Gesturing Refugees: Participation, Affect, then Action?
No. 8 (2021-01-01)Author(s)
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Farah SalehIs a Palestinian dancer and choreographer active in Palestine, Europe and the US. She has studied linguistic and cultural mediation in Italy and in parallel continued her studies in contemporary dance. Since 2010 she took part in local and international projects with Sareyyet Ramallah Dance Company (Palestine), the Royal Flemish Theatre and Les Ballets C de la B (Belgium), Mancopy Dance Company (Denmark/Lebanon), Siljehom/Christophersen (Norway) and Candoco Dance Company (UK). Also since 2010, Saleh has been teaching dance, coordinating and curating artistic projects with the Palestinian Circus School, Sareyyet Ramallah and the Ramallah Contemporary Dance Festival. In 2016 she co-founded Sareyyet Ramallah Dance Summer School, which runs on a yearly basis. In 2014 she won the third prize of the Young Artist of the Year Award (YAYA) organized by A.M. Qattan Foundation in Palestine for her installation A Fidayee Son in Moscow and in 2016 she won the dance prize of Palest’In and Out Festival in Paris for the duet La Même. She is currently an Associate Artist at Dance Base in Edinburgh, UK, and is a PhD student in Art at Edinburgh College of Art, University of Edinburgh, UK.
Abstract
In this article I analyze through practice-based research how unearthing alternative narratives of refugeehood using the bodies of artists and audience members in the participatory performance Gesturing Refugees can contribute towards an interchange between the subjectivities present in the space, the creation of future responsibility, and a potential for action after the performance. I explain how a performance can turn into an event through participation, where the audience is considered as a collective of singularities and is invited to feel-think together, through a series of microshocks. Moreover, I reflect on how the event enables the audience to experience alternative stories and gestures of refugeehood by reenacting, transforming, and deforming the gestures in their own bodies, carrying them beyond the performance space and creating an afterlife of the event that could materialize in different degrees and forms.
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