 Thomas, what are you doing with my heart? Yeah, sorry. I'm so sorry. Good evening. Welcome to the 14th episode of the School of Resistance, an online format and platform for creating change, for discussing alternatives for the future, and to create a blueprint for politics of resistance, which is a lot to want and to wish for, but it's necessary. Tonight, I'm your host, Karolina Maciel de Franca, talking to a collective lastesis from Chile, speaking to Nora Amin, based in Brussels, and speaking to Susan Buckmoors from the US. I will be introducing them gradually as we proceed in this conversation, but I'd like to introduce today's topic to you, which is revolution today. We'll not only be talking about today's revolutions, but also how previous revolutions have taught us to use politics and to use art as a form to practice politics. So tonight, we will be discussing a lot of that. Before we really start this conversation, I'd like to open up for questions. If you're watching from all over the world, you can ask questions in the chat, and also email them to schoolofresistenceatanteagent.be. I guess we are able to put the email address in the chat as well, so you can join us later with questions. For now, I'd like to start by showing a video made by Coletivo Lastesis in 2019, where they took the streets of Chile. Thomas, do you have a video for us? Excuse me, Thomas, do you have the video with sound? Sure, it would be nice. I think the sound is important. I'll talk to you while you fix it. Maybe I can introduce some of the members of Lastesis while Thomas goes and fixes the sound problem because you came all of you, Sibila Sotomayor, Daphne Valdez, Paula Cometa, and Lea Cáceres. Thank you for joining us, and some of you are translating to each other as we speak, which I think is an act of solidarity in itself. I love that. Tell me, would you get to tell me a little bit more about how you got together as a collective and then how it came to the point of this video that we're going to see? And then afterwards, we'll talk more. Yes, we started on 2018, sorry, with this idea of spreading feminist theory because we thought that in our local context, it was really urgent and really necessary to help us understand as a society a lot of issues, many, many, many issues, but mostly feminist issues, of course. That's very important for us. We are a feminist collective, a political collective, an activist collective, but mostly an artistic collective. That's pretty much the place that we have chosen to fight, to do our fight throughout and through these different disciplines because we come from different artistic backgrounds too. We come from theater, from dance, from history, from social sciences, from design, from textile, like costume design also. So yes, what we try to do is to put all these different knowledge that we have, these different methodologies that we have, materials, languages, put it for the performance, put it on service for spreading these ideas, these feminist demands, these feminist theories to also express and denounce the oppressions, the violence mainly through for women, for people from their GPTQAI plus community and of course in the context of Chile, Valparaiso and Latin America. And with that in mind is that we start working little pieces in a small format so it could be adaptable. So we can show it on theater, but also on electronic parties like in raves in the street, in universities also as a panel, everywhere. We really believe in this idea of adapting our work and that's how in the context of 2019, there was this big uprising in our country and we decided to go to the street with one little piece of one of our performances that denounced sexual violence, but specifically to dedicate it to the police in our country because of all these denounce of political sexual violence from them in this context of big social uprising that we were living. Thank you, Cibila. So as I understand, you're artists from and intellectuals from different disciplines and you just gathered your means of communication and unified around your femininity to pressure the outside world. Through feminism, more than femininity. Through feminism, yes. Good question. And through a methodology that is collage. For us, what we do is a performance collage. Like all these little languages, there's not a hierarchy of one from another like everything is in the same importance because we think that people learn from different ways, not only through the words, the speaking words, but also through body, through the visual, et cetera. And this specific piece of performance that is now ready for us with sound, it takes place on the streets as I saw before and it has this very specific text to it. I'm not sure if we should listen to it first and then translate. Yes, maybe. Let's go, Thomas, if you want. Congratulations. I don't know about you, but I'm the goosebumps all over. It's so powerful to hear this message through the voice of so many women. And also, how was it for you too? Because you started in Chile in Belfariz, maybe, but this traveled the whole of the world. Anastasis? It will never stop to surprise us first because it keeps on showing that the power of art and introducing that kind of knowledge to your body, to body language and to different ways of expression. And it can show you the force of the world, how women and how the power of feminists, it's like you can feel it on your body because you are related with that pain. And so, or you're related with that awful things that society had taught you to think. So it's quite, it will never stop impressing us because it's art in his own way, doing his stuff. Maybe it will never cease impressing as long as there's still the oppression that we recognize. Nora Amin, you're an author, performer, theater director, choreographer, and you founded your own theater group, La Musica Independent. You also use your body and your politics on feminism, not femininity as a basis of your work. And what intrigued me when I read your bio was that you use the theater of the oppressed by Augusto Boal as a method, and you translated it to the Egyptian context, as I understood correctly. How did you do it? How did you find it? How did you come across this Brazilian method and find it useful for your own context? And how do you include feminism in that story as well? It's a very big question. I know, I love big questions. I want to start by thanking and cheering for what we saw and really recognizing this kind of global sisterhood. And I feel it is not just struggle against patriarchy and sexual violence, it's a struggle for freedom and equality. And I think the women have to be the leaders of this fight. There is no other way. For my story with theater of the oppressed, I met with Augusto Boal. I was the translator of one of his books from French to Arabic. This is how it started. We developed a friendship. He became also my mentor. I traveled to Brazil and I trained there with him and with his team and later with Barbara Santos. And then I started working with the method in 2011. Before I tried to make workshops, but it was impossible to spread on a large scale and it was impossible to implement in the outdoor sphere, public sphere. Exactly because it is based on exchange, equality, participation and the criticism of the oppressive mentality. So of course it was banned by the oppressive system, of course. As all the outdoor performing arts were forbidden under the emergency law of Egypt until 2011. And this makes us understand how performing arts out-sphere like what we did now, what we saw now is already a protest, at least in the mentality of dictatorships. Whatever is performed by the people and from their own perspective becomes a kind of protest and live demonstration, even if it is just a simple play about a girl who is beaten up by her father and deprived from going to school. This was our main starting performance with Tater of the Oppressed in Egypt in 2011. And it was happening in the context of transformation. At that point, everybody felt that the barrier of fear was taken down. And when fear is removed, our minds can think more critically and more freely. And with the barrier of fear also falling off, it was a possibility to understand the togetherness because fear is a tool to prevent us from feeling this togetherness. In this togetherness, also the discrimination between genders is falling apart even temporarily, maybe only temporarily. And then we can see in the image of the girl Samah, the heroine of our Tater of the Oppressed story, we can see in her every Egyptian citizen, whether male or female. We can see in the subjugation of the young female child, a subjugation of the Egyptian citizen that have been infantilized. There is a continuous infantilization for women across history, across patriarchal systems as much as there is an infantilization of the citizens under dictatorships. In our story, I just will mention this, the last thing, so not to talk too much. Many of the spectators are going on stage and replacing the character of Samah and trying to negotiate possibilities for justice so that they are not beaten up, they are not deprived from education. This happens by talking, by negotiating the conflict and the oppression. And it was amazing to see male spectators replacing the character of a female. With all the history of shaming of the man playing the role of a woman, this happened and this was a proof that there is something changing. But there was also the idea, the consensus that the spectators understand the character of the father as being the ruler, the president, the dictator. So it was an immediate equivalence between fatherhood, patriarchy, and political rule. And if we need to find the new governance systems that are based on equality, we need to dismantle this patriarchal figure because we are not only ruled by political regimes, we are ruled by patriarchal political regimes. This I understood also with the spectators throughout our performances. Can you elaborate on the letter? Maybe for me, I want to stick with this sentence that you said, that the distinction that you made and I want to understand it better. It's almost as if I'm looking for this moment where the audience in itself through dialoguing realizes that the oppressor is the form of this professor, the oppressor of this metaphor. Of course, in the sense of watching the father figure in this kind of hierarchy and supremacy, we understand through the discussion and the improvisation with the actors, of course, that the father feels totally entitled to inflict pain, to control and to rule the house because all the subjects in the house, the wife and the children and the daughter, they are owned by him. They are not owned by their own selves. They don't own their bodies. They are ownership's properties of the father. Oh, yes. In this exact situation, you can see the parallel with oppressive or dictatorship systems thinking that the governing body owns the country and the citizens are just part of this ownership. It's also a way to disappropriate the land and the country from the citizen and make it appropriated by the governments so that when we revolt, are actually reclaiming our identity as citizens. Yes. This to me, sorry. It resonates to me. Yes, finish, please. There was a woman spectator who suggested in her improvisation to kill the father. And she suggested that the whole family should cooperate together to kill the father because the father is already a kind of killer. And for her, this was also applicable for the political situation now that we should liquidate whoever tortured us. And this very critical moment was exactly getting to the core of the operation. We do not need to recycle torture. We do not need to recycle oppression. Otherwise, we also become an oppressor like the father. And then the bigger question, then how to move on and how to find forgiveness. How to find justice if we cannot forgive and how to find forgiveness if we don't have justice. I just opened more topics. I'm sorry. Yes, I love this box of Pandora here. I love summarizing a little as well, just to be sure that I completely understood your line of thought, which I think is great. So you mentioned the child figure is also a metaphor for the infantilization that I also see happening with women that we also saw in the video by Las Tesis where women are actually fighting back to appropriate their own bodies. And when you think of situations of enslavement then it's also about the disappropriation of not land but of bodies that then settles the oppressor. And this I think is a nice, before I come back to you, I will certainly come back to everybody, but maybe to introduce Susan, Susan Bocmose who is you with us tonight as a political, professor in political science. And Susan, your book that you published in 2019 is called Revolution Today, just like today's talks. What do you study in this book? Do you analyze revolutions of today? Do you analyze relations between oppressors and oppressed people or groups that are tired of it? Have you, do you have conclusions that were met here already in this, in the video that we saw in the talks? Well, maybe can you introduce the book or the analysis you made? Thank you so much. I will talk a little bit about it, but mainly I want to say that the book which the last picture I got into, it's a short book, a hundred pages, a hundred images. And almost every page is an image of a demonstration taking place since 2011. So it's kind of this constant, global willingness to perform in public space a different kind of society. And it's really extraordinary. It has no, there's no spatial hierarchy here. This happens all over the world. The last picture I got into the book was Sudan in 2019. But since that time, I've been collecting pictures from Miranmar or from Hong Kong or from Chile or from all over the world. You can't stop collecting these. It becomes a huge archive. But what I want to just say thank you for inviting me to this because it gave me an opportunity to find out more about Nora's work and to find out Las Tasis's work and particularly this wonderful, wonderful video and to know that you have been working with in a kind of solidarity with pussy riots which I knew from work I had done in the Soviet Union. So you see these connections happening. And I want to use my time just to say what strikes me, I had one image in the book which for me is just crucial. And it is when you, I'm sure all know it came, I think from Spain in 2011 from Madrid, la revolución será feminista o no será. The revolution will be feminist or it will not be. And it seems to me that that, if you really take that to heart, what that means, it's the end of an entire model of revolutionary work. So in my book, I'm still thinking about national revolutions. I'm still thinking about the history of revolutions through the French revolution, the Russian revolution, the word revolution has changed. The whole idea of the spatial arena of revolution has changed, everything has changed. And if you keep at the center the feminist impulse, then suddenly pieces come together in a totally new direction. And so, I mean, it was just extremely exciting to prepare today. And what has been a problem, it seems to me, until this moment is the kind of separation of the critique of precarity, from the critique of racism, from the critique of something else and something else. And suddenly all these pieces are fitting together. And you begin to get different definitions, like take the word democracy, right? Democracy has nothing to do with the history of the term. It has to do with the fact that the majority of the people in the world are women. The majority of the people in the world live a precarious economic life. And the majority of the people in the world are not white. So we're talking about a majority that is a totally different majority from what it would be inside of a nation-state idea of politics. So that's the first word, but also revolution. What is a revolution? It just can't be, one thing that's very important is the whole idea of stages is gone. That's been a critique of neocolonialism. But when you put that together with the feminist demand, then you get this interlocking of neocolonial critique with actually not only the feminist demand, but the feminine led movement of Black Lives Matter in the United States, then the Afro-American history in the United States suddenly becomes a global discussion, right? It's no longer wedded to one country, but it becomes part of the anti-colonial movement. That's extraordinary that that connection can be made. And what you do, Las Tases, and I just love it, you can't not dance to this video. You have to do it. And the beauty of it is that police violence of Black Lives Matter and police violence against women in the sense of not recognizing or protecting the violator in the home, i.e. the patriarch, whatever, and also protecting or violating women who are in public space in terms of their handling by the police, that these things come right together. And there's an absolute analogy, there's an absolute fluidity of moving from one kind of movement to another. And it's no longer about assimilation. It's not about joining the majority of your country. It's about a totally different idea of sisterhood or collaboration, which is global in scope. And then the other thing that I think is so beautiful, that I had some images, but we don't have time to show them. So I mean, somehow or other, the rainbow, the rainbow coalition, it's not just about LGBTQ solidarity. It is about that, but it's about more than that because what we see is that there's a beautiful piece of street art in the Gazy Istanbul demonstration, where a set of city streets is painted in rainbow every step is a different color. And you realize that what it actually means is that there's a collaboration of movements that have different colors, different identities, different diverse, the whole movement is diverse. It's not about the working class or even women. So this whole either or the other, the whole structuring of knowledge begins to destabilize to destabilize and become just a proliferation of possibility. So suddenly, as someone who I suppose has to call herself a theorist, these manifestations are actually creative of being able to see the problems of theory in a totally different way. So I think my book is already very much old fashioned. It's 2019 and we've gone light years since that. So okay, okay, but I have a new book and the new book is year one. And actually it's about the first century and it's more like what's going on right now than the one from 2019. So anyway, I'll stop. I like the fact that you started with pointing out how important it is for movements and protests to be intersectional. So not only, for instance, if I would have to choose between a feminist protest and an anti-racist protest, I would rather go to one and solve all those problems at once because they affect me intersectionally. It's not that I am disembodied from my feminine identity when I suffer racism or anything. So I think that's already a progress we made from the first wave of feminism where some of you may know the example of Sojourner Truth, a black woman who was denied full access to a feminist movement, one of the first. So I think that is already something very important that you point out, Susan, that these movements are starting to converge and actually discerning the commonality of the oppressor, which I think is what Nora pointed out so well that the oppressor is very equal in his ways of oppressing, in his ways of infantilizing women and children and people of color and then placing himself, speaking of him or the power itself as the savior of all these. So yes, yes, and this leads me to the next question. Also, minding the thing on feminism and femininity that we talked about is that nowadays here in Belgium, situating the situation here in Belgium, the word activism is becoming tainted somehow. People are mistaking this idea of active citizenship, which is you taking to the streets to revolt whenever it's necessary to an idea that is, oh, I don't want to be an activist. I don't want, people here don't want to be called activists because it's somehow the oppression is also there on the word level of not being able to call yourself an activist, especially as an artist. So how does it play in your contexts, Las Desis and Nora, and how do you then extrapolate it to theory, Susan? So maybe starting with the performing artists. How do you deal with this tension of being engaged in your work with politics but also meeting this idea of activism being an insult when you're, do you see this idea in your practice or is it just a European kind of, it could be very European now, the distinction? What do you want to start with? Oh, you already started, please continue. I experienced this distinction or prejudice towards activism from people who are very clear about what everything is. So they have clear definition, what performance is, what politics is, this is that and this is this, they cannot overlap and I find this not natural or realistic. And for me, I cannot distinguish activism outside of any cultural and creative practice because in our practices, if we need issues of injustice, discrimination, subjugation, oppression, we have to deal with it, we have to fight back and this is a form of activism. Any conscious action that we take during whatever practice we do is activism. Now, if we come to some specific contexts of the performing arts, I can say like for instance in Egypt or in Africa or maybe in the Arab region, I do not think it is possible to practice performing arts and creatively without being activist because we have to face a history of coloniality, colonialism, we have to face a history also of the state manipulating any form of expression. We have to face censorship. We have to face also corruption and abuse in many forms. So if we need to continue, we need to actively defend ourselves. We need to defend our existence. Also within societies that consider arts and performance as a luxury or as mere entertainment or as unnecessary. So we need also to be active and activist in the way to like claim our right to decide our profession and our principles of thinking. In some societies, there is a very conservative and religious thinking. We need to be activists there if we want to practice the arts, especially as women. So I feel the activism is everywhere and since ever. Whether it is mixing with political actions of protest or not, this is another question, maybe a more developed question. And for me, I think of maybe the Egyptian stage being a microcosm of the oppressive system for a long time. I think that the stage before trying to contribute to the activism of the society, it needs to revolutionize itself first. So I would say we need a revolution for the stage before we expect from the stage to support the revolution society. The revolution society is much faster than in the arts and in theater. Theater is still very much controlled again by patriarchy, by capitalism, and very much by the colonial thinking that performance is this. You have to be acting in a specific way. The lights have to be in a specific way. The women have to act in a specific way and be resigned to their objectification and to a certain tone of voice. If you dismantle this, if you go on the street, no, this is folklore, it's folk art, it's not theater. If you do a protest in the street with song and movement, and this is not performance, it is just a demo. Well, it is much more of an honest and true performance than anything on stage that is manipulated and deformed. And for me, I feel it's one thing. Yeah, or maybe also because of being with this tradition in the Arab countries, in Egypt, also in the Muslim societies, where if you want to do performance, you are definitely an activist to make it happen and to make it last. And also not to be instrumentalized by the regime, because you can very well be working for the state theater, in the national theater, but to be instrumentalized. And I don't think this is something any of us wants. I see, you've just pointed out how it can also infantilize as a sector. Sorry, Las Desis. I think that, notice it's quite clear because for us as a group, we can't see activists as not part of art or part of being a political body in the streets. We think it's all mixed together. I think too, if persons are afraid of that word, it's maybe we have to put up the lights because something wrong is going on over there. We're all, as human, we're always activating not only with our bodies, with our language and our ideas and our territory, with information, with music. Activism is a powerful word. It's a word that makes you realize what is your purpose in this life, in this tangential life that we are having. So I think it comes from a very privileged position to say that activism is frightening people or it's a word that you don't want to be related. I think art in his profound way is always looking to activate us. So I think it's kind of, if somebody else will think or be afraid of this word, I think we have to be more profound. You're not seeing more profoundly things. So Lea, I'm looking for a sentence to sum up what you just said together with Nora. Like, something like activism is only some kind of luxury if you're in the position of doing nothing. So when you speak from this urgency that you both spoke about, I don't know, we didn't go into the tree-leaver faults. I don't know if there'll still be time or I should just point people out to Wikipedia. Susan recently said that most of the world are being in the opposite part, well, color and racial difference part. We don't have that amount of money. If we see Twitter in our part of the world that is laughing America, we are more oppressed. And so if you can't realize that oppression body that's making an activism, it's something frightening is because you are in a privileged way. You're not thinking that the majority of the world are being oppressed and they need to be free by expressing themselves at the way they just do it or they realize their body will do it. So yeah, I think. And as to this thing that we shortly mentioned here about when do you choose to go on the streets or when do you choose or this is, I'm gonna keep this performance to work on for several months and then perform in a black box. Does it have to do with, well, the obvious one is here, impact. But I'm guessing maybe the question is more when you choose a black box, when do you do it? Because it seems to me from what we are speaking of now that the streets are more powerful anyway. So when you find yourself in a black box context within an institution, how do you then use your protest? The question is also how when we adapt our work not only to the street, that maybe the street has a context of protest as much more concrete, like obviously there is a greater power than in a theater, but what happens with our activism, with our struggle when, for example, we are in a theater, when we face a more traditional space? Thank you, Sibila. At least in our case, it comes from the idea of planting these feminist ideas everywhere. And although here at least going to the theater is a privilege, because it is difficult to access it for all people, it is important for us to be there too, but also to be on the street, but also to be in community work places or everywhere, because the idea is that these ideas are spread everywhere. That's what Daphne is saying, that for us is pretty much what we discussed first, like every place is a valid place for us to spread these ideas, to spread these demands, to denounce these oppressions. So if we have to do it in a theater, we're going to do it anyway, even if in our country, go to the theater is a privilege. It's not cheap. But generally when we work, we mainly have shown our work in activities that are not for free even in theaters, but still we are always open to the possibility to adapt our work to any place. And we think that all places are equally important because you can reach different people. In the theater, you're going to reach some kind of people, on the street, another kind of people, on a community center, another kind of people, et cetera. And the idea here is always to spread and to generate community, to generate a collectivity where we can find each other, when we can relate to each other. And that's pretty much what we think happened when, for example, we see this performance replicated in so many different cultures is that we are relating. So what we saw in that moment right now, I'm talking not what Daphne says, I'm just adding something, sorry. What we can see now is that there's clearly like this underground network, feminist network that is everywhere that is connecting us through our bodies, through our testimonies, through our experiences, even if we have never met each other, even if we have never spoke to each other, we are connected because of all what Susan and Noda also says, because patriarchy is everywhere. This fight is a global fight. In another talk, we were with an Indian activist and she said, if the problem is global, the solution must be global too. And we really believe in that and that there is a power of collectivity, of this feminist collectivity that, as you said, is made by different subjectivities. It's not only women, but it's crossed by race, but class, but gender, but by sexuality because there's so many oppressions that we share. So we really believe in the power of this collectivity where we can, for one moment, even sometimes forget our individual problems and be part of something greater, something bigger, that it's like you fight for your own oppressions, but you fight along someone that has other oppressions and together you fight for all these oppressions. And that's something that we really believe in and we really believe also in this, in the way to do it is through one way, art, through performing arts. That's the place that we have chosen. That's why for us also being called activists will never be an insult. It's like, of course, you know that says, yes, like you can make a division like, ah, this is my artistic face, this is my act, no, everything's together. You're really true to your statement when you say that you're dedicated to disseminating feminist theory through performance. And when I saw your performance, the cool one, El Bialadora del Estú, is with the sentences that you give, especially when they're translated, they give women throughout the world hand-ready made slogans to react to other oppressions. So it's actually really a tutorial video of how to respond to. And that way, the other insult often heard in the Western performing arts sector is that activist art would be too direct and too not abstract. And in a way, you prove them wrong by showing how El Bialadora del Estú is powerful through being so concrete, through being so, how you say, relatable. And so direct as actually a way to, I wrote down art as a way to inspire and gather a crowd and to make a mob to actually enlarge in your group of aware feminists. So I thank you for that. I know it's, I know from experience because I was born in a patriarch country next to yours. So I've had to deconstruct a lot of things that we were learned as children, all of us, I think. So maybe a question for those of you who studied several revolts and uprisings around the world. What has been the most, what has been something very powerful that we can just copy-paste into other contexts? And what has been working globally and what can we take further around the world to do this? As we have this, we now know that our common oppressor is common, he's the same throughout the world, just now the exchange of tactics and methods in the sisterhood. Yes, please. I wanted to say, when you mentioned the word abstract, of course our actions and expressions in the street, in demos and protests, they are anything but abstract. And in the Western performance and theater, there is this goal of abstraction. The more you are developed and brilliant, the more abstraction you can make. So it keeps abstracting, abstracting, abstracting, abstracting until it loses its own flesh and bone. You don't find the smell and the senses and the breathing and the temperament and the danger. Temperament, then- And the danger as well. The dangerous, the aggression, it's aggressive. And I feel, if we really, I mean, for myself, as a choreographer, performer and everything, I would like to learn from the street actions, from the protests, something to develop and decolonize the stage. So if we look at it, there is really a kind of universal language of movement and of expression. A kind of gestuality, a kind of communication. There is the borders also between the people. They are not so much there. I would like to learn how the body can be so well-routened and also so much powerful from the expressions of the body, the movements of the body and the being, the corporal being that is also embedded in emotionality and in a sense of dignifying this togetherness from a protest, how to find a way to learn from this for the stage and especially for the embodiment of women on stage. How to change this universal tradition of how women are portrayed and embodied on stage and what the female body means and what the female sexuality means. And also from the communication and dynamics between the people in a protest, in a revolution, we learn a different kind of spectatorship. So we live for a long time with a kind of division. Here the performer, here the spectators, those are watching, they are silent, they are passive and the stage has the discourse. But when you are together in a demo or protest, everybody is performer and everybody is spectator. And we watch each other while we do what we do. And this barrier doesn't exist. There is also a kind of moving away from this separation of who holds the center or the focus. You have to be multi-focused and you have to employ your senses and your heart and not only your mind. There is big space for empathy and I feel also big potential for healing and it's a kind of healing that goes through the pain. If we really want to find the healing, we have to go through the pain. There is no other way to make it happen. So this also I think we can learn from the stage. I love talking to you all. Ah, me too. I'm suddenly becoming very fluent in expressing myself which is not so often and also the smile of Carolina. Yes, I've been set to encourage people. So I'm right here. Please continue. I'm the one who should be checking the time. I'm not, but I should. I'm done. No, no, but I wanted to talk. As you were speaking of the stage, I also realized that the peripheral view, women's view, much broader than a man's. So we have this wider view. It spoke to me about your multi-focality and the points. And I had this question for Susan in the back of my mind since you talked about your book being full of photos. Maybe do you have a memory of how is there something similar in all these photographs of revolts, people revolting? Is that something that stands out to you as being very particular to that kind of context or very unfamiliar in that kind of context? That could be some kind of answer to Nora's search for the corporeality of a protest. If I may call it that way. Well, I think I answer one word, women. Women are in these photos, you know, and my thanks are to all the people in the photos. And the taking to the streets has been overwhelmingly led by women, not in one country, but across the world. It's really quite striking. But Carolina, I want to pick up on something you said, which was that in a certain sense, the video that we saw is a tutorial video for the world. I think that's really quite beautiful because again, I'm a pedagogue. I'm a pedagogue, but we need a new kind of pedagogy. And the idea that something like this teaches others. I think it's also totally interesting that Nora has found the calling of streets, performance, folk art by those who would prefer to keep it an elite practice. The old questions used to be, you know, like many means, aestheticization of politics, politicization of art, as if these two things were in conflict or whatever. But I think that's also been transformed. And part of this is the new technology, the media that are possible, make for a kind of convergence of politics and performance, performance and art. Art that's not art, but is as Nora says about anesthetics and aesthetics of the body and aesthetics of rhythm and aesthetics of song, whatever. This is not totally new in history, but the way it's performing an epistemological break in the whole tradition of what radical politics is supposed to have been is really important. I was going to say that it's not an instrumental politics, but I think to myself, isn't it true, you wonderful people from Chile, that you actually have a new constitution as of last weekend that has been voted in. I don't know how good it is, but I'd love to hear about that because I'm not sure that the only goal or the main goal is a transformation of national political representation. That is a goal, but there's so much more and it's precisely to me the global interrelationships. The situation has radically changed. Black Lives Matter was the biggest demonstration in the United States, I think in history. And its movement in other places in the world has been extraordinary. And again, this was led by women. There is a kind of problem because it becomes anonymous. So people claim that they are Black Lives Matter in ways that are rather self-serving. And I think that's happened in some senses with Pussy Riot as well, but so what? Let it be, because there's something else going on that's more important, which is, I mean, this corporeal understanding of what liberation and freedom is that Nora was talking about. And it's the opposite of ontology. It's the opposite of some sort of essentialism, even though it starts with the body or something essential that has been seen as essential, like race or sex or whatever. It's precisely an overcoming of those categories that tend to fix you into some box that's no different perhaps from the black box of the theater. Everyone's supposed to be in their place. Everybody's in their seat. Everybody is either looking or being looked at. All of this is in enormous flux right now. It's totally exciting. But I think you gave me an idea of when you spoke of aesthetics, I think what we could come to a conclusion here maybe today is the start of the aesthetics of protesting, like a sharing, and also the role of the internet, especially for your work. Last test is spreading so quickly throughout the whole world and being copied by so many women is actually indeed what you said, Susan, due to the new technology, democratizing, if it's even a word, making it more democratic for you to broadcast and disseminate your message. Do you want to answer on Susan's question on the... Yes. I'm going to take two ideas from what Nora also said, from this idea of activism and art as separate things. What happens here in Chile is that it's always expected that activism should come from your participation in a political party. And what happened with the social uprising in October is the confrontation against the political class. So that idea of this global phenomenon that arises from our work is the idea that activism not only belongs to political parties, it's a social, interdisciplinary, and also non-disciplinary. Understanding that in Chile, like any other sub-developed country, it also has high rates of people who are illiterate, non-professional, and that means that all those people from their... from their vital experiences, many families who haven't been to the university, today have a first generation of people, a first person, a daughter, who entered the university and who today is part of the Constitutional Convention. That's the result of social uprising and of art in the street with us and with a lot of more expressions that came out as well. That's it. So Paula was saying that she is going to take two ideas from one point what Nora was saying about how some people, while in Carolina also with her question, some people separate art from activism. She was telling us that in Chile, generally activism is related to political parties, for example. It's like something that's only related with people on the political parties. In Spanish, we actually made a distinction between the political and the political. And the political comes from all these institutional politics. The political is related to the basis, to what happened in the street. The political wears a tie. The political wears a tie in the suit. The political is like the idea of citizenship, that you should be responsible for your own well-being of your own. And what she was saying is that what we saw in this political uprising in 2019, now answering the question of Susan, is that there was this big uprising against the political class, against the political institutionalized, against the political parties. So in this moment, we can see how this... How these two are converging. There was something about anaphobetism. Yeah, but not yet. Sorry. I have some notes, but I don't have a very good calligraphy, so then I have some problems. But she said that how this global phenomenon against the political class is global, as all of you have said, and that now allowed us, at least in our country, to relate activism not only to political parties, but to the political, to the street, to artists, too. And from a point of view, that is also interdisciplinary and even non-disciplinary sometimes. It doesn't even relate to any disciplines and disciplinaries. And also how all this process led us to today, for example, in a country where also education is private, mainly there's been this big uprising since 2011 to try to have, again, a public and free education because we still don't have it. So what we have seen is that there's a lot of people that don't have access to education. But today, because of this political, big social uprising, we have people, for example, that are going to write the Constitution now that was just elected last weekend because the election was not for the new constitution, but because of who is going to write this Constitution. People that, for example, are a first generation that came into university of even people that don't have superior education. So it's really what we have seen is how the political parties have lost all the credibility, you know, because with this big lack of representativity, and we can really see a big demographic in that place that even if it's not representing everyone, because sadly there's a lot of different sectors of our society that didn't get to be there, that wasn't chosen or because of different systems to the election was very, very weird. So yes, but still it's still different than before. What we have seen that not even half of those people that are going to write this Constitution come from political parties. And that's something that is very important in our local history. Cometa, I don't know if you want to add anything else. I have an additional question. Paula, should I call you Cometa? It's much nicer to call you Cometa. So please, Cibila, tell us. The only little thing I wanted to add because of what Susan, I think, no. Yes, was talking about how body has been able to understand essentially like from gender, from race or from sex, even not even gender, is that from our point of view, of a decolonial point of view, we relate to some things that for example, Maria Lugones says that race and gender are constructions, are fictions, are fictional and are in service for the power of coloniality. And that's something that is still happening today because it hasn't end. Clearly, we are still living in territories with colonial basis structures and oppressions and extractivism that's happening all the time in all the spheres of our lives. And adding to that, Paula, maybe, thank you for making the distinction both of you between the political and politics because I think there's a thing here when we see so many protests, they are usually against an oppressing political power. And then you get people who are not happy with the situation and they go and protest, but then they apoliticize, they become apolitical sometimes, which is actually a contradiction in terminus because you're doing politics by revolting. So what you're pointing out to me is that something for the toolbox or the toolkit of the feminist revolt or the aesthetics of protesting is also getting into, well, politicizing, wearing this badge of I am activist, I'm an activist, I am political and all these slurs, these things that can be used as slurs, especially on the European continent then. But also by having these same bodies portrayed in Susan's book become the bodies of power in institutions, which is what I hear when Paula, I really would like to call you a commenter right now, but Paula was commenting when she said that your new constitution is going to be written up by what they call an inclusive group, a more diverse group that represents more layers of the society and then has more perspectives on how it can be multifocal, how we can then not have a politics of a standard on the stage, like Nora said so beautifully. Any other, I did check on the time, I said I wouldn't, but I always do. We have 20 minutes left and there are no questions as of yet from the audience, so we just get to talk and exchange strategies as long as... I would like to say something. Please, please. Very brief regarding the multifocus, because Nora was talking about the multifocus within the Carolinian protest as well, and that led me to think about how we actually through this methodology of collage are trying to get this multifocus, this idea that there's a lot going on at the same time, like a lot of stimulus, I don't know how you say that, simultaneously, like the visual, the body, the clothing, the music, the hear, there's some samples, there's so much going on, but actually everything that's going on, the way that we work it is actually repeating the same idea. So with whatever you see, you listen, whatever way your focus goes, you're going to get the same information just through a different channel. And that's very important for us as performing artists too, like this idea that we don't want to go to that abstract place, but we also don't want to go to the literal place. We also believe in the power of metaphor, of course, we think that the political is not only in the content, but also in the shape, in the way you produce what you do, of course, that's very important for us, but we work through this collage and this repetition, like repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, because we want to be sure that everyone gets the essence at least of the idea that we want to say. And we think that that's probably something very inspired also in our context, in our political context of protest, but also in our political cultural context of Valparaiso, that is a city that is full of different things. It's very a multi-focus place, because I don't know if you know a little bit how it is, but there's just a few streets that are flat, like next to the sea, and then the rest is only hills, hills, hills, hills, that has different shapes with little houses that you feel that are falling down from the hills and different colors. So I think that yes, that all these aesthetics, that are aesthetics that come from the protest, but also from our territory, it's also reflected in these strategies from the performing arts. And Susan, you're free to join in and just join in when you like, whenever you like to ask questions to each other. It's possible. Can you raise the volume a little bit? I was just saying that you can join the conversation whenever you like, both you and Susan. But I have an additional question for Alastazis. What are you planning to do next, for instance? Where are you taking the demo? Are you going to do something else with it? We have another secret plan already. ¿Qué estamos haciendo? Resistencia, ¿no? ¡Adelante! ¿Qué va a hacer la próxima cosa? ¿O es el secret? No, no, no. It's a secret. No, it's not a secret. We are working in a lot of things, writing, music, sounds, dress code. No. I'm going to speak in Spanish. You have an amazing book. You reminded me. You have a book and the cover is a match. Match books, no? De los fósforos. I was amazed by the graphics of this book. It's amazing. But what was the content again? ¿Cuál es el contenido del libro de la antología? Son textos de filosofía, todo de feminismo. Vienen desde enfoques feministas. También tenemos imágenes de artistas, de la performance. Es una compilación de textos y de imágenes de artistas y escritoras feministas. Okay, different, so different contributions from feminist artists. And there are texts and photos and multidisciplinary again as you are. Exactly like from theory, but also poems or theater, even there's a little piece of a play of Manuel Infante, like pieces of art, performance, etc. ¿Y resistencia? Daphne, no? And the other thing that we were working last year and this year, but because of the pandemic, it's been a little bit hard. It's a play that it's called resistencia, resistance, actually. It's the resistance or the reivindication of a collective right. And it's the collective right of a life without violence of women and people from the GPTQAI plus community. And also the right to appear in the public space, like to be how you want to be, how you are, like really stop living with all these oppressions because of only who you are. And it is a collaborative piece, so the only way to do it is with other people. So what we made is this structure that then we make a workshop with people in different territories. That's what we want to do because of the pandemic. We have only been able to do it like one and a half time. And then the play appears, you know, the performance. And it is a collaborative piece. So the only way to do it is with other people. So what we made is this structure that appears, you know, the performance. And yes, what we want to do is to do it with around 80 to 100 people. And we have only been able to do it one time because of the pandemic. And it was very powerful for us. I'm looking forward because it's, it sounds so simple, like the right to appear in the public space without suffering violence, but it already, if you really think about all the oppressions that we suffer, it sounds more like a utopia. It sounds utopic. It sounds like it's difficult to imagine, but maybe there is, that is the role of art that the power of imagination. And then going towards it. Not that I thought of you. And then one small question. I thought of you when it, when Sibila talked about the embodiment and the, the repetition. And then there was a part of the bodies. And then, somehow I thought about how you mentioned this man. In your performance. This man that became the, I think he became the symbol or the metaphor and some, somehow I was reminded of your performance. And then I lost my, I lost my connection, but I'm back here with you. Maybe I can ask you for your next secrets or your next questions of embodiments of the revolution. I made a performance in the 2015 with Yasmin Al Baramawi, who is a wonderful Egyptian musician. And Yasmin is one of the heroines and survivors of the gang grapes of the Harir Square from 2012. For us, this performance was for invited audience. And we tried to create a reenactment of the effect of gang rape. It was about performing the trauma itself, but also about finding a kind of forgiveness to that event, and a kind of mutual healing with the audience. Now, I think my next and my still ongoing performance project would be this same performance, which for me is a ritual. It was a solo dance that I was performing and choreographing with the music played live by Yasmin on a wood. And I still believe that this kind of performance, it has a lot of potential for development. Sorry, Noura, is it the one that you cleaned the floor? It's a red floor. Yes, it is called I Dance For You. And it is dedicated to all the women who suffered sexual violence. But we also try to focus on sexual violence as a political weapon. It has said to be one of the most efficient political war weapons. Like I can find that, yes. My idea for developing and continuing with this performance is that on one hand it is so necessary on the human level and also for feminist issues, but in itself it is one tool of fueling the feeling of humanness as a bonding between the spectators and the performers. And this humanness goes beyond gender and can create a foundation for collective revolt and healing. And with this performance we experienced every night, we showed it that with the male spectators, they felt totally identifying with our embodiments of rape. They felt it in their body. This is what they said because we are collecting written testimonies from them after the end. And this meant that in this action of rape, there is something that can connect us all beyond our genders and destroy the patriarchal divisions that were created in terms of hierarchy and supremacy. If we get to the core of it, because the performance of it is one way maybe to trigger emotional memory and also to create live metaphors and to help spectators who maybe did not experience such sexual violence to connect to other forms of aggression and violence that they endured that makes them in kinship with survivors of rape and makes us maybe understand the different aggressions we endure as political aggressions because they are meant to rob us from our human dignity and willpower and autonomy, autonomy of being and transform us into empty vehicles that can function like objects, dehumanized. So this would be my ongoing continuous and future performance project that is inspired from the revolution but also definitely from the struggles of women with their bodies all the time and sexuality being considered a tool and an object and a weapon for political regimes and for patriarchy. For me, this kind of performance is a way to retrieve the humanness, the humanness of all of us beyond our genders and sexualities. Thank you. The word that sparked with me was integrity. When you say that men also are able to, through your performance, to identify with the violations of the violation of that integrity, then you hit something, then you make it larger than a female body. Because also a lot of men are survivors of rape. It's much harder to speak about it, I think, when you're a man. And if we as women have such a longer history that makes us equipped now to perform it and to protest against it, then maybe we can support our fellow survivors. Because for me, this is really beyond the, it's beyond gender. It's about our humanness. It's a rape of the humanness. Yeah. It's a long way to go. It's a long way to go. And also to identify that in order to create change and ongoing evolution, we have also to work with youth and with children. And in order to do this as a transformation of consciousness and pedagogy, we will need again to fight rape and abuse for children. Because even for children, it is used as a pedagogical conscious tool for subjugation. It is not a mistake. And it is part of the concept of parenthood in some places. As a parent, you can do whatever you want to do to the child in some places as a husband, you own the body of your wife. So there is no rape if you are married. Some places rape is not even recognized as rape. But the core behind this is the definition of a human being of humanness. And that the humanness cannot be owned except by the person who is the human. It's going to add autonomous humanity. Yeah. Otherwise it sounds to me like a recycling of the whole history of enslavement. It's not over. It was never over. And it is still continuing. And the end of protest against it. Susan, you had an addition as well. You're on mute still. Sorry. It is a little out of context right now, but maybe not so much. It seems to me that the role of. Okay. For a while I was doing a lot of writing on for artists catalogs and things like that, and it became so much absorbed in the art world in a way that was extremely compromising. I felt, you know, artists wanted you to write something theoretical, which would justify their art, blah, blah. And I think that everything that we've spoken about here is not in that category, which is very nice. And I also have felt for a long time, particularly when faced with a lot of European theory. That theory is not the place you go for a justification of art. And I've been teaching Walter Benjamin. Not what he says, but how. So Benjamin as method. As method. And one of the weeks is just this one phrase. I have nothing to say, only to show. I think that's that was how he imagined his passage and back. And I think that this idea of a collage of showing. That the form of the theory is more important than the content. Is, is very wise for this moment. So there is no theoretical way you begin, you may use theory as you use other things in the collage of your multi focal presentation. But I have nothing to say only to show puts us in the, in the role of the mediator, the, the medium, the, the relation. The builder of relations and relationality. Another quote by you that I came across in an interview was that you said more than meaning something, it did something like that as well. And it kind of circles back to also. Yes, it's a practice. The theory is itself a practice. There is no first theory. Then art or first political program. And then action. That, that is really. Very clear and so exciting with, with the people who have been talking today. Yes, I am. I have so many more questions for you. I am also trying to synthesize, synthesize and summarize because I, I have this tendency of wanting to give a handouts in the end. But I think the most important thing is that this discussion about activism. And citizenship, you reclaiming citizens, citizenship as a responsibility of an individual living in its context to act politically. The autonomous humanity, the reclaiming of the humanity and the integrity of a human being as opposed to the common enemy. The, of the patriarchy. Art being a tool for change. The, the urgency that you feel as opposed to a luxury. That some feel as in speaking out. In, in speaking with you, I felt this, the urgency was really, really tingent, really. I can almost touch it. But we are virtual here, so I cannot touch it. And then the role of the internet. I think in not only this. Very strong image that I have of your books. The photos of mostly women being on the frontline of protests and through the, the course of history and through the course of how power was divided. I think that is saying a lot about the common enemy of patriarchy and intersections. But also of the, the, you remind me of who is taking power again and who should with whose perspective, which is women. Do you have things that you want to say to each other or do you want to exchange emails and ask for each other's signature? I for one, I, I hope we made a start here in this thing called the aesthetics of protesting. I hope you never are asked again if you want to choose between your disciplines and methods because I think you shouldn't you, you proved to me. So if none of you want to speak and none of the audience have questions, I'm going to check. No, it's just translating. I think we should keep these translate translations to, to Spanish for, for your next anthology. But also now, if you don't, do you have anything to say to each other? Si tenemos algo que decir no entre nosotras ahora. For me, just sending a lot of love. Very honored to have been among you. It's been an honor to share ideas that it's so important to realize how are we meeting this very big social kind of new system of how we are getting together. It's, it's quite amazing. Thank you for the time and for the opportunity. It's been very nice. I think I'd like to thank all the partners and Teagan's Academy de Kunst, the IAPM, Howl, Round Theatre, Kulturschtiftung and many others to gather up this amazing bunch of experts on change. And I was very honored to be here to mediate this conversation and to learn the first place I'm always learning and then mediating and learn from the knowledge that you share. And also I must say it gives so much power to be connected with you, albeit through the internet, but it gives so much power to connect with women and people who are holding on to the struggle, I might say. So thank you for that. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. The livestream is over. We are offline. Yay. But I think thank you offscreen as well. It's a little wonderful job.