OVERVIEW

1/14/09

Greetings from Jean-Pierre Karegeye, Chantal Kalisa (IGSC) and Erik Ehn (School of Theater).

So what we have in the Occupied Territories are both the apartheid –the imprisonment -and the ethnic cleansing that are necessary to maintain the Jewish majority state: what is by now not just a homeland, but an ethnic supremacist state that is being maintained by the subjugation and disappearing of another people.

Israel could end this occupation tomorrow, either by withdrawing and freeing the Palestinians, or by annexing them into the State of Israel, as they did with Jerusalem. But the fact is, they still want that land and water and farmland, and if you’ve been following the numbers, you’ll see why they won’t annex. Jews are still a minority in the region, and if Israel annexed the West Bank and Gaza there would be no real Jewish majority. Instead, Israel has continued trying to gain the land without the people, by maintaining this military dictatorship and enabling ongoing ethnic cleansing. Since from the start any resistance to the plan of Zionist conquest has been seen as criminal, many Israelis and Israeli apologists justify this imprisonment and apartheid, just as they did in South Africa. It’s very difficult for them to justify the ongoing settlements and ethnic cleansing; but as the facts become more obvious, some are taking that stance that even ethnic cleansing is justifiable in self-defense: which is simply to say that they believe Israelis have the right of self-defense and Palestinians do not.

That basic outline of the situation still applies today. Much has happened and we can go over that in questions, but there are a few key events that have impacted how we see the situation.

IS THERE A PALESTINIAN GOVERNMENT NOW?

In 1993, the Oslo Accords created the so-called Palestinian Authority, which in fact had no authority but was only mandated to manage the occupation for Israel and to suppress resistance. Yasser Arafat was brought back to lead this non-authority, and he handled it with his own personal combination of corruption and incompetence; but the situation was impossible from the start. As Nelson Mandela said, you can only negotiate with free people; and Palestinians were not anything like free in 1993. We now have the disgusting spectacle of Palestinian factions actually fighting over this non-authority. Furthermore, Israel had only a few responsibilities under the Oslo Accords; one of them was to freeze settlement building, but in fact over the next 7 years, settlements doubled. Settler attacks on Palestinians rose. In 1994, an Israeli settler shot 29 Palestinians in the back while they were praying, and 40 days after that, in response to that massacre, came the first Palestinian to strap on a bomb belt and suicide attack Israeli civilians.

HAVE PALESTINIANS EVER BEEN OFFERED A STATE?

In 2000, at the Camp David II accords, Prime Minister Ehud Barak and President Bill Clinton said that Israel had offered 90% of the territories for a Palestinian state, and that Palestinians rejected it and turned to violence. In fact what happened was that Israel offered Palestinians reservations -somewhat larger reservations than before, but still pockets of land, surrounded, controlled and subdivided by Israeli settlements and Israeli-only roads, and Israeli military. The violence began on September 29 2000 when Israeli soldiers fired live ammunition into an unarmed crowd of Palestinians and killed four, and two weeks later inside Israel, when another group of Israeli soldiers fired live ammunition on a crowd of Israeli Palestinians and killed 13. Violence escalated, with 80 Palestinian children killed before the first Israeli child was killed, and months of Palestinian deaths before the suicide bombing started again. All human rights groups including Israeli groups say that Israeli soldiers are attacking civilians. And Israeli settlements continue to be built. In fact the State of Israel has never recognized a Palestinian state, nor even agreed that such a thing should come into being.

GAZA 2005

Much was made of Israel’s redeployment of troops and removal of settlers from Gaza in 2005, but in fact Gaza is still controlled by Israel. Israel controls the borders (along with Egypt, now clearly an ally of Israel), controls the seacoast, the water underground, electrical grid, the airspace, imports and exports, even technically has veto power over the so-called Palestinian Authority. Some 8000 settlers were moved out of Gaza, which is a fine precedent, but in that same time over 20000 settlers were moved into the West Bank; and the Israeli government made no secret that this redeployment from Gaza was done for the purpose of consolidating Israel’s hold on the West Bank. Under the Geneva Conventions, Israel still has functional control of Gaza, and so Gaza is still Occupied Territory. Gaza has become the world’s largest prison camp, and the million Palestinians inside are continuing to resist that military occupation.

HAMAS

Much as also been made of Palestinians electing Hamas into office, but this hasn’t changed the situation much. Hamas started out as a religious party, nurtured by Israel because, again, Zionism always needs the image of the religious zealot Arab to maintain their policies, so Hamas was encouraged as a religious counterweight to Arafat and the PLO which were a secular democratic movement. Hamas campaigned against the corruption of Arafat’s Palestinian Authority, and promised to continue resistance. I wouldn’t have voted for them, any more than for any other religious party anywhere, and they have disgraced themselves by entering into violent conflict with other Palestinians over the impotent ruins of the Palestinian Authority, and I would demand that they remove racist language from their charter; but they were freely elected, they were well into an 18-month truce when they were elected, and though they started out as an extremist religious party, they’ve been moderating their views and calling for a two state solution, even saying they will recognize the state of Israel if Israel will recognize a Palestinian state, which has never happened.

DOES ISRAEL WANT PEACE?

Meanwhile every year there is a UN resolution calling for a two state solution, based on recognition of both sides with secure borders. The whole UN votes for it, except for Israel, the US, and a few US satellite countries.

WHAT NOW?

Since Israel was founded on ethnic cleansing, should there be some vast punishment, should they all leave? No, no more than we can all leave because our country was founded on ethnic cleansing. In Israel, they have to stop denying the ethnic cleansing in the past, and stop the ethnic cleansing in the present. They have to stop criminalizing Palestinians for resisting that ethnic cleansing. Both sides are infected by racism: anti Jewish racism among Palestinians and the far more prevalent and unchallenged anti-Arab racism among Israelis. But more important is the system of racism that privileges Jews and persecutes everyone else: just as in South Africa, that has to be changed.

Just as in South Africa, where the white ruling minority realized that apartheid was simply unsustainable, and decided to negotiate for a viable future while they were still in power. It seemed as impossible there as it does here, but I know that once Palestinians and Israelis have a shared interest in maintaining viable nations –one nation or two nations –they will quickly become allies against the extremist minorities on both sides. When Palestinians have equal rights, they can begin to build peace. Just as in South Africa, the apartheid system has to be overturned first; and then the real work can begin, of learning to live together as equals, which is the real future in the region.

Rwandan parallels: The Palestinian/Jewish conflict is not ancient; problems arise with externally manipulated ideas of the nation-state.

Iman Aoun, a theater-worker from the West Bank, talked of the Boal-inspired basis of her practice: a people’s theater, Forum Theater.

Iman, quoting Aristotle: Tell me and I will forget, show me and I will remember, involve me and I will understand.

A succession of Palestinian and Palestinian artists: Are we moving past the legacy of the nation state? “I am an Iraqi-Palestinian with an American passport.”

Panel: Motherhood as a class It was pointed out that “class” as an analytical device is Eurocentric; the framework of the conversation shifted:

1. We’ve lost our fires and the waters don’t know where to go. [Celia Rodriguez] – Our sense of self, and our respect for Mother Earth, are disordered.
2. In rebuilding: identity is an archive, an archive is a public space – who you are is what you keep, what you keep safe, what you teach. [Roberto Varea]
3. In educating children – “The fire is lit and they pay attention.” [Cherrie Moraga, from an anecdote about engaging her children with nature, showing them how to build a fire. Their attention early in the morning, before sunrise, is scattered. Then – the fire, and the circle around it, charge the mind.] Recovery is going home, even if that means making home for the first time.
4. In making home, check yourself – that you are not duplicating sentimental, received notions of what a home is. [“Single motherhood is Queer – CM]

Notes 1/17/09

Today’s highlights:

About the formation of a nation state – One nation under oil. Rwanda is a country whose borders were shrunk, but it remains a “state of mind.” Should the Basques have a nation?

Under what terms? Yugoslavia was a diverse nation; it is through great violence and misery that it is converting to a series of weak, divided, ethnically defined states.

Throughout the day: gender is a feature of war and genocide. In approaching the empowerment of women as a nation (as a model for approaching collaboration with countries in trauma in Africa – what do women need? a) the solidarity of women b) for the sake of their own empowerment; c) the presupposition of expertise, power and history… Although the public space for history has been shattered, and the documents have been erased, this doesn’t mean there is no history.

Motherhood may be a nation – a collective force; the lullaby is a national anthem, encoding core cultural values.

A new dramaturgical model, from pity and fear – the incapacity or overflow of emotion (pity – you will not be able to act on a feeling; terror: you will not be able to restrain a feeling), to compassion and hospitality – the sharing of needs and powers (Suffer and offer; compassion and hospitality).

Cultural diplomacy – do not work on behalf of the state, work on behalf of the art.

Retain the ability to move from the margin and back, cloaked in the neutrality of art. Neutrality doesn’t mean you lack a point of view – artillery is neutral (Pauline

– cross border work is politically charged; mediation is protest). Neutrality is the guarantee of your freedom; at some point you may want to freely choose to abandon your freedom.

Evening – Roberto, Violeta: A piece on genetically modified corn; an assault on nature embodied as an assault on the body – our complicity, our self-pollution, but also our capacity for healing, for purging the body politic.

Cherrie Moraga, Celia Rodriguez, Alleleuia Panis: Reading, improvised movement, improvised performance – embodied wisdom building out of themes realized in the earlier panel on Motherhood as a Class… and beyond A concise overview of Moraga’s concerns as a playwright; the formation and deformation of the meme of the woman’s body; a gloss on mother earth and our elemental relationships, in Spanish.

This in, from Laurie Lathem, on her workshop:

Leading a writing workshop called Other Mothers in which all but one of the

participants were Kurdish. There was a lot of hilarity in a language I could not

understand -my favorite kind.

We began with interviews in pairs. Each pair interviewed each other about their mothers and rebellion. They did so without taking notes which requires a deeper kind of listening. As I listened to the speakers at the conference my own concept of rebellion grew to include singing, speaking a certain language or not speaking one, nursing a baby, cooking, loving, praying, mothering itself -all of these things in a certain context can be acts of rebellion.

After the interviews the interviewers wrote down everything they remembered from the interviews, plus anything that came to their minds from their own lives.

They gave a new name to this character that they were creating from the interview material, the first step in removing their writing from the “facts” of the interview.

The writers then wrote a short piece -poem, monologue, scene -in which this new character tells a story about their mother. Then they read them aloud. A family crosses a raging river while soldiers shoot at them; a child’s hands are bound to the cradle; a young girl becomes a mother herself.

Then I asked the writer to speak the pieces aloud again, this time without looking at the page. Most participants were resistant to try this which made the exercise all the more valuable. What is remembered about a piece one has just created? What bears remembering/forgetting?

The writers had about 15 minutes at the end to re-write their pieces if they wished. There was a lively discussion in which we asked, and mostly did not answer, the questions:

Whose stories are these?
What makes it your story? What makes it someone else’s story?
What is the difference between collective telling and individual telling and
remembering?
How does it feel to have someone else tell “your” story?

After the workshop we rejoined the larger group in which year after year I see familiar faces and am humbled and inspired all over again by the work and the ideas shared at AOW.

Notes 1/18/09

An eclectic and lively morning, featuring an interdisciplinary perspective on approaches ot cultural studies (Paula Tavrow’s abstract, below), and a lively exchange with the Consul General of Spain, who was also a former Spanish representative on the UN Security Council; he opened the door to a thorough reconsideration of the way the SC is set up (its voting/veto powers), and was also able to stand in the middle of a storm of response concerning the negligence of the UN and the “international community” in broad terms.

Traditional male circumcision and gender roles in Western Kenya -Paul Tavrow

While recent scientific studies from Africa indicate that male circumcision is highly protective of HIV, evidence suggests that traditional male circumcision practices may encourage early sexual debut, rigidify gender roles, and at times cause genital injury—thereby mitigating some of its beneficial impact. In alternate Augusts, the Luhya of Western Kenya conduct male circumcision ceremonies at puberty. In this presentation, we will consider traditional male circumcision as a period “betwixt and between” (as per Victor Turner’s construction), where Luhya male youths are not boys and not men. Traditional male circumcision and its aftermath puts youth into a “liminal” period of transformation, when gender roles are shaped. We will explore the entire circumcision process through this lens. Finally, we will examine a pilot project to counteract some of the messages communicated to the youths before and after circumcision

We then proceeded to look both back and forward as a conversational community.

Sum Highlights: Disney, rebel conference, Aristotle, Margee, beer (visiting informally; the pleasure of being alive, balancing the mental fire), sustained conversation (the pleasure of seeing friends/partners-in-crime, again and again).

To consider: More time (a longer conference; events spread through the year)! More space! More student participation (require it?). Do we want concurrent sessions? More, smaller conversations, breakout sessions in response to larger gatherings (e.g. – What Can We Do sessions). We could have engaged more squarely the issue that genocide is something men do. Free-write board: a space for informal, evolving community record-keeping. Letter to the UN re: Palestine (there was, in fact, follow up on this). Green room.

Next year’s topic: Cambodian focus. Wealth/poverty. Education and class. Genocides in the U.S.

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VOCABULARY/EVOLVING PRINCIPLES

[Difference between repetition/redundancy – ritual/administration; sometimes overlap] An artist is well positioned to span analysis/observation through empathy. For an artist, the “I” may be another.

Culture causes as well as heals genocide.
Choices are not always between good and evil.
Political art needn’t be political in topic, but in behavior: every social order is a

critique of power. Peace is not joy. Coexistence is not necessarily reconciliation. Justice is not necessarily judgment (there is no punishment to fit the crime).

In terms of practical applications: be with (knowing that a call to trauma is as often a requirement to be healed as well as heal – you will be taking as much as you give and must find a way in your ethic to accommodate your own selfishness); admit others (lose control); be present (the world causes you when you are present to it).

When concrete language loses honesty, lean into paradox and metaphor. Reason poetically and feel for reason’s sake.

In an increasingly horizontal world/heterotopia – what is supreme is not the right answer or orthodoxy (the fixed location or steady path), but faithfulness itself, a steady state of readiness according to an assured sense of what may be called peace – the assurance of being.

“Note: Foucault uses the term heterotopia to describe spaces that have more layers of meaning or relationships to other places than immediately meet the eye.” – Ed Jourdenais

Alexandre Dauge-Roch/Groupov: Forensic anthropology – the film is a shovel. We work to transform remains into relics.

Genocides are each unique – they may not be held relative to each other, in a hierarchy, or in qualitative judgment; underlying principles may be effectively discerned, but they stand at a high level of abstraction

How to work the conference Rely on each other: Accept the stranger as yourself. Serve each other: Treat yourself as a stranger, and transpose yourself from one to

one of many. There will be times when we need to pull together, to change a space, to offer a ride. Potluck dinner/party. A strength and challenge of the conference – made more like a garden than a

mausoleum – in flux (note start time). If distressed, see me, volunteers. Will try to run on time. Rebel conference: if you need to adjust the agenda, and we are not able to make

apt changes for you in the official body of the conference, please take command of your experience! Find like-minded people, announce a purpose, and make the conference your own.

Practical workshops: writing, moving, performing on Friday/Saturday. [Together today, tomorrow, Sunday; some freelancing Friday and Saturday after the morning sessions] Concurrent sessions can help you develop smaller thread groups who can meet

together throughout the conference and help make thematic links for one another; propose these groups at collective transition points.

We would like to foster relationships with other networks and organizations; be alert to these options and let me know how I can help highlight connections.

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COMMENTS, PAPERS, PRESENTATIONS

Cynthia Cohen (via Roberta Levitow)

The solutions to the world’s most pressing problems – poverty, the environment, violence –will require cooperation across boundaries of race, economic class, nation, religion and culture. During the last decade, while our government has pursued policies that undermine the constructive potential of this country’s leadership, U.S. artists and cultural leaders have been hard at work, building relationships, exploring collaborations, strengthening intercultural understanding, and supporting creative responses to conflict. They are interacting with artists in other countries around the world, as they help their societies recover from violence, develop economically, and nourish capacities for self-reflection, for holding governments accountable, and for communicating robustly and respectfully across boundaries of all kinds.

Cultural exchanges can be crafted not just “to strengthen America’s image abroad” but to engage in the urgent work of cultivating an international civil society capable of acknowledging painful truths and imagining a new, more just, and more sustainable future. Artists and cultural workers can help us craft the vibrant, nuanced and flexible identities needed to cooperate on the unprecedented challenges represented by global climate change. As planetary survival calls for patterns of interaction and consumption to realign with values of sustainability, all of the world’s cultures afford sources of knowledge and wisdom. For these reasons and more, the arts and cultural work should be central features of a new foreign policy.

“A Tortured Cliché, A Fragmented Identity”

By: Cklara Moradian (performed at AOW conference, 1/17/09, slightly revised)

Before I begin-

THIS is my word of warning to you (gesture to the audience):

If you must, please leave, for I am going to tell stories NOT for the weak at heart!

Leave if you must, please

The truth perceived with open eyes is not for the intolerant!
And no, this is not a poetic dramatization, it is no literary formation
My imagination,
the communications of the neurological axons in my foundation
is by NO means this demented or sensational in creation.
This is in fact no more, no less than the truth
(Wait, pause…look at audience)
No one? (look surprised)
You’re all very brave…
Ok then…
(Begin strong)
I am a story!
(pause a sec, take a long breath, remember, paint a picture, don’t read)
The year 1984 behind a desolate building, in an unknown Kurdish province
He is taken out of the box by box coffin of his solitary cell for the first time in months.
He is not the only one.
That day he is accompanied by five others.
All of whom he has an irrevocable bond with:
Best friend, his mentor, his uncle, his teacher, his childhood neighbor
(act it out)
Line up (Hands behind back)
Alphabetical order

Rank

Political affiliation Everyone’s eyes are covered with black fabric

But even in the pitch darkness they can all see each other’s and their own fear

(Wait, look at the audience intensely)

In front of them are 6 soldiers

Lined up

Alphabetical order

Rank

Military standing

(pause, look at audience again, stomp your feet with your heels, 6 times, suddenly fall on

one knee, head down, slowly look up)

They fell

(shocked and horrified look on your face),

they all fell, they ALL fell and were lost (softly say) All but one

In a land where you cannot trust men, you cannot trust that guns will deliver you to an

unjust death! (Mockingly)

Five of these political prisoners of conscious were lost so that ONE would feel the

execution stand!

Could taste the bitterness of death on his dried lips, hear the sound of his thumping heart

“thump”, “thump”, “thump” shout for another moment of life, only to arrive at the

realization of loss and despair, only to appreciate the depth, weight, and length of

brutality, to understand torture, to succumb to tyranny.
The man who fell but was not lost is-my father-he was shot with an empty gun!
They were hoping it would break his silence and repent his beliefs of freedom.
I have since stood on the execution stand with him and WE shall not bow down to terror.
***
(Move forward, look at audience, wait)
(strong voice)
I am a story!
The year 1987, in a detention center in the Kurdish province, a solitary cell impregnated
with the body of a pregnant 18 year old beauty.
The first sounds I heard were those of her shouts as they threw her against the cemented
walls of her cell.
The second whispered sounds of her sweet soft lullabies when she was left alone.
The third were of strange men and women speaking in tongue, demanding, for hours,
what she would not give away.
The first thing I felt was fear as she was beaten on a long thin wooden board.
The second was worry and I clenched my newly formed fist hoping she could feel she is
not alone.
Then, our tears came streaming down, only that mine swan within the protection of the
ocean of her womb.
The first thing I tasted was starvation, as she was not fed for days. There was only the

vacuum of her apologetic umbilical cord.

The first nightmare I had was her sleep deprived nights, as they bombarded her ear drums

with the beating sound of women and young girls being tortured and interrogated.
The second was that of monstrous loudspeakers roaring the Quran for hours on end with
no remorse.
The first light I saw was the bright blinding darkness of being born into shackles.
The first breath I inhaled (inhale) was the pleasant scent of her shit on the floor.
But it was the smell of her strength.
The guards gave her weeks in a tiny cell with no toilet, and she gave back a breathing,
fighting, living being by herself.
She is-my mother-a prisoner of conscious. I was a fetus who was nourished and formed
by her tenacity and resilience and swam out of her womb into love.
I have since been conscious with her and together we work for emancipation, for WE will
not be tied down to horror.
***
(Move forward, look at audience, wait)
(strong voice)
I am a story!
The year 1992 in the best kept room of grandfather’s house, the guest room, during the
celebrations of Nowroz when everyone was dancing to the Kurdish drums and strings and
flouts and were lost in their reveries of possibilities,
Of victorious revolutions,
Of the end to humiliations,
The end of mass executions,

The end to annihilation,
(Emotional, tearful, childlike)
HIS filthy hands were penetrating my six-year old being with confusion!
No, he was no stranger…
Incest parted my thighs and ripped apart innocence and brilliance from my childhood
Incest rubbed himself on the shattering pieces of my sanity, just as years later I cut
myself with the broken pieces of my disgust.
Incest disguised himself under familiarity and blood ties,
protected himself with blind trust and the traditions of taboo.
Incest forced silence on me for years, the same way he forced his body on my youth.
Self-censorship is a lethal weapon of the patriarchal society.
The same silence that molested me IS the reason why little nine year old Kurdish village
girls are still circumcised so that their future husbands can be confident in their manhood
and not fear infidelity.
That silence perpetuates the cycle that continues to infiltrate the thighs of other five, six,
seven, twelve year old innocent Kurdish girls and WE want to say (scream)
“STOP”-(softly) “Noooo more!”
I am a story but I am NO one’s victim! I had to stitch up the scars you carved on me but I
will not remain in submission to this trauma and tragedy.
No more… I choose to heal, I rise above!
****
(Move forward, look at audience, wait)
(strong voice)

I am a story!

The year 1996, a Kurdish family of four is on the run not towards the safety of home but
from the threat of death from the house they called home.
Four suitcases, four coats on their fragile bodies, they take with them nostalgia and the
promise of no return.
Why? Because they asked for equality!
I had a doll with hollow crystal blue eyes wearing a pink polyester dress. She recited the
English alphabet; she must have been royalty. She did not fit into the suitcase. She was
left behind.
I had a best friend with deep almond eyes; I didn’t have time to say goodbye to her as I
did with my grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and the playground where I was first
forced to abandon my mother tongue.
In my nine year old mind, having to seek asylum from your own home seemed strange,
but this is the story of crossing arbitrary borders drawn by the white men of history.
We ran. We ran. And we ran the distance.
I am still running for home.
***
(Move forward, look at audience, wait)
(strong voice)
I am a story!
The year 1997 in a United Nations refugee camp outside of Turkey, there are no watch
dogs to watch the dogs.

Still born babies are fed to the hungry German shepherds, as morality is eaten up by

inhumanity. “Humanitarian aids” ask for flesh in exchange for bread. A twelve-year old
girl is sent by her own father to line up and offer herself to savage beasts so that her little
brother does not die of hunger that night.
Is this asylum from brutality?
The cargo ship that brought them there remains afloat. Men, women and children sow
their lips together in protest.
Hunger strikes and self imposed silence does not bring mercy.
Deportees cut their own fingertips off to avoid recognition by fingerprint.
Perhaps, on this earth, purgatory is better than the hell they come from.
The NATO guards do not know my name; they know me by my geographical region
number.
I am just a case.
Snow to my ankles; I am given only one pair of boots.
I have been taught compassion by the bedtime stories of the heroic acts of my father and
mother and their dreams for redemption.
No one warned me that empathy is a foreign and dangerous concept in an environment
where life is hanging by a thin string.
Once upon a time, I gave my boots away to my first love. Her pair of boots was stolen by
a coward. For nine and half hours the sorrow froze in my feet as the blood could not
circulate. I became a child again and could no longer feel the world weigh down on my
knees.

I have since given away my shoes and walked barefoot for compassion, and do not seek

asylum in the protection of plastic boots. (take shoes off)
***
(Move forward, look at audience, wait)
(strong voice)
I am a story!
The year 2003 the safety of a Los Angeles air-conditioned room and feather blankets, the
physical threads of genocide a distant surreal memory by now but the immediate threat of
emotional demons have awakened.
“Why did I survive and others didn’t?”
“Why do I get to eat and others are starving to death?”
My own self imposed survivor’s guilt putting me in interrogation rooms similar to those
founded by the Bush administration; they’re invisible to the naked eye.
And so time passed by but the wounds only grew deeper. I got older but the stories
didn’t.
It was in the safety of central heaters and abundance of material possessions that the
gravity of the aftermath of these stories weighed me down.
When I realized I did not care about football games and prom night and could not relate
to capitalistic notions of success,
when I realized I had been fighting a war I did not start and was collateral damage of
imperialism,
when I began comprehending that *I* had to clean up the bloodshed,
well… I became paralyzed.

The irony is that it was in safety when I first felt threatened.

So one day in a highly competitive class for over achievers, all seeking the American
dream, I was asked by my instructor:
“Where are you from?”
I boldly answered, “Kurdistan!”
I was asked again “Where?”
As I explained my history he said “Oh, that’s not a country, you’re Iranian so you’re
Persian, ok.” And he moved on.
I learned then that perpetration does not end, degrees change.
I AM a denied identity, but I am NOT what you want me to be,
what you have imposed on me,
all these binary labels you want to sow on me,
all these false categorizations, pre-conceived notions,
all your demonizing intellectualizations,
psycho-analytic perceptions,
all your stereotypes, minority exploitations, all these unfitting observations
No, I am NOT your image of a savage, uncivilized, nomadic population-
I am Kurdish passion!
Do not underestimate my history or the potential of my pent up energy,
the power of my knowledge and creativity
can be the next Renaissance, enlightenment, revolution
Do not continue living with the notion
that your systematic institutionalization

is somehow not subject to abdication!

Pay attention! Let me propose the concept of free equal education to empower my raped but surviving generation Let me propose that the eradication of divine intervention IS the road to emancipation! Let me propose that progression is NOT an abstract concept of youthful imagination Do not remain under the idiotic apprehension that the Kurds will not overcome oppression or will eventually accept brutality in some passive form of submission. Dictators and tyrannical systems of enforcement-in fact the Roman Empire-also fell through for its acts against human compassion. Let me suggest that this globalized, monopolized, idea of capital domination is the root of this syndrome of apathy and disconnection. You call censorship, trust in media fabrications, animal extinctions, environmental resource eradication, uprooting of ethical foundations, this era of information, technology ruling, corporate domination, pornography, bailing out fat wall street mansions, the bankruptcy of intellectuals, bookstores, and independent stations, silent genocides through drug addictions, child labor and exploitation of women in third world society-A civilization?

Let me clearify that I am NOT a single entity that can be check marked into a box on a
college application
To become a white collar slave to loans until the end of my philosophical habitation
I am a story, I am resistance, I am the new Kurdish generation for liberation.
I am a movement; a force.
Do not underestimate, under appreciate, or undermine me!
I am the beating drums of freedom.
Let’s torture a cliché, shall we?
“What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger!”
Or does it?
Perhaps it makes you taunted, wretched, twisted, forgotten-haunted
I don’t know, insane? alien in your own skin, believe in sin
I am a story!
No, this was not a glorification of my person
This was only an observation
These were stories of collective women. Not just mine.
I might be tortured but in fact I am no cliché. Like the Kurds I am fragmented, but I am a
complete identity deserving of a nation!

“INNER MANDALA”

The Healing Power of the Theatre Lecture/Performance

“Who ever walk Somewhere in the World Who walks without reason In the world, Walks towards me” R.M.Rilke

Actress: Maja Mitić Director: Dijana Milošević Set designer: Antonella Diana Object “cross/coat hanger” : Neša Paripović Text: texts from the Bible, Bertold Brecht, Moni De Buli, Helen Keller, Maja Mitić,

Momčilo Nastasijević, Gavrilo Princip, M. Rilke, i Carlos Fuentes

Video exerts: performances “This Babylonian Confusion” 1992 and “Zenith” 1994