Niurca Marquez
Niurca Márquez is a movement artist/researcher and author As a trained somatic educator and uses her body-centered work to service communities undergoing processes of healing and self-realization. A Latinx artist and activist on the margins advocating for silenced voices, she is particularly interested in notions of identity, cultural memory and ritual within a contemporary framework, as well as the multiple layers of communication and understanding in movement practices that lead to liaisons with political and social discourse. She is part of the Rising Leaders of Color Initiative of Theater Communications Group, Cohort #4 (TCG, NY) and a 2019 graduate of the National Association of Latino Arts and Culture Leadership Institute (NALAC, San Antonio, TX). She directs Cultural Arts Exchange, an organization dedicated to expanding the conversation and offerings of the arts community in South Florida and the Caribbean, through artist services and programs centered on social accountability. She is also a founding member of FARO, a collaborative whose vision it is to create a space for rigorous creative/research that gives voice to thinkers and doers independently of institutional representation and recognition; work that is of and for the margin, and that recognizes the margin as a source of understanding and shifting perspectives.
Day 1
Wait, wasn't I just here not too long ago.
Still digesting Materiality of Exile and now a new kind of response...
One more network to respond to.
"Failure should be in the artist, not the audience"
In the end I realize today I naturally gravitated to an external cue, choosing to be at its mercy. In this case, the water, or rather the sound of the water.
As it turns out, my taste is strongly experienced through my vision.
I carry the explorations back into the room with me. My proprioception seems affected by it all somehow.
What stays, what goes?
I worked on this campus for over two years and have had ongoing incursions for over 15, yet today it all felt new and unexplored.
Today's moment had nothing and everything to do with the journey. The body as ACTIVE repository. Just like that, a 20 year question about how to speak of choice in the bodies of "trained" dancers who are also practitioners in the discussion on the somatics of syncretism lands in the chair next to me, and I am reminded that connections are sometimes uncovered in the most unexpected places.
2/25/20
Part 1:
Too much
No words so much as felt
Stealing Julia’s words because we seem to have had the same day. She in German, I in Spanish, both translated
“For the records: today the sun was shining, my cells vibrated - they're swinging on new things, on me. I'm exhausted and rugged and this is normal on a day like this. A lot is at the same time - I'm happy, I'm sad, trust, let me be, love.”
Part 2:
Hands
Shadows
guides
feet must follow
clumsy at first
gravitas
y van tomando densidad
full
we'll lead & you follow now
que pasa cuando la periferia
se convierte en las que sugieren?
indican,
sirenas,
dictan
sígueme
Today it was skin. Skin as gateway, not container. Skin negotiating interiority and exteriority. Skin not as barrier. As space of suspension and perceived silence. Touching something, aware of something.
Hoy me quedo con lo erótico. Cómo se llega a ello y cómo puñeta salgo de ahí. Qué ricura llegar ahí no porque me di un baño de luz hippy, sino porque me quedé en el cuerpo (lo interior y lo exterior, el va y ven de la auto-conciencia) y caí en ello. Me quedé con las pautas y lo que pensé iba a ser una eternidad se fue volando.
What are all the ways I can let my "hands guide me through the space"
Staying true to the tasks as I've set them up, the body melts into nothing and everything, and I'm back at space.
2/26/20
"The intensive is what transforms the extensive"
And on a day where the pain barely let me focus and Bachelard walks into the room, I'm left with this question:
IF the image of space can in fact have a universality, then is the handling of said image (the activating it and intending to enter, interact and even dare I say transform in some way) how one might be alerted to ritual?
Pain has a way of making me land.
2/27/20
In the end we are each responsible for our individual research questions. Mine continue to guide me even when I don't believe I have any solid ones.
I had jotted a few questions to myself last Saturday. At the time they didn't seem to be aligned with this experience. In fact, I was considering an overall question of general purpose. As always, full circle.
How does it all weave?
How is it relevant?
What am I finding that helps me better explain it?
How do I bring my bruja self here?
I had started out with an interest in the sonic. Given the shifts I am going through, it is the area I am most having to question in my practice. I never actually left it. My initial attraction is still there and becoming more solidified.
The skin still needs to be present because the tactile is what is connecting it all at the moment.
"The clarity of what it is for you, becomes the clarity of what you are offering"
Of course, Ofrenda...
It was all about cartography and now we circle back around to it. Just like that, the 2016 Grass Stains project and this 2020 exploration collapse into each other. And here once again, the layers of participation I am interested in are multiple: sound, visual, tactile and yes, ritual.
Open composition
(tenía traducción, creo que le llamábamos composición instantánea, pero ahora no lo recuerdo y como contiene el instante, no sé ni si funciona como traducción en si, pero no importa)
El estar dentro y fuera a la vez
(eso sí)
The multiple layers of awareness
Deformación profesional. Esto es lo que hay.
2/28/20
Today was about fairy tales that don't tell stories and sounds that are illusions.
Breadcrumbs are rocks
The rabbit belongs to another group and is leading the tea party and riddles are absent but answers are given nonetheless.
Alice surfaces once again (as she's been doing for the past four days for Carla and I, but today) her presence was confirmed first by Ana and then by Google...
just a funny little coincidence.
Monica begins with tapping. Does it bother us she asks? Are you kidding??? It's perfect. We just found our initiator. Little connectors have started to surface. Guess it's what happens when you simply adhere to the element and the task.
All I can keep thinking about is how to augment water.
After a few unsuccessful attempt to get my music editing program to work, I realized (as my friend Yvonne loves to say) "Mercury is in reguetón and I'm pulling out my chancleta."
So, I gave up on editing the track as I would have liked to ideally, so I went generic for now. Maybe Aeon had better luck with including the other track. I've included both here so that it's at least archived.
For tomorrow:
Three buckets of varying sizes
Grey and blue balloons
Signs for buckets
Bluetooth speakers
Sound file to dancers
Incense
Mermaid
And a ton of rocks