PERIPHERIES II

After the imposition of martial law last year, amid South Korea’s repressive political conditions, a solidarity movement emerging from the margins has formed a constellation of resistance, challenging the forces of power that have led to social deterioration. Each in their own way, individuals have taken up candles to defend democracy and reclaim their everyday lives – symbols of connection among subjects who exist beyond the political and institutional center.

This movement transcends time, aligning with the struggles of the nameless citizens who sacrificed their lives during the democratization movements of the 1980s. Han Kang, a novelist who has captured the memories and suffering of those who fought for democracy during that era, observed the ongoing resistance and remarked, “The past helps the present.”

In this way, the solidarity of the marginalized cuts across time, space, and the ideologically divided structures of power, transforming into a liberatory and revolutionary force in search of new possibilities. More than mere resistance, it is a struggle – one that envisions and actively strives toward another world.

Myoung-jin Heo’s article explores individual practices that break through the binary boundaries of modernity and tradition, as well as the West and the non-West, within Korean dance history. She critiques how, during Korea’s modernization process, external dance forms were historically integrated into Korean dance by following Western models. The reception of Western contemporary dance was often framed as a means of attaining contemporaneity, prioritizing the speed of response over critical reflection or self-examination. Within the Korean dance landscape, shaped by institutional and disciplinary structures rooted in a colonial legacy, elements that do not fully belong to either Western or traditional frameworks have emerged. The author highlights this indeterminate state as a process through which singularity is gradually established in Korean dance. The uncertainties surrounding self-identification and suspicion toward dance, rather than being restrictive, have opened up new possibilities for dance. Furthermore, through these heterogeneous practices, the article reveals the impossibility of what has been assumed to be a universal discourse.

A much-appreciated intersectional perspective of marginalized “entities,” as some groups of queer people which performatively take up the streets of the Maré favelas of Rio de Janeiro call themselves, is brought up by Clara Lhullier. They are the racialized subaltern queer subjects, with their untold side story to the polished image of the liberal LGBTQ+-friendly city center, where these individuals’ survival is under attack every day.

Azade Shahmiri, through her collaborative work Ongoing Archive for Endless Performances, documents that remain on the periphery of performance, reflecting on how she has encountered frustration and been forced to exist in a state of impossibility – both within her personal experiences and in response to contemporary realities. As an Iranian female artist, she critically examines whether she has, despite facing racial discrimination and the dual oppression of being a female director in Iran’s male-dominated theater scene, still perceived her experiences through the lens of dominant norms. While exposing the marginalization of women pushed to the periphery, she simultaneously grapples with her reliance on the rigid frameworks of theater and performance. She confesses to experiencing self-doubt and a process of self-erasure, caught in the contradiction of resisting exclusion while still operating within established theatrical structures. However, this skepticism, uncertainty, hesitation, and volatility do not merely function as limitations; rather, they serve as an imagination – one that enables performance to navigate extremes, testing and exploring all possibilities.

Skin is the porous “border” of one’s bodily autonomy, where contemporary dance professionals, which are mostly women, developed thicker layers of skin as these practices can get edgy. Addressing touch and consent, Tova Gerge writes about how rationally set consent rules are not adequate, as the processes of agreeing to something are always manifold, complex and seeking constant negotiations. These tangible experiences can be a good lesson for any (political) interaction.

The topic rounds off with the No Manifesto of Decolonization; a collective rewriting of Yvonne Rainer’s 1970’s No Manifesto by a group of “white, not quite” dancers and writers, imagined at a workshop held by Biljana Tanurovska Kjulavkovski and Dražen Dragojević in Tanzfabrik Berlin in the summer of 2023.

In the review of the new book by Claire Bishop, we return to the topic of attention, which was one of the themes of our previous issues. Zuzanna Berendt reminds us that the disruptions of attention are not only hegemonic mechanisms but should also bring about different practices of viewing and writing, which disrupt the dominant order of art and publication distribution seen as products for consumption.

The Neodvisni section brings about the perspective on missing spaces, other spaces and non-spaces (for contemporary dance) in our local Slovenian art community, drawing a perspective of the marginalization of a field which can’t seem to establish itself as worthy of the conditions for its permanence, its institutionalization.

This issue of Maska was again conceptualized on the margins – the margins of Europe, margins of the West, margins of funding mechanisms, margins of academia, margins of the crisis of print media, margins of the society of the spectacle. However, rather than positioning marginalization as merely a counterpoint to the center, these discussions resist such binary framing.

The minoritarian politics that exist on the periphery do not emerge from directly confronting the center but from engaging with and negotiating the relationships among diverse subjects. Likewise, their practices are not about overturning the center but rather about experimenting with the withdrawal of even the mere recognition granted by it. This approach proposes a politics of the periphery – one that remains in a state of minimal presence, enabling continuous transformation and resonance with other existences.

Jae Lee Kim and Pia Brezavšček