Culture as currency. Culture as wealth. If culture is a form of wealth, could not the culturally ‘rich’ trade cultural information for acknowledgment, advancement or recognition? One way in which cultural history affirms the power invested innately in the image or text is to uncover its dynamic relationship to other cultural texts.
Reflecting on our day with our guest Jul, makes me think about creative ways to blur and straddle the lines between perception and fact, history, the imaginary worlds, and ‘real’ ones. Our theater exercise with Jul using an ancient Greek story, modern interpretations, and the theater was just that. Theater and dance are mediums of cultural expression which are not just vessels to disseminate cultural information but it also provides opportunities to respond back.
Look around you, do you see your history written down? Histories or herstories begin long before memories are collected and retold. Behind each pen that writes history, is a person with distinct perspectives, objectives, and agendas. Never forget this fact and draw your attention to how texts work and circulate. What about the histories of those which have been excluded due to race, gender, and class. Or those people who didn’t have the leisure of time to write their own historical records? What are your responsibility and bodily standpoint in the writing of history and how can we contribute to more inclusive self-assembled records and new historicisms?