The Banshee’s words are mostly illegible but at times crys- talize into messages, stories, recollections:
in 8th grade… Expanding desert in China… Tornadoes in the wrong month… I saw ducklings ensnared with plastic can rings. A storm about 10 years ago that blew out the power in my neighborhood…Listening to Rabbi Arthur Waskow speak…Parents’ accounts of colder and drier winters in the area where we lived before the hydropower station and a giant artificial water reservoir were built… An Inconvenient Truth… Later seasons, migratory birds arriving later…The Brisbane floods…Hurricane Sandy… The Banshee retreats into a tent in the space, lit from within and amplified muttering…rising fear, rising tem- peratures, rising waters, rapid losses, rapid extinctions, rapid events, uncertainty unmasked… Ritual attendants in the space give you tasks scrawled on bits of recycled paper and invite you into creating a trace of your experience in the space. The Banshee continues mut- tering from within the tent, but something has shifted. Now she knows your names and she knows your deepest secret superpowers, and she weaves them into the room in a sing song voice… Empathy… diving in and starting something from scratch… bringing different ideas together… I can read bodies… visioning a reality unknowingly needed… unexpected encounters – collaborative power with plants… reading a room… I am a connector…I’m a chameleon, I adapt well in new environments… making something out of nothing… patient strategic optimism… my superpower is my imagination… cool, calm, collected, and organized… introducing people who share common goals… forging brilliant connections… able to create happenings… com- plex problem solving, communicated simply… thoughtful diplomat leads with gut… holding space, words, and listen- ing… facilitating safer spaces… spontaneous translation of feelings to words… deep listening…
I went to my teachers and asked them: What do you do when you don’t know what to do? Crawl into the room What do you do when you don’t know what to do? Invite your friends into the process, bring materials, make a mess.
Create arbitrary structure to support you.
I have three things to say.
One, two. three. I have one thing to say. One, one, one, one. three.
You already know everything you need to know in your body now. This is a lecture on crisis. This is a climate gathering. This is a crisis.
Breathe. Bring attention to sensation.
Ohhhhhhhhhh. No. Stay present. Don’t fake it. Fire, fire, fiiiiiiiiiire. Rising waters.
ZShaw (left) as the banshee during a Climate Gathering performance in New York City
500 years of colonialism burning in the skies. Floating in fetid flood waters. Soaking into our skin. Suffocating atmospheres. A history of anti-environment and anti- and anti- and anti-Blackness.
Musician Byron Au Yong works with audience members to gather water and sounds during a Climate Gathering performance
Livable Futures: https://livablefuturesNow.org
swinging in the wind, bubbling water and rising fireflies, the tapping of a woodpecker…
What’s your earliest memory of climate change?
Interactive Online Version of Climate Banshee / Climate Gathering: https://climategatheringredux.webflow.io/ Wexner Center for the Arts Interview about Climate Banshee and Livable Futures: https://wexarts.org/read-watch-listen/qa-norah-zuni- ga-shaw
Resilience creates its own momentum, it is repetitive and oscillating motion, rocking, shaking, bouncing, the oscil- lation of sound as a microphone feeds back through the speakers, video loops, fractals unfolding, seasons. CLOSING L ivable Futures reverberates with questions at the heart of present conditions, questions about futures, livability, instability, resilience, and connection. What are we called to do now? And as many have asked before me, how might we become better ancestors? We welcome you into our practices as podcast listeners, newsletter readers and online community members, as contributing artists, and friends. We hope the scores we have shared are helpful and can be taken up, adapted or serve as catalysts for creating your own. And the question we like to ask at the end of our per- formance rituals: What resources are you taking away from this experience today? How can you share them?
Sense what remembering feels like.
You already know everything you need to know to get started.
What’s your earliest memory of climate change?
Score: Resilience Motions Take time today to simply notice where you observe cycles, repeated processes, and endings that are also beginnings in the world around you. How might you participate in these oscillations in a way that is both again and for the first time? There is no single, final solution to climate change nor to fascist uprisings and unstable lifeworlds. Rather, there are countless processes that we repeat, reiterate, begin again, to which we return. Each repetition is also an opportu- nity to do it differently. Take a walk and gather images or resilience around you. Create your own movement loops: A hula hoop goes round and round, a child bouncing on a trampoline, bells
The Banshee already knows your memories and as she moves, responding to sensation and awareness of crisis, she recites your collective memories: I was in college in my environmentalism class… It doesn’t snow anymore, not regularly like it used to, and then sometimes it snows too much… A Sunday drive with my family as a girl, new highways being constructed through farmlands and forests. Even then, as a child, I was alarmed… Watching our local brook erode and disappear… The Earth is getting warmer and the ice caps are melting… Experiencing summer on the West Coast become “fire season”… My first memories of climate change are the constant deforestation that hap- pened in my city from when I was a kid until I was 18 and the resulting change in temperatures that occurred over the years… Seeing the hole in the ozone during science class
[1] Dani D’Emilia
NORAH ZUNIGA SHAW is an artist, writer, and director for performance and technology projects at the intersection of body, ecology, collaboration, and liberation. As Professor and Director for Dance and Technology at The Advanced Computing Center for the Arts and Design (ACCAD) at Ohio State University ZShaw co-founded the Motion Lab for performance and tech- nology research and leads its residency program. ZShaw’s major projects include interactive media scores Synchronous Objects with William Forsythe and TWO with Bebe Miller and the Livable Futures social practice project, newsletter/podcast, and performance rituals including Climate Gathering , Upwelling and Oasis XR . She is co-editor for the new Routledge Companion on Performance and Technology (forthcoming 2025).
56
in dance SPRING 2025 56
SPRING 2025 in dance 57
In Dance | May 2014 | dancersgroup.org
unify strengthen amplify unify strengthen amplify
44 Gough Street, Suite 201 San Francisco, CA 94103 www.dancersgroup.org
Made with FlippingBook - Online Brochure Maker