Title: Remixing time through bodily poetics
Artist: Raffia Li
During their residency at HMK, artist Raffia Li develops a collaborative performance which rearranges the relationship between body, time and accessibility. Remixing time through bodily poetics culminates from an on-going dialogue with invited guest artists, collaborators, organization and visitors about the systematic and political struggles around access making, but also the creativity and poetics that can derive from it.
Residency 28 July - 1 September 2023
Opening dialogue; another time, to begin again? 11 August, 14:00-16:00 (online via zoom link), w/ Meet & Greet, 17:00-18:30 [at HMK, doors open from 13:00]
Opening w/ performance: 1 September, 17:00-19:00
* Make a reservation (mandatory)
* Online attendance (Zoom)On view: 1-9 September 2023
· If you think of a direction, would the future be behind or in front of you?
In sign languages with a European origin, the past is behind the body and the future in front, but in others, like the Urubu-Ka’apor sign language in Brazil, it’s the other way around. Here, the past is considered something visible and in sight, while the future is unknown and therefore, out of sight.
· Now, think of your favorite season. Would you choose one from four or more seasons a year?
Raffia Li grew up with 24 seasons a year and their favorite season is Guyu - Grain Rain. The saying of this season is: The rain gives birth to all grains.
“When I think of time I think about the river near my grandmother Qin’s yard. It stretches in my body like an infinite embrace. A 7-day / 24-hour regulation of time disorients my body, because it pretends to be existing without relating to my body, or any body. So I search elsewhere, search for other times, with other bodies, where time doesn’t exist, or the idea of time gets challenged on a daily basis.
A capitalist ableist time is productive and efficient, only to its own system, only to the privileged, only offering limited access, limited resources, limited languages and therefore limiting imagination.
Performances always work with time, and I want to work with it in relation to the body, to the disabled, queer, body of color, whose relation with time have been more complex and almost too complex to describe and still resisting in being described. There are no languages that can be clear enough to contain these bodies and their positioning and relation with time. So we tilt towards the poetics of the body, a remix of time.
Try to think of a touch from which you are certain that time doesn’t exist. And I will meet you there.”
Raffia Li, Remixing time through bodily poetics, live recording
Raffia Li, Opening dialogue; Another time, to begin again
Raffia Li (TA/They/She)’s practice has been focusing on working with “otherwise” languages as poetic and political space for relation making/transforming, challenging and interrupting normative ways of knowledge and value production. They tilt in slow dialoguing. They work with poetry melting in minor edges/senses, in forms of performances, videos or installations. Their art practice is deeply influenced by poetry, theatre of the oppressed, reading of Zhuangzi, their field research over shadow puppetry and their rituals in China, Thailand, Indonesia and India, their learning experience of being in a sign language art collective Shape of Language & their actions in the hutongs and streets, running a community art festival, diary/letter exchanges with friends, their MA study at Dutch Art Institute, observations of their dreaming state, and the river near Grandma 芹’s yard.