Brandon Perdomo with Another Lopez

Brandon Perdomo writes about testimony in relation to the body and response to social-scape by activation-of-voice in response to a presentation by both Sara Sinclair on her work on How We Go Home, and Suzanne Methot, who complements the piece with curriculum-building for Voice Of Witness.

During her feature in a 2019 TEDx Talks session, Building Identity: A Creative Process, Moroccan musician Oum El Ghaït Benessahraoui, better known as Oum, gave voice to her understandings of the experience of identity. She lays out a breakdown of the word:

idem > the same

identitas > sameness

identity

We are then offered this: identity is of being the same, and as an act, it means to be staying the same though time.

We know: no one peoples is a monolith – meaning that there is no static uniformity to any one culture's presentation to the world, and individuals and the cultures they make up experience both growth and evolutions – a visualization can be imagined as the form assumed by a flora as it slowly dances through the day, pulsating, sometimes stretching, chasing the light. Oum carries this grace as she delivers the note that she herself is of a plurality, made up of many things and that this collection of several-parts-of-self is actually the foundation of the process of becoming. Similarly, in How We Go Home, Sara Sinclair explores elaboration in the editor's notes, considering the Indigenous peoples of North America and their relationships to identity: “Self-identity for an Indigenous person is a very personal choice: some narrators use their tribe names, others their nations or bands, and these are sometimes used interchangeably. In some cases, we use more than one entity.”

Within the field of Oral History, I have concerned myself with testimony focused on expressions of ownership of self – these collections have been voiced beyond dominant narratives of society, particularly by creatives giving insight to their finding-of-voice, or rather, what stories they have accumulated that inform their creative practices. As these practices are delivered by elaboration of narrators' experiences of being, the line between art / outlet / creation and life are blurred, and it is true: here I define art as not-work, an act to perseverate, and oftentimes to express rebellion – art as an act of celebrating life, and as an innate human trait. My narrators have given voice to their ownership-of-self and experience of becoming in experiencing their environment, and how their environment has experienced them.

Lazarus Nazario, painter

Bronx, NYC (U.S.A.)

Lazarus shares with us her observations during these months of Civil Rights activation, and her experience as an artist in this time of quarantine. Through her testimony, we are given insight of how she had found activation of espirit de corps as a person within a minority group in the environment that has both been her city of birth and that has shaped her experience of being, and how local and global social activation had inspired her own public action.

Lazarus: So I went through a bit of a time when- I call it- I guess it's called a block, but it's where nothing would come out of my hands. That's kind of the best way I can put it. Like things- nothing would come out of my hands.

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But - I finally got this - image going in it - and - but the timing and speaking about the Black Lives Matter - like it was palpable. Like I could feel it. You know, I was like, hold on. I don't have to - strange to say this - but I don't have to be embarrassed that I'm Puerto Rican anymore. I don't have to feel like I'm lesser - somehow less - less than, you know, like the way that black people were reclaiming themselves. Because they had to - they had to fight back because of what was going on - literally in the streets outside - dying in the streets outside.

It was almost like, as heavy as that was - and I could sense it was the same way for a lot of black people out there - as heavy as that was at the same time you were like, I'm going to claim this. We now claim things - you know, and they're out there, unapologetic.

And - it felt palpable to me. I was like, all of a sudden, it's like everybody's eyes went **focusing** and they focused on: Hold on. This is wrong. This racism is wrong. You know, so it was like, lifted, somehow - that was lifted off of me. So I wanted to do something to sort of stand in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement.

You know, like, I wanted to tie it to the election so that we could get Trump out of here. So I started - I made my own billboards.

Sara Meghdari, interdisciplinary artist

Brooklyn, NYC (U.S.A.)

See: Sara Meghdari, Silent Self

Concerning Silent Self, I asked Sara, “How do you explain this piece?” She gives insight into her process of composing this piece, both technically and what thought was put into its composition. She explains general public perception within the U.S.A. of women in their hijab, or Muslim women - in this instance from Iran - as portrayed as other.

Sara: it's a performance for the camera of me and my hijab, or rousari, as we say in Farsi, that's another word for it - rousari. I am going through a series of emotions really slowly and consciously. It's not digitally altered, or slowed down at all. - It's me going through the emotions with my face really slowly - the video is only a minute and a half long, but it took me about five hours to shoot. Because when you try to control your face, your face starts twitching. And if you notice, you can see some twitches in my eyes.

- I felt like I still do that. A lot of times when we see images of women in a hijab, Muslim women, or women from that part of the world, it's usually images of war, sadness, or refugees or, you know, like these pictures of the worst moments of these people's lives. Like, anybody who would be in that position would look like that. And that's the image that is given to the United States of people from that part of the world. And I just wanted to show that, you know, there's a lot of sides to us as humans, because - it's really interesting, this one little piece of cloth can really change someone's whole perception of you, and their - how they value you as a human life. And so I was playing with that little bit and trying to appeal to, you know, basic human emotions that we all feel and go through -.

Mx. Sugar Mamasota, performer / multidisciplinary artist

Brooklyn, NYC (U.S.A.)

See: Dancer Bio

This piece was shared with me as a presentation in parallel to a previous collaboration we had made together in response to the prompt, “What does movement mean for you?” This statement illustrates a powerful testimony to practice as informed by lived experience.

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A post shared by Mx Sugar/ Masaka Lacroix (@mx_sugar_mamasota)

Mx. Sugar Mamasota: After years of bullying and physical abuse, I came to the conclusion that my body wasn't my own - the world could and would say - do whatever they wanted to it. And any form of self preservation just seemed futile. So I began to live more in my own head. It got to the point, I couldn't feel large portions of my body at all. But this is kind of the goal - just to be a physical form on autopilot. Later in life, one of my sisters had described disassociation to me and to our horror, we realized I've been doing it for well over a decade. I use movement to reintroduce myself to my body and to bridge that divide. My name is Mx. Sugar Mamasota, and I dance to remind myself that I'm whole. I dance because an oppressive society like this, happiness is a subversive act. I dance because I'm still here. I'm present. And I'm free.

As we survey testimony within shared channels of being and becoming, reclamation, and radical self-ownership, we may find that we come to view difference - that is, within a narrative, the growth of an individual, the life and vitality of social movements - maybe this is a difference of our own understandings. A mentor taught me “Same same, but different” - the term for meaning of both sameness and difference - in this instance, it was in response to the same notes played in music, with a different mood, or tone. Perhaps we are constantly in-finding of our mature voice, and our bodies are the vessels that experience the building of this vernacular. I understand it as a constant practice, and each time it is new - like stepping onto a slippery sidewalk in the beginning of a new Winter, or learning how to say Hello in a new language. In their own way, it is a matter of footing - and the process-of - and it repeats - as Miles Davis said, “Man, sometimes it takes you a long time to sound like yourself.”

Brandon Perdomo is a multidisciplinary artist based in occupied Lenapehoking, New York City, fascinated with self-reflection and alterity, which are the engines of his work. More on his work and collaborations can be found at: https://www.brandonperdomo.com/