Indaba

The word indaba originates in isiZulu, literally meaning a Zulu council meeting. The transferred sense of the word, known and used in many of the languages spoken in South Africa, refers to any conference, meeting or discussion. (Dictionary of South African English, n.d.) Wachira (2024) adds that an indaba seeks to “gather the right people together at the right time to discuss the right issues”, including an emphasis on deep talk and the notion that each person has something important to say.

In the context of the performance and research at hand, our understanding of the word indaba is an extension of the previous definitions: a meeting or coming together in a shared performative space.

Our indaba is built on a close-knit connection between the performers which includes a lot of listening, reacting, playfulness and supporting your friend. The performed material itself feels almost arbitrary - we could exchange a song for another and the indaba would still be the same - the ways of being together and inviting the audience into that connection feel like the key action.

Third space

Homi K. Bhabha’s concept of third space refers to liminal, hybrid spaces or interstices that act as meeting places of difference. Third spaces emerge at boundaries, or in Bhabha’s words: “the boundary becomes the place from which something begins its presencing” (1994, p. 5). He proposes that these are the spaces where subjects are formed, and where collective experiences and cultural value are negotiated (Bhabha 1994, 2).

Eeva Anttila notes that the idea of third space “offers a frame to understand (cultural) difference as a possibility for something new to emerge” (2023). She suggests that third space may help to transform friction or conflict into collaborative and creative possibilities in intercultural and interdisciplinary practice (Anttila 2023).

This calls for a radical readiness to listen, give space and receive something unknown, while letting go of one’s own immediate needs and intentions. This approach includes taking the time to sit with difference as we encounter it rather than trying to overcome or dissolve it. (Anttila 2023.)

In our indaba, we have tried to come together as artists in a way that would deliberately give a lot of space for the material to emerge between us and develop into something no one of us could have conceived alone. Similarly, when we perform this indaba, we try to listen attentively to the audience. We invite our audience to be active subjects in the performative space by encouraging them to react, comment, and think out loud during the performance. This results in a certain loose or porous quality in what we do and how we are on stage.

3.2 Investigating questions of mixed identities

Intersectionality

Kimberle Crenshaw developed the concept of intersectionality to shine a light on the various ways in which race and gender interact to shape the particular discrimination faced by Black women. The intersection of race and gender here serves as an example that “highlights the need to account for multiple grounds of identity when considering how the social world is constructed”. (Crenshaw 1991, 1244–1245.)

The term intersectionality originates in Black feminist theory on power and privilege and has since had a broad and notable influence on discussions about identity. Intersectional thinking argues that different dimensions of identity are not separate, but instead intertwined in intricate ways, resulting in different and site-specific combinations of advantages or disadvantages.

In the context of our indaba, our focus is not on power dynamics but rather just on the pluralistic nature of identity. One of our core themes has been the idea that we are many things. By this we mean that each person is a uniquely situated intersection of a myriad of different social factors, like a crossroads of relations and influences. You might be someone’s father and still be someone’s child at the same time, just like that. In the same way, you might be both Ethiopian and Finnish, for example. You might even be a Finnish-Ethiopian father who is also someone’s child, and still be a lot of other things, too.

Borderlands

Gloria Anzaldúa writes about fronteras, or borderlands, as a queer Chicana woman from the Texas-U.S Southwest/Mexican border. Her thinking builds on W.E.B. Dubois’ double consciousness: a term that describes the dual self-perception experienced by subordinated groups in an oppressive society, originally in the African American context.

“Anzaldúa argues that living in the borderlands creates a third space between cultures and social systems. The word “borderlands” denotes that space in which antithetical elements mix, neither to obliterate each other nor to be subsumed by a larger whole, but rather to combine in unique and unexpected ways.” (Anzaldúa 1987/2012, introduction by Cantú & Hurtado, p. 6.)

Borderlands produce hybridity and grant their inhabitants special perspective, importantly an experiential understanding of the arbitrary nature of social categories themselves (Anzaldúa 1987/2012, introduction by Cantú & Hurtado, p. 7). When this side of the river is called Mexico and the other side is called the U.S. and both are home, it becomes self-evident that these are social constructs, or more simply, names we give to things. The border could just as well be 1000m or 1000km that way or this way. This business of naming things is done by people, which means we could be the people doing it, too. This can mean rethinking, renaming and reshaping things as we go along.

Gloria Anzaldúa’s theory of borderlands also follows the logic of intersections, in that “individuals’ various sources of oppression are conceptualized as intersecting in a variety of ways depending on the social context” (Anzaldúa 1987/2012, introduction by Cantú & Hurtado, p. 8).

The score of our indaba deals gently with some of the names or constructs that concern our trio, such as “Finnish”, “Tanzanian”, and “South African”. The script suggests that the best way to find out things about your friend is to listen to what they say about themselves, rather than making guesses by looking at them from the outside.

Excerpt from the script, translated into only English³:

Kasheshi: Pietu. You said it is easy to be many things. I am wondering. Do I look Finnish to you?

Pietari: Yes.

Kasheshi: Do I look Tanzanian?

Pietari: Yes.

Kasheshi: Does Ayla look South African?

Pietari: Yes.

Ayla: Do I look like a big sister?

Pietari: Yes.

Ayla: Do I look like a flute player?

Pietari: Yes.

Kasheshi: Do I look like a father?

Pietari: Yes. And you look like you might be afraid of snakes. 

Kasheshi: So my friend, how can you see that?

Pietari: I don’t know my friend, I can’t see it. I know cos you told me the other day.

Ayla: Ha. You can’t see these things by looking from the outside.

Pietari: Yep, we need to remember to listen to each other.

Third culture kid

Our indaba also draws inspiration from Mona Eid and Koko Hubara’s book Third Culture Kids Suomi Finland (2022). For the purposes of this book and the Finnish context, Eid and Hubara define third culture kids as “Finns who actively create new identities and cultural realities and who must maneuver in the perimeters and in-between spaces of existing cultures” (p.10, own translation).

The term third culture kid was coined by U.S. social scientist Ruth Useem in the 1950s to describe “children who accompany their parents into another society”, meaning children of expatriate parents from affluent countries working in privileged positions in another country (Pollock & Van Reken 2009/1999, 15). 

Eid and Hubara’s definition, on the other hand, emphasises the perimeters and in-between spaces of cultural spheres and offers a useful tool for the context of this research. It is as if Useem’s definition went through an intersectional glow-up: this version allows a lot more space for diverse lived realities while still acknowledging that third culture experiences exist and are worthy of our attention. 

3.3 In practice: Each person as a universe

Each of these concepts outline a particular aspect of the broader topic of mixed identities in a specific context and each has its limitations. In my artistic practice and in this research, they serve best as an intertwined toolkit complementing and challenging each other where needed.

The trouble I find with the term third culture kid, for example, is that it implies a binary of two kinds of people: third culture kids and other people who are seen as monocultural. In my thinking, everyone is a third culture kid in some way. All places are borderlands, to some extent. It is not possible to be “purely” one thing - there is no such thing as a pure Finn, for example. Every parent is also someone’s child. Mixing is the way that we come into being: everything is already mixed, and everyone is already mixed, more or less.

As Naomi and Natalie Evans point out: “the term ‘mixed’ can also be dubious in that it can evoke negative connotations, such as being ‘confused’, ‘mixed-up’ or ‘unbalanced’” (2022, p. 5). On the contrary to this trauma narrative, my premise here is that being mixed is a good thing insofar as it is the normal state of affairs. In other words, being mixed is the starting point rather than the exception, or exotic specialty.

The dubious connotations of the word mixed connect to a legacy of Western obsession with protecting the integrity of entities such as race, culture, language, genre or fashion style by keeping them separate. This includes the idea that mixing between entities would lead to their homogenisation and ultimately a loss of diversity. Meanwhile, mixing and contact generally increase and foster diversity. For example, migration and mobility increase the cultural diversity of a society (Wood et al. 2023, 109). Looking beyond the sphere of human societies, connectedness between ecosystems and the subsequent movement of species between them is an important force maintaining biodiversity (Brodie et al. 2025, eadn2225).

Our indaba asks: “How do many identities fit into one person?” and suggests “easily” as an answer. To quote Evans and Evans once more, “I am not confused, the world is confused about where to place me” (2022, p. 65).

This leads me back towards the idea of intersections. Each person is a universe. It would be extremely crude to try to reduce an entire person, an exhilarating universe of personhood, into just one or two things, say a nationality or nationalities. It feels just as absurd to assume that identity would be fixed and static, instead of a living, dynamic and fluid thing that breathes and grows as we do.