NAIR
Naming the Unnamed
Participatory durational performance in public space
Duration: 8 hours
Materials: Rice grains, rice paper, rice flour paste, fine point pen, tweezers, scissor, sound
Documentation: Korina Kordova, Diederik Van Baal
Research: Becom(th)ings: Posthumanism, Subjectivity, Performance Art
Location: Kortestraat, Arnhem, NL (2020)
‘Naming the Unnamed’ is a durational performance that took place from 9am to 5 pm in a public space. The artist wrote the name of each migrant and daily wage worker on each grain of rice. As it was held in a public space the audience/passersby were invited to join the action for however long they pleased. The performance aimed to create intimacy within a public space to take out the time and attention to acknowledge the names of these people who are often forgotten and ignored on a personal and social level. It also hoped to stir up conversations and bring awareness to the social crisis. The abstraction of the identities of the workers is made visible through the materiality of rice. Rice re-embodies them and reasserts their identities through the process of naming. The added significance of rice (a non-human entity) is indicative of the artist’s current research that explores the relationality between humans and non-humans. Rice plays the subject through which the history and culture of the human-rice interaction and relationship is told.
