Culturistan asks its residents to linger and exchange in social spaces through readings, shared meals and environment. It pushes its residents not only to observe but also engage and reflect on the how storytelling, poetry, and other texts are situated in relationship to culture, place, race, class, and gender and for Class 1’s cohort~ centered around the theme of authenticity.
Today I shared with my fellow residents a presentation using my dance work discussing the concept of performed heritage:
Are humans mere brains contained in useless and meaningless vessels? No. We are living, breathing, moving creatures and this fact matters, not only for how we think about ourselves in a moving world but also how we think about thinking itself.
What if we were to start the discipline of history from the stance of bodies moving? In a world of economic, cognitive, ideological and political hegemony. Who holds a monopoly over ‘knowledge’ and critical thought? Might dance be an epistemological approach to critical thought? How can we learn from and through the act of moving? If we could learn to think on our feet, invoking critical frameworks, might we be able to sense how power moves and in turn choreograph our resistance to it? What strategies and sacrifices are we willing to make in order to reach our end goal? Is authenticity always the most valuable ingredient?