ChimeZine is about the fight for global gender equality. This issue of the zine looks at our core tenet through the lens of performance. We use the term performance broadly, enabling us to ask as many questions as possible. For example, what is the difference between an authentic performance or something performative? Can meaning be found through the layering of actions with predetermined intention? Does the dichotomy between performer and audience create division or a space ripe for change? Can performance be a tool used to advance global gender equality? Change may start with a chime but can it also happen when a performance asks us To Gather Together?
Adrenaline, culture, sisterhood, and empowerment: these are just a few words that represent us, a group of young women who want to make a change. ImillaSkate is a collective of women who decided to live life to the fullest, express freedom and empower others.
ImillaSkate was created in 2019 in Cochabamba, Bolivia, by a group of women who got together to skateboard.
Lu Yang is an artist whose 3D animated works bridge the scientific and the technological with the spiritual and philosophical, creating new visions of Chinese corporeality. Shanghai-born and Tokyo-based, Yang's 2013 work, Uterus Man, conjures up a proposed “Superman” with the powers of the uterine reproductive organ, employing the aesthetics of video game design to propose a gamified transhumanist subject. Raising more questions than it answers, Uterus Man is an amalgamation of Yang's interests in biomedicine, gaming, and Eastern philosophy.
I think we're already living in a digitized, virtual world, so there's no need to be bound by the ways of the material one, but it seems people still project their material worldviews onto the virtual one anyway, so the virtual and material worlds end up being not that different after all. If class, gender, race, nationality—all these concepts of binary dichotomies and juxtapositions from this world—are just moved into the virtual one, that would be so uninteresting. My personal ideal for a virtual world is one that's completely free of such concepts and rules. It's not bound by the concepts of the real world, and therefore there isn't a need to fight for gender equality.
Joshua Serafin is a multidisciplinary artist and performer. Below they speak to CHIME about their newest work and how performance can be used to create change and advance global gender equality
Hi, my name is Joshua Serafin. And I am a Filipino Brussels-based multimedia artist, who focuses on dance, performance, and choreography. The main focus of my work is performance that is situated in the theater and the main theme of my practice is embodiment.
I use my body as a canvas to talk about current social, political, cultural phenomena. My work deals with questions of identity, transmigration, queer politics, representation, state of being, and ways of inhibiting the body.
I'm currently developing a cosmology of work, which I call Cosmological Gangbang, which seeks to create new forms of rituals and embodiment in relation to queer ecologies. I'm very much interested in the duality between the physical form and its representation.
At a time when the label “performative” is equated with being disingenuous, it is interesting to contemplate how the element of performance can be used to advance global gender equality. Especially for someone like me, who performs for a living.
Over the years, I've reflected a lot on the actions of artists I most revere.
The Woman, Life, Freedom movement in Iran began in response to a compulsory hijab law, requiring women to cover their hair and bodies in public. Women in Iran have been fighting against this law for decades, arguing that it violates their fundamental human rights and restricts their freedom.
The death of Mahsa Amini in September 2022, while in police custody for allegedly not wearing the hijab in accordance with government standards, sparked months-long protests. These protests have been met with violent government crackdowns, with protesters facing arrest, imprisonment, torture, and death.
Muna Mussie is an Eritrean performance-based artist based in Bologna, Italy. Her performances Oasi, Oblio, and Milite Ignoto (Unknown Soldier) ignite probing questions regarding the history of colonialism and the creative possibilities of performing the private in the public. Below, Mussie speaks with CHIME about these most recent works and her thoughts on performing the Self, finding channels to discuss colonialism through the story of her grandmother, and more.
I'll start with my experience as a performer and what my journey has been. So consequently I'm speaking from my own experience. Performance and all art forms and artistic mediums inevitably have personal and social value. I think that the personal will inevitably affect the social. When I talk about the personal I am talking about the concept of politics in terms of more of an intimate resistance.
I'm many things to many people. To some I'm a friend. To some I'm a coworker. To a few employees of a Fort Greene natural wine shop I'm an annoying regular always looking for something “fun.” But to many people I'm probably “the woman with the abortion show.” I am also not a mother.
I began the off-Broadway theater run of my solo comedy show, “Oh God, A Show About Abortion,” at the end of April 2022.
