Angry Women 2021
Two different performances prepared with 17 women in a 90 min. workshop.
June 25 17h30 CEST
June 26 20h CEST
15 min. + Q&A.

Video of the first performance and the Q&A where we talk about this dance of energy, the political togetherness, listening, the danger of and shame around expressing anger and its relation to fear and care.

A .pdf with the chattext for the Q&A and reactions by email from the performers.
Extracts of the reactions: ...more important to me to explore anger with the ensemble rather than perform it. I like that the "rules of engagement" were loose, but included the most important elements of doing anything on stage -- presence and listening -- It allowed our work to wander creatively, but with purpose. - L'émotion parcourait le groupe par vagues, par ondes et les mouvements semblaient se communiquer. Oui contagion. - Because I am used to being on stage with my fellow performers and connecting physically rather than remotely, it brings up (for me) a certain loss of control, and letting go of the usual things I use as a performer to be aware of the choir/ensemble. - ...speaking in another language makes me feel wee bit more vulnerable: I've lost my mother tongue and may be out of my depth. Language won't save me. - If ever they organise another online Magdalena, it might be nice to do another performance with the same group. That time deciding on a theme and a protocol together!

The performances were announced as multilingual performative improvisations on anger (female anger?) as well as exercises in being WITH others at a distance mediated by machines. Individual ideas, actions, expressions on and of anger were woven in a collective unified sound fabric. At the same time the performers created a composite gridded collage of caged individuals. Alone, but not lonely we hope.

With: Alice Lenay, Amaranta Osorio, Anja Borowicz, Christine Develotte, Colette Tron, Emmanuelle Gibello, Eugenia Cano, Joanne Morrison, Karla Ptacek, Mansi Thapliyal, monica de ioanni, Sarah Hart, Shelly Quick, Susie Lamb, Sylvie Roques ...

In the frame of Bodies:On:Line the Magdalena Online Festival.
Info June 25, June 26.

screencapture at the end of the workshop.

Protocol June 25 .pdf all performers stay on screen
Protocol June 26 .pdf performers can mute and come back

screencaptures performance June 25

… Kind of like sticking a sliver under the audience’s skin, giving them something to worry at for some time to come…
…Performing in Angry Women doesn’t/didn’t solve anything, and that, as one of my co-performers pointed out, wasn’t really the point. It has changed something though, at least for me…
An Experience of Angry Women text by Shelly Quick, published by Magdalena.

Video of the second performance.

On Love 11 04 2013 8.00 pm
CB4 (the theatre), ATRiuM,
Cardiff School of Creative & Cultural Industries,
University of Glamorgan, Adam Street, Cardiff, Wales, CF24 2FN.

After five performances with only women, one with only men and two mixed fe-male in this series, we had in January 2013 two private webcam meetings (one in French, one in English) where we tried to analyze what was happening and what these performances did with us. One of the things we discussed was if and how the subject of Anger did influence the groupdynamics. So for this performance in the frame of the Remote Encounters conference in Cardiff I choose to change the subject.

30 01 2013 FR and 28 01 2013 ENG
private discusion ANGRY discussion interne



With / Avec Olga P Massanet, Derek Piotr, Igor Stromajer, Suzon Fuks, Helen V. Jamieson, Sébastien Zaegel, Bérénice Belpaire, Antye Greie, Martina Ruhsam, Pascale Barret, Hedva Eltanani, Ienke Kastelein and, et Annie Abrahams.
Ask for the passwords if you want to watch the video archives http://vimeo.com/58622918 & https://vimeo.com/58451528 Demandez les mots de passe afin de pouvoir regarder les archives vidéo.

One of the things we discussed was if and how the subject of Anger did influence the groupdynamics. So when I got an invitation to do a performance for the Remote Encounters conference in Cardiff I choose to try to test this. On Love changes the subject but still challenges it participants to discover the “we” in a universe of lonely togetherness, to discover what it means to think a ” to be with” based on singularities.

12 12 2012 19h and 24h
ANGRY 1 & 2 mixed male female performance for Testing – 1 2, 1 2, 1 2, Upstage online performance festival. Live Node KAWENGA, Montpellier.

With / Avec Derek Piotr, Ursula Endlicher, Bérénice Belpaire, Laurie Bellanca, Gretta Louw, Antye Greie, Martina Ruhsam, Sébastien Zaegel, Christophe Alix, Pascale Barret, Julie Châteauvert, Ienke Kastelein, Simona Polvani, Suzon Fuks, Gaetan Rusquet, Annie Abrahams and Igor Stromajer. 

Performance protocol en français .pdf
Performance protocole in English .pdf

9 Screengrabs ANGRY 1 http://www.flickr.com/photos/bramorg/sets/72157632235502051/ …
10 Screengrabs ANGRY 2 http://www.flickr.com/photos/bramorg/sets/72157632235572337/ …

Video ANGRY 1 23 min.
Video ANGRY 2 19 min.

"La colère, si elle est prétexte au départ, ne s'est pas sentie, directement, mais plutôt qu'une réaction primaire elle semble plutôt donner naissance à une expression profondément singulière, peut être une manière de "déjouer" l'adversaire en lui proposant une forme non pas qui l'écrase ou le domine, mais qui pourrait peut être, un court moment lui faire perdre les pédales, ou les manettes: "I don't want to be manipulated". A l'heure ou n'importe quelle information s'échange, se télécharge, se pirate, se récupère, se contrôle, où on pourrait remplacer le mot "information" par le mot "vie", ta proposition condense un temps absolument autre et absolument vrai à la fois, qui, si on reparle de l'adversaire, pourrait bien lui échapper... enfin! Extrait de la Réaction par mail de Jean-Marc Demay.

21 04 2012 19h30 sur le site de l’ancienne laiterie Les Bouillants, à Vern-sur-Seiche
Angry Women Take 5
soirée inaugurale de Frontières

With / Avec : Annie Abrahams, Bérénice Belpaire, Ienke Kastelein, Inès Kchaou, Julie Châteauvert, KRN, Laurie Bellanca, Pascale Barret, Paula Roush and Simona Polvani.

12 Minutes long 9 women in front of  their webcams, connected via a common interface to internet, will express their anger, their irritations. In contrast with the four previous performances in the Angry Women series, this time, the women will be able to act on their presence in the interface – this way they will try to get as close as possible to their anger.

Pendant 12 minutes 9 femmes devant leurs webcams, connectées via internet à une interface commune vont exprimer leur colère, leurs énervements. A l'encontre des 4 performances antérieures les femmes vont cette fois-ci pouvoir agir sur leur présence dans l'interface - elles vont ainsi essayer d'être au plus près de leurs colères.

Extrait de 2.30 min vimeo.com/40947840

"C'était difficile et courageux, nous avançons :) - très intéressant et tumultueux.
Nous avons toujours encore des difficultés à exprimer nos colères et aussi des difficultés à co-construire dans cette situation de lonely togetherness. C'est excitant et parfois aussi bouleversant d'essayer de transgresser ses limites.
It was tough and courageous, but we are moving on :) - very interesting and tumultuous.
We are still struggling to express our anger and we also still have difficulties to co-construct in this situation of lonely  togetherness. It's exciting and sometimes overwhelming to try to transgress one's limits."

04 12 2011 18:30 Brussels and on-line (http://www.vj13.constantvzw.org/live/)
Angry Women Take 3 & 4
during Prototypes for · pour · voor transmission festival Verbindingen/Jonctions 13

After two performances where 24 women of different nationalities, using their mother tongue, said their anger in front of their webcams at home until there was none left, the next step in the Angry Women research project is a series of two sessions of exactly 12 minutes. The limited time, the experience of the first performance and the fact that this time the ladies will use a single language per performance (One performance will be in English, the other in French), will make this a completely different experiment concerned female anger and networked collaboration and group dynamics.

La première étape du projet Angry Women fut un dispositif qui montrait vingt-quatre femmes, de différentes nationalités, exprimant leur colère dans leur langue maternelle. Chaque femme était à la maison devant sa webcam et la performance se déroulait jusqu’à ce qu’il n’y ait plus de colère. Pour la seconde étape, la performance consistera en deux sessions de douze minutes exactement. Le temps limité, l’expérience de la performance antérieure, et le fait que cette fois les femmes utiliseront une seule langue par session (une performance en anglais et une en français) en feront une expérience tout-à-fait différente sur les dynamiques de groupe, la collaboration en réseau et bien sûr la colère des femmes.

Capture d'écran de Take 3 en français. Vidéo vimeo.com/33492100
Screencapture of Take 4 in English. Video vimeo.com/33498082

"I decided to put the videos of Take 3 and 4 online as they are. I really didn't make any sense to cut into them, that would take away a very essential part: the process of dealing with this situation of No Exit, of voluntarily being trapped in a grid with 7 other ladies that one hardly knew. In the beginning I had difficulties accepting these videoarchives because I saw how much they depended on our hazardous trying to interact, to be present in this universe of alone togetherness. Besides I didn't like my own presence. As in other webperformances I felt trapped and revealed myself not as I would have liked to be revealed. But now I begin to accept this (again) as its qualities and I do like the very different dynamics in the two versions. These performances raise many questions as for instance possible language and cultural differences, that I would like to explore further but for now I would first like to organise an Angry Men performance and I will try to improve the performance interface." Annie Abrahams email 3/01/2012.

"...Quant à la colère, notre contenance m'étonne toujours....Quant au choeur cependant: un million de choses à dire...
d'affection, je crois avoir préféré la première version, celle avec trop de gens, celle avec les délais, les décalages, les difficultés d'orientations, les erreurs d'identification de voix, de parole, de direction, celle des échappées, et de l'orchestration fragile, fuyante, précaire... mais qui en arrive tout de même à ce silence final...qui impressionne. Sa durée aussi, qui laisse le temps aux fluctuations des états, le temps de dire ce qu'on sait déjà, le temps d'essayer de l'action, le temps de regarder les autres, le temps de se taire, le temps de tenter de s'arrimer aux autres, le temps de tenter d'influencer les autres, le temps le temps d'oser des paroles nouvelles inconnues de soi même, on ose cachée par le délai, on ose pour voir s'il y aura relais, on ose parce qu'on a le temps de devenir téméraire et de se dire, ah ouais? what if? et que c'est un peu ça aussi l'énergie de la colère: "ah ouais? what if?"
la grande grille, la possibilité de placer des regards, vers les autres et droit devant, vers ces autres qu'on ne voit pas. Le temps aussi de bien vivre le fait qu'on n'est pas ensemble pour vrai, enfin oui, mais non, et de sentir qu'il y a fiction possible... de découvrir qu'on peut faire semblant en se regardant les genoux de regarder sa voisine du dessous. et ça dit que la colère peut être fourbe.
mais ça dit aussi, qu'en colère, dessous, on peut aussi bien rigoler.
et puis ça laisse le temps de s'imaginer, ceux et celles qui verront et de les inclure... " Extrait d'un émail de Julie Châteauvert 13/01/2012.

"...I enjoyed the multiple frames and all the heterogenous ways of how to deal with this situation. What I like a lot is the contingency that the performance implies and exposes. It is obvious that it is not really clear or determined for us what is going to happen. That makes it very interesting to watch. I love the silent presence of the woman in pink in the middle of the picture in take 1. I also love the big scream that you did together and the fists and the silence afterwards. I realised that understanding the language is somehow important because before we tried I thought that it´s nice that noone is really understandable and that it´s more about creating a kind of sound-carpet. But for me it was quite hard now to watch the take in French in which I almost couldn´t understand anything. So, I realised, that for me (from a spectator´s view) the content of what we are saying is not irrelevant and that understanding some bits and fragments of our talking is important..." Extract from an email by Martina Ruhsam 14/01/2012.

A pdf (8 pages) with more reactions & analyses (acting versus performing / on gender / conducting and directing / pro and cons of the mirror situation / performance strategies / scripting and improvising / recording or not recording) by Annie Abrahams, Ienke Kastelein, Julie Châteauvert, Martina Ruhsam, Helen Varley Jamieson, Antye Greie, Paula Roush and Lucille Calmel.

Angry Women Take 1 & 2
Origionally done for Training for a Better World Annie Abrahams's solo exhibition at the CRAC Sète (28/10/2011 - 01/01/2012).
From home, in front of their webcams, 12 women say their anger until there will be no more anger left. Their images are combined into a single video projection. The performance will last as long as there will be anger or thoughts about anger left in one of the women.
They will all start together using their mothertongue at t=0. They will stop, listen to others, resume ... The performance duration is undetermined - the performance will last till there will be one minute of total silence.

Le cri de la victoire. 1.06 min of joy after more than 40 min on Anger in the Angry Women Take1 performance. 7 07 2011
The only public were the participants of the Open Atelier#16 at Labomedia, Orléans, where I did a residency in the frame of Géographies Variables.

More photos and a short video on the website of the Open Atelier session #16.

Waiting 15 min of waiting, adjusting before the 27 min on Anger in the Angry Women Take2 performance. 7 09 2011.

Extrait Take 1 6:23 min out of 43 min.https://vimeo.com/31323390
Extrait take 2 6:33 min out of 27 min.https://vimeo.com/31370961
Whole length videos available for installation. Contact Annie Abrahams.

Preparations

If the video doesn't show up, please watch Testing streaming interface capacity on vimeo.These are the first 10 minutes of our second test that evening. The server seems to start crashing when handling around 140 to 150 streams.18 05 2011.

12 ladies preparing 27 last seconds of the technical test of 07 06 2011. It works! 12 ladies streaming = 156 streams.

ANGRY WOMEN

An artistic research project:
*on remote communication and collaboration using anger as a pretext
*on female anger using webcam performances as a facilitator

At the start with:
Albertine Meunier albertinemeunier.net
Anne Laforet sakasama.net
Annie Abrahams bram.org
Antye Greie aka AGF poemproducer.com
Bérénice Belpaire berenice.lautre.net
Caroline Delieutraz cdelieutraz.free.fr
Gretta Louw grettalouw.com
Hedva Eltanani vs4rslab.wordpress.com
Helen Varley Jamieson creative-catalyst.com
Hortense Gauthier hp-process.com
Ienke Kastelein ienkekastelein.nl
Inès Kchaou
Julie Chateauvert kassl.wordpress.com
KaReN KRN.incident.net
Laurence Moletta nioskarma.com
Laurie Bellanca kompost.me
Lizvlx ubermorgen.com
Lucille Calmel any way you can find some of mine on line
Martina Ruhsam turia.at/titel/ruhsam.html
Olga P Massanet olgapanades.com/
Olga Kisseleva kisseleva.org
Pascale Barret pascalebarret.com
Paula Roush msdm.org.uk
Sabine Revillet
Simona Polvani simonapolvani.wordpress.com
Suzon Fuks suzonfuks.net
Ursula Endlicher ursenal.net
This group is constituted of ladies I met sometime, somewhere via the internet and whose work is related to computer, performance, writing and or contemporay art practice.
Later others joined.

Développement interface Estelle Senay - Théâtre Paris Villette
From september 2012: Ivan Chabanaud mosaika.tv – Kawenga scène(s) numérique(s).

Contact : Annie Abrahams

Performance Series.

Take 1 7/07/2011 Labomedia Orléans - Géographies variables.
Take 2 7/09/2011 online only.
Take 3 4/12/2011 ConstantVWZ Brussels, festival verbindingen/Jonctions 13
Take 4 4/12/2011 ConstantVWZ Brussels, festival verbindingen/Jonctions 13
Angry Men 12/04/2012 19h, Labomedia Orléans.
Take 5 21/04/2012 Bouillants festival, Vern sur Seiche.
ANGRY 1 and 2 12/12/2012 Festival Upstage online.

Presentations.

Videos of Take 1 & 2 in two video projection on two perpendicular walls in Training for a Better World Annie Abrahams's solo exhibition at the CRAC Sète (28/10/2011 - 01/01/2012).

Waiting included in Super Art Modern Museum December 2011.

Take 1 and 2 presented in Being Social, the opening exhibition at Furtherfield Gallery in Finsbury Park in North London. (25/02/2012 - 25/04/2012)

Take 3 & 4 presented in Connection protocols by Constant as part of the Artefact Festival organised around the theme of The Social Contract in t Stuk Leuven (Be) . (14/02 – 23/02 2012)

Waiting exposition Spamm, Galleries Brussels, festival Transcultures. (03/05/2012 - 20/05/2012)

Take 3 presented in an alternative documenta (…what a 21st century documenta could look like ) by Christian Lutz. 06/06/2012

Take 1 & 2 shown in Subversive Systeme. Poetische Transfiguration des Digitalen, Stadtgalerie Mannheim, Germany. Curator: Benedikt Stegmayer. (24/10 - 30/11 2014)

Angry Women Waiting 2011 – 2014 In the show Net Work by Gretta Louw, Platform, Munich (3 November – 31 December 2014)

Angry Women take 4 included in ArtFem.tv.

Video of Take 2 in Stranger Collaborations, London Art Fair. Curation Pryle Behrman. (18 - 22 January 2017)

Video of Take 2 in Women Art and Technology, an exhibition curated by Arterial for Zone and The Waterfront Club, London. (July 6, 2017)

Video of Take 1 and 2 presented at the Creative Commons Global Summit in Lisbon. (9-11/05 2019)

Video de Take 1 présenté dans l’exposition Hadaly & Sowana, Cyborgs et Sorcières à l’espace Gantner, Bourogne. 12/10 2019 - 25/01 2020. Commissaire Cécile Babiole.

Trapped to Reveal – On webcam mediated communication and collaboration An exposition concerning my collaborative webcam performance projects, focussing on / trying to determine the special aspects of machine mediated communication and collaboration has been published in the Journal for Artistic Research, an online, peer-reviewed journal for the publication and discussion of artistic research.

Michael Szpakowski on Angry Women in his article Annie Abrahams - Training for a Better World http://dvblog.org/?p=9025 (English & français) : "The jewel in the crown of the show is the video installation ‘Angry Women’, created by Abrahams and 22 other women of many nationalities (3 more , in fact, in total, 2 “backstage” assistants, and a performer who opted for silence throughout) speaking about, acting out, demonstrating, reflecting upon, their anger and its causes and triggers, on webcams at their different individual locations and in their native tongues, with the images being sent to a 3X4 grid, in a format that Abrahams has made her own. Because of the limits of even current streaming technology it was necessary to conduct two distinct performances, separated, in fact, by an interval of two months. The length of each was determined by a protocol where a minute’s silence by all participants signalled the end. This resulted in pieces of differing lengths the lack of synchronisation of which adds another layer of fragile grace to the final projections, projected large on adjacent walls around their common corner, with sound from the left image grid fed to the right speaker and vice versa.

The piece occupies most of a large rectangular space at the CRAC (with the video ‘Double Blind (love)’, a collaboration with Curt Cloninger we’ve savoured here before, in its performance incarnation, in the opposite corner and in its full and majestic 264 minute duration).

The impact is visceral – we face what feels like a wave of humanity, not so much in numbers, although 23 women is impressive, at least to this man, but in the infinite malleability of face and hand, of gesture and expression and of how these things might occupy a frame. Sometimes that frame will resemble a Giacometti portrait, with the subject appearing to recede into what seems to be endlessly deep space. At others red lips or an open mouth, sensual and terrifying by turns, occupy the whole of the space – and furthermore each cell is constantly in flux (because these are living, breathing, unpredictable, human beings). There’s something both of portraiture and of the dance at work here, and a kind of found poetry too (which the moving image work has in common with the collaborative texts at the other end of the exhibition). The combination of iron control, planning, foresight (the grid, the protocols) with the letting go and trust evident elsewhere – the phased lengths, the blank space for the person who didn’t turn up, the open performative structure – makes for something of great richness."

Annie ABRAHAMS - Training for a better world -... par CRAC-LR. Je parle beaucoup de Angry Women.

Annie Abrahams, artist, interview @ "Simeio Art", Greek Public TV (ERT) Interview by Evi Tsirigotaki. About Angry Women and its context. Camera, sound and mounting: Philippe Vu.

Acting versus performing / on gender / conducting and directing / pro and cons of the mirror situation / performance strategies / scripting and improvising / recording or not recording. Raw reactions & analyses pdf (8 pages)
Annie Abrahams, Ienke Kastelein, Julie Châteauvert, Martina Ruhsam, Helen Varley Jamieson, Antye Greie, Paula Roush and Lucille Calmel.

Judy Nylon on the Angry Women  project, the impossibility of the naturalistic pose, a possible mastering of the narcistic gaze, the basic bones of the Universal English spoken as a second language and her expectations for future of webperformance (among other). .pdf communication 07 02 2013

Related projects :
Angry Women, Edited by Andrea Juno and V. Vale.
D/t\P disturb.the.peace[angry women] project by Jess Loseby

Angry Men performance 12 avril 2012 19h, labomedia Orléans.