RECONQUÊTE DE TINTIN, 2018, Granderson Lab, Belmont, Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago. #newmedia #ttff/21

The Dadaists embodied absurdity. Absurdity in the context of art exploration has the close ‘pumpkin vine’ cousins of humour, ritual, repetition, play, endurance, failure, irony, sarcasm and of course rebellion and resistance. How long will I be able to brush this patch of hair with its natural curl? How long will it take for me to get it’s point straight or rather get straight to the point that it (my little Tintin coiff) has a mind of its own, is of it’s own mind, and won’t become straight? When will I realise the futility of this protracted moment? What is the point of this performative but documented act? Is the point to be just that pointless? In the final analysis the work maybe provokes more questions than there are answers and ironically feels like it has ended right where it began as absurdity personified.

As one of my tutors pointed out, perhaps this absurdity is working in parallel with a deep poignancy about the attempted process of colonially (laden transformation and assimilation) baggage. This transformation and conformation is far from absurd and so the absurdity of action through the process of attempted and futile transformation is something much more deeply violent than absurd.
#obsessionswithtintin #heresomegoodhair #performanceexperiments #movingimage #absurdityandviolence #hairfeelsnopainbutratherpressure
A note on the use of the body.
Our bodies are also occupied territories. Perhaps the ultimate goal of performance, especially if you are a woman, gay or a person “of color,” is to decolonize our bodies and make these decolonizing mechanisms apparent to our audience in the hope that they will get inspired to do the same with their own. – GUILLERMO GÓMEZ-PEÑA