A work that reflects on rituals, ancestry and colonisation, Suga’ takes an accessible approach to give audiences a live dance performance using the innovative Volumetric Performance Toolbox
Ancestry has been a common thread of the 2022 Sundance Film Festival, as discussed in this recap.
Suga’ was one of the works from the New Frontier lineup that focused most directly on this theme: born out of a reflection by performer and researcher Valencia James on her ancestors during the early months of Covid19, Suga’ takes the audience on a journey through “the historical reality of the Transatlantic Slave Trade and the establishment of the sugar industry” (x).
Guided through the experience by performer Sandrine Malary, the audience leaves behind the darkness and tragedy of the journey that brought millions of slaves to the sugar plantations of the Caribbean to reach, after a liberating live dance performance, a transcendental end that represents our connection with our ancestors.
Accessibility is at the core of this production: not only does Suga’ make it easy for people to participate in the experience, which takes place entirely on the Mozilla Hubs platform. It also offers artists around the world an open-source tool, called the Volumetric Performance Toolbox, to bring their audience a live experience they can create from the comfort of their own homes. A fundamental need born out of the difficulties the arts field has experienced during the necessary closures of the last two years.
We contacted Valencia James to have a deeper insight into Suga’ and its meanings and to find out more about the Volumetric Performance Toolbox and the community that revolves around it.
On the importance of ancestry
AGNESE – Congratulations on Sundance, Valencia! I can see that this work holds an important place in your heart, representing your connection to your ancestors… What specific aspects of your ancestry did you feel the need to examine more closely in Suga’?
VALENCIA JAMES – As a person of African descent born in Barbados, I grew up without a way to really know where my ancestors are from, their culture, their language, their beliefs. All this was stolen by their enslavement and denial of their humanity during the TransAtlantic Slave Trade. This is the case for most Black people who are descendants of people who were enslaved in the Americas. During my twenties, I ached with a profound sense of loss of culture and identity and a deep anger about the stereotypes and lies my people are taught as a result of British colonialism in the Caribbean. This awareness started when I discovered Afro-Cuban dance during my studies in Cuba. I saw how well Yoruban spiritual traditions from Nigeria had been preserved there and how familiar it felt to my spirit, despite growing up learning to think of this as “witchcraft”.
Since then I have become a student of the dances of African spiritual traditions that have been preserved in different parts of the Caribbean including Cuba and Ayiti (known to most as Haiti). This led me to the practice of ancestor reverence and during the global pandemic this has been a source of comfort and strength for me.
Spatial justice and virtual environments
A. – It was beautiful to see some of these aspects represented in your work. Was there a lot of historical research behind its creation?
V. J. – Before I even had the idea about virtual performance I was drawn to first hand accounts of slavery and this time in history. I had read the account of Frederick Douglas and was reading Sugar in the Blood by Andrea Stuart, in which Stuart brilliantly interweaves her own family history in Barbados to paint a vivid picture of the history of the establishment of the sugar industry in the Caribbean. Just before the first lockdown of the global pandemic I had met HM Queen Mother Dowoti Desir, who is a scholar and activist. In her book Redlining a Holocaust, Memorials and the People of the AfroAtlantic, she speaks of the concept of spatial justice as the right of African descendants to the commemoration of their ancestors’ struggles.
So when I started researching virtual environments as a possible stage for online performance and I found the 3D models of the Annaberg sugar mill by CyArk, the concept of spatial justice made me think about virtual environments as a site for healing and how these colonial structures could be reclaimed through virtual acts. I found this idea radical because online gaming space tends to be saturated with white males. Using this space to tell the stories of Black people which tend to be erased or obscured is powerful.
During the creation process of Suga’, I did a lot of historical research around the history of the sugar industry in the Caribbean, Danish colonization (which we usually don’t hear about) as well as the history of St. John, USVI and the Annaberg Plantation.
I spent weeks researching public domain images and 3D assets. The most significant discovery was the story of Breffu, the royal Akwamu leader, from present day Ghana, who led the 1733 rebellion against the Danish. It was Marin Vesely, who worked on the project as the 3D artist, that brought her to my attention. Breffu’s story is fascinating to me because I had never heard of her before even though I am from the Caribbean nor had I heard of this rebellion and it was one of the earliest and longest lasting in the Americas. Most significantly, Breffu was a woman. We normally don’t hear much about female resistance leaders in history.
Volumetric Performance Toolbox: a tool for accessibility
A. – Mozilla Hubs plus Volumetric Performance Toolbox: a great combination that, as we said, makes this piece much more accessible. When and why did you get the idea to work in this direction?
V. J. – Volumetric Performance Toolbox (VPT) consists of low-cost performance kit hardware and open source custom 3D video live-streaming software for use in Mozilla Hubs and Spoke, a free social virtual reality platform and virtual environment builder. This project is a collaboration between myself, the spatial interaction lab Glowbox, and the creative technologist, Sorob Louie.
The first seed for the project came during the first lockdown of the global pandemic when I had been thinking of restaging a performance from a previous project called AI_am where I have a duet with a dancing avatar that would learn my movements and respond with new ones. So this was my first encounter with the idea of dance in virtual space but I had been projecting the avatar onto a flat screen while I danced on stage. Then in the pandemic I suddenly thought, “What if I as the performer got into the computer and danced in virtual space?”. Then I contacted Sorob with this idea and he introduced me to Thomas Wester, the co-founder of Glowbox and we applied to Eyebeam’s open call for the Rapid Response Fellowship in the summer of 2020 and this is how we were able to develop the project.
From the beginning the goal was to create a way for artists anywhere from any background to perform from their own living spaces without the need for expensive equipment and massive funding – which was the case before VPT and presented a huge barrier for entry. We also wanted the performances to be accessible to audiences anywhere in the world using just their computers and not requiring special headsets. Thomas recommended Mozilla Hubs as the performance and creation platform because all you need is your computer to access it and it is also designed to respect user privacy.
The multiple meanings of dance
A. – The dance moment was a liberating passage. How would you describe it?
My dance performance is presented as live volumetric video stream within the sugar mill point cloud. It signifies a transformative journey that begins with a ritual of cleansing and healing for my ancestors and all those who suffered the brutality of the TransAtlantic Slave Trade and exploitation on the plantations.
Then there is a spoken word where I reflect on the ways the sugar industry has touched my own family through stories told to me by grandmother whose mother had to continue harvesting sugar cane even after the abolition of slavery to support her children, my uncle who managed sugar factories, and my mother who learned to swim in the trenches used to transport sugar.
Then the music builds and my movements reflect on the rebellions and resistance of my people. Finally this is transformed by the hope of change and celebration of our vibrance and resilience as a people and I perform Barbadian folk movements to 1688 Orchestra & Collective’s Bajan Folk Medley. In the end I step backwards into the mill taking loud inhalations and exhalations, amplifying the gesture with my body, in my remembrance of Eric Garner’s last words and emphatic insistence that we will breathe easy from now on.
The music is a collage consisting of an original composition by Barbadian composer Stefan Walcott as well as 1688 Orchestra & Collective’s Bajan Folk Medley (composed by Nicholas Timothy, arranged by Stefan Walcott). The final composition was arranged together by sound designer, Carlos Johns-Dávila.
Limitations become invitations towards creative solutions
A. – Can you tell us more about the Volumetric Performance Toolbox and the community you’re building around it?
V. J. – What excites me the most is how the performance kit now makes volumetric performance streaming accessible to artists anywhere using low cost lightweight equipment.
I want to shout out Sorob Louie, Thomas Wester and the team at Glowbox for making this a reality. We use off the shelf equipment including an Intel Realsense depth camera, Raspberry Pi 4 computer with a display screen and a microphone. It cost us around $350 at the time and through the Eyebeam fellowship we shipped eight of these kits to artists across the United States for our pilot residency program which I co-developed in collaboration with Simon Boas, who was working at Glowbox at the time.
The residency was fully remote and ran between December 2020 and January 2021 and it was an amazing time of co-learning and co-creation. At the end of the residency we had a public launch with online volumetric performances by the artists in Mozilla Hubs that were projected in real-time on the public facing doors of the Abrons Art Center in NYC. Actually I met three of my collaborators through this program – Terri Ayanna Wright and Carlos Johns-Dávila participated in the residency and Marin Vesely taught a Spoke workshop.
There are limitations with the kit. For example, because it utilizes just one camera, this means you have a small space to dance in (one square meter) and you have to carefully gauge your distance away from it to stay in frame. And the resolution is not as high as other cameras on the market which require expensive laptops. Having said that these limitations can be invitations towards creative solutions- for example my pixelated image led me to construct some of my scenes as point clouds which gave a beautiful aesthetic. One of the artists from the residency, Remi Harris mounted her camera on the corner of her ceiling to capture more of her body and this changed the perspective in an intriguing way.
Our goal is to build a community of creators experimenting with volumetric performance so that this new genre can develop and become more widespread. I believe that there is so much powerful potential in this form of creation, where the artist has control over the design of the performance environment and can reach audiences around the world simultaneously!
Suga’: a piece for transformative change
A. – Something said during the Q&A stuck with me: “to honor my ancestors in this way feels intrinsically right”. I like it because it really shows that this work has something you don’t always find in XR: a soul. What message, first and foremost, would you like for your audience to bring home with them?
V. J. – Thank you Agnese! I really appreciate that. My motivation with Suga’ is about personal and ancestral healing and at the same time I am on a mission to bring more awareness to the fact that the wealth generated in the Caribbean and the legislation established to police enslaved populations served as the foundations for racial injustice that we see in the US and beyond, including the surveillance and mass incarceration of Black people. These legal and economic systems created the disparities in wealth that continue to benefit other members and institutions in our society today. My wish is that audiences come away with a desire to do their own research around this topic and hopefully this contributes to transformative change towards an equitable future.
A. – If you look at the Sundance New Frontier 2022 lineup you will find several works that use different expressions of immersive technology to raise a discourse on ancestry and culture. What is the significance of using high technology to share these topics and what is your hope for the future in this regard?
V. J. – Yes! I was really blown away by these amazing works! I was also really happy that there were two immersive works (Suga’ and Cosmogony by Cie Gilles Jobin) that featured live contemporary dance performance. I think we are living at a unique time when technology is advanced and accessible enough that more diverse creators can have their voices heard and by a wider audience. This brings an opportunity for perspectives previously unheard to bring light to issues that were suppressed and I believe that will be an important factor in how we can move towards a more just future. We are in a position to spread awareness, educate and speak up about important issues in more compelling ways.
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