On Saturday 4th November 2023, Bristol-based artists Howl Yuan and Ania Varez welcomed fellow practitioners and the public into the spaces of St. Anne’s House to be part of the Re-imagine Community Practice event. The group engaged with map making, games, and celebratory dances in the settings of Ania’s Cooperation Disco and Howl’s Arty Farty Karaoke.
Below you can access the audio and the text transcription of Howl and Ania’s conversation about social gathering, identity, collaborative friendship, celebration, and joy-making practices.
Both the event and this conversation are co-commissioned by performingborders and Counterpoints Arts for Platforma 2023.
Audio Edited by Baiba Sprance.
Text extract:
Ania: I think the question that I would like to add for us to close the discussion is: Why is it important for you to make work from a migration experience or through the lens of migration? Like is it important to you now? Is it not? And why?
Howl: I think for me, making work through the lens of migration is the way to acknowledge the differences among people’s experiences. If we’re going to make work from people’s experience as also a way to kind of like resist against or repel this kind of homogenized society, because we are different and those differences are worth attention’s, worth being acknowledged.
And yet, we’re aiming to acknowledge that at the same time in a very peaceful, kindful, graceful way, rather than in a confrontational way. So that is…you know, if you asked me by now, I would say that maybe it might change in the future. But yeah, I mean, I’m not sure if you had this thought because before it was a lot about me making my story, you know, or the work is coming from my story.
But at one point I was almost, you know, had this question where, you know, hanging around my head, saying – is my story worth to tell? I mean, as I keep saying these things about myself, almost maybe feels like I’m just like bragging about myself, I slightly shift to – it’s okay to start from, you know, as a self-indulgence as much as you wish, but I always thought it was important to bring everyone or more people in. What does that engage? You know what the story can burden and how it can go wider to engage different people, how it’ll relate to people. So I think that’s the thing maybe I’m more focused on right now.
And then there’s another really interesting story. I bumped into this artist this year when I went back to Taiwan, she stayed in the States for a very long time, for a couple of years. And reason why she moved back to Taiwan is because she didn’t want to just make about work out of nostalgia. I mean, I kind of assumed about identity politics and migrant status, stuff like that.
And so there’s a lot of self-deduction to go through, it’s like yeah I can relate to it because I don’t want to just make [work about] this thing, I want to make [work about] whatever. But I was like wait, hang on a minute like what do I mean by “whatever”? Is that the way we’re trying to resist some kind of whiteness, do you know what I mean? It’s going back to the issue of who is that mature body? Nobody…and actually a mature body is a European body. Right. So as I travel to be able to get that status, like you feel that freedom you can do whatever, say whatever or make whatever work… Does that mean that we are resisting some whiteness? And if it’s not then what is it?
Because her action is moving from the states back to Taiwan. So the context was quite, you know, the identity is literally flipping. So yeah, I feel like I’m saying too much, but this is sort of … yeah.
Ania: I really relate to what you’re saying. I think. Yeah. For me, I think you said it very beautifully, I don’t know I can say it in any other way but I think to me it’s important to… I don’t, I don’t know… for me it is not like necessarily a primer, like the central lens, migration is not necessarily the the only lens or the central one. I feel like queerness for me comes also side by side with that from my experience. But the more I live, the more I see that there’s actually quite a lot of lenses such as class as well, and you know, other experiences that people may have, that basically do what you’re describing, which is sort of open a crack and like a little space where, you know, difference is really acknowledged, you know, and this kind of existence that can be somehow on the margins of what is established currently as the norm or as, you know or as the priority as the system that we have currently, whatever any of those identities that are on the margin with a lot of differences between them and also with some crossing points, I feel it’s important to consider and to make work from that place.
So there’s that. But then I also have thought quite a lot about, how in Venezuela people didn’t really make work from any sort of identity politics point of view. Like I don’t remember any of that. I definitely didn’t. And I’m not saying that there’s no politics involved. What I’m saying is that there’s a very different thing when you’re like, you know, making work in a place with no structure, no money, and a a big regime on top of you. You know, people just didn’t… that just was not what would, you know, make the work. People made very abstract work, actually very kind of personal work. And, you know, I remember like the practices that were around me when I lived in Venezuela were much more about like beauty and exploration and very kind of internal questioning and way less about identity politics, way less about, you know, even being in any way direct about a situation that was happening in the world, which I find that very interesting and makes sense considering we were you know, there are dictators and there’s a danger in that. But I also find it interesting that, you know, I didn’t meet anyone making work about any other issue. You know, it’s all kind of this world that is, you know, much more personal and abstract, which, you know, has a lot of value. But then I remember when I arrived to the UK, suddenly I was, you know, either forced or gifted, I’m not sure, this language and this identity and these things that made me go, okay…So I guess to talk to this new world, I need to kind of talk in this language. And so I find it very interesting to keep questioning what my voice is as a migrant artist, as someone who’s migrated and who comes from a very different culture with a different way of making work and has landed here.
And you know, all of that mixed with my values. I’m always interested in, you know, just sort of questioning what that means and seeing how it grows. Because I do sometimes feel, am I making art like England wants me to make art? Like, am I creating in their language? And obviously I am, I’m speaking in English right now, but you know what I mean?
I just like, literally, have just adopted the structure of this place and how can I resist that? How can I try to get a hold of what I come from and choose the bits that I want from what I come from, choose the bits that I want from where I live, and maybe make up something else in the middle that is just mine in that particular moment, you know, a bit like what your friend did when she went back to Taiwan, you know, sounds like they just like got rid of the UK element. But could I, for example, without moving back to Venezuela, could I try to stay somehow safe within this world that I’m in now? Yeah. So all of this I find very interesting and I don’t have answers to. But that’s why, that’s why I’m interested in continuing to think about it and talk about it, because I think ultimately we need as many perspectives as possible. So it’s good to keep speaking to a certain degree and making room for others to speak.
Howl: It’s sort of a continuous discussion or exploration, on the thing we’re talking about. We can definitely share this afterwards, but I think it’s important that we [try to do this] regularly. I’m not sure, however it can be, but that’s something to think about.
Ania Varez (they/them) is a Venezuelan dance artist and community worker based in Bristol. They graduated with honours from the London Contemporary Dance School. Ania makes experimental and collaborative performances, working with other dancers, artists of other disciplines and with people who don’t identify as artists yet. They have worked with Lisa May Thomas, Laila Diallo, Terrestrial, Fair Play Productions and Shotput Theatre. Their own work has toured internationally (Taiwan and South Korea) as well as in the UK, including SPILL Festival. They are a member of Interval, an artist support network in Bristol.
Howl Yuan, or Yuan Cheng-Po, is a Taiwanese performance maker/writer/curator/researcher. His interests cross cultural identity, mobility, site/place/space and decolonised narratives. His works span different formats but are primarily performance-based, and are presented in theatres, galleries, festivals, beaches or gardens.
Main Image credits: Image: Re-imagine community practice: Social Muscle Club + Arty Farty Karaoke, Bristol, November 2023. Courtesy of Howl Yuan.
