A Choreography of State Violence

A Choreography of State Violence will take the medium of a site-responsive multi-media installation performance composed of texts, video, sound, and printed materials, accompanied by a movement piece. The work examines events of state violence that were perpetuated in the public space from a choreographic perspective. It examines how what is perceived as incidental and individualized cases of violence by the state are, in fact, conceptualized, rehearsed, and performed in a specific bodily performance. This project will build on my interest in looking at the political potential of performance. It does so by exploring choreography as written analysis with the capacity to initiate evidence of misused power.

The premise of this work began when I met activists in Cairo during the Egyptian Revolution who were collectively questioning whether the incidents of mass rape that took place in the streets were sexual violence of improvised nature or a calculated state-directed counter-revolutionary weaponry. A few years later, the Black Lives Matter movement in the US refuted law enforcement’s argument that racially driven police violence is committed by a “few bad apples” and insisted that all violence at the hands of the state is an intentional and systemic one. The installation argues that choreographic scores can amount to evidence. However, choreography is annotated in diverse ways: as descriptive text, poetic text, stick figure drawing, and a system of movement analysis (labanotation), amongst others. Bringing all these forms to annotate these violent incidents brings various tools of movement analysis and human interpretation and builds a collective effort to counter such violence and how it is recorded and remembered.

To develop this research into an artwork, I aim to collaborate with dance artists, choreographers, and movement-based performers to create multiple interpretations of one case of a local incident of state violence. For example, as I examine the crushing of protests in Beirut, Paris and NYC, I will involve local activists as well as dance annotators and movers. This will result in a visual art installation composed of sound, images, annotations/sketches. Simultaneously, a choreographic score will appear in the space where the installation is taking place. This movement will be encountered in the space while also streamed in the installation space through the use of body cameras worn by the performers. The choreographic score is up to five minutes each, repeated in broken-down and slowed-down movement. Depending on the research incidence, it will involve two to five people at a time. The movement element of the piece appears and disappears in a crowd in the public space. It is recorded and streamed in the installation but it blends in the public space and can be ignored by the public. This form highlights how some of us are hyper-vigilant and can easily perceive violence or threats while others need to train themselves to such perception. Bearing witness to the hyper presence of violence around us is an invitation to embody that political responsibility.