by Sivamohan Sumathy
(June 30, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) On Sunday the 6th June, I attended a presentation on the use of video production in theatre by the Polish-German artist Karina Smigla Bobinski. The presentation which lasted roughly three hours was a visual demonstration of Karina’s work which was used in theatre productions as video back drop, installation or used as installation in conjunction with theatres and theatre spaces. Or to be more precise, this is what I understood.
Let me say from the outset, that this is not a review of Karina’s work. Much of the installations or the video productions were interesting and thought provoking; though to my own ‘artist’s sensibility, the work was necessarily nuanced and produced as avant garde within the spaces provided by the self consciousness of the (post)modernist operating within the European aesthetic. There was one that struck me as very powerful, an empty vacant white wall, that turned into shapes of different human beings when the spectator turned up near or in front of a particular spot on the wall to stare at the blank wall. This was self consciousness that pivoted on an attempt to understand the ‘other’, calling into question the notion of the self sufficient other.
In view of this sophisticated representation of the self/other, I was surprised to see another presentation that struck me as solidly orientalist. A representation of Iranian women through a shadowy tracking of their forms through the chadors (the tents) that they were put in. This troubled me a great deal and I asked a question of the dual othering of these women who are seen as not being able to speak on the Iranian stage: An othering undertaken by the state of Iran and the womanist sensibility of the German theatre duo.
SCENE I: Staging representation
This question triggered an interesting response from the theatrical space of our own stage that day. Here I am writing about the theatre space of the Goethe Institute in Colombo and the enactment of a politics of voice and voicing. What I refer to here is my viewing of Karina’s presentation with a bunch of other people, mostly Sri Lankans, at the Goethe Institute in Colombo. My question posed at Karina brought on a curious and disconcerting experience for me, one which has less to do with her video production and more to do with theatre, the theatre space of the Goethe as a centre imparting and sharing with locals the cultural heritage of Europe, of the past and the present; and secondly the drama of speaking, listening, querying, counteracting and in the end, silencing.
The scene of the theatre was as follows: Karina presented the productions on screen, punctuating it with extensive anecdotal, technical and production related comments. Her commentary was quite elaborate.
‘We’ as viewers and listeners asked questions in between the screening of the separate items. As many of the participants found it difficult to follow the presentation in English, Anoma Rajakaruna translated Karina’s presentation and answers and in some cases the questions as well, when the questions were asked in English.
A few questions were asked about certain issues, largely technical and about the thematics. Some had to do with the location of the production and the whys and wheres and whats of the production. One of the video productions had to do with representation of Iranian women IN and INSIDE Iran. The women were placed in tents (if I understood it right) and the tents swayed about, implying the movement of the women inside; and there were images of women’s faces projected on top of the tents. At the end of the short production there was an invitation inscribed on the visuals inviting the people, the viewers (of the original theatre I presume, not at Goethe) to come on stage to visit the TENTLAND. Only women were allowed. There was a script in Farsi, Arabic or some other language along with the German that ran across the screen for the most part of the production.
Then something disconcerting happened, disconcerting to me. In sharing this disconcerting moment with other people, people who were not present at the Goethe, I wish to perform a different kind of theatre, a theatre of discomfort and risk. I risk putting a rather private and conversational episode that happened between friends and colleagues up for public view and analysis. At the same time, I risk placing in discomfort friends and colleagues and in turn myself by turning what would be deemed as incidental into a political act of articulation and revoicing of my question. I risk jeopardizing my cordial relations with all those present; some of whom are rather dear to me.Yet, this is theatre after all. So, let me proceed. Here I reproduce an email I wrote to one of the viewers in that space, who intervened during my interjection and said that we should move on. Let me begin with the question I posed at Karina. My question was as follows (roughly): "While women in IRAN are not permitted to appear on stage, as ruled by Ahmadinejad, your own production too, appears to be a silencing of the women in a curious way. For instance, the ethnographic music coupled with the script that ran across the screen in Farsi (presumably) and in German spoke to me in that manner." Karina kept on referring to the script that none of us could understand as Islamic. To a question asked by someone else, about whether the script was religious she said yes. But this particular viewer who understood German said the German script running underneath was not religious. One of us asked, what the script in ‘Arabic’ said. Karina did not know what it meant. But she insisted on calling it Islamic. I have seen some very powerful representations of Iranian women in very intriguingly strategic ways. Also of Saudi women. The way women subvert (in)visibility. That was missing for me here.
Some one else, seated by my side, asked why did the theatre duo, Karina and the Director of the Drama, whose name I forget now, wanted to do a play in Iran. The answer to that was: ‘Ahmadinejad cannot ask me, a woman from Europe, not to do theatre in Iran.’
In reproducing this conversation, well remembered, I am not trying to level some kind of accusation of racism at Karina, based on "you said that, you said this etc. etc.’ She was struggling in English which she did not seem to be too comfortable with and I am willing to take some of what she said in the broadest possible light; which on the face of it was rather questionable. But what I found really objectionable was the fact that the viewers, rather powerful Sri Lankan viewers, powerful in that particular context only, decided to deem my question not important. This is what I found offensive and as an attempt to silence the voice of the ‘marginal’.
In order to give a sense of the theatre of that happening I re-present my case in the form of an email I actually wrote and would have written to my friend and fellow viewer who in my view shut me up that day; told me that we should move on.
SCENE II: misguided missives
Dear ………
I had to rush off the other day soon after the presentation as I had another appointment. I wanted to talk to you. [This is what I wrote to my friend in my original email. But it is actually a lie. I was thoroughly annoyed, thought it was a club and did not want to stay back and chit chat] The video productions were quite interesting, though I had expected to see the theatre formation also in conjunction to see how it worked together. But that is okay. No big deal.
I am writing this more specifically with regard to my question the other day to Karina and the way it was handled by you. I was a bit perplexed to see that you shut me up, or stopped the discussion on my question from proceeding. The question was an important one for me, important because it dealt with representation of women who cannot, seemingly, represent themselves. Karina was trying to answer my question, but instead of letting her answer, you intervened and said that it was not an important question there. I was a bit perplexed, because I thought it was an important question. Also, I really don’t know why instead of letting Karina answer the question (I don’t know how much she understood my question, but she was trying to answer it) other people jumped in to talk about my question.
Anoma started translating my question, but before she could proceed other voices intervened to stop it. Your exact words: ‘Let’s not get into a discussion on exotic Muslim women.’ In response another viewer said in Sinhala, ‘This is outside the subject’. But how could he know what was outside the subject and what was not, since my question or Carina’s answer had not been translated and this particular viewer had asked for translations of everything in English into Sinhala? What gave him the power or the knowledge to decide on what is important?: Because another male voice, suitably proficient in both English and Sinhala (you were also translating into Sinhala) could rule on that as opposed to my English (and absent Tamil) voice?
My question was about the video production in front of us. It was a question about its semiotics. You tried to link the video ‘art’ to a similar production of Karina’s which you saw in Colombo. I think that is totally irrelevant. Firstly, what we saw that day was produced prior to the one you saw. Also, more importantly, what we saw that day stands by itself , semiotically, and it triggered in me certain associations with orientalism. My words in the original email I reproduce here in order to capture my anger and frustration of the moment: "The very use of tents and worse, tentland, the way the women’s faces were used, the ethnographic music, the script in Farsi, which Karina had no f- idea about (Isn’t that a give away in the first place?), and she kept on calling it Islamic, but she did not know what it meant!!! And her attitude which I found repulsively euro centric: ‘Ahmenijidad cannot tell me, a woman in Europe, what to do!’ It was a case of, in a modification of Spivak’s words: ‘White women saving brown women from brown men.’
Why do I think my question was important? If you had asked the audience later about what they thought of Muslim women in this blessed country, you would have come across some of the worst stereotypes about Muslim women that are popular among non-Muslim people. I encounter it daily in my interactions with students and staff and with other people. I myself might be guilty of the same. Who knows? The visuals in Karina’s ‘art’ did nothing to dispel stereotypes about Muslim women in Iran or elsewhere. I am sure the person who intervened to say that my question was outside the subject has these views.
Why did you consider my question unimportant? Because it is about Muslim women? This was about women in Iran. But from my vast experience in discoursing on the subject of women any discussion on Iranian women invariably turns into a discussion on Muslim women in Sri Lanka.
Or did you consider my question unimportant because I asked it in English? Would you have condescendingly put up with it if I had asked the question in Sinhala? Or worse, Tamil, because you would not have had the foggiest idea about what it was all about, and there would have been nobody to translate. Or even worse, would you have not said anything if you had seen me as a Muslim woman? The absence of women visibly marked as Muslim gave you the authority to tell me, ‘Sumathy, let’s discuss it over tea?" You and I, non-Muslim and English speaking can be part of a clique and gossip over tea about Muslim women in chadors? Your words ‘Let’s not get into a discussion on exotic Muslim women’ continue to hurt and jar. I want to be fair. I do not want to pillory you for something you said in a hurry and in an agitated manner. Obviously it was not easy for you to ask me to keep quiet. You spoke hurriedly and the words just rushed out. I am not even suggesting that it was a ‘Freudian’ slip. No. It is not what you said that was and is irksome. The words have a certain usefulness for me as I attempt to make sense of the act of silencing. It was the act of silencing that I find objectionable and I find as partaking in a politics of othering.
Whom did that space silence? Me and not me. I had my say, and I left, presumably in a huff. No, it was not me you silenced. The issue itself was silenced and in turn, women who were absent there: the woman in purdah, or chador in Karina’s words or maybe the woman who might have spoken in Tamil. Again in an appropriation of Spivak from ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’: "Between patriarchy and imperialism, subject-constitution and object formation, the figure of the woman disappears, not into a pristine nothingness, but into a violent shuttling which is the displaced figuration of the ‘third world’ woman caught between ‘tradition’ and ‘modernization’ (inverted commas mine).
I am writing this in the spirit of beginning a discussion on the subject and not in order to bicker. Talk to you later. I hope the workshop is going well.
And talk to you all later.
Sumathy
 by Sivamohan Sumathy (June 30, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) On Sunday the 6t...){kind=link}
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