Sinead Mc Cann - Barbara Knezevic - Tracy O'Brien
performance text photos
Tea, Ritual, Empire and Power
Hello. May I sit? I am weary. My journey here has been long and its tale most peculiar. So strange that as it is told, you may keen, you may sigh, you may not be able to tell the difference between a wail and a whisper. So piercing is its cocphony, you may twist your fingers into your ears.
The lights dim. She leans forward and lights the lantern to a low flame. She pours liquid from the tea pot in her cup. She is barely discernable as she rests back in the chair’s shadow. The cup seems to warm her fingers. For a minute, you hear the sound of rain and then again the dham dham dham of the drums, a distant wailing. It fades.1
Hello. May I sit? I am weary. My journey here has been long and its tale most peculiar. So strange that as it is told, you may keen, you may sigh, you may not be able to tell the difference between a wail and a whisper. So piercing is its cocphony, you may twist your fingers into your ears.
The lights dim. She leans forward and lights the lantern to a low flame. She pours liquid from the tea pot in her cup. She is barely discernable as she rests back in the chair’s shadow. The cup seems to warm her fingers. For a minute, you hear the sound of rain and then again the dham dham dham of the drums, a distant wailing. It fades.1
...
Sinead Mc Cann’s performance centred largely around the ritual of tea, and it’s social importance in Irish culture both as a form of engagement between individuals and as a gesture of comfort. More broadly, the trope of tea points to historical connections to trade, empire and power. Bound up in the tableau of compulsive activities McCann enacted were considerations of class, state, Imperialism, family, alienation and gender.
Over the course of four hours, McCann made countless of cups of tea, stacking them upon each other partially consumed, as part of a complex set of activties that also included the cutting and sucking of lemons, the other, more bitter accompaniment to tea. This in particular was the most violent activity she performed and was difficult to observe. McCann’s actions were often aggressive when sucking these lemons, throwing the skins away swiftly at the ground, chewing frantically at the pulp. As observer, one felt complicit in the pain that the performer was surely experiencing, but it was also peculiarly alienating. The viewer assumes the role of a shocked onlooker to an act of attack on the self.
From this, I was reminded of the idiom a ‘bitter pill to swallow’, and this was borne out in the actions that followed. McCann made her way towards a wooden ladder positioned amongst a snaking line of lemons arranged on the floor, waiting to be devoured. Suspended from the ladder was an LED number queing sign, of the variety commonly seen in Government and bureaucratic offices. She shuffled her feet briefly in the scattering of tea leaves at the foot of the ladder, before ascending the rungs, then descending one or two, then up again. The pattern of these movements up and down seemed to have some inner, inscrutable significance, one that was hidden from the viewer.
Over the course of four hours, McCann made countless of cups of tea, stacking them upon each other partially consumed, as part of a complex set of activties that also included the cutting and sucking of lemons, the other, more bitter accompaniment to tea. This in particular was the most violent activity she performed and was difficult to observe. McCann’s actions were often aggressive when sucking these lemons, throwing the skins away swiftly at the ground, chewing frantically at the pulp. As observer, one felt complicit in the pain that the performer was surely experiencing, but it was also peculiarly alienating. The viewer assumes the role of a shocked onlooker to an act of attack on the self.
From this, I was reminded of the idiom a ‘bitter pill to swallow’, and this was borne out in the actions that followed. McCann made her way towards a wooden ladder positioned amongst a snaking line of lemons arranged on the floor, waiting to be devoured. Suspended from the ladder was an LED number queing sign, of the variety commonly seen in Government and bureaucratic offices. She shuffled her feet briefly in the scattering of tea leaves at the foot of the ladder, before ascending the rungs, then descending one or two, then up again. The pattern of these movements up and down seemed to have some inner, inscrutable significance, one that was hidden from the viewer.
...
‘Run fast, run fast. I’m your sister, run fast I’m your mother, run fast run fast’ intoned McCann monosyllabically. With this, and the props surrounding, I reflected on the nature of structures of power, of the state or otherwise, and the futile desire for escape of the individual, from the system that contains them. It has a striking resonance with Piya Chatterjees observations of the politics of Tea plantations in India both under colonial and sovereign rule.
Patriarchal acts of labor management, through the hukum, are the warp and woof of the plantations political and cultural economy. They create the vivid strands of plantation patronage. Through them emeners a feminized habitus of labor that connects imperial trade, commodity fetishisms, and rituals of domesticity in Victorian, colonial, and postcolonial parlors.2
Ireland and India are connected both through the history of tea and the shared spectre of Post Colonialism. India inherited the industry of tea and it’s iniquities first from the East India company and then the British Raj. Tea was introduced to Ireland widely in the 1800’s by the colonising ‘wealthy’ classes. Today, Ireland drinks more tea per head of population than any other country in the world.
Patriarchal acts of labor management, through the hukum, are the warp and woof of the plantations political and cultural economy. They create the vivid strands of plantation patronage. Through them emeners a feminized habitus of labor that connects imperial trade, commodity fetishisms, and rituals of domesticity in Victorian, colonial, and postcolonial parlors.2
Ireland and India are connected both through the history of tea and the shared spectre of Post Colonialism. India inherited the industry of tea and it’s iniquities first from the East India company and then the British Raj. Tea was introduced to Ireland widely in the 1800’s by the colonising ‘wealthy’ classes. Today, Ireland drinks more tea per head of population than any other country in the world.
...
The pyramidical structure of power present on the tea plantation is reflected in the appartatus of the ladder deployed by McCann. Further, the relationship between the production of tea and it’s consumption described by Chatterjee is enacted in this performance work.
Tea is both commercial and heirarchical in it’s production - yet domestic in it’s consumption - as Chatterjee observes. But in both instances the politics of tea are gendered. So too, is the language used by McCann, sisters and mothers imploring one another to ‘run fast’ from an unnamed authority.
The corporeal and remembered oral texts of women in their fields are situated as counterstances to these dominant discounses of fetishism. They question the compartmentalization of time and space in the stories of tea.3
Tea is both commercial and heirarchical in it’s production - yet domestic in it’s consumption - as Chatterjee observes. But in both instances the politics of tea are gendered. So too, is the language used by McCann, sisters and mothers imploring one another to ‘run fast’ from an unnamed authority.
The corporeal and remembered oral texts of women in their fields are situated as counterstances to these dominant discounses of fetishism. They question the compartmentalization of time and space in the stories of tea.3
..
‘Oral texts’, and storytelling as a rejection of authority appear later in McCann’s performance, this time in the form of song. She sings ‘walk, walk slowly, don’t run, notice it all, stay with your family, there’s nowhere to get to, walk, walk slowly…’ This aural interruption to the performance sounded akin to the sounds of keening, or mourning. It hinted at the power of the family and the domestic to subvert the tyranny of external social structures exerted upon them.
Sinead McCann’s performance was a collection of activites performed with a constant reference to the politics of the relationship of the individual to the state and other structures of authority. Throughout, tea was poured, prepared and offered as a tonic, a futile comfort. Her compulsive actions suggested the desolation of the individual in the face of this authority, but also the possibilities for refusal.
Barbara Knezevic, January 2011
1. Chatterjee, Piya A time for tea: women, labor, and post/colonial politics on an Indian plantation (Duke University Press, 2001) p.1
2. Ibid p.7
3. Ibid
Sinead McCann’s performance was a collection of activites performed with a constant reference to the politics of the relationship of the individual to the state and other structures of authority. Throughout, tea was poured, prepared and offered as a tonic, a futile comfort. Her compulsive actions suggested the desolation of the individual in the face of this authority, but also the possibilities for refusal.
Barbara Knezevic, January 2011
1. Chatterjee, Piya A time for tea: women, labor, and post/colonial politics on an Indian plantation (Duke University Press, 2001) p.1
2. Ibid p.7
3. Ibid