Circular
(last edited: 2022)
author(s): Sarah Kaushik
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I came here with a question of how do I find my sense of belonging in an ever-changing surrounding. This stemmed from a disconnectedness from my personal relationships with my family, growing up, and continued with a constant change of surrounding and environment as I moved from place to place in my own country. This othering and exclusion became stronger as I moved to a different continent all-together, enhancing my search for the meaning of belonging.
According to Yuval-Davis, belonging refers to an emotional or ontological (the nature of being) sense of attachment or of being at home. In Ancient Greece, Oikeiôsis signifies the perception of something as one’s own, as belonging to oneself.
The concept of belonging seems fluid and flexible, situated and socially constructed. It cannot be predefined, rather is dependable on one’s own definitions, ideas and experiences. In the previous semester, I was looking for this place to belong, sometimes within and sometimes around, spiralling inside and then outside.
Since this semester is about collecting, I have focussed on collecting physical experiences, material encounters, traces; taking repetition, movement, spatial dimension of time, as the starting point. These materials and objects I have used are the tools of performance and the pillars of my investigation in the realm of scenography.
My questions at the moment are how do people understand belonging and what kinds of stances toward belonging do they take? What kind of knowledge or ways of knowing about belonging can I explore through scenography?
Through collecting, I use participatory methods as an intuitive methods to discover these aspects.