PUURRAPP, performance, “To Seminar”, BAK – basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht, 2017
PUURRAPP – Purifying Unifying Urban Rappers’ Raw Appeal – is an experimental performative artistic research project (in the framework of the collective project “Co-action Device: I Rather Laugh”) which involves researching the potentials of narrative within the body and the language in order to create a zone beyond representation. We conducted a workshop focusing on the gap between the abstracted language of legal texts and the concreteness of everyday life. Our workspace was a stage decorated as a court hall. An attempt to work intimately with complicated law texts is the core of the method. Working within the axis of bodily/facial expressions and texts, sensations were triggered by personal memories in relation to real court cases, which resulted in rap songs produced in collaboration with students of MaHKU. Using our capacity to be present in the moment was the key of the whole process and rap music paved the way for us, thanks to the feeling of the rhythm it provides. We got involved with complicated law texts through our sensations to meet the language of the street again. At the end of the workshop, texts selected from the constitutions of nine countries were performed as a multi-lingual rap song, with the mottos “rap the constitution” or “paw that law”.
take the stage / make your rules / you are the law / find your voice / law as a body / paw that law! / get out of your body / move in a bow / shake your tongue with fresh made law / law as a body / paw that law! / instant law / constant paw / law as a body / paw that law! / law as a body / paw that law!
Wu Yingyi, Marlene Redtenbacher, Dinos Milonas – PUURRAPP workshop participants / MaHKU students
“Attention Please”, lyrics by Dinos Milonas – PUURRAPP workshop participant / MaHKU student
From the working process