Reflecting on the Body in George & Maria’s Workshops

The central focus of George Sanchez and Maria Jose Contreras’ workshops (in October and November respectively) was the body: the body that “keeps the score” of its habits, desires, and accumulated traumas, whether or not that score ever makes its way into verbal expression or outward acknowledgement. The goal of these workshops was to explicitly offer that acknowledgement: to make the score visible, legible, and communal, rather than burying it in the rush of “going back to normal life” after a year of COVID lockdown, precarity, illness, and death. The goal was also to find expressions for it that were not entirely linguistic: to use the body itself, and its myriad senses, to bring out the body’s aches and sores. As such, two central activities from the workshop stood out the most to me: George’s “Image of Covid” activity (adapted from Augusto Boal’s image-theatre) and Maria’s “Body Maps.”

The “Images of Covid” activity was powerful because it came on the heels of “Images of Power,” in which we were encouraged to set up three chairs, a table, and a water bottle in such a way that gave one of the chairs ultimate power over the rest. It was only after interrogating various permutations of these objects and analyzing what power meant to us as a group that George prompted us to create a similar “image” to capture the Covid experience. One participant, Thomonique, took the lead, and the “image” wound up being a woman feeling the temperature of a reclining (and potentially dying) man, while a couple held hands at a distance and wept. On the face of it, this image was less “impressive” than the inanimate and highly imaginative images of power that preceded it. But what it allowed the participants to do was share their experiences organically as prompted by the image before them. This organic story-telling that emerged from the group was worlds apart from more stilted variations of “processing the pandemic” that I have experienced in the past, in which folks go around in a circle and confess their suffering to strangers. Though I had experienced George’s workshop once before among only ZCMP fellows in September, this moment had not taken place the first time, largely because we inadvertently settled into the more familiar sharing-in-a-circle structure at the time. This, however, was far more moving. The stories participants shared were unprompted, and all used the image as a jumping-off point for their personal lives.

Maria’s “Body Maps” succeeded in an entirely different way: rather than encouraging us to focus on the events of the past year (the “plot points” within the monotony, as it were), it gave us sounds, shapes, and colors through which to narrate our body’s unique journey through the pandemic—a story we otherwise would have no space to really tell. We were asked to trace outlines of one another on large canvases and then draw within those outlines where the pandemic had left its marks on our bodies and how. Each map turned out completely unique. For some folks, the body was loud: ambulance sirens blaring within the mind, fires engulfing the heart and lungs, shackles chaining the arms and legs. For others, it was silent: empty spaces, vines winding through the legs and arms, an astronaut’s glass shell surrounding the head, or the head transforming into a luminous laptop screen. The stories we told through the artworks then manifested in speech. Maria asked us to explain the effect on our bodies to one another through a match exercise—we had to speak for as long as the match was burning, then pass a match to the next person in the circle. The maps we had just drawn seeped into our stories, and the focus on the match’s weak light took pressure away from the verbal constructions themselves. It was a magical moment, much like the one with Thomonique’s image in George’s workshop. Some folks cried in the small window of time their match gave them; others expressed their gratitude for the bodies they had come to find themselves in. In that way, the workshops completed one another, moving between visual and embodied stories, and transforming the most private and intimate memories into elements of collective experience.

Author Bio: Aya Labanieh is a Ph.D. candidate in the English and Comparative Literature Department, where she works on imperial conspiracies and their conspiracy-theory afterlives in 20th and 21st century Middle Eastern literature and politics. Her broader interests include conspiratorial thinking within a global digital context, and how conspiracy theories function as alternate histories, heretical discourses, popular critiques, epistemic injuries, and modern enchantments.

The Zip Code Memory Project seeks to find community-based ways to memorialize the devastating losses resulting from the Coronavirus pandemic while also acknowledging its radically differential effects on Upper New York City neighborhoods. Through a series of art-based workshops, public events, social media platforms, and a final performance/exhibition at the Cathedral of St John the Divine, community members participate in building networks of shared responsibility and belonging.

Representing Covid through Boal’s Image-Theater

Images of “Covid:”

#1. A person lies on a bench with both hands resting on their stomach and eyes half-closed. Another person stands with one of their hands placed on the forehead of the person lying down. The person lying down does not see the person who has a hand on their forehead. At a certain distance, two people stand behind some chairs holding hands and looking in the direction of the person lying down.

#2. A person sits on the ground with their legs outstretched. Another person lies on the ground with their upper body rested on the other person’s lap. The person sitting on the ground embraces the person lying on their lap with both arms and holds them.

#3. A group of people sit cross-legged on the ground in a circle. They all face the outside of the circle, with their backs turned to the center of the circle. Everyone in the circle holds their head down with both hands over their head. No one sees or touches another person.

These three images of “Covid” were created in the “Rehearsals for Change” workshops that took place in the past three weekends. We were asked to use the bodies of other participants to build a “sculpture” of “Covid” (Boal 143). As in Boal’s Image-Theater, we were “not allowed to speak under any circumstances” (144). Instead of verbally expressing our opinions about “Covid,” we had to come up with a “physical representation” of it (144).

Boal’s Image-Theater (like his Poetics of the Oppressed more broadly) focuses on the body as a means of theatrical production. “The means of production of the theater are constituted by [people] . . . the first word in the theatrical vocabulary is the body, the main source of sound and movement” (131). To get to know one’s own body and to make it “more expressive” are arguably the most important steps in Boal’s Poetics of the Oppressed and its goal of transforming “spectators” into “actors” who “assume the protagonist role, change the dramatic action, rehearse possible solutions, [and] discuss plans for change,” thus “preparing themselves for real action” (126).

In his discussion of Image-Theater, Boal mentions themes like “imperialism” or more “local problems, like the lack of access to running water” (143). Reading Boal’s TO in the context of the ongoing global pandemic, we think of “Covid,” and the focus of Image-Theater on non-verbal physical expression seems particularly conducive to representing “Covid” if we consider the ways in which many experiences and emotions associated with the pandemic seem to defy verbal articulation. As Bessel van der Kolk writes in The Body Keeps the Score, the “imprint” of painful experiences are often “organized not as coherent logical narratives but in fragmented sensory and emotional traces: images, sounds, and physical sensations” (211). In our workshops, many of us mentioned the sound of ambulance sirens and the image of refrigerator trucks parked at the entrance of hospitals — two “traces” (one sonic, one visual) that powerfully express something about our experience of the pandemic. If many “imprints” of the ongoing pandemic are organized in “traces” such as images, Boal’s Image-Theater offers us a tool to use our bodies (the same bodies that “keep the score” of what we’ve been going through) to express and share these “traces.”

In Image-Theater, a participant is asked to build a “physical representation of the proposed theme,” and, subsequently, “another image showing how they would like the proposed theme to be. In other words: the first grouping shows the real image, while the second shows the ideal image. With these two images, a participant is asked to show what would be, for them, the transitional image. We have a reality that we want to transform; how do we transform it?” (Boal 144). Using the example of a young woman who lived in a “small pueblo, called Otuzco,” in Peru, Boal describes an image in which leaders of a peasant revolt were publicly tortured in the town’s central square (144). Boal describes this image as “terrible, tragic, pessimistic, defeatist, but, at the same time, an image of something that really happened” (145). The young woman transformed this real image into an ideal image in which “people worked in peace and loved each other . . . in short, [the image of] a happy Otuzco” (145).

#1. A person lies on a bench with both hands resting on their stomach and eyes half-closed. Another person stands with one of their hands placed on the forehead of the person lying down. The person lying down does not see the person who has a hand on their forehead. At a certain distance, two people stand behind some chairs holding hands and looking in the direction of the person lying down.

What happens when you have a real image that isn’t only “terrible, tragic, pessimistic, defeatist”? The image of “Covid” that Thomonique created in our first workshop has things we would probably like to change. We would like to see health workers (the person with one of their hands placed on the forehead of the person lying down) also cared for and comforted, and justly compensated for their essential labor. We would like to see family members (the two people standing behind the barricade of chairs) not totally isolated from their loved ones, somehow feeling like they too are caring for and comforting each other in a difficult moment. And yet, as the person lying down in this particular image, I felt the warmth of Susan’s hand on my forehead. Similarly, Julie, who was embraced and held in Image #2 (created by Nazia), expressed feeling comforted and protected. “Gestures of comfort” like touching or holding “makes us feel intact, safe, protected, and in charge” (Kolk 253). Touch, when “attuned” (253) and “mindful” (254), is “the most elementary tool that we have to calm down” (253). Such “gestures of comfort” and the affection and hope they elicit are things we would like to keep as we struggle to transform our reality into something closer to what we want it to be.

#2. A person sits on the ground with their legs outstretched. Another person lies on the ground with their upper body rested on the other person’s lap. The person sitting on the ground embraces the person lying on their lap with both arms and holds them.

Perhaps the real image of “Covid” in most need of transformation is Image #3 (created by Leah). The gestures in this image seem to be gestures not of comfort but of distress, especially the gesture of holding one’s head down with both hands. This is the only image in which people touch themselves, but not others. They are in the same circle, yet deeply alone. Maybe we would like each person in the circle to place one of their hands on someone else’s forehead, and to have another person’s hand placed on their forehead. Maybe we would like each person in the circle to hold someone else, and to be held. If this is the real image of “Covid,” maybe the ideal image would not be that different from the circle with which we closed each of the workshops — one where everyone stands turned to the center of the circle with arms interlocked with those of the people next to them. If this is the ideal image, what would be the transitional image? How do we get from the circle in Image #3 to the circle at the end of the workshops? Maybe the workshop is the transition, the circle of chairs where we first meet at the start of the day, and the circle of chairs where we later discuss the images of “Covid” and what it means to us before standing up for the final circle.

#3. A group of people sit cross-legged on the ground in a circle. They all face the outside of the circle, with their backs turned to the center of the circle. Everyone in the circle holds their head down with both hands over their head. No one sees or touches another person.

Image-Theater is “one of the most stimulating [forms]” of the Poetics of the Oppressed (147). It stimulates the “desire” to practice what was rehearsed in the workshops, a “certain lack of satisfaction” that Boal calls “ímpeto revolucionário” — a moving force that seeks “fulfillment” through political struggle (152). Together, the three images of “Covid” that came out of our workshops suggest that gestures of comfort and the feelings they elicit are key to any “ímpeto revolucionário” and to our struggles to change the unjust realities that have been exacerbated by the ongoing pandemic.

Boal, Augusto. Teatro do oprimido e outras poéticas políticas. Civilização brasileira, 1991.

Kolk, Bessel van der. The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma. Viking, 2014.

Author Bio: Guilherme Meyer is a PhD candidate and teaching assistant in the Department of English at New York University. My dissertation project deals with prophetic utopianism, which is a mode of utopianism that engages in prophetic denunciation-annunciation as a means to sustain revolutionary praxis. He is a co-chair of the Marxism working group in the Department of English and an organizer in the union for graduate workers at NYU, GSOC-UAW Local 2110.

The Zip Code Memory Project seeks to find community-based ways to memorialize the devastating losses resulting from the Coronavirus pandemic while also acknowledging its radically differential effects on Upper New York City neighborhoods. Through a series of art-based workshops, public events, social media platforms, and a final performance/exhibition at the Cathedral of St John the Divine, community members participate in building networks of shared responsibility and belonging.

An email after a visit to La Morada

This post contains an email that I shared with Diana Taylor, Marianne Hirsch, and Lee Xie after visiting La Morada in the Bronx with Aya Labanieh on September 7th, 2021. 

Dear all,
As I said in my previous email, the experience today was amazing and fulfilling. We spent many hours peeling beets and carrots and getting to talk with the members of La Morada. We made hand corrections on the date of the call and left a note next to the fliers saying that there were workshops available for kids. Unfortunately, families weren’t picking up veggies today. That will happen next Monday. I plan to go back there to volunteer a few more hours next week, and I can then distribute fliers to these families.

Photographer Camila Falquez, who did a project for El Pais (Spain) titled Queens of New York in which Natalia Mendez (main chef and organizer at La Morada) was included, came with us to volunteer. We had the chance to spend some time in the kitchen talking to Natalia and Marco, thanks to Camila, and also get a sense of the mutual aid work they undertake, how much work they do, and how vital it is for them to get people to help. We also went with Yajaira and Angeles to the community garden they started back in the spring. It’s an incredible space where they teach people to grow their own food and do workshops on medicinal plants for people in the neighborhood. The beauty and amount of work they do, which I got to know about while working at Hemi, is overwhelming. The level to which they take care and conversation made me wish that they could be taken as a model for public humanities, and I am absolutely serious about this.

Aya and I had a beautiful chance to talk and discuss the intended target for the workshops and thought that volunteers would be interested in applying and could also be the ones with time to apply and commit to attending workshops. We talked to Marco and Jacob (a regular volunteer) so that they can distribute the fliers among them as well as the regular families who come in search of mutual aid support.

At some point at the end of the afternoon, a basketball player (a famous one) showed up. He and his media team came to take a series of pictures for his social media. The pictures were supposed to show him doing some social justice/community work. Natalia was joking back in the kitchen about how these celebrities come over to “help” but end up making all the work more difficult and slow. That’s how it happened today, and as Natalia had predicted, the guy peeled a few potatoes, made a donation, and left. His media team, a bunch of white men, basically stopped the cooking process for almost 30 mins because, for them taking the picture was more important than the work that was taking place there.

That moment made me think of the Lorraine O’Grady retrospective organized by the Brooklyn Museum recently, in particular the piece “Art is…” which is one of my favorite works of art (obviously because it is a carnival-inspired work). Here is a summary of the work: Art is. A fascinating aspect of this work is that instead of creating more artworks, O’Grady finds a way of framing the people of Harlem themselves as works of art. I would be more than happy to share more reflections about this piece at a meeting and also some of her writing about it. But I wanted to bring this up because it seems to me like a great example of how documenting/registering what is already happening could be more powerful and “artistic” than coming as outsiders to execute a new project. While peeling beets with Aya, we got to talk briefly about Saidiya Hartman’s “The Anarchy of Colored Girls Assembled in a Riotous Manner,” so I would like to pull out a fragment from it as it has helped me to see the artistic and unseen potential of mutual aid efforts and somehow it also makes me think of O’Grady’s and the potential that the ZCMP holds:

“The mutual aid society survived the Middle Passage, and its origins might be traced to traditions of collectivity, which nourished in the stateless societies that preceded the breach of the Atlantic and perdured in its wake. This form of mutual assistance was remade in the hold of the slave ship, the plantation, and the ghetto. It made good the ideals of the collective, the ensemble, the always-more-than-one of existing in the world. The mutual aid society was a resource of black survival. The ongoing and open-ended creation of new conditions of existence and improvisation of life-enhancing and free association was a practice crafted in social clubs, tenements, taverns, dance halls, disorderly houses, and the streets.”

It seems to me that the re-emergence of mutual aid projects in NYC and around the globe during the current pandemic deserves attention. They might not work as memorials themselves, but, as Hartman points out, they constitute themselves a practice that we did not forget. And in not forgetting this collective practice resides a powerful potential for remembrance as these people have been in direct contact with those who lost jobs, family members, etc.

I’m attaching a few photographs of the community garden and some “memorials” I came across while walking around the neighborhood. The candle memorials, which are also very popular in Brooklyn and the LES, have always attracted me as they stand to serve many social functions in these communities when someone dies violently. They are placed in the spot where the person has been killed and are composed primarily of candles, spirits (liquors), food, cigars, coffee, photographs, and personal objects. I’m curious to know if someone has written about them. I’ll check out and let you know if I find something.

Sorry for my messy thoughts and writing. It’s late and I’m tired but excited for the opportunity you have created for us to do something meaningful. Thanks, Marianne and Diana!

Best,

Luis Rincón Alba

Mapping Out

November 20, 2021 Group Workshop with Maria

We as a collective attempted to connect through body movement. Like molecules we bumped and diverged, spreading in all directions at different speeds. After a while we were asked to trace ourselves to the past. So we made body maps. Laid them out flat and traced the outline of our present selves while filling the bodies with loss, fears, memories, thoughts and even hope.

I traveled through the incessant cries and frustrations of my children and through my own memories of feeling trapped, scared and in pain from the sickness.

As I drew the inside of my body map I began to outline green vines, wrapping my body, circling around my feet, protecting me from myself? I wasn’t sure, but I kept going with it. I had to see how the vines were going to get me out of my own head. And they did.

Even though my hands were tied in a pink bow and I felt helpless, even though knives like death were threatening me from all sides, I felt the green vines were going to bring me back.

When I stood up and looked at my body map from a distance I was overwhelmed by the image of my own body, “is that my body?” I asked myself, “who am I?”

People who walked by commented but I stood there and tried to capture the feeling. I was sad by how quickly I forgot or rather got used to the pain brought on by the pandemic without even giving it a breath of release.

After everyone was done we hung up our bodies on the back walls of the auditorium. We walked circles around the hung bodies and we mourned together. We shared stories inside the bodies. We commemorated the bodies we had hoped were left behind for good. Some bodies didn’t want to be left behind, they were the lucky ones.

Once we attempted at peace with ourselves, we were asked to now mark our neighborhood maps, maps of our physical space during COVID, maps of our stagnation. That wasn’t hard. I had a hard time finding myself on the map, where did I live? Where did I go during this time? Why couldn’t I find my street. So I went to another group’s map because I didn’t want to be alone. There I found three spots that situated me on the map and I suddenly felt at ease. I told some people about the places I marked. Hudson River path near my home where I walked regularly and let kids ride their bikes while cursing unmasked runners under my mask. I marked my block where I spent almost a year in isolation with my family. I also made a mark where I work, far from home but a place where I was told I had to be even if I was afraid. When I tried to look for a place where we would go to escape, near Bear Mountain, it wasn’t on the map. It was not part of the map that was handed to me. I guess the escape is just not part of the big picture but a distant place, hidden and off the radar. It’s better that way, less chance of it getting contaminated.

After the Workshop I somehow felt closer to myself, like I got to know myself a bit better. The workshop allowed me the time and space to feel and be with my thoughts and memories and that was enough to begin the journey of healing from the past COVID to the present COVID. And even though the pandemic is still in full swing, I now know where I can be found.

Author Bio: Leah Kogen-Elimeliah is a poet, essayist, short story and nonfiction writer from Moscow, currently living in New York City. She is an MFA candidate at City College of New York, is the Founder and Director of WordShedNYC Reading Series and an Editorial Associate for Fiction literary magazine. Her writing focuses on immigration, identity, language, sexuality and culture. She is a member of the ZIP Code Memory Project.

The Zip Code Memory Project seeks to find community-based ways to memorialize the devastating losses resulting from the Coronavirus pandemic while also acknowledging its radically differential effects on Upper New York City neighborhoods. Through a series of art-based workshops, public events, social media platforms, and a final performance/exhibition at the Cathedral of St John the Divine, community members participate in building networks of shared responsibility and belonging.