Raman's story
Choreographies of resist///dance is a triptych of films commissioned by Tramway, Glasgow for their Tramway TV project.
Mundair's films meditate on rituals for resistance for women of colour during troubled times. It incorporates healing and uplifting practices and presents them as poetic strategies for self defence: dance, breath-work, music, song, and dialogue with other women of colour and moments with nature all become radical acts of self-care and self-love.
Mundair uses the traditionally Punjabi female folk dance of Giddha and female group singing of Boliyaan as a rallying call for resistance. For a call to literal, spiritual, emotional and psychological movement – a physicality that embodies resist///dance. The work was available for 1 week to view via instagram tv.
https://www.glasgowlife.org.uk/event/1/raman-mundair-choreographies-of-resistdance
Mu Vich, Ajeeb Jeeb :: In My Mouth, Strange and Curious Tongue (2020) – a film quartet
meray jhutay hai japani (1.45mins) //sirh pay lal topi russi (1.23mins)//english is an unsubtle act (1.50mins)//your tongue in my mouth (1.33mins)
Mu Vich, Ajeeb Jeeb :: In My Mouth, Strange and Curious Tongue is a series of four films designed to be viewed simultaesnously or individually or in different combinations. It's an experimental exploration of articulation, of the act of naming and forming ways of expressing in a creative, textual, visual and performative way. It is an open ended conversation without an assigned syntax or grammar. It is a diasporic, cultural and linguistic free association, each moment enhancing and amplifying the previous moment. It is a multi-genre work that dances within the evocative space of emotional exile, the space that many of second and third generation people of colour can step into and emerge with an innovative new language and identity – a unique way of seeing and telling our lived experiences. Commissioned by Oxford University's Slanguages Project.
Her Third Eye Was Erased at Birth (3.16mins, 2020)
Her Third Eye Was Erased at Birth is a film-poem: This poem was commissioned by Aoife Lyall as part of the Scottish Poetry Library’s ‘Champions’ project, a guest curatorship programme to help extend our national reach.Lyall says, ‘Raman’s poem breathes into the weight of responsibility and expectation ‘vision’ lays at a woman’s feet: to be painfully delicate, perpetually self-aware, purposefully made less to be thought more. It is a call to action and a cry to freedom, a realignment of purpose and function, ideals and realities.’
Mundair says, ‘The proposed subject of vision made me instinctively narrow my eyes. I wanted to filter and notice the peripheral, the liminal and let that land in me. I wanted to consider the weight of the concept of vision and visioning and let it irritate a little and then let it settle. ‘Her Third Eye Was Erased at Birth’ is as playful as it is experimental and as equally poetic as it is political.’
https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/her-third-eye-was-erased-at-birth/
still/ill ::: breatheyesmemory (13.21 mins, 2019)
still/ill ::: breatheyesmemory ::: is an experimental filmwork - Beta hypothesis 1: White space renders me invisible My brown body moves but you can't always see it, catch it, feel it. There is pain and trauma in this brown body but you can't always see it, catch it, feel it, know it. Fact: I have an invisible disability to accompany my stifled voice and censored presence. Fact: I make signs and gestures and signal from this brown body but you can't always see it, catch it, feel it, know it. Fact: I am stillmovingstill In process and in inertia In the tension between dis/abl(e)ility versus agility versus pain versus trauma versus memory versus breath versus eyes From tautness and in between these spaces What do we need to say? How do we need to be remembered? - As a whole, not in parts. In subtlty and in the murk and gray rather than the convenience of white and binary space. This brownbodymoves through space like underwater, a resistance wearing at my skin - This brownbodymoves despite the steroidbloating and the exhausted sinew and muscles that give way - This brownbodymoves even in a low dose naltrexone blur and didn't you know walking is falling, falling is moving stillmovingstill? This brownbodymoves and you do not see that I am stillmovingstill and still/ill - Note my hands, here – see these feet now, look, these eyes this memory - stillmovingstill Commissioned by and premiered at Dancebase Edinburgh, UK 2019
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArEpaNrg1dk
Sow, Reap and Slowly Savour (10.33mins, 2019)
Film documentation of Raman Mundair's 2019 Sow, Reap and Slowly Savour action/intervention/sound work and installation at the Centre for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow, Scotland. ::: exhibition notes: The seeds were planted beneath our tongues many moons ago Now is the time to reap and taste the language Say their names and slowly Savour… For Sow, Reap and Slowly Savour, poet and artist Raman Mundair will create a new work that will be recorded and installed as sound and text. As part of the process, she offers an opportunity to women of colour and women with a lived experience of the immigration and asylum system via a workshop where they make a place setting for a woman – living, past or mythical. The patterns, text and design of the place settings will be influenced and inspired by Raman's work and draw from seeds, spices, culture, women's mythology and plants from Asia, Africa, the Caribbean and the Arab world. The workshop will be followed by a meal in the space between the participants. Following the workshop and meal, visitors are invited to view a text and sound based installation that will record stories, memories and sounds related to the seeds, spices, culture and mythology of the women participating in the workshop. The meal place settings will be left in the space to mark the work, offering people who might not have a lived experience of borders, the opportunity to understand processes of generational migration.
Commissioned by and premiered at the Centre for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow, UK 2019
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HkIxd9Cd6wE
Noctuary (6.08mins)
'Noctuary' is a triptych of artists films made by Raman Mundair & Lotta Petronella. The three films: Pavor Nocturnus, Apnea & Cataplexia explore the effects of domestic violence on sleep. The films were originally exhibited at the Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWmWGCDU5ak