Amarebe Act 1: Tracing Movements is a lecture performance on the conservation process of the eponymous Rwandan water lily. It is the outcome of my research into the relationship between knowledge and movement under the colonial inheritance of global capitalism. It represents the practical outcome of academic, archival and field research according to the theoretical framework of performance studies, and more specifically embodiment as practice of meaning and knowledge making. This lecture performance is a response to the questions gathered at the offset of my research: What kind of knowledge can be mobilized at the intersection of academic research and performative embodiment? What does the lecture performance as a method contribute to research into the commodification and mobilization of all forms of life? 




I presented Amarebe on the opening night of the graduation exhibition at Loods 6, organized by the Arts and Performance Research Masters students.  During this time I presented my research into the conservation process of Amarebe, a small Rwandan water lily, in the form of a free-form narrative focused on movement. For most of the performance I was sitting at a desk lit by a desk lamp on which I had set up an standing camera facing down to record a measuring mat. This camera was connected to a laptop which was connected to a projector. Behind me the projector showed this live feed. Other objects on the desk included a marker, a block of graphite, six folders labeled with the titles of each chapter of the script, two books from which I quoted, a collection of stamps, an envelope addressed to me, hand-drawn diagrams and my printed script. Throughout the performance I accompanied my speech with image by placing various printed materials under the camera to be projected behind me: the folders to announce the chapter title, photographs (gathered in each folder) and stamps. I also used tracing paper to layer these materials with live drawings of diagrams to illustrate my words in real time. 

The first 5 chapters were dedicated to presenting my desk-based, archival and field research into the kinds of movements required in the process of conservation of Amarebe, otherwise known as Nymphaea thermarum. During this presentation I tried to emphasize not only the movements of bodies but also of knowledges, in systems of classification and nomenclature, of narratives, in the language used to describe this process, and of capital in the production of cultural goods associated with this conservation project. I quoted directly from the concepts of geographical fiction synthesized in Paul B. Preciado’s “The South Does Not Exist” and less directly from Achille Mbembe’s concepts of necropolitics, the earthly commons and the mapping of national borders onto the bodies of populations rendered as undesirable. Throughout the performance I composed a map of the locations I mentioned in my script. Each time I mentioned a new geographical location I got up and marked three large blank sheets of paper I had placed on the wall with an “X” to represent this place.

During the sixth and last part of my performance entitled “dance” I connected these “X” marks with arrows, drawing a large map of the movement of Amarebe across these locations. While I was drawing this map I introduced the concept of choreography as a way to create a reference – as something to repeat or as a point of departure. My intention was to visualize what I have identified as an accumulation of value along a layered supply chain of bodies, knowledges and capital fueled by botanical conservation. This accumulation of value, like in most supply chains, manifests at the end of the supply chain, at the point of consumption. By mapping this supply chain as a set of movements I was able to render a choreography – a set of movements – which was devised to activate and perpetuate uneven geographies of value.

After I completed this map, I remained standing in front of the projection of the Earth as a globe cut up by the lines of meridians and parallels of the equator. The projection of this grid mapped onto my body and I started talking about how trees move. I turned on the song “Slave 2 the $” by Greg Lou and the the globe turned red and was flipped upside down superimposed with the lyrics of the song. Then I raised my arms to be perpendicular with the rest of my body and invited the audience to imagine me as Amarebe, as a root and a stem and leaves floating along an imaginary surface/horizon/equator. I started dancing and singing the lyrics as Amarebe. I moved my arms across my chest, over my head, drawing imaginary lines across the projected grid. I finished by spinning with my arms pointing out in angled diagonals as the music continued and the audience sang along. After the audience applauded whichc signified the end of the performance, I stopped and remained in the performance space to talk to the audience about the piece with the music still playing and the lyrics still projected onto the map: “Seasons change, people change / Money stays the same / Slave 2 the $.”

The days following the opening, when I was not performing, the desk, projection and map remained as an installation both documenting the outcome of the performance and inviting the public to discover the materials by themselves.

Amarebe embodied the definition I gave of choreography: it was a score, a performative event and the documentation of research. It represents the compilation, visualization of my research through the embodiment and the repetition inherent in the elaboration of performance. My research into the affordances of the lecture performance informed my research into botanical conservation. It provided me with the theoretical framework of choreography, a lens with which to center bodily movement in my research, both that of my research subject but also my own. Rehearsal became a crucial part of this project and shaped the way I conducted and presented my findings. It also provided me with the methodology of the performance diagram. The literature framing the diagram as a tool to visualize and present systems with a poetics of its own allowed me to focus on systems of movements and rehearse my research through drawing as a bodily act. The frame of the lecture performance allowed me to highlight the poetics of research as a bodily and highly personal praxis. It also allowed me to fold nuance with fiction, fabrication with potential, passion with authority and my body with other bodies, my movements into other(ed) movements. This project elaborated and worked on these allowances to find out how performance could enact a network of movement which could enroll the movements of the performer as host to the movements of their research subject and by extension, the movements of its consumers, including the audience.

My goal, through the repetitive and diagrammatical elaboration of this performance as a research practice, was to create a palimpsest of movement that would fold together bodily and planetary scales. Throughout this research project I was able to formulate and expand on lecture performance’s ability to materialize and play with knowledge. I narrowed my focus on the visualization and presentation of systems which order the living in exponentially intrusive ways. I also questioned the value of this visualization alone: visualization without transformation runs the risk of solidifying a narrative and perpetuating its reality. As a result of this concern I decided to frame this performance as the first part of a larger project of which the purpose would ultimately be to disturb the flows of value which are encrypted into the logistics of global capitalism. Amarebe Act One will hopefully be followed by Amarebe Act Two which will focus on how to divert these flows, disturb them and eventually reinvent them.