Performing Statelessness: Creative Conversations between First Peoples and Refugees

Tania Cañas; Ruth De Souza; Genevieve Grieves; Danny Butt

doi:10.33303/gpsv5n1-2a104

Authors

Tania Cañas Arts Gen
Ruth De Souza RMIT University
Genevieve Grieves
Danny Butt University of Melbourne

Abstract

Performing Statelessness is a creative and practice-led research initiative that foregrounds stateless communities’ voices and lived experience to investigate what it means to be stateless in the context of Australia. This project extends the legal notion of ‘stateless’, generally used to discuss national citizenship, to stage an encounter between practicing artists who identify as having a First Peoples, asylum seeker or refugee background to understand the connections between communities experiencing disposession and displacement by the colonial nation-state form. The interedisciplinary performance lab at Bunjilaka Aboriginal Cultural Centre at Melbourne Museum explored the potential of performance as a de-instrumentalising and anti-extractive modality within a collaborative research process, understanding that communities can be the source of their own theory, and the starting and ending point of value.

Author Biographies

Tania Cañas, Arts Gen

Dr. Tania Cañas is the Artistic Director at Arts Gen, a community arts and health organisation, and sits on the editorial board of the International Theatre of the Oppressed Journal.

Ruth De Souza, RMIT University

Dr Ruth DeSouza is a clinician and nursing educator. She is the Vice-Chancellor's Fellow at RMIT University, based in the School of Art and Design and Creative Practice.

Genevieve Grieves

Genevieve Grieves is an Indigenous educator, curator, filmmaker, artist, oral historian, researcher and writer who has accumulated nearly 20 years experience in the arts and culture industries.

Danny Butt, University of Melbourne

Dr. Danny Butt is Senior Lecturer in Interdisciplinary Practice at Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne.

References

Arts Gen. “Performing Statelessness.” 2020. https://artsgen.org/project/performing-statelessness/.

Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. Verso, 2006.

Bloom, Tendayi, Katherine Tonkiss, and Phillip Cole. Understanding Statelessness. Routledge, 2018. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315200460 DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315200460

Butler, Judith. “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory,” Theatre Journal. Vol. 40, no. 4, 1988, pp. 519–531. https://doi.org/10.2307/3207893 DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/3207893

Butt, Danny. Artistic Research in the Future Academy. Intellect/University of Chicago Press, 2017. https://doi.org/10.26530/OAPEN_631389 DOI: https://doi.org/10.26530/OAPEN_631389

Cañas, Tania. “10 things you need to consider if you are an artist - not of the refugee and asylum seeker community - looking to work with our community.” Rise. http://riserefugee.org/10-things-you-need-to-consider-if-you-are-an-artist-not-of-the-refugee-and-asylum-seeker-community-looking-to-work-with-our-community/

Carlson, Bronwyn. The Politics of Identity: Who Counts as Aboriginal Today? Aboriginal Studies Press, 2016.

Conquergood, Dwight. Cultural Struggles: Performance, Ethnography, Praxis. University of Michigan Press, 2013. https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.4845471 DOI: https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.4845471

DeSouza, Ruth. “Walking a Tightrope: Asian Health Research in New Zealand.” Diversity in Health & Social Care. Vol. 4, no. 1, 2007, pp.9-20.

DeSouza, Ruth. “Motherhood, Migration and Methodology: Giving Voice to the Other.” The Qualitative Report. Vol. 9, no. 3, 2004, pp. 463–482. http://nsuworks.nova.edu/tqr/vol9/iss3/6/

Fanon, Franz. The Wretched of the Earth. Grove Press, 2005.

Gómez-Peña, Guillermo, and Roberto Sifuentes. Exercises for Rebel Artists: Radical Performance Pedagogy. Routledge, 2013. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203830420 DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203830420

Guterman, Gad. Performance, Identity, and Immigration Law: A Theatre of Undocumentedness. Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137411006 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137411006

Inda, Jonathan Xavier. “Performativity, Materiality, and the Racial Body.” Latino Studies Journal. Vol. 11, no. 3, 2000, pp. 74–99.

Jeffers, Alison. Refugees, Theatre and Crisis: Performing Global Identities. Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230354821 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230354821

Kershaw, Baz, and Helen Nicholson. Introduction: Doing Methods Creatively. In Research Methods in Theatre and Performance, edited by Baz Kershaw and Helen Nicholson, Edinburgh University Press, 2011, pp. 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1515/9780748646081-003 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9780748646081-003

Kozel, Susan. Closer: Performance, Technologies, Phenomenology. MIT Press, 2007. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/9780262113106.001.0001 DOI: https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/9780262113106.001.0001

Lazarsfeld, Paul. “Remarks on Administrative and Critical Communications Research.” Studies in Philosophy and Social Science. Vol. 9, pp. 2–16. https://doi.org/10.5840/zfs1941912 DOI: https://doi.org/10.5840/zfs1941912

Malkki, Liisa. “Refugees and Exile: From ‘Refugee Studies’ to the National Order of Things.” Annual Review of Anthropology. Vol. 24, no. 1, 1995, pp. 95–523. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.an.24.100195.002431 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.an.24.100195.002431

Malkki, Liisa. “Speechless Emissaries: Refugees, Humanitarianism, and Dehistoricization.” Cultural Anthropology. Vol. 11, no. 3, 1999, pp. 377–404. https://doi.org/10.1525/can.1996.11.3.02a00050 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/can.1996.11.3.02a00050

McKittrick, Katherine, editor. Sylvia Wynter: On Being Human as Praxis. Duke University Press, 2015. https://doi.org/10.1515/9780822375852 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9780822375852

Meromi, Ohad, Pablo Helguera, Xaviera Simmons, and Paul David Young. “Turning Theatre into Art.” PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art. Vol. 34, no. 1, 2012, pp. 169–782. https://doi.org/10.1162/PAJJ_a_00083 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1162/PAJJ_a_00083

Mignolo, Walter. “Epistemic Disobedience, Independent Thought and De-colonial Freedom.” Theory, Culture & Society. Vol. 26, no. 7–8, 2009, pp. 1–23. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276409349275 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276409349275

Mignolo, Walter. The Darker Side of Western Modernity: Global Futures, Decolonial Options. Duke University Press, 2011. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv125jqbw DOI: https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822394501

Moreton-Robinson, Aileen. The White Possessive: Property, Power, and Indigenous Sovereignty. University of Minnesota Press, 2015. https://doi.org/10.5749/minnesota/9780816692149.001.0001 DOI: https://doi.org/10.5749/minnesota/9780816692149.001.0001

Nield, Sophie. “On the Border as Theatrical Space: Appearance, Dis-Location and the Production of the Refugee.” In Contemporary Theatres in Europe, edited by Joe Kelleher and Nicholas Ridout, Routledge, 2006,.pp. 61-72. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203391297_chapter_4 DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203391297_chapter_4

Schechner, Richard. Performance Studies: An Introduction. Routledge, 2006.

Scott, James C. Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts. Yale University Press, 1990.

Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. “More on Power/Knowledge.” In Outside in the Teaching Machine. Routledge, 1993, pp. 25–52.

Smith, Hazel, and Roger Dean. Practice-led Research, Research-led Practice in the Creative Arts. Edinburgh University Press, 2009. https://doi.org/10.1515/9780748636303 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9780748636303

Smith, Linda Tuhiwai. Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples. Zed Books, 1999.

Szczepanikova, Anna. “Beyond ‘Helping’: Gender and Relations of Power in Non-Governmental Assistance to Refugees.” Journal of International Women’s Studies. Vol.11, no. 3, 2009, pp. 19–33.

Taylor, Diana. “Double Blind: The Torture Case.” Cultural Inquiry. Vol. 33, no. 4, 2007, pp. 710–733. https://doi.org/10.1086/521566 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1086/521566

Thiong'o, Ngũgĩ wa. Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature. East African Publishers, 1986.

Tuck, Eve, and K. Wayne Yang. 2013. “R-Words: Refusing Research?” In Humanizing Research: Decolonizing Qualitative Inquiry with Youth and Communities, edited by Django Paris and Maisha T. Winn, Sage Publications, 2013, pp. 223–248. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781544329611.n12 DOI: https://doi.org/10.4135/9781544329611.n12

Vettraino, Elinor, Warren Linds, and Divya Jindal-Snape “Embodied Voices: Using Applied Theatre for Co-Creation with Marginalised Youth.” Emotional and Behavioural Difficulties. Vol. 22, no. 1, 2017, pp. 79–95. https://doi.org/10.1080/13632752.2017.1287348 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/13632752.2017.1287348