OUR OTHER BODY

Boaz Barkan

Presented at:

Wellcome Collection as part of Care and Destruction 2019.

With brutality and humour, I dig through a living body to find a precarious organ with rather unpleasant functions.

A performance about ‘internalised racism’ - examining the effects of racism on the way we ‘are in our bodies’, the way identity inhabits the body.

In the performance I explores how these forces are ‘lived’ in us, based on my experience as an Israeli Jew with roots in Europe.

I use a living naked corpse as a theatre for an intimate, playful and sincere discourse about these critical influences in our life. It is a performative anatomical description of a hidden organ, an organ which stores racist ideas and influences the function and image of our own body.

In particular I discuss the Jewish identity and the effects racism has had on the embodiment of the 'Jewish Body' vs. the 'Zionist Body', oppressed and oppressor.

In the performance, I draw parallels between the history of my Jewish-German family before the WW2, and the life of Muslim-Danish communities today. I make the point that living within the white Danish context has an effect on our embodiment and should be discussed more openly.

Created by Boaz Barkan 
Performed by Boaz Barkan & Lukas Racky
Dramatic consultation: Daniel Norback
Supported by the Danish Arts Counsel
Premiered at the Danish Medicine Museum in December 2017

Bios:
Boaz Barkan is a performer, creator and educator living in Denmark. Born in Israel to a family of immigrants, he has continued the tradition of migration and spent most of his life practicing and studying dance in the US, EU and Japan. Barkan focuses on embodiment practices as mediums for performers, audience, and communities. Barkan recently presented ‘May I Speak About Dance?’ at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival to great reviews.

 Lukas Racky, from Germany, studied “dance & choreography” at The Danish National School for Performing Arts, lives and works in Copenhagen. He started practicing acrobatics and parkour as a teenager and later got into contemporary dance. Lukas is curious about many kinds of performative situations. Recently, he worked as a performer for Marina Abramovic and in theatre pieces of the Danish artist-duo CoreAct and of director Camille Langdal. With his artistic partner Onur Agaba, he explores the possibilites of site-specific audience experiences. Last but not least, Lukas is diving into the world of the Feldenkrais method and is currently pursuing a training guided by Elizabeth Beringer. 

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