#NUD in #yyj (Oct 14 2pm "Odeon Alley")

Naked Ugly Dancing

#NUD in #yyj

Saturday, October 14

2 pm

"Odeon Alley"

700 Block of Yates St

Victoria, BC

-- Part of Open Actions Monthly

Everyone welcome.

Photo by Miyoko Caubet, #NUD in #yyj September 2017

I will ugly dance naked.

Why? •Healing ritual. •Cultural antidote. •Humanization. •I am a human canary ("in a coal mine") and Stage 4 cancer survivor. As a longtime performance artist using my own naked, vulnerable body/self, I share and create space for vulnerability. •I am dancing the ugly out on behalf of myself and my dehumanizing, destructive culture. •The casual violence of our dominant culture is systemic, structural, and we learn to tolerate it pre-verbally. So, in my art (and life), I explore purposeful, visceral vulnerability. Facebook event link

The Thin Edge of the Wedge

A friend asked me if I believed in the current structures and, if not (I don't), what would I replace them with?

Another friend asked me why we didn't hand out flyers at our Boxing Day AnthropoScene or ask people, "What are you doing to create the extinction crisis we face?"

I got really irritated with both of them and I'm still irritated.

Regarding handing out flyers and asking people point blank... seriously? Ya, the reason I have diligently used my naked, VULNERABLE self/body as an expressive/artistic/political statement for  MORE THAN 10 YEARS of HEAVY LIFTING is because I haven't thought about flyers or asking people pointed questions. 

The decision to intervene, to trouble, to create—dare I say it?!—discomfort is purposeful.

Portrait of me by Elemental.

In my portrait here, by Elemental, she used an interview she conducted while sketching me to pull my quote. I say: "This is a culture of avoiding pain at all costs." 

But it's worse than that! We're a culture of avoiding discomfort at all costs. 

And, hypocrite that I am—because who cannot be a hypocrite in this culture?—like pretty much all of my cultural criticism, I am also criticizing and implicating myself. I have said many times and I'll say it again: I'm teaching what I need to learn.

I know that the work I've done in the Human Body Project and the new AnthropoScene Collective isn't easy to parse. 

It's more like a poke in the psyche for the people who come upon it. Yes, it creates discomfort. I dunno, is discomfort worse than facing mass extinction? A fate that is decidedly closer with President-of-the-Petrostate Trump's inauguration. 

Just because our society's emotional/neurological systems haven't evolved to FEEL the PAIN and seriousness of the ongoing situation so that in most cases NO AMOUNT of logic will penetrate... I'M supposed to figure out a surefire way of reaching people?!

And I'M supposed to know the best system to replace it with?!

This is what I know and have been expressing in my personal/political art practice for more than 10 years: we don't understand or deal with VULNERABILITY. 

Because in this ego-based culture, in this culture built on millennia of domination and violence, our understanding of vulnerability is suppressed pre-verbally. 

(From my personal perspective of doing DECADES of self-study and therapies to heal, I have come to understand my own PTSD-like nervous system symptoms as something that happened at birth. Simply put, my extremely sensitive baby being couldn't believe I had landed in such a cruel, unloving, DISCONNECTED place and my extremely sensitive 55-year-old being still can't. Ya, ya, people are basically kind but are emotionally damaged, etc. I'm on board with that. That's the whole point.)

We are all walking around in various states of PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder). To cope, we learn to suppress our vulnerability. This suppression of vulnerability is especially socialized and internalized by masculine beings.

So conversations about climate change, mass extinction and the end of capitalism as an idea that functions for the good of most people—incredibly challenging conversations—are impossible to have when one-upmanship is the norm. 

And impossible to have when one-upmanship (a nicer word for domination and violence) created the situation in the first place. Hence thinkers such as Audre Lorde: "The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house."

The choices the American people had for electing a leader were mistress-of-realpolitik Hillary Clinton (status quo, or, arguably, worse) and an INSANE PERSON addicted to one-upmanship. The system—and many people—allowed the insane person to win. 

The current structures of English and most dominant languages, as well as dominant institutional structures for governance, "trade," education, etc. do not allow for us to have the kind of conversations we need to have AND have created the situation we are in.

As I explained to the friend who asked me what structures I would replace the current house of cards with, that's not my job! I'm the thin edge of the wedge already!

Do the visuals help? The thin edge of the wedge people are taxed in a way that most people couldn't possibly comprehend. We're up front chip-chip-chipping away, creating the space for movement and change.

Like the tip of any wooden doorstop, we are beaten and battered but, at least in my case, still in service.

Not only that, "be the change" has been my purpose from the beginning. To own and hold vulnerability, to share vulnerability, I do work that is exactly the opposite of comfortable. 

And, not only that!! To offer a space to be vulnerable and show up vulnerably is exactly what we need to have honest and NECESSARY conversations.

As I explained to both of my friends, after doing this for more than 10 years, my work is about due diligence. I show up and do the work. I don't get money. I don't get jobs. I am not generally befriended or welcomed by art or theatre people. Academics don't get it. I am CONSTANTLY coming up against criticism and judgment, my own and others; or worse, indifference. There are moments of fun when I'm actually out there but far more moments of difficulty (MENTAL ILLNESS/processing shit-type stuff) behind the scenes. I got Stage 4 cancer for fuck's sake.

DUE FUCKING DILIGENCE. I hereby honour myself.

As my friend suggested I ask: what are you doing to prevent the mass extinction crisis in which we find ourselves?

I try not to rant but so be it.

The next AnthropoScene will take place in solidarity with the Million Women's March on January 21, 1pm, in Centennial Square, Victoria, BC.

Vulnerability is the Key

As a yoga practitioner and yoga teacher, yogic concepts have been very powerful growing tools in my life. Two of those concepts, compassion and presence (i.e. the act of being present), are simple to understand but difficult to embody. I mean I, for one, have difficulty with my family of origin and my next-door neighbours compassion-wise. And, while I have not found the usual absentizing substances useful for me for a long time, I would happily take a holiday from myself and read detective novels and eat cookies and popcorn in bed for three weeks if I got the chance. I am no shining star.

In my day-to-day life I also watch myself and my social discomfort. I often feel like I don't belong and that people are judging me. I have various ways I try to defend myself against this discomfort. My defences put people off. I'm just human. What I'm trying to point out is that we all have these kinds of difficulties and they hold us back. Much of our social interaction is about avoiding vulnerability.

When we are overcompensating, when we are not present, when we are not able to feel compassion, we make the wrong choices. This applies on a macro- and micro-level. This applies to the current mess in my own head and the current mess in the world.

Many people are working on their difficulties these days. We want to feel better. We want to be more compassionate. That's why TV shows like Oprah and Dr. Phil are so popular. People want clues. Oprah and Dr. Phil tell people what to do. I suggest this works only to a point. Many spiritual advisers and religions also offer less than practical advice.

For those of us who are ready, there is a deeper place that Dr. Phil and Oprah and Deepak Chopra and many pastors don't seem eager to go to. There is a key to working on these individual icky places and our collective fucked-upness. That key is learning to experience vulnerability. This has to be experiential and visceral, i.e. felt.

In this project, i.e. my particular choice for exposing myself and others to a shared experience of vulnerability,  I'm saying that by dealing with nakedness (mine and those who join me; this self-exposing blog) you are going to feel vulnerable. I'm not saying this makes sense for everyone, but the people who are drawn to this project are looking for that kind of experience. I created this project because I need this kind of experience.

Another yogic concept is the idea of practice. The more practice we have feeling vulnerable, the easier it gets until, who knows, we may get better at being present and compassionate. This will aid us individually and globally.