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Katherine Hymers |
Shabnam Shabazi Shabnam Shabazi is a maker and enabler of work. She is an artist and creative producer. She is currently working as a freelance consultant as well as making her own work. She has directed over twenty productions, and initiated many projects. Prior to that she was Producer of Jonzi D’s Still Brock Productions. Associate Producer of Contact Theatre, Manchester; Creative Producer of BA.d@Derby Playhouse (Black and Asian development); Cultural Development Director of ‘Other Peoples’ Houses’ for Tower Hamlet’s TH2000 Millennium Celebrations; Cultural Development and Outreach Consultant for ‘Urban Mass’, Newham’s Festival of Youth Culture; Director of Chats Palace Arts Centre in Hackney; Associate Director Chester Gateway, Assistant and Associate Director at Out of Joint; Literary Manager of London New Play Festival; Education Officer of Theatre Centre, Assistant Director of Paines Plough and Assistant Director for Women’s’ Theatre Workshop.
Session 1 Is it okay to appropriate? Is it important to be aware of cultural references that we may explore in the work we make? Or is appropriation the basis of all art? Should we create some ground rules for critical debate? What is real? What is not? Who is real? Who is not? What is important? What is not? I spoke about too many things that day. I would have been more focussed if I had just spoken about ‘Speaker’s Corner’ (My current project). I felt a bit frustrated and angry at my circumstances, as I walked home that evening, knowing that I had to create ‘the space’ for the work to happen.
The journey of Speaker’s Corner so far… A kind of journey, a real journey, a necessary and practical one, perhaps bringing me closer to returning to my country of birth which I have not seen since the age of 9. I am forced to view my own place of birth from the outside: ‘Exile’. Facing personal, political, social and psychological demons in making my return due to ‘memory tricks’ but also because I would need to go there as a veiled Muslim woman, without make-up and nail varnish, and ask my dad’s permission when it’s time to leave. When you are a feminist and a free spirit these infringements of civil liberty are a little hard to swallow…though I hope to eventually overcome them. For now I have to finish ‘Speaker’s Corner’ which is definitely more than one thing. From 11-20 December, I will create a make shift studio for myself for two weeks at artsadmin as I kind of ‘story-board’, and come up with the final idea of what this work is, the end of R&D presentation for feed back, and what I would need in production phase and how I would make it happen. This project has been a necessary journey for me, because I was disconnected from my own history and needed to re-connect with it, in an attempt to try and find my own voice creatively, emotionally and spiritually. I cannot deny where I come from…and actually this is more than one place! The Research and Development has been practical because I found it easier to connect with the past by having something between myself and ‘it’ - the making of a piece of work. It has been a very thorough and ‘soul searching’ journey, and one I do not need to repeat for another decade probably. I find that once every decade when things break down, I am forced to question everything right down to the cellular level, like a personal ‘spring clean’. It has been a structured but organic process facilitated for me by me. I have left plenty of space for responding to ‘outside’, social stimuli, though I have had a structure. There is certainly an element of participation in how I develop my work, and people and places inspire me. The activities, journeys and actions that I have been involved in are leading me to images, I spend time letting the images settle, and looking at where I want to go with them: where is that image leading me? A major point of consideration very early on for me was the realisation that I wasn’t free neither at Speakers’ Corner nor in the society that I was part of. Having to question many of the themes and images that I was preoccupied with due to the political context that I live in and where I come from, and the fact that there is so much censorship. Investing in the necessity for secrecy and the pernicious presence of some form of terror, and strangulation of basic human rights. Aware that what I have been exploring which is very personal may have an impact globally on people who have an association with me. Particularly because of its autobiographical, and documentary nature. I live in a climate where it is not difficult for me to be transgressive as a woman from Middle Eastern origin. Now I have overcome my self-censorship, because of the fire in my belly, I have accepted that some of the material I might have to lock away for now, until there is a climate of peace, and when people have more freedom in Iran. I have also been thinking about direct representations of people in works: its strengths and weaknesses. What’s obvious? What’s not? In any case through making this piece of work, I am going to feel a lot lighter. It has been about my own ‘empowerment’ as a first generation immigrant who assimilates into so many other cultures other than her own. Attaining knowledge and information about my own history in order to create a new ‘presence’ for myself... |
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Franko B 2006
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