A Hope. For things we should always hold dear. Reflections on La Bomba as a centre for the future. Beatrice Jarvis.
A Hope | For things we should always hold dear. Reflections on La Bomba as a centre for the future. Beatrice Jarvis. As a young urban researcher when I came across the work of La Bomba I thought I had stumbled on a utopia. A centre in the centre of a community, working for the community, with the community. The sort of ideals you read about yet never seem to exist. Yet here it is: La Bomba.
Situated close to the flower market on the outskirts of Bucharest, this is a hub, a place of ideas, focus and action. Action in the simplest and most complex sense. Creating a place where anyone and everyone can go, to sit, to talk, to share experiences, to make sense of all the complexities that life in current day Bucharest might throw at you. The first time I arrived to La Bomba, the door was closed and there was a group of young people waiting to get in. They were patient, they were waiting, inside this centre was where they really wanted to me, their patience in the blistering mid summer heat seemed joyful, expectant and excited. This centre is sort of Mecca, a hub of positive energy; youth who really wanted to engage with a notion of community.
I approached La Bomba as a choreographer and a photographer, based at Goldsmiths, London, Studying for my MA in Visual Sociology. My research posed the question How can multidisciplinary site specific arts practices and site projects formulate a visual sociological knowledge base which can be used as source material with urban regeneration practices? It initially explores how far walking with residents can affect ideas of cartography. I felt very lucky to be working with both the people who help organise the centre and the users of the centre, both who worked very collaboratively and cohesively towards the same goals of progress. I approached the centre with two main questions: - How far can movement and dance be used as a vehicle to articulate residents emotions concerns towards their localities; -How successful can the externalisation of personal emotions through movement and dance be in communicating local urban issues to regeneration stakeholders? How far can the body express the mind? Can moving expression universally express intention? Exploring these questions at La Bomba, I utilised the body as active sociopolitical catalyst for change and renewal and to highlight certain urban preoccupations. The body can act as symbol. Within La Bomba context, the articulation of the bodies of the project participants was designed to highlight the aspects of the landscape which they wanted to see changed. Their bodies became social and political apparatus and catalyst; elevated beyond standard functionality to a new sensory plane; able to articulate different social intentions and create multiple schemas of reaction and impact. The role of the body within the La Bomba case study was not; as biological entity of primary importance; rather the actions which the body of the participant performed became social function and potential catalyst seeking to explore the area from the perspective of those who know it best; Fraser problematizes the relationship between the body metaphor and sociology is ‘for while the body and the organism have offered metaphors for the social world, they have not traditionally been considered relevant as subjects for sociological analysis in their own right.’1 The physical actions of the body as moving entity cannot be divorced from the sociopolitical motivation which enables such actions to occur.2 Here, walking and dancing can be situated to facilitate understanding of the social network to which the body is connected. Foucault asserts that the body can not be divorced from politics, ultimately; it can become a symbolic representation of the political forces which act to a directly affect its landscape and modality of being; ‘ But the body is also directly involved in the political field; power relations have an immediate hold upon it; they invest it, mark it, train it, torture it, force it to carry out tasks, to perform ceremonies, to emit signs.’3 1
Fraser. M. Greco. M (eds) ( 2005) The Body; A Reader. Routledge. London. P1 Fraser. M. Greco. M (eds) ( 2005) The Body; A Reader. Routledge. London P 3 3 Focault. M. ( 1979) The Political Investment of the Body sourced in Fraser. M. Greco. M (eds) ( 2005) The Body; A Reader. Routledge. London P 100 ( extract from Focault. M. ( 1979) Discipline and Punish. The Birth of the Prison. Random House. New York. ) 2
At La Bomba the research concept was to allow the body to become the active unit of power; collecting and reviewing images of the locality gradually merged with body participation. The participants translated images into ‘slogans’ politicising their relationship with the landscape; as though the confrontation and review of images gathers would facillate a sense of collective action. These slogans enabled participants to realise the value of visual material for both as creative stimulus and social document: object and text based study progressed to physical embodiment as the slogans initiated movement. The duality of the body as vessel for the mind, intellectualising rationalising everyday daily life provided a point of departure for the physical act and spatial externalisation of the mind- personal sentiments were thus enacted by the body of the subject in the locality they are concerned with. As Crossly alludes; ‘Human beings are neither minds, nor strictly speaking bodies, in this view, but rather mindful and embodied social agents.’ 4At La Bomba, the different fashions by which personal landscapes to built environments can be socially and politically manifested to cultivate awareness within government regeneration agenda, was designed so that bodies in space can cultivate public awareness and stimulate change for the spaces which the participant bodies were highlighting. After the dynamic switch from image to body; participants formed improvisations in the place they wanted to regenerate, their park. Themes emerging were unity, solidarity, team work, strength and fighting: these structured the improvisation. The personal relationships described by participants in the image review materialised in their body movements, at times aggressive or disturbed; a theory which Crossly examines closely;‘ Our bodies are our way of being and experiencing the world, but they are not objects of our experience as such; at least not in the first instance. Or rather, our experience of our bodies is fundamentally different to our experience of object external to us.’ 5The improvisation physically articulated emotions revealed in the visual exploration of the locality; developing the practice of the body as everyday functional biological entity, a creative physical engagement between body and spatial form and becoming a social articulation and catalyst for social action. 6
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Crossly. N ( 2001) The Social Body. Habit. Identity and Desire. SAGE Publications. London P 3 Crossly. N ( 2001) The Social Body. Habit. Identity and Desire. SAGE Publications. London P 17 6 This adheres to Shilling’s suggestion as; ‘sees the body as project’Nettleton. S. Watson. J ( eds) ( 1998) The Body in Everyday Life. Routledge. London p 7 ( with reference to Shilling. C ( 1993) The Body and Social Theory. SAGE Publications. London) which can be structured into dialogues to express the concerns of the mind; he expands; ‘The body is seen as an entity which is in the process of becoming; a project which should be worked at and accomplished as part of an individuals’ self-identity.’ Nettleton. S. Watson. J ( eds) ( 1998) The Body in Everyday Life. Routledge. London p 7 ( with reference to Shilling. C ( 1993) The Body and Social Theory. SAGE Publications. London P 5) 5
In the context of urban generative research, how far can practice based research generate innovative social contributions to collective knowledge formed by direct investigation of the concerned subject matter? Action based, or arts practice as research, navigates a route though the social imaginary which facillates a comprehension of local life worlds and the complex web structure in which they coexist with a degree of humanity. This facilitates an open window to previously unknown territory; whereby areas such as Rohova Uranus are not simply given a poverty index and left as ‘ to be reviewed’7; rather the dynamic play of the residents lives is captured, framed and presented for review. Working with the users of La Bomba; I was amazed at the energy and strength of all those who took part; we walked around the surrounding areas of the centre a lot and each walk was guided by a new person, so we were literally seeing the area through the eyes of the people who knew it best; and when it came to making a choreographic work there was the same overriding notion that these people who use La Bomba really ‘own the landscape.’ If the worst should happen and La Bomba is forced to leave; the loss is much deeper than surface level; this is not a building, it is a whole anchor, weight and punctum in the landscape, a fixed point in a fast moving sea which enables local residents a small and modest space to voice their thoughts in a structure and form that does not exist already in the community. For the younger attendees to the centre; it offers discipline, focus and direction; enabling new opportunities and avenues of progress that they may have no other opportunity to pursue, for the older members of the community they can feel happy and secure that their children are spending their day in productive and safe manner. La Bomba is a root, it is a space which enables unity and harmony, creativity and relief in an area where struggle is at times very apparent; this is not central modernised Bucharest where everyone can go to MacDonald’s and the cinema; this is a part of a city where limited resources have to be more creatively and constructively used; which is exactly what La Bomba offers, a safe and engaging place for mutual collaboration, unity and for passing days in a way that is educational, fun, challenging, free, structured, and heartfelt.
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The full list of outlined questions is as follows: “ – what is the efficacy of arts interventions in building communities? - What are the present and future roles of the arts in our social process? - Are there separate aesthetics of community arts? - What are the relations between performance theory and practice? - What communities are being served/ served themselves? - What factors hinder or further collaboration, dissemination, organization and sharing? - What are the relationships between activism and action, between performance and the performative between the artistic and the art - what are the practices of transformation and transgression in our contemporary cultural scene? - what are the shapes, the smells, the scenes, the people and the places and politics?” Questions raised in Community/ Performance conference. US, June 04. Sourced in Kuppers. P. Robertson. G (eds) ( 2007) The Community Performance Reader. Routledge. Oxon p 3
When I think of La Bomba now, I am struck by how emotional it makes me feel. I was there for research and there to do workshops, yet there is something about La Bomba which resonates much more deeply than any community centre I have ever come across. Perhaps as it has been thriving for so long, with no funding, no government support, just the dedication of those who run it and those who join it, the raw and unfaltering dedication to keeping it alive and keeping it strong, is something that brings goose pimples to my skin.
There are places we can glimpse here in the UK which perhaps seek to emulate the qualities of La Bomba; perhaps in ways which they will never achieve as they are not as whole heartedly supported by their community. La Bomba is created by a need, people do wait outside the door waiting for it to open, people who use the centre will do anything they can to help to make things run smoothly, there is an ease to the running and continuation of La Bomba as it is driven by the people who need it the most. To deny La Bomba a future would be deny each and every person who uses the centre the hope such a venture has offered. Within my own research I often look back to the time I spent at La Bomba and see it in my minds eye as tool kit for how all future centres should be run. I often ask in my own research; can such creative material become social resource? If sociology is the understanding of daily life, and these forms of creative practice articulate such dialogue; then does this allow them to be a ‘sociological resource’? Neither sociology nor art practices can be divorced from the realities of daily life - the issue rests in how such structures and interactions are re-presented and explored. The whole heartedly engaged researcher and artist finds in their discipline and the fruits of their research a means to navigate a route through the world; as Back further highlights; ‘sociology is a way of living and something that is practiced as a vocation, a way of holding the world and paying critical attention to it.’ 8 My research at La Bomba strove to actively encourage participants to develop the following; - Increased awareness of personal locality through image making; dialog and movement - Generative creative process of engagement with local landscape - Use of photography to assert sense of personal ownership within landscape - Use of collaborative research process to develop process of regeneration within participant set parameters - Creative freedom to asset conceptual and physical image of localized cartography. It was a creative cross over where collaborative processes generated art works in the form of photographic and choreographic localized investigations and process then generate social documents which were both spatial reflections and accounts of the human texture of urban space. As Sweetman points out such seemingly quotidian reflections of the everyday have the potential to unearth and encounter the realities of the urban fabric which may otherwise be concealed in a complex tapestry of competing juxtaposed narratives; ‘sociality might simply be defined as all those interactions with others through which individuals navigate their day to day world. It consists of interactions with friends, neighbours, work mates, play mates and – at least to some degree those everyday strangers met at the super market check out, shopping mall, café or pub.’9 8
Back. L. ( 2007) The Art of Listening. Berg. New York P 165 Latham. A. Researching and Writing Everyday Accounts of the City. An introduction to the diary photo diary interview method. Sourced in Knowles. C. Sweetman. P ( eds) ( 2004) Picturing the Social Landscape; Visual Methods and the Sociological Imagination. London. Routledge. P 118 9
This research aimed to explore the ‘grass roots’ realism of the landscape and to grasp how the landscape is deemed and responded to by the inhabitants, beyond the application of cultural policy, exploring the day to day experience of the landscape for the inhabitants these case studies presented a cartography of cultural policy, regeneration and the use of arts as cultural catalyst. Yet in reality I found when departing from La Bomba that in reality I was just very thankful to have gained experience of working with people so dedicated and determined. A keynote of sadness within this research has been the disparity between the vigour and enthusiasm for change by the participant s and the cold hostile wall which has confronted them within governmental review. What has become alarmingly apparent from this practical application of sociological research has been the lack of communication which exists between regeneration agencies and their subjects. The alarming discrepancy highlights an unmet need within current regeneration strategy. From a far all I can do is offer my support to La Bomba and express my gratitude for having been fortunate enough to have been able to be involved with a small part of the centre; it was hugely inspiring and I hope that La Bomba is able to continue for many years to come as I firmly belief is an emblem and anchor of hope for communities of the future.
Beatrice Jarvis | Choreographer | Performer | Researcher Beatrice is an urban space creative facilitator, choreographer and researcher. She utilises key concepts of choreography and visual arts methodologies with the intention to develop, original doctoral research on the connections between choreography and urban cultures. Her practice merges essential techniques in a sociological framework of critical perspectives. Beatrice is currently a visiting lecturer at various town planning and architecture departments in London developing a platform for the conceptual and physical integration of urban planning, sociology and choreography leading to practical social creative implementation Beatrice is keen to create platforms social interaction using urban wastelands and reflections on urban habitation as a creative resource; her research currently focuses on how far choreography practice can develop a new methodology to interrogate a range of inner city conflict zones. Beatrice has recently initiated a new urban forum: Urban Research Forum for artists, architects, urban designers, cultural researchers, sociologists, anthropologists and all with an urban interest. This is conducted through seminars, workshops, performances and exhibitions. Collaboration, discourse and intellectual inquiry are seminal to this concept. The city with her practice becomes a live laboratory for social and spatial research of urban space use developing from this research innovative and interactive future space use programs through creativity Current research funded by DEL. ( Dartington College of Arts 2005-8 Choreography and Visual Arts BA hons First Class, MA Goldmiths, Centre of Community and Urban research, AHRC Funded; PhD, Ulster; Architecture and Art and Design, DEL funded) Please see www.practisingspace.com and http://beatricejarvis.com for further information. For the publication which was made for the research I did at La Bomba please see here: http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/invited/1015638/a8bd37a9fad73767cb13edef857 dba7d