Why It Matters to Rethink Catharsis and Take Activism to the Dance Floor
Although we were very fortunate to play a few concerts with the Gigi Saggi Dance Band in the summer season, due to the pandemic we were not able to play as much as we had initially planned to. But we took some time during the rather calm summer season to reflect on what this actually is what we are doing by combining music, visual arts, science and activism. In end of August we then had the chance to hold a workshop at the (online) conference "Zukunft für Alle" that we called "The Dance Floor as a Carrier Bag for Transformative Futures". There we discussed our approach to the dance floor as the Gigi Saggi Dance Band, using its possibilities for shaping transformative futures. In the following we want to briefly share with you our thoughts we came up with during the process of preparing this workshop and beyond.
In the introductory performance for the workshop (see video above) we were inspired by an essay the musician Jarvis Cocker wrote. In “The Sound of the Underground, an essay about music and caves”, Cocker travels back to the very beginnings of humans’ artistic ways of expression, speculating about the remarkable resemblance of caves and contemporary underground music clubs as well as our love for reverb and echo sounds. He himself had been inspired by the findings of the renowned archaeologist David Lewis-Williams, who observed, during his decades of research in Neolithic caves all over the world, that the highest concentration of cave paintings could often be found “at a certain point in the cave system where there is a particularly strong audio echo.” This finding not only suggests that musical expressions might even predate the act of painting, but ultimately shows that music and visual arts already were of significant importance for the earliest cultural rituals. As Lewis-Williams points out, the paintings may actually have been used to enhance the mood during musical rituals in the cave. It’s not too far-fetched to think that a collective catharsis facilitated by music, flickering light and paintings was one of the key preconditions for the emergence of our modern societies.
But why does this story matter today? Let's travel in time right into the year 2019 and continue with another story. While the modern societies we now live in experience multiple social-ecological crises that reinforce the personal and collective need for cathartic experiences, the 2019-edition of the famous British music festival Glastonbury – the modern day Neolithic cave – turned out to be a site of catharsis: Bathed in the golden light of the evening sun, thousands of people danced densely packed in front of the festival stage to the music of local post-punk band IDLES. While watching their performance in the video beneath and remembering their show at Haldern Pop festival we experienced the same year, we had the feeling that there was something slightly different about the cathartic experience the band invoked. It wasn’t the usual catharsis festival-goers know all too well.
Carried by the band's highly energetic music IDLES' singer Joe Talbot poses important questions about social justice, mental health, toxic masculinity, sexual violence and racism in his lyrics, topics that have the potential to resonate among the festival-goers even beyond a weekend of music and fun, topics that keep them involved. So, instead of a catharsis based on relieve they bring a catharsis to Glastonbury that “makes a change”. More specifically, they bring not a catharsis of purification or purging of emotions and conflicts but one of keeping us involved, one that leaves us sticking in the mud, the 'societal' mud. A muddy catharsis.
With the Gigi Saggi Dance Band, we are making it our aim to bring such a muddy catharsis to the dancefloor. As the art collective for earthly survival, "i gigi saggi" (colloquial Italian for “the wise people”), that strives to combine music, visual arts, science and activism, we are currently developing our own audio-visual approach to "artivism" that is deeply committed to the utopian power of the dance floor and that utilises the tactics of story and play in music to eventually bring about a muddy catharsis — something we term Cathartivism. Feminist scholars like Donna Haraway already acknowledged story and play as the main strategies of an emotional activist science, a science that stays involved in the societal mud, or that “stays with the trouble” as Haraway puts it. Cathartivism, just like artivism, builds on story and play. However, the combination of music and visual arts promises to add a muddy catharsis and, in this way, might elevate the impact of these tactics even further. Before we dive deeper into story and play, the tactics of Cathartivism, we want to first give you a short overview on what artivism means to us.
Brainstorming about artivism on flip chart by Orin Zebest (CC BY 2.0)
Music is regarded the language of emotions, its poetics the opposite of violent language. There is a reason peaceful demonstrations like Fridays For Future as well as those that were overshadowed by violence like the protest marches during the G20 summit in Hamburg 2017 have dance floors. Hope lies in an activism that turns to emotional communication (like music) and carefully explores new ways of communicating, not merely personally emotional communication at demonstrations or in social networks but more collectively emotional communication on dance floors, where people open up affectively and let themselves be touched by the world (e.g. dance floor neighbours and yet unheard ideas). Ideas and initiatives being worth taking action for in order to bring about societal change need to be woven into experiences of muddy catharsis.
These theories and practices need to come from a diverse array of knowledges. Knowledges that are feminist, antiracist and decolonial, and that conceive of human nature as an interspecies relationship. It matters to take an activism informed by such knowledges to the dance floor just like it matters to reconsider catharsis as muddy. “It matters which worlds world worlds,” the feminist scholar Donna Haraway once stated. Indeed, the worlds represented by a diverse array of art forms generally offer the possibility of involving people emotionally and thus growing with them more sustainably. And that is what we define "artivism" — activists working together with artists or using artistic language themselves to promote their causes — and the rise of an emotional science both activist and artistic (e.g. environmental humanities) — feminist, posthumanist and multispecies scholars combining, enriching, and representing their scientific work with artistic approaches. In a nutshell, artivism is the important work on dissolving the long-upheld borders between arts, science and activism.
Gigi Saggi Dance Band live @ Alte VHS Bonn, 21st August 2020
Now, as humanity approaches a turning point hardly of less significance for future (more than-)human life than the invention of agriculture and the emergence of complex societies, a collective muddy catharsis on our contemporary dance floors might be a chance that is worth taking. It has never been more important than today to revise our understanding of what is human, what is humane, or in other words: to find our roots again. Therefore, the dance floor offers space for playfulness, most commonly related to newborns or animals, which qualifies as a powerful tool for revision. IDLES’s Joe Talbot points to “a vulnerability with playfulness,” which allows “your imagination, innocence and naivety to come through as your strength,” ultimately leading to novel movements, connections and ideas. The renowned Philosopher Timothy Morton wrote in his recent book, Humankind: Solidarity with Non-Human People: “Philosophers should never be allowed on the dancefloor. Or maybe they should only be allowed on dance floors, because that’s where their intellect might become confused enough to say something of significance”.
Gigi Saggi Dance Band live @ Alte VHS Bonn, 21st August 2020
We need confusion because it leads to "storying otherwise", and ultimately to muddy catharsis. We need play. Donna Haraway — while talking about dogs playing with each other — gave a short but quite precise definition of play: “Every play session recombines the elements in ways that never existed on Earth before. They’re constantly experimenting with possibility. That’s what play is.” She then refers to the findings of behavioural ecologist Marc Bekoff, who observed that, in order to successfully play, you need to be skilful in ethical behaviour: “The ongoingness of the game depends on its players knowing how to keep it safe enough to stay in, and the payoff of play is joy, basically.” Quite strikingly, the exact same thing happens on the dance floor at an IDLES concert. The chaotic and highly energetic punk dance style, pogo, which might appear violent to some people, actually relies on ethical behaviour as a fundamental play skill. It’s a common, unspoken law to never willfully hurt other people, to just let yourself bounce against the other without using your arms and legs, and to care for each other, take care of one another, to help people up who fall to the ground and help people out who seem in distress. This is what IDLES singer Joe Talbot empathetically observes from on stage and what he reminds the crowd of every now and then during their performances. There’s a reason the famous German hardrock, metal and punk oriented festival “Wacken” is regarded one of the friendliest, despite the seemingly violent appearance of its dance floors.
In the words of Donna Haraway: empathetic players — here dancers — are rewarded with joy for their ethical behaviour. Shouldn’t we encourage spaces where ethical behaviour is rewarded? And doesn’t such a space offer the right environment to pose important questions, show alternatives, envision utopias and stir up change?
Gigi Saggi Dance Band live @ Alte VHS Bonn, 21st August 2020
What if we were to tell stories on our dance floors? Stories that are telling worlds otherwise? “I think of storytelling as an opening up of the possibility of that kind of feeling of being with some worlds and not others,” Donna Haraway once said in an interview. It is true. When IDLES play their song “Danny Nedelko”, the crowd experiences this “feeling of being with some worlds and not others,” the feeling of being with Danny Nedelko, a migrant worker in the UK. “Stories are about one person saying to another: This is the way it feels to me. Can you understand what I’m saying? Does it feel this way to you?” the famous writer Kazuo Ishiguro observed. But what is particularly powerful about storytelling? For a possible answer it is fruitful to turn to the critical theorist Hannah Arendt. For her, “storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it.” She sees Story as a practice that stirs our imagination in a way that keeps a multitude of perspectives open rather than claiming a universal worldview: “To think with an enlarged mentality means that one trains one’s imagination to go visiting.” Stories help us open ourselves up for play, for something we haven’t yet imagined, but that becomes possible once we “go visiting.”
Why not weave theories and empirical findings that make worlds otherwise or the utopias already lived in local contexts in our stories, and tell them through our music, lyrics, visuals and dance moves in a playful manner? Let’s listen once again to Donna Haraway: “It matters, to take these capacities and skills and all the rest of it and connect with the people who are trying to make worlds otherwise.” That’s what we do. We put all our efforts into connecting with those people and push a step further: We will tell their stories on the dance floors and we will carry Pina Bausch’s words with us: “Dance, dance or we are lost.”
Gigi Saggi Dance Band live @ Alte VHS Bonn, 21st August 2020
We do this because it matters to rethink catharsis, and to take activism to the dance floor. There is a chance that these stories that tell worlds otherwise will stick with an audience, as they might experience them in a form of muddy catharsis. This possibility arising from the dissolving borders between arts, science and activism is worthy of further exploration. This is Cathartivism.
For a more detailed edition of this text, see: https://olegzurmuehlen.medium.com/why-it-matters-to-rethink-catharsis-and-take-activism-to-the-dance-floor-76aaa11bfab9
