R.I.P. Josiebones

Bye Bye Josie?

I am considering abandoning my pseudonym, Josephine's Echopraxia. I have developed more pride in what I do than I had when I started and more of a sense of my own worthiness and abilities in my field. I no longer feel the need to apologize for my profession (and my existence) with veiled tongue-in-cheek literary and medical references.

I have long felt uncomfortable about my decision to appropriate the term echopraxia. I rationalized to myself that I didn't consider echopraxia to be a disorder but merely another expression of human diversity and told myself I was drawing a smart parallel to the learned behavior of mimicry that becomes second nature, almost compulsive, to a dancer, but really what would disability advocates say? Recently I watched a man at my bus stop with real echopraxia. The kind of echopraxia in which one tries to hold back the movement with the other hand or distract oneself with a cigarette, the kind in which one moves away from others in an attempt to hide even as each passing minute of the bus' tardiness and each siren and horn blare causes the uncontrollable agitation to grow ever more intense. Even if I catch myself embarrassingly rehearsing in public (yes, this happens) in the end I can stop when and if I choose to. Sometimes I choose not to, even if I feel shy about it, I don't want to lose my train of thought, but I can if I want to. Yes, my creative pursuits often make me feel like an outsider, but creativity is not classified as a disorder in the DSM. It's stigma is profoundly less. Most of the time I am watched by audience and not gawkers.

I have no right to use this word.

Josie, Josephine… Kafka's precocious little mouse, patronized by her doubtful but permissive/dismissive community. I have come to love the sound of her name as mine. Yes, her story is often the reality of being an artist- 'we don't get what you're doing or why you won't do real work, but you tell us it's important and you do look kind of cute, so we will let you get away with it'. Claiming Josephine as my totem gave me an academic unemotional way to apologize for myself while at the same time poking fun at the status quo. Josephine could be my defense mechanism to give myself the courage to swim against the current and make work. Now, I no longer intend to apologize for myself. I know longer intend to dignify the existence of doting father style patronage by using my own title as a response to the harm it causes to not only the individual artist, but also to the art form, the audience and the community at large.

No more internalized oppression. I no longer want to buy into my own marginalization.

Josie at The Henry

Josie E. has been invited to show work at The Henry (5th Ave NE & NE Campus Pkwy) as part of the Carolee Schneeman Symposium: Streaming in From the Moon , on 11/19. I go on shortly after 7pm, beginning on the Cascaiding Stairs and moving to the Fuses exhibition room. Please follow the action or you will miss it. Don't be shy! I will be doing a site specific version of an idea I've been kicking around and I'm calling it Fugue. Here is a preview image

Another iteration of it will be performed in December's 12 Min Max at On the Boards (100 W Roy) Dec 11 and 12 at 7

[[TROPHY]]

I will be creating a site specific dance, physical sculpture and video installation Saturday, September 24th, at The Hedreen Gallery at Seattle University’s Lee Center for the Arts, located at 901 12th Ave as part of their NIGHT CLUB series.

The event will begin at 7:45. Please arrive on time as audience members will be led on a small tour starting from the Hedreen Gallery. This is a free community event. For more information please email josephinesechopraxia@gmail.com

This is a very exciting opportunity for J's E as the event is specifically designed to bring the school's students out as a way to not only see new art but get to know working artist's. After the performance the audience is invited for an all-night SLEEPOVER!

Josie is doin it for the kids!

Also, I am pretty excited to touch back with some material presented during my Project: Space Available residency http://marissaniederhauser.blogspot.com/2010_09_05_archive.html

I will be further exploring manipulation and ownership in gender relations bringing in fresh research into Hitchcock Blondes, visual framing as dismemberment, substance abuse as a method of control and drowning as a parallel for identity erosion.

JOSIE at SAM REMIX 6/3

Mercy is a Warrior will be performed at SAM REMIX!

June 3

8:45 in the lounge, 9:30 and 10:45 in 3rd floor galleries

1300 1st Ave

http://www.seattleartmuseum.org/calendar/eventDetail.asp?eventID=21408&month=5&day=3&year=2011&sxID&WHEN

Pictured: Tobi Nussbaum and Marissa Rae Niederhauser

photos by Carlos Melgoza http://anima-nocturna.blogspot.com/

More on the concept at

http://marissaniederhauser.blogspot.com/2010/12/2-pieces-in-upcoming-12-min-max-at-otb.html

Past performances of Mercy

http://ontheboards.org/blog/josephines-echopraxia-12-minutes-max

tracings at SIFF

The time/date has been released

tracings will play Thursday May 26 at 9:30

in the Alternate Cinema Shortsfest

at SIFF Cinema in the Seattle Center

More info: http://www.siff.net/festival/film/detail.aspx?id=44394&FID=206

Mercy is a Warrior

From a recent photo shoot for Mercy is a Warrior.

Photo by Carlos Melgoza http://anima-nocturna.blogspot.com/

Thanks to http://www.inscapearts.org/ and Sam Farrazaino

SIFF

Wonderful news tracings will play SIFF!

http://www.siff.net/festival/index.aspx

May I suggest?

While I would never want a world free of intelligent review and critique I think it is sad that critical analysis is our default mode for viewing art. I know it makes us feel like we are an informed insider to be able to dissect and knockdown a piece of art but I find it heartbreaking and think that in doing this we, as audience, rob ourselves of being able to sit inside the creation.

A humble suggestion, occasionally suspend your disbelief and accept a work of art as you would a birthday gift. Even if it isn't exactly what you might buy yourself, it hardly matters. What matters is that someone took the time, energy and thought to give you something that they hoped you might gain some benefit from.

I think this is where most artists come from when offering up the fruits of their labor, so why do we insist on putting up so many barriers to our own connection with a work? What are we depriving ourselves of when we insist on pulling the wings off of everything we see in order to determine if and why it can/not fly?

I am not saying we should watch every thing in this manner for the rest of our lives. I just think it is a nice experiment to try in hopes of gaining fresh eyes. Remember when you first went to the theater (gallery, record store…) and everything was mind-blowing? Don't you ever mourn the loss of that perspective? I do.

Art is a gift.

Sometimes it is ok to just say thank you when someone gives you a gift.

Visit at VA Puget Sound

Thanks to the veterans and Anne Peterson at the Beacon Hill VA Puget Sound. We had a charming visit.

Highlights include meeting Jack who used to be a ballroom dancer AND played drums in a husband/wife band when swing dance drove ballroom out of fashion. You could see it in him too, long limbs and a certain presence even with his age.

Another bright spot was a sleepy vet that wandered right through the middle of the dancing to get to the coffee on the other side of the rec room. It was such a nice reminder that dance doesn't always have to be this precious thing pedestaled upon a stage but is really just another simple part of life.

As soon as I got home I got a nice note from Anne thanking us for our performance!

On a more serious side the experience let me to some further contemplation on the role of arts in the world. Upon first arriving at the hospital I feel shame. Who do I think I am trying to make a DANCE of all things considering mortality, loss struggle. Here I am youthful and ridiculously able-bodied in comparison to the residents, living a fairly sheltered existence.

Who do I think I am????

Of course none of the vets or the staff were thinking this. They are pleased that we have come, they are enjoying it. And I come to terms again as I have over and over with the truth that it is ok to be who you have become. Not everyone should be a doctor or a soldier and not everyone should be a dancer, and that is ok. It is ok that life places each of us in different roles. I am what this life has presented me, just as they are. I don't take issue with them for fighting wars that I don't believe in, they don't take issue with my years of plies and tendus and futile acts of movement.

They are happy to see us. Instead of guilt, I will feel happy to be seen.

I have a right to tell this story even if I am most likely farther from it than they. We all have a right to it. We all end up in it. We all have to watch those around us enter into it. It is OUR story. I just happen to have been placed in a position where I can tell the story. They were in a position to patch wounds or to fight and sadly to kill, but they rose to meet what they were given. I am in a position to be seen. I have a forum to 'speak'.

Maybe sometimes the graceful thing to do is to put aside our private neurosis, to not shrink humbly away on account of our own insignificance, but to do whatever thing we have been given with as much dedication and integrity as we can muster.

Maybe seeing a thing through is an honorable thing, regardless of what path you have stepped onto.