decolonial practice, queer theory, ritual, postmodern dance, jazz, collage, marxism, somatic movement practice, and cultural production from marginalised cultures and revolutionary movements that started then but that are still going on today.
The present moment has many parallels with that time, and research helps illuminate the correlations between content/form of embodied artistic practice and an engagement of art in politics and society.
Borrowing the principle of interconnection and interdependence from ecosystemic thinking, the process sought to forge nonhierarchical polly-directional links between many different aspects:
-Eco-intersectionality and multispecies thinking, in contrast to colonial ideas of wilderness (something to be dominated, conquered, civilized, fantasized/romanticized, othered) and some human sciences that were fundamental to the establishing of the modernist, civilizatory, colonial project (such as architecture and urbanism, and anthropology).
-Myth-making in relation to social struggles, exemplified in Afrofuturism and Queer science fiction.
-The constant effort to affirm the existence of certain sectors of society, so that they are not made disappeared, erased, exploited, violated, invisibilize.
-The decentralized, flexible, fastly reactive, principle of choreographic organization of the protests in Hong Kong that exemplifies a new ecological approach to social action, ie “be like water.”
-Some traditional social practices happening in Hampstead Heath, like cruising, and how public green spaces offer potential space to rethink the ways we live in the city and interact as a society (whilst perhaps we should doubt if it is possible to step outside capitalistic white hetero patriarchal normativity; this is perhaps a misguided fantasy).
The work we are doing at Hampstead Heath comes in a series of sections. Solo pieces choreographed by the MA students with input from the process “Manifestos for a dance in a pandemic or dances for non humans or where myth sits, reclaiming-phantasy-the portal”. Smaller group pieces (that are not present during the day of internal presentations that you are taking part in) are “The Chain” and “Obsidian Practice or the purge/the heal aka privilege/responsibility aka ...”. Finally, there are whole group configurations: “Intersectionality”, “S-o-l-i-d-a-r-i-t-y” and “Theater Of The Oppressed” (that also will not be presented). These pieces are independent, yet in dialogue with each other. They can stand alone, or be performed in a variety of sequences (i.e. there is no prescribed order).
The artists involved in this project come from different locations around the planet, and have different backgrounds and ambitions. Although we share dance as a common language, our different positionalities, beliefs and experiences creates a rich mix of contributions and productive friction. To quote Donna Haraway, we tried to stay with the trouble. This trouble is at the center of the artistic research in which we have engaged. We mapped and shared our histories, discovering both commonalities and the differences between our personal and national oppressions. In dance, we have found a way to move forward from separation and conflict. We exercise care and find support and comfort through the pleasure of our bodies, our company and the connection with other species.
The piece was developed in a circular motion, starting with the costumes first. Every piece of costumes we are using is from the archive amassed since the 70’s by LCDS/The Place; coming from hundreds of different dance pieces done in the last 50 years by choreographers and dancers trying to make sense and reinvent the world through dance. A strong LGBTQAI+ representation is noticeable in that archive, clearly recognised in the high levels of creativity, faggotry, queer fantasy, working of gender archetypes, rebels and futurism. These costumes provide a spiritual lineage that leaks and it’s recalled in this project,” invisibly”. We are wearing again their clothes, dancing in our ways their dances, maintaining their legacy, honouring dance as a fundamental part of society and our culture.
We are not able to perform the work in front of a live audience, but the work has been and it’s still being presented every time we practice at Hampstead Heath, and we are developing strategies to communicate it. For example, we dis a film with Alexandros Pissousous, and an Instagram takeover (posting the manifestos we have written for a dance in a pandemic). We have produced some interviews and will exhibit video documentation of our live explorations too; this compromise respects the health measures without letting them stop us completely.
Over several days, we have been experimenting with various forms of audience engagement and participation, and we will continue to do so. We hope we have found a way to exalt what is already there, and what people value from that space, without disturbing it: the trees, the openness, the greenery, the multispecies encounters, the apparent suspension of the capitalistic time, the connection to what's palpable, proximite and experienceable.
Texts by anthropologist David Edgar and conservation architect Sam Causer accompany the project extending on invisible but present realities that are built into the material configuration and use of Hampstead Heath and it’s historic relevance for people whose freedom, dignity and justice is intrinsic to the viability of their existence and everyday life.
This dance is for the trees and animals of the park; it is for our friends and family and colleagues; it is for us. It is enabling survival, and seeking to extend this liveness to others. It helps us to grieve and grow. It is providing us with tools to face and deal with the challenging contemporary issues we referred to above; and whilst facing the complications of meeting and doing a dance project during a pandemic, and not being able to use the technologies we have in our bodies to connect and support each other, we still aimed to practice the unlearning of harming behaviors.
This project was done in collaboration with the trees and all species and soil living interdependently in Hampstead Heath.
Performed and developed in collaboration with and with contributions from: Alexander Benjamin, Aliki Dermat, Catalina Donoso, Daniel Prats, Fruzsina Nagy, Irene Gimenez Montes, Katerina Chaida, Kasey Lachenicht, Pauline Robin, Elena Rocio Chacon Sampano, Yolette Yellow-Duke, Yun Cheng, Madli Paves
Concept, direction, music, facilitation: Carlos Maria Romero aka Atabey Mamasita
Choreographic assistance and production: Natifah White
Costumes: Frances Morris
With workshops by: Sam Causer, Harun Morrison, Thomas Goodwin, Florence Peake, Mayfield Brooks
Text contributions: David Edgar, Sam Causer
Training: Joseph Funnell, Hilary Stainsby
Program coordination, production, rehearsal director: Hilary Stainsby
Program director: Martin Hargreaves
Made possible with ressources of: London Contemporary Dance School / The Place
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Special playlist for wandering at Hampstead Heath for the occasion of an internal live presentation done in October 2020.