Resisting, Surviving

Project Notes:

In November of 2024 I was asked to do a springtime performance in London by the wonderful curator Joseph Morgan Schofield of Future Ritual. Their email came just days after Trump was elected, but already the writing was on the wall for his regime to dismantle the US government, as outlined in Project 2025. I knew that I wanted to make a performance in response, but what might it be?  After Trump’s inauguration in January, the daily reports were overwhelming in the scale and speed of the destruction wrought by his henchmen.

I decided to make a performance about learning to resist Fascism. I realized that working in London, the more familiar comparison for that audience would be the rise of Hitler and fascism in Europe in the 1930s and 1940s, and World War II.  I began to do research, reading about how everyday people resisted fascism during that time, in a context not unlike our current situation in the USA.

Meanwhile, I had agreed to be part of a program of durational performances that would happen simultaneously in four different rooms of the Copeland Gallery, in Peckham. I chose a small, nearly square room that had two entrances in opposite corners of the room. Benches and cushions were positioned along the walls for the audience to sit on.

I placed a rectangular table in one corner, covered with a black tablecloth that extended across the room on the diagonal.  On the table were books about resistance activities in Germany and France during World War II. And also bottles of glue. Two chairs were on opposite sides of the table. On the cloth extending along the floor was a mound of rubble, the broken shards of domestic crockery – ceramic plates and cups and bowls.

I had an I-Pad on the floor that was reading aloud, in a mechanical female voice, one of the books that was on the table, Agnès Humbert’s Résistence.  I began the performance by lying on the ground alongside the rubble, listening to her account of living in Paris during the Occupation, and how she began to be involved in resistance activities.

I continued listening as I sat up and began to sort through the broken dishes, trying to find pieces that fit together.  When I found several pieces of a cup, I brought them to the table and began to glue the pieces together.

The empty chair across from me was an invitation that an audience member soon responded to.  When they sat down, I asked, “Can you give me advice on how to resist Fascism?” A quiet conversation arose between us as we were gluing together pieces of pottery.  Meanwhile, other audience members sat on the floor and began to sort through the broken dishes. When they found pieces to put back together, they took turns coming to the table to sit with me and work on gluing their pieces together.

All the while, we were listening to Agnes Humbert’s description of her resistance activities in Paris during World War II.

The gluing was not easy.  Initially I was concerned that it took so long. I would hold the glued pieces together for what seemed like ages, and when I thought the glue had set, I put it gently down on the table.  But after a few seconds it fell apart.  I had to hold it much longer than I expected.  In retrospect, I think that the effort and time that was required to repair the dishes was a useful demonstration of how difficult it is to restore something that is broken.

A few hours into the performance the battery on the I-Book died. I asked the audience if anyone would be willing to continue from where it stopped by reading aloud from the actual book. I said they could read as long as they wanted, and that I hoped someone else would volunteer to take over. And from then on people willingly agreed to read out loud.

The energy in the room coalesced at that point, and the sense of community intensified.  More and more people began to organize the broken pieces, helping each other to match them so that they could be glued back together.

As the five hours drew to an end, I was the last one to read.  I moved to sit on a bench with the audience. I began reading, but I didn’t know where or how to stop, the account is so compelling.  We were up to 1942, and her description was of doing forced labor in a German prison camp. As I read, I came to this passage:

“A new girl arrived today. Nora is twenty years old and quite beautiful. The sight of such a lovely face does one good. She is Dutch, the daughter of a tulip-grower near Haarlem, and she helped her anti-Nazi fiancé to escape. Her smile is exquisite, and her blue eyes sparkle as she declares in her pidgin mixture of Dutch and German: ‘Hitler has taken my country, my home and my fiancé, but he will never take my thoughts.  My thoughts are mine and only mine.”

I stopped there.

And after a brief silence, I added, “Trump is our Hitler.”

I thanked the audience for being there with me, and for their help reading, and repairing the broken crockery.

Additional Texts:

• Some audience responses to the performance of Resisting, Surviving.
• Books used in performance of Resisting, Surviving