It turns out that God created rain to annoy us,
but Satan sent the Umbrella to protect us.
Borislav Pekić, 1977
Balkan narrator: This conversation didn’t happen. Well, the invented parts, whichever they are, didn’t. But they almost did. If only a) I’d had more audacity, b) I’d documented everything, c) the wi-fi hadn’t crashed, and (d) there wasn’t a wall between us. I re-member it like this:
We were in Lyon. The Biennale de la Danse’s Forum aimed to bring the world together through dancing, talking and PowerPoint. Four talks in three days: Climate, Hospitality, Decolonisation, and the Body. I came armed with a notebook and a low-grade existential crisis.
Dialogue 1. Dance, climate and contested land
I sat at the edge of the room, leaning against a black curtain that separated us from the speakers. An honest scenography and a literal wall. But also, how poetic, a metaphorical one.
Wall: ‘Relax, I’m here to practice interconnectivity.’
Balkan narrator: ‘You’re literally blocking my view.’
Wall: ‘Exactly.’
Voices floated from behind the curtain.
Indigenous choreographer: ‘We dance on contested lands to embody climate justice.’
Collaborator: ‘Our methodologies honour transindigenous legacy through collective reciprocity.’
I scribbled ‘relationspace’ in my notebook wondering if mapping dance isn’t just another western pastime disguised as decolonisation. A partner from Brussels was mentioned. The EU appears in these things like parsley on every dish: decorative, and on top. I wanted to ask who else was practising connectivity, because a lot of the seats were empty.
Balkan narrator: ‘If a tree falls in a forum but no one is around to hear it, is it still an open discussion?’
Wall: ‘Hmm.’
There was talk of shared humanity and cultural dramaturgy. I wanted to ask what remains after the choreographers leave: does the body forget the steps, or do they become part of the land? But the mic was across the room, and I had the feeling the Wall would judge my accent.
Balkan narrator: ‘How do you decolonise dance?’
Wall: ‘You start by decolonising the conference snacks.’
Balkan narrator: ‘There are no snacks.’
Wall: ‘Exactly.’
Dialogue 2. Hospitalities and complicity
The next day, the panel sat in a semicircle, opening up to each other like members of a support group for anonymous cultural workers.
African curator: ‘Hospitality means hosting and being hosted simultaneously.’
He rolled the Latin root around his tongue like a grape. (The lack of snacks was starting to play tricks on me.)
French auntie: ‘Why are there no representatives from the French colonies in this discussion?’
Programmer: ‘We invited our friends, people we admire.’
A woman took the mic. Her voice was smoky and electrifying.
South American curator: ‘We know what fascism looks like. It comes fast. In our country, the Ministry of Culture vanished in one day. Beware, it will come for you as well. Soon.’
The room went quiet. Someone nodded solemnly in three different languages. The word complicity snuck out the back door.
Balkan narrator: ‘Does hospitality feel different when you come from a country that’s been both an unwelcome guest and an occupant?’
Wall: ‘Don’t ask me. Hospitality requires walls to come down, not up. Also, inviting only your friends is not hospitality; it’s just Friday night.’
European-struggling-artist™: ‘How does one get picked by curators?’
Programmer: ‘We pick people we admire.’
European-struggling-artist™: ‘I need new friends.’
The Wall coughed diplomatically.I wanted to argue, but the Wall wasn’t wrong.
Dialogue 3. A provocation
The title suggested excitement, or at least caffeine.
Moderator: ‘We’re here to talk about time and counter-colonialism, about beginnings that never end.’
African curator: ‘Authenticity is being in a space of memories and ancestry.’
South American artist: ‘Our bodies are fragmented yet creative: Dança Quebrada.
It is all about repositioning the body on stage, through hip hop, Pokémon video games, and our ancestors.’
A woman in the audience raised her voice.
Non-European-struggling-artist™: ‘How do we gain more connections and collaborations with Europe?’
Nobody noticed it was the question from the day before.
Asian artist: ‘Accepting mistakes in your mother tongue is a decolonial practice.’
Balkan narrator: ‘Does me mumbling to a wall count as decolonial?’
Wall: ‘Only if it’s sincere.’
The panellists talked about the non-capitalist, non-normative and embodied authenticity of non-western artists. I thought of my own region: no colonies, but plenty of fascists. Decolonising without colonising is like recycling someone else’s garbage. Necessary, but it still stinks.
Wall: ‘You humans love binaries but dance in circles. Maybe start there.’
Balkan narrator: ‘Do you think they know how tired I am?’
Wall: ‘You are participating in embodied exhaustion.’
Balkan narrator: ‘That’s a concept now?’
Wall: ‘It’s fundable.’
Dialogue 4. Ecosomatics for the exhausted
It was the last day. The academics spoke as if in a trance.
Academic 1: ‘Notice movements in us that are not of us, like breathing, blood flow.’
Academic 2 (reverently): ‘Composted humanism.’
Academic 3: ‘Nanopolitics. How do we hack our core muscles to survive late capitalism?’
They quoted Fanon, Haraway, and Gravity.
Academic 2: ‘There is no Black before the Middle Passage. Black experience is ontologically always in grieving.’
I tried to coin a nice phrase for the Balkan experience. I thought of students in the streets and collapsing railway stations, how only tragedy unites us. But it always turns into a joke about murderous vampire umbrellas. And fascists don’t do humour.
Wall: ‘You forget to breathe when you’re anxious.’
In the end, I spent three days talking to a Wall. It listened politely, as walls do,
without blinking, without changing its mind.
Wall: ‘Try knocking. Sometimes walls are doors with bad attitudes.’
Balkan narrator: ‘Maybe next time I’ll bring a hammer. Or a cake. Hospitality, after all, can be improvised.’
Outside, the weather rehearsed its own choreography. Winds of authoritarianism blowing cold to the marrow. But somewhere between Pokémon and Fanon, there must be room for a joke.
Epilogue: An eastern European semi-colonial blues
If I’d had more audacity, I’d have asked them to step outside.
To breathe in the fresh air between curated talks.
I’d have said: we don’t have colonies,
but we can recite ethnic conflict by heart.
Our guilt is not white, it’s grey,
the colour of trauma-fatigue and concrete apartment blocks.
We are semi-colonial, semi-peripheral, semi-everything,
half of a sentence that never finishes…
Shameful atrocities and shameful self-pitying.
Who gets to speak, and who has to listen?
The Wall had heard it before,
its velvet ears absorbing theory, spitting out the fishbones.
We know fascism like an autoimune disease,
but we don’t fit the dress code.
We join the audience, next to those who clap
then we go home to our great walls and blocks.