The year 2020 brought the world to a state of volatility, uncertainty and apathy, which remains ongoing. The world is still trying to cope under the enormous socio-economic pressures of the Covid-19 pandemic and Britain has finally entered its post-Brexit phase of leaving the European Union. Against this backdrop, there has been a surge of attacks, hate crimes and racism towards people of East and Southeast Asian diasporas worldwide. Though anti-Asian sentiments and attacks are nothing new, the pandemic has compounded and exposed such sentiments to new heights and resulted in people feeling angry, anxious, exposed, hyper alert, worried for their safety, injured, some murdered.
F-ing Good Provocation is a response to these incidents and sentiments. As we stand in solidarity with colleagues, creatives and artists of the global majority, our focus is race and racism in Britain’s landscape of movement, dance and body practices.
Initiated by dance artist Jane Chan, the Provocation is a culmination of forty hours’ worth of conversations, one-to-one sessions with twenty independent artists on race, racism and injustices as well as their lived experiences. All artists are of the East, Southeast Asian diasporas working within the landscape of movement, dance and body practices across Britain. The conversations were guided by open questions carefully devised through two focus groups with Thea Stanton and Xie Jin Hao respectively.
The Provocation was first published online in spring 2021 to an invited audience of approximately 100 industry professionals in the landscape of movement, dance and body practices. As we progress into 2022, we continue to gain confidence and courage to speak about such issues more openly, hence the decision to make F-ing Good Provocation fully accessible in the form of a printed publication.
By the time The F-ing Good Provocation Zine reaches you, we may be in a different paradigm to that of lockdown 2020/21 and the publishing of this Zine, autumn 2022. I urge and encourage you to engage with these texts and art works more with their essence than the form they may take with an open heart and hold them gently with kindness and care.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jane Chan is an independent dance artist who works at the intersection of choreography, performance, teaching, project management, mentoring and change instigation. Empathy, kindness, care and people centred approach are at the heart of her artistic practice. Her work is autoethnographic and aims to question and reclaim cultural and social misrepresentation as well as dismantle, redistribute and reconstruct the power dynamics within the landscape of movement and dance. She works with different artists, mediums and processes with a consistent objective to tell stories of our time.
Appreciation and gratitude to:
All artists involved | creative team |
Daniel Pitt | Dr. Royona Mitra | Thea Stanton | Xie Jin Hao
INTRODUCTION
