Winner Threshold Award Social Practices (shared) and Research Award 2020 (second place)
On December 9th, 2020, Sarafina van Ast won the annual Threshold Award for the Social Practices and the Research Award (second place) with their graduation work [24:30]. In this interview, we look back at Sarafina’s time at WdKA and look forward to their evolving career.
What have you been up to since graduation?
After I graduated, I took a break and slept a lot—I needed it! Because graduation took place online, I could spend six months in Finland around my graduation. That was really nice. In that period, I also applied for the Fine Arts Masters at Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam and got accepted. So, in October I started studying again. And for the rest, I created a workshop based on my graduation work and I am giving it as a guest teacher at WdKA. Right now, I am trying to offer the workshop at other institutions as well.
Can you tell us a bit more about your graduation work and how it came about?
In my third year, I did a research on the topic of Islam and women. During that research, I came across some very interesting words, such as ‘wilfulness’ and ‘waywardness’ and started researching them in relationship to the Quran. That is when I found the chapter [24:30], which I later titled my thesis after. I made the connection between the way in which males and females are treated differently, and how that is portrayed in the Quran or in religion in general, and within society. From there on, I started writing about these differences and about the spaces we find ourselves in—public spaces, institutional spaces, black spaces, white spaces, and so forth. And about how our identities are shaped in these spaces and what happens at the intersections where spaces meet and overlap. I then started erasing and replacing words. The entire text is written without pronouns, for example. That means I replaced the words he, him, his and she, her with the letter ‘X’. And from there the thesis was coming together, it became almost like one big poem.
The thesis is about the politics of Gaze, but it also talks about the idea of gender. It is about notions such as bodies and spaces and what it means to Gaze.
Each chapter is a performance in which I reveal the aspects that I have erased or replaced in the text. I think the latter became the most interesting part of the work. I can write about literally anything, but I can still emphasise the notion of gender, or rather the fact that pronouns are not necessary in a text, and that it's quite violent to assume that certain things need to be described in a he- or she-form. Especially in academics, which is predominantly (white) male oriented. I wanted to move away from that. Not by emphasising the female perspective instead, but by finding a completely different way to do it.
Which urgency are you addressing in your work?
As I mentioned before, the work mainly evolves around the politics of Gaze and notions of gender and space. I believe that each space has its own code you need to switch to in order to fit in. Being bi-racial myself, I move through these different spaces and switch codes all the time. And besides that, I really wanted to focus on the experience of a trans, non-binary body, because I feel that trans or non-binary academics are not read as much. I think it's very important to create that representation. And in order to do so, I believe we need to find new ways of writing. One of the things that I discovered is that, as I started replacing pronouns with x’s, the text did not only become very poetic, but I also created a new type of language. This makes people read and understand the text in a different manner, and for specific people—cisgender people for example—this could help in understanding how text is predominantly binary and how this affects us and our world.
How did you experience graduating during the Corona pandemic?
I think that in a way it was not that weird for me. Being disabled myself, I am used to being a bit more distant from my friends. From a young age, I have not always been able to do the same things everybody else do. So, when the first lockdown started, I was quite alright. It became difficult later, when I was in Finland, with no one I knew around me and no people that looked like me, because Finland is a predominantly white country. But at the same time, it was a very interesting period to graduate in, because I could focus entirely on my work. Although at a certain point, like a lot of people did, I really missed going for a drink.
And do you think the pandemic influenced you work?
Yes, I think it definitely did. The online performance I created based on my thesis works in an online space. It could work in real life as well, but it is made to function online. This experience definitely opened my eyes to the possibilities of digital art. I figured out a way to still be able to perform live in front of an audience, but then through a screen. From a performance perspective, this was a very interesting process. At the moment, I am working with this technique in my masters.
How has your graduation work influenced your perspective on your current or future practice?
A big dream of mine has always been to do a PhD one day. Until recently, it was difficult for me to believe that this would be an option for me because I come from pre-vocational secondary education (VMBO). I never really learnt how to write properly. I've always been writing—I mean, I'm a poet so I love doing it—but I was never that confident about it. Working together with my graduation supervisor Teana Boston-Mammah was such a great experience. She gave me a lot of freedom, and every time I spoke to her, she was very supportive. When I was unsure about erasing words and replacing them with x’s, she was just like “all good, go for it!” That really changed my perspective on what I want to achieve, and it also helped me take myself more seriously in a way. Working with text as a medium, I always struggled with the lack of visuals. I always tried to add visuals because I thought that was what’s expected. But for my graduation, I just handed in a book with text and a performance with a black screen.
Receiving such a positive response to my work—graduating with two tens and winning two awards—really means a lot. I think this gave me the confidence boost I needed.
Where do you hope to be in a year?
I’m hoping to graduate from my masters in 2022, so for now, I will be focussing on that. I hope that in a year, I will be writing more and that I get a chance to perform again. I hope to be able to teach more by then and develop my workshop with different groups of people. And I would also like to publish or exhibit some of my works, including my graduation project. A part of my thesis was published in a German magazine called Afghan Punk Magazine shortly after graduation. And finally, I hope to be working towards my PhD. I'm not exactly planning to start next year, but it would be nice to evaluate the options for the future.
What will you be working on in the near future?
As I mentioned, I am now developing a workshop based on my graduation project. It is a writing workshop in which participants are introduced to the different methods that I use in my writing. One of the methods I used while writing my thesis is to replace words with a letter. Like this, there are many other methods and aspects that I explain during the workshop. I see that this exercise makes people more confident in their writing, in the same way I experienced it. The focus of the workshop is really on the writers themselves and what they want to say with their text. In my workshop, I aim to make participants realise that they can use language however they want. I encourage them to make up new words that don’t exist yet or use words that are not known that much. I also invite them to do further research to understand how other academics, writers and artists approach this. And how language changes over time and how it affects—and is affected by—culture.
How would you introduce yourself as a practitioner today? What would be your ideal job title, if you could choose any?
I've always wanted to be a researcher, something like a performance researcher. Not that I research performing alone, but also things like sociology and religion. And I am definitely also an activist. So, I would say I’m an activist, researcher, performer and poet.
What role did WdKA play in the process of becoming the professional you are today?
I think that going through WdKA, I had many good experiences but also bad experiences. Both made me realize what I want to fight for in that sense. At times, I felt lonely as a performer, because I feel that there was not a lot of emphasis on performance art in the curriculum. But at the same time, the thing that I appreciated the most about the Willem de Kooning Academy, is that they really gave me freedom. So that meant that if I wanted to do a project somewhere else for a few months and I would miss some classes, there would be understanding for that.
What is the future of your work field, in your opinion?
I think that the current activistic climate is definitely providing more opportunities for people like myself. I hope this will continue to grow for others and that I can be a part of that process—creating space for others. The way I see it, the Netherlands has really opened up since the Black Lives Matter movement, however, we have a long way to go, and a lot of work still needs to be done. And I have to say that this has also opened doors for me professionally. Because people are more critical about who they hire and why. It seems that a long-awaited change is coming. People are ready to listen to other voices and those other voices also claim their space. Communities are starting to share stories and joy, and this is so important. I have learned from my own experiences that community is everything, that I would be nowhere without my community.
For more information about Sarafina’s work [24:30], check out their graduation catalogue page. Furthermore, Sarafina’s journey can be followed on their Website and Instagram.
