Category Archives: Processions or Marches or Parades

Michèle Magema, Oyé Oyé (2002)

Oyé Oyé / screen 2 from Michèle Magema on Vimeo.

Oye Oye, 2002
Video, 5:30 min.
Michèle Magema
* 1977 Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo

“In Oyé Oyé Michèle Magema deals with the Memory of the father and an entire generation of men and women who were eager to achieve a modern Africa. Oyé Oyé is about nation-building, a stop on the journey to a so-called « utopialand ». It is the raving story of a man who seized power and perverted history, Mobutu Sese Seko, who ruled Zaire (now Democratic Republic of Congo) from 1965 to 1997. Mobutu pursued a phantasmagorical vision of an «  authentic » Africa. (« Autenticity » was political, social, economic, and cultural ideology implemented in 1970 with the goal of shaking off all colonial influence, to the point of banning Western poducts and prohibiting Christian names.)

Magema’s Oyé Oyé is a two-channel video installation; on one side the artist, shown without a head, mimes a military march; on the other are public images from the Mobutu era, such as parades. In both the African female body is shown as an instrument of propaganda. By parodying the political concept of identity, Magema forces us to reconsider a country’s past.

– Text by Ngoné Fall”

Kinder Mass Trespass (1932)

Kinder Reservoir from Kinder Scout

Kinder Reservoir from Kinder Scout [credit]

“In April 1932 over 400 people participated in a mass trespass onto Kinder Scout, a bleak moorland plateau, the highest terrain in the Peak District.

The event was organised by the Manchester branch of the British Workers Sports Federation. They chose to notify the local press in advance, and as a result, Derbyshire Constabulary turned out in force. A smaller group of ramblers from Sheffield set off from Edale and met up with the main party on the Kinder edge path.

Five men from Manchester, including the leader, Benny Rothman, were subsequently jailed.

75 years later the trespass was described as:

the most successful direct action in British history

Lord Roy Hattersley, 2007.“

Bowden Bridge Quarry 1932

Bowden Bridge Quarry 1932

“The trespass is widely credited with leading to:

  • legislation in 1949 to establish the National Parks
  • contributing to the development of the Pennine Way and many other long distance footpath
  • securing walkers’ rights over open country and common land in the C.R.O.W. Act of 2000

The trespass was controversial at the time, being seen as a working class struggle for the right to roam versus the rights of the wealthy to have exclusive use of moorlands for grouse shooting. It remains controversial today, both for those reasons and because some think its importance has been overstated. Our aim is to tell the story of the mass trespass, but to put it in the context of all the other contributions made to securing access rights to the moorlands, mountains and countryside of the UK.”

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Women’s Suffrage Procession (1913)

“Thousands of women gathered in Washington, D.C. to call for a constitutional amendment guaranteeing women the right to vote. While women had been fighting hard for suffrage for over 60 years, this marked the first major national event for the movement.

The huge parade, which was spearheaded by Alice Paul and the National American Woman Suffrage Association, was held on March 3, 1913. Riding atop a white horse, lawyer and activist Inez Milholland led over five thousand suffragettes up Pennsylvania Avenue, along with over 20 parade floats, nine bands, and four mounted brigades.

parade with horses and flags

Women suffragists marching on Pennsylvania Avenue led by Mrs. Richard Coke Burleson (center on horseback); U.S. Capitol in background. (Library of Congress

The organizers of the parade also maximized attention on the event by strategically hosting it just one day before the inauguration of President-elect Woodrow Wilson. This tactic worked. As the women marched from the U.S. Capitol toward the Treasury Building, they were met by thousands of spectators, many in town for the inauguration.

Not all spectators were kind. Some marchers were jostled, tripped, and violently attacked, while police on the parade route did little to help.  By the end of the day, over 100 women had to be hospitalized for injuries. However, the women did not give up; they finished the parade. Their experiences led to major news stories and even congressional hearings. Historians later credited the 1913 parade for giving the suffrage movement a new wave of inspiration and purpose.

suffrage parade

While it took another seven years for the Nineteenth Amendment to be ratified on August 18, 1920, the women who marched on this day in history accomplished their goal of reinvigorating the suffrage movement. As the official parade pamphlet read, they gave “expression to the nation-wide demand for an amendment to the United States Constitution enfranchising women.” Alice Paul, Inez Milholland, and the others who marched in 1913 are just some of the women who made a more just and prosperous future possible for all Americans.” [credit]

Nando Messias, The Sissy’s Progress (2014)

A person in a red dress with a parade behind them

Nando Messias, The Sissy’s Progress (2014)

“by Nando Messias
Musical director Jordan Hunt
​
Nando Messias was beaten up on the street in an act of homophobic hatred. After years of dreaming up his response, he presents The Sissy’s Progress, a spectacle of provocation, celebration and hyperflamboyance.

Part dance-theatre, part walking performance, The Sissy’s Progress leads its audience out onto the streets with a live marching band playing original music composed by Jordan Hunt. The Sissy’s Progress confronts the harsh contradictions of gender and violence of city life, standing up for sissies everywhere. ”

Lorraine O’Grady, Art Is… (1983)

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“This is a series which saw her capture a glittering performance in Harlem’s African-American Day Parade. On a gold fabric float with a giant gilded frame, 15 performers reached out to the adoring crowd to hold up gold frames to their faces. O’Grady caught with her camera – so beautifully and so joyously – the different personalities and ages in the crowd. And ultimately recorded what art is about: people”

O'Grady as Mlle Bourgeoise Noire

O’Grady as Mlle Bourgeoise Noire

This event was O’Grady’s final performance as her famous persona, Mlle Bourgeoise Noire, “who invaded art openings wearing a gown and a cape made of 180 pairs of white gloves.” [credit]

Okwui Okpokwasili, Market Thrum (2016)

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Okwui Okpokwasili led a 9-person walk that explored the making of an “embodied collective” in the charged landscape of the South Bronx. Facilitating a multi-sensory exchange with each other and the space, the group slowly walked through the Gold Coast Trading Company (an African market) and worked toward an expansive group practice of dynamic movement. No previous dance experience was required.

Click here to see photos from “Market Thrum.”

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” “It a people market!” a woman shouted as nine of us slowly followed Okwui Okpokwasili through Gold Coast Trading Company in the south Bronx.

She was telling us this wasn’t our market. It is a place where Africans shop, gather, and commune. It wasn’t our place to create art. One of our participants — an African American woman — tried to explain our mission. The woman disappeared and left us to our ritual.

Walls of Bounty, Ajax, Goya, and West African spices hovered over us as we weaved our way through the market’s maze. Prior to entering the market, Okpokwasili explained women would cleanse the roads to the market, and we were symbolically going to do the same at Gold Coast Trading Company. At a walking meditation pace, we moved together as much as a unit as we possibly could contain.

But what if a space and its owners do not want the roads to their market cleansed? What if they have a special place in their neighborhood in which Americans do not visit? As participants, we became performers for people who didn’t want a performance. They were confused, concerned. But we never felt unsafe.

One man, in a green cap with a red star, stopped and stared. He grinned, seemingly getting it, turned around, and headed down another isle.

But to other customers and employees, the ritual seemed sinister. Maybe it was a ceremony to bring bad juju. That’s what the market’s owner suggested to Okpokwasili after the walk as we stood outside and waited for her to finish negotiating with him.

Shalom said someone told him, “This is an African market. Not an American market.”

Outsider. Infiltrator. Other. For a change, I was placed in the uncomfortable position of feeling unwelcome.

Okpokwasili grew up in this neighborhood, and she wanted to share something from her childhood. The smells, the energy, the malts, and chin chin awakened a childlike joy in her. All she wanted to do was share a special experience in a special place with a small special group of people.

In the end, Elastic City decided it best not to return to the market and disturb them again. The remainder of Okpokwasili’s walks trekked through the Harlem Market.”

 

Philip Corner, 4th Finale (1962)

a sheet of paper with handwriting on the right side

Philip Corner, “4th Finale” (1962)

Score: “Members of a marching band, each playing to their own tune, leave the stage and whatever building they are in, followed by the audience.”

Credit: Waxman, Lori. Keep Walking Intently: The Ambulatory Art of the Surrealists, the Situationist International, and Fluxus. Sternberg Press, 2017. Page 266.

“4th finale was performed by Lynghøj School Brass Band at Stændertorvet. Each performer was instructed to choose an action to perform, whether this was constant, intermittent or variable was up to the performer himself. The tune or sound could consist of a repetition, a cyclic progression or an evolving note, and could be freely invented or quoted from any source.

The performers were instructed to continue their chosen sound, while slowly beginning to leave the area. As the orchestra left Stændertorvet, spectators followed in procession down the street towards the Viking Ship Museum.” [credit]

 

Eric Andersen, The MassDress (1985)

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“Costume by Eric Andersen
Performed by The Group Berzerk

During the art fair Art in 1980 in New York, Gallery Interart from Washington arranged a sensational Fluxus Buffet from October 10 through 18, 1980. The following artists participated: Eric Andersen, George Brecht, Joe Jones, La Monte Young, Yasunao Tone, Nam June Paik, Takako Saito, Mieko Shiomi, Daniel Spoerri, Emmett Williams, AY-O, Geoff Hendricks, Dick Higgins, Alison Knowles, Yoshimasa Wada and Bob Watts. For the occasion Eric Andersen produced a Dinner Dress for 30 people. The costume is part of a series of possible shared costumes for which function overrules convention. Among these costumes are a TV Costume for 1 to 10 people, a Soccer Costume for 11 people, an Industry Costume for 5 to 10,000 people, a Big City Costume for 5 to 10 million people, an Erotic Costume for 3 to 99 people, a Witness/Victim Costume for more than 2 people and a Debate Costume for fewer than 179 people.

In 1984 in Copenhagen, the group Berzerk performed The Idle Walk of the Year for Eric Andersen – a procession stretching from The Ethnographic Collection at The National Museum through The National Bank to the courtyard of Amalienborg Castle. During the Festival of Fantastics, Berzerk performed with the 30 people costume carrying out an extensive choreography. Initially, the performers put on every second part of the costume, conducting a procession across Stændertorvet. Then audience members were invited to enter the remaining fifteen costume parts. The ensuing procession climbed ladders on fire department vehicles and stretched through city streets, alleys, busses and shops. The whole performance lasted more than two hours.

Eric Andersen’s description of The MassDress“

Robert Watts and students, The Human Celebration (1969)

class photo

Credit: Hendricks, Geoffrey. Critical Mass: Happenings, Fluxus, Performance, Intermedia and Rutgers University 1958-1972. Rutgers University Press (2003).

The Mayday Protest (1971)

Mayday Protest 1971 Poster

Mayday Protest 1971 Poster

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“The 1971 May Day protests brought tens of thousands of anti-war demonstrators to Washington D.C., the culmination of weeks of anti-war activity in the city that spring. The announced goal of the protests was to disrupt the basic functioning of the federal government through nonviolent action; the immediate focus of the protesters was on snarling traffic to prevent government employees from getting work on Monday, May 3. Their slogan was If the government won’t stop the war, we’ll stop the government.

By the end of May 3, more than 7,000 Vietnam war protesters had been arrested across the city; 5000 more were arrested on May 2, 4 and 5. These represent the largest mass arrests in U.S. history. Ultimately, however, only 79 people were convicted of any offense related to the protests.

In a Washington Post article dated September 23, 2019, longtime political organizer and historian L.A. Kauffman called the event the most influential protest you’ve never heard of and noted that It contributed to helping end the Vietnam War and pioneered a new model of organizing that would shape movement after movement in the decades to come.”