Gilivanka KEDZIOR & Barbara FRIEDMAN

4 - RED BIND

00:0000:00

RED POLE DANCE

Performance | 2012 | 45'

Video from the performance | 2012 | France | 3'43'' | Color | Stereo | 16:9 | HD

AUG 2015 | NOMADIC ARTS FESTIVAL - Between Wheat & Pine, Charcibałda, Poland

NOV 2012 | a beach, Half Moon Bay, United States of America

MAY 2012 | a meadow, National Nature Reserve of the Massane Forest, Pyrénées Orientales, France

Photos | Arek DZICZEK & Kirsten DETEC

Two women, totally blinded by a black hood, are both connected to a pole by a long red ribbon attached to a collar around their necks. For nearly an hour, they rotate in passing each other, until the whole ribbon is wound around the pole.

This performance is inspired by the “Maypole Dance”, a form of folk dance from Western Europe still widely distributed nowadays. The origin of the Maypole Dance began in ancient Babylon during fertility rites. Its symbolism has been continually debated for centuries, although no set conclusion has ever been arrived at.

Here detached from its festive scope, it opens up to various readings : by turns fateful dance, endless ritual procession, or metaphor of an animal convolution.

The performative act takes there a penitential dimension. It experiences the limits of resistance of a body in a position of constriction and sensory deprivation, submitted to a repetitive action. Paradoxically, it also experiments the anesthetic effect of this same obsessive movement. It analyzes the relationship to the other one, the inability/difficulty in communicating of the enduring body and its subdivision through time.

Deux femmes, complètement aveuglées par une cagoule noire, sont chacune reliées à un mât par un long ruban rouge accroché à un collier autour de leur cou. Pendant presque une heure, elles tournent en se croisant, jusqu’à enrouler la totalité du ruban autour du mât.

Cette performance est inspirée des “Maypole Dances”, danses populaires originaires d’Europe de l’Ouest et encore très largement répandues de nos jours. L’origine de la danse de l’Arbre de Mai (ou Mât de Cocagne) remonte à la Babylone ancienne et commence lors des rites de fécondité. Son symbolisme a été continuellement débattu à travers les siècles, sans qu’aucune conclusion ne soit jamais fixée.

Ici détachée de sa portée festive, elle s’ouvre à différentes lectures : tour à tour danse funeste, procession rituelle interminable, ou encore métaphore d’une circonvolution animale.

L’acte performatif y prend une dimension pénitentielle. Il éprouve les limites de résistance d’un corps en situation de constriction et de privation sensorielle, soumis à la répétition d’une action. Paradoxalement, il expérimente également l’effet anesthésiant de ce même mouvement obsessionnel/lancinant. Il analyse la relation à l’autre, l’impossibilité/difficulté à communiquer du corps en résistance et son cloisonnement dans le temps.

“Musicología “carnal” y estudios de género : una propuesta experimental” -

MUSIC & BODY MATTERS International Conference,

Universidad de la Rioja, Logroño, Spain | June 2012 :

"During the International Conference Music and Body Matters (6-8 June 2012),

I presented some ideas about the work of Gilivanka Kedzior and Barbara Friedman ;

their actions are an excellent example of how performance studies transfeminism,

"sextremism", postporn and pornoterrorism, subverting biopolitical thoughts,

"the body" and ideals of "equality" and "difference" versus a human rights increasingly reviled."

Susan CAMPOS FONSECA

PhD in History and Science of Music,

Master of Spanish and Latin American Thought from the Autonomous University of Madrid (UAM),

and Bachelor in Music Direction from the University of Costa Rica (UCR),

Susan Campos Fonseca internationally stands out as a musical and artistic director.
“From the perspectives of "carnal musicology" (E. Le Guin) and "corporeal feminism" (E. Grosz),
my research interests are Music and Philosophy, Music and Literature, Musical Theology and Mysticism,

Women and Performance Studies in Spain and Ibero-America.”