So Then, What Is To Be Done? clings to the naïveté of childhood play as a form of resistance.  Inspired by my daughter’s happier re-imagining of Animal Farm through play, I remember the unfettered sense of hope that precedes the hurt, exhaustion, and disillusionment that comes with relational failure.  Here, I stage an imaginary protest on No Man’s Land in Oklahoma where black, brown, and white tenant farmers once created sparks of an organized labor resistance movement. To me, it’s the perfect place to envision “What is to Be Done?”, a question that has inspired revolutionaries to conceive of better outcomes while mourning our past failures to organize across race, class, and gender. My daughter films this sequence, reversing the trope of a parent documenting childhood play.

Heather Ariyeh

So Then, What Is To Be Done? 

2021

performance, video, photography

videography: Eleanor Ariyeh

photography: Heather Ariyeh and Andrea Selfridge

photo editing: Tim Ariyeh @emptysignal

Essay: Remembering Play

It was important to me to begin this project by considering the relational space one has to themselves in their own mind. Certainly, the mind can be a space of self-bullying, self-abuse, and domination. It can be the site at which we rehearse and internalize all the inadequacies we are taught to believe about ourselves, largely because those manufactured insecurities can be directed toward marketable solutions. When trying to decide where to focus on such a broad topic, I came across a picture I took a few years ago that caused me to a step back and consider imagination and play as art practices that can help us imagine conditions of multiplicity and mutuality. (more…)

Dreams for Labor

Notes on Place

Thinking about multiplicities and mutualities from “No Man’s Land” in my home state of Oklahoma, and the site of these investigations with imagination and play.