she refused to be what she was told she was (2018)

Yasmina Reggad

Performance on Thursday 8th February, 9pm during the opening of Shoot the Women First, at The Breeder Gallery, Athens.

she refused to be what she was told she was is a site specific performance that activates Bulk Targets 1-100 (2017), 100 works on cardboard by Navine G. Khan-Dossos. The performance is titled after the last words of Lisa Downing’s essay ‘Shoot The Women First. A Reflection on the Gender Politics of Targeting” (2018) specially commissioned by the artist. The costumes are taken from among the first studies for Bulk Targets 1-100. 

As the shooting target models shield one side of their bodies, a group of individuals become, at the same time, the coercive ‘army’ that divides and conquers, and the threatening objects to be targeted.

The group will perform ambiguous characters and stereotyped ideas projected onto women from different angles, blurring the boundaries between victim and perpetrator.

Both the gallery space and the pedestrian street are under siege and transformed into a stage and a battlefield. Members of the audience are the witnesses or accomplices of either the oppressed or the persecutors.

The heels hitting the ground awake one’s memory of a lonely woman walking an empty street, a rushed roadside solicitation – or maybe this is the call for an uprising.

 

(Choreography & research: Yasmina Reggad; Yi Quan training & mouvements: Paola-Rebecca Drea; Costume: first studies for Bulk Targets 1-100 (2017) by Navine G. Khan-Dossos; performed by dancers Mina Ananiadou, Ioanna Angelopoulou, Marilina Besi, Paola-Rebecca Drea, Veatriki Kapnisi, Dafni Krazoudi, Marina Miliou-Theocharaki, Elton Petri, Alexandra Tsotanidou and Valentini-Eleni Vekkini; Photography: Alexandra Masmanidi)

 

thanks to: Navine Navine G. Khan-Dossos for her hospitality and her courageous gestures, Ioanna Angelopoulou, the audacious performers, 42 Zone Studio Pilates, Ali Macgilp and all our sisters who submitted names of ‘exceptional women’ throughout the world.