Bodied Memories

• In Event: Critical Karaoke

Abstract

This set will explore the city’s “racial memories” enacted in the bodies of its inhabitants by responding to two dance performances choreographed by Lenora Lee. Lee is a San Francisco choreographer who experiments with dialogues between live dance and film. I will respond to “Rescued Memories” and “The Escape” as they unfold on screen, asking how we can think about the intersections of urban racial histories and contemporary bodies through the lens of performance. Cities’ “racial DNA” and their memories of trauma are rehearsed through contemporary affective existence, stored and enacted in the bodies of people who inherit those traumas. How do dancing bodies help us understand the ways racial histories are re-inserted, re-performed, and re-lived through contemporary urban existence? How does live dance performance complicate the historical memory suggested by filmic representations of the urban landscape?

Inna Arzumanova is Assistant Professor of Media Studies at the University of San Francisco. Her research examines racial and gender performativity and aesthetics within popular culture, global media and cultural industries. Her work has appeared in the International Journal of Communication, American Quarterly, Critical Studies in Beauty and Fashion, as well as in several anthologies.

Author

• Inna Arzumanova, U of San Francisco