dislocation, diaspora, displacement and the creation of a new village

Dislocation, Diaspora, Displacement and the Creation of the New Village was the theme for the in-class performance festival that took place on April 8. Although everyone was addressing the same topic, the presentations were very diverse in form and content.
Lindsay Page's performance piece was interesting and playful. She stood in the room and invited people to draw on her body with permanent markers for a few seconds while she stripped off her clothes. Once she was completely naked she started asking people around her to lend her a piece of their clothing. The group had been open to participate drawing on her, but when she started asking for clothing people were reluctant to comply at first. Most people lend her an item of clothing they were not using or was not crucial to their dress.
After her performance, she told me she was hoping to create a tension between dressed and undressed, having people stripping off their clothes and leaving them in the nude to clothe her, and I told her she should have asked and people would have probably done it, this dynamic gave me my idea for my own performance.
Jennifer Norquist's performance had a very intimate feeling. There were small mounds of twiggs, stones, banana peels (left from Francis' performance) and other organic materials and she carefully gathered a few materials from each of the mounds and placed them in a middle pile, reminiscent of a small bonfire.
Ana White, Genevieve Cloutier and Grant Hash collaborated in a piece they titled Show and Tell Vancouver, where they addressed the issues of homelessness and integration into our surroundings. They presented a video of them built a shelter from found materials on a street in Vancouver east side, and then they took it down. They also made a series of cards with suggestive actions one could do around the city to experience the surroundings in a new way, and a blog where people could post their experiences on these actions.
Heather Ohlin brought in a mirror with an ornamental wooden frame and asked for help from the group to move it. When the volunteers helped her put it down against the wall, they all looked into the mirror and smiled, as if they were trying to compose a portrait.
Franciso Granados stood holding a white rose while he plucked it petal by petal repeating the words "os ama, no os ama", which means "he loves me, he loves me not". He later explained this had been a play on words as Osama had been the name of a man he had been in love with. The words also brought reference to war, relating the word Osama with Osama Bin Laden, and the white rose was a strong yuxtaposition of this concept.
Yota Konishi performed a durational piece through the length of the class where he used parts of old computers to help him exercise. This was a very humorous piece as he came up with very clever and unexpected ways to use the computer to do all kinds of excercises. And he did all this very quietly, in a corner of the room, so every now and again one would forget he was there, and then look back to be surprised by his new move.