Leena Raudvee
2021. Split screen looped video (24:46), looped video of interpretive description as text and audio (5:38), chair, parabolic speaker, handheld sound vibration speaker.
Videographer and Sound Design: Alexandra Gelis
Artist Coach: claude wittman
Technical Support: Clement Kent
Produced with the support of the City of Toronto through the Toronto Arts Council
In a B&W split-screen video, Toronto-based artist Leena Raudvee repeatedly falls and gets up again. In the gallery, the video loops repeatedly. The audio is projected over a chair in the space directly in front of the video and a small hand-held speaker on the chair transmits the sound of the video through sound vibrations.
In a separate video, Raudvee reads her interpretive audio description of the video, Precarious Gestures, as a personal reflection on the experience of performing her daily ritual.
Raudvee writes:
“For several years I have been falling. As the falls became more frequent, more difficulties with muscular weakness began to appear, most notably in my legs. Getting up from a chair was difficult. Getting up from the ground was almost impossible. When I was diagnosed with a degenerative muscle disease, I resisted the use of canes and walkers, fearing the stigma, the labeling. But the falls persisted. And every time I fell I would feel defeated, helpless, struggling unsuccessfully to get up. Every time I fell I had to wait for someone to stop and grab my arms and try to lift me up. I was drenched in shame. Finally, 2 years ago, I started to use 2 walking sticks. No longer able to pass as able bodied, I was now visually identified as disabled, a spectacle, something to be stared at, accommodated, and judged in silence. Disabled, cautious, slow as well as aged, I had also become strangely invisible.
Precarious Gestures speaks from the precariousness of negotiating im/mobility through disability and aging. The immediate impetus for creating this performance arose out of the accumulated trauma of falling. It was a public outing of my dis-abled un-abled body. But it was also an opportunity to reframe my own narrative. I could be in control.”
Through this work, Raudvee mobilizes the ritual element of performance to assert control over her aging and dis-eased body. Reclaiming and reframing the slow effort of getting up from the ground and its associated shame, Raudvee demands that the audience witness the act of standing from a fall as a physical feat of strength and determination. The work becomes a crip ritual not only in the sense that the repeated act of standing starts to feel like a rite, but in the sense that, by facing shame, the work itself is a documentation of coming to disability consciousness.
Video of Precarious Gestures with closed captions
Video of Raudvee reading her interpretive audio description of Precarious Gestures (with text)
Screenshot images from Precarious Gestures
Written Image Description:
Two black and white images are side by side in a split screen.
In the image on the left, we look up towards the ceiling of a big white room. A woman, on the right, in dark clothing, lies on the floor looking up at a stool. There is a white column on the left, with long lines drawn on it.
In the image on the right, a woman peers out over dark round glasses from under a metal stool. Her foreshortened body in a dark shirt almost fills the picture frame.
Written Image Description:
Two black and white images are side by side in a split screen.
In the image on the left, we look up towards the ceiling of a big white room with a white column on the left. A woman in dark clothing is leaning over a metal stool. She is on her knees with one arm reaching to the floor and the other arm folded under her chest. The end of a walking stick is visible on the floor to the right.
In the image on the right, a woman with short hair and glasses and wearing a dark shirt is lying awkwardly on the top of a metal stool. She has one arm folded under her chest and the other is reaching down. Her head is leaning over the edge of the stool facing down. Her body fills most of the picture frame.
Written Image Description:
Gallery view of artwork by Leena Raudvee. A brown wooden chair placed in front of a large TV screen, which is mounted on a white wall. The large TV screen depicts two black and white images. The left image shows a room with a chair in the center, and a person standing beside the chair. The left image shows two legs standing on top of a wooden floor. To the right of the large TV screen, there is a smaller TV screen, which shows the text ‘My daily ritual begins’. Underneath the smaller TV screen there is a pair of black headphones pinned to the wall.
Written Image Description:
A brown wooden chair with a black bag that has a black wire attached to it. The word ‘breathe’ is printed in white on the black bag.
Written Image Description:
Gallery view detail of an artwork by Leena Raudvee. A TV screen mounted to a white wall. The TV screen depicts a black background, with white text which says ‘A brief flutter. As body twists. And I slide to the ground.’ Underneath the TV screen are a pair of black headphones which are hanging on a silver hook.
Leena Raudvee’s Website: leenaraudvee.ca
#CripRitual 