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I Woke Up & Chose Violence
2022
Presented and supported by Recess as part of their Session ProgramI Woke Up & Chose Violence is an invitation for a critical engagement with violence. This project asks how and why violence has become an ideology and empathizes for whom and when non-violence may not be an option. It hopes to prompt a relationship with violence that could potentially be generative for non-hegemonic bodies.
This project is part of a five-year reexamination of the narratives around the Indigenous practice of headhunting in the Philippine Islands. Historically, these practices functioned as a moral rationale for civilizing missions by Western imperial powers. Garcia is interested in symbolically recuperating headhunting’s role as a psycho-spiritual ritual for processing and dissipating profound personal grief, whilst extending this notion of grief to the burdened histories of colonial erasure that persist in our present day. I Woke Up and Chose Violence, therefore, leads with an unconventional ethos and flirts with transgressions in dealing with the subject of violence.
During the Session, Garcia transformed the gallery into a hybrid space: part-studio, part-training gym:
The studio featured the artist working on an evolving installation made of reimagined, 3D-printed weapons based on period and improvised weaponry traditionally used in headhunting expeditions, (such as daggers, swords, axes, spears, etc.) and self-defense training tools. These weapons went through a process of re-rendering through an intersectional feminist and diasporic intervention, decoupling the objects from hyper-masculinized, patriarchal affiliations.
The “gym” functioned as an arena for Filipino Martial Arts (FMA) training. Participants were invited to a one-on-one experience with the artist which involved a guided exploration with the training weapons, followed by a design session for the participant to create their own personalized weapon based on somatic observations and conversation with Garcia, and their inner dialogue.
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Additionally, Garcia facilitated free public programs for her Session:
- Self-defense Classes x 4 (led by Guro Kristen Cabildo)
- Guerrilla First Aid Workshop: Herbal Medicine (led by Princess Manuel)
- Guerrilla First Aid Workshop: Improvised Medicine (led by Dr. Kristi Tran)
- A closing reception which featured mini workshops and demos by Ngani Liwayway, Dr. Emily Siy, and Sisters in Self Defense; poetry by Noelle de la Paz and a performance by the Chrysalis Kali Collective; as well as activations and community collaborations with Little Manila Queens and Kimberly Tate (full details here)
I Woke Up & Chose Violence centered the needs of Asian and Pacific Islander women, girls, and gender-expansive femmes (also welcoming BIPOC women/femmes). By leaning into the emotion of rage as well as a critical engagement with violence – an approach historically imperative to women warriors and female fighters – a deliberate tool for political warfare and self-preservation can be determined. This project is an act of ethnographic refusal and resistance to the commodification of trauma by exploring self-defense, attack, and healing. It not only preserves indigenous rationales, but also honors and modifies them to our current survival needs.