Art as a political statement

In our first choreography lesson, we were put in to small groups of three. Then each group was given a stimulus to annotate and interpret movements to use in a performance if the focus was based around that stimulus. Then after 10 minutes of discussing and annotating with my group, we switched to another stimulus and deciphered it. We repeated this another 3 times and then discussed the stimulus as a whole class, giving forward ideas and theories we had about the pieces. The first piece of stimulus me and my group looked at was called 'Un Violador en Tu Camino'('A rapist in your path': Chilean protest song becomes feminist anthem, 2020) which is translated in English to 'A Rapist in Your Path'. My group and I managed to grasp an idea of what the piece was about, we interpreted that it was a movement about feminism and the women in the protest all appeared united from the position the people were in. Although we gathered the main concept of feminism, the protest was also about fighting against rapists and the position the women are holding in the piece is a symbol of feminism.

(J.Swain,2022) This is our annotated version of 'Un Violador en Tu Camino' from the class. Later in our groups we created a sequence based on 'Un Violador en Tu Camino' where we used a hand bound symbol above our heads, along with covering our eyes, ears and mouth to convey the restriction the women in the protest acted out. We also thought that maybe the reason the women in the protest covered those parts of their body in the protest was to show that even though they felt restricted and possibly controlled towards the opposition, the women were still fighting. I felt as though it was important for the piece to be viewed as strong and fierce as the protest was all about coming together as women and fighting for whats right, therefore I encouraged ideas of unison and repetition in this small performance my group and I put together. After we choreographed a small sequence, we showcased the piece to the rest of the class and compared the performances to the stimuli, to see where the message or relevence came across. Personally I found that the majority of the pieces came across through with the movements that were made, however the sequence that was based around the 'Scar of Bethlehem' (by Banksy) I found hard to see the link between movement and the piece of art. This may be because I struggled to annotate and question what the piece of art meant when we completed the notation task in our groups. The photo we got of the protest was from this video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5AAscy7qbI Here is the piece of art 'Scar of Bethlehem' by Banksy annotated by my class.

(J.Swain,2022) After discussing and looking at other notations from my peers, I learnt and discovered that the posible meaning of the art could be to do with religons being so divided and wanting to keep their beliefs seperate. In addition, another contribution was suggesting with more detail that it was representing religion and war, and how different beliefs can cause disagreement and disruption, I took this comment onboard and thought it was a really interesting point. After researching on the art work, I learnt that the piece is to encourage people think about the the Palestinians living in a divided city.(Banksy's nativity – with bullet hole in place of star – unveiled in Bethlehem, 2017). Overall I really enjoy annotating a piece of art or general subject to form a performance as you can gather and brainstorm ideas from one topic that can lead you into either another angle of a subject or movements and dynamics to interpret a message. I am inspired once again by this technique for a starting point and therefore I will be motivated to use this device to create my choreography this year. J.Swain. 2022. 'Un Violador en Tu Camino' annotation. [Image] [Accessed 2 October 2022] J.Swain. 2022. Banksy- 'Scar of Bethelehem annotation'.[Image] [Accessed 2 October 2022] The Guardian. 2017. Banksy's nativity – with bullet hole in place of star – unveiled in Bethlehem. [online] Available at: [Accessed 2 October 2022]. Youtube.com. 2020. 'A rapist in your path': Chilean protest song becomes feminist anthem. [online] Available at: [Accessed 28 September 2022].