INCANTATION
BELOW ARTIST AND PERFORMER MAIA NUNES COLLATES SOME OF THE MATERIALS AND RESEARCH BEHIND INCANTATION, A MULTIDISCIPLINARY SHOW BASED ON INTERGENERATIONAL TRAUMA FROM THE ARTIST'S PERSONAL PERSPECTIVE. 
A KIND OF BAPTISM / CLEANSING ​
Thinking through ideas of intergenerational trauma as well as wisdom. Repetitive cycles of emotional work “rinse and repeat”. Tears shed as a kind of cleansing / release. A sense of ceremony / ritual in repetition and repetitive cycles. Unconscious repetition and embodied memory. What kind of work have our ancestors hands done in terms of manual labour but also intimacy, touching, healing, sculpting, creating. What kind of rhythms do we make, what kind of patterns are we co-creating?
AMEN - A PAUSE FOR BREATH 
Thinking through notions of breath in relation to recitation and chant. Thinking about full stops and commas in stories and lives - silence in relation to noise. How can we create those moments of pause and reflection in order to make room for transformation and evolution. Relentless repetition makes pause necessary.
RED LEAVES, CRYING BODY
“Words repeated arrive irresistibly at prayer”- Jonathon Burrows. Repetition eventually arriving at a prayer or wish for healing and transformation. The word “irrisistable” is important to me it echos Audre Lorde’s “erotic yes”. This sense of change as being driven by desire for pleasure and liberation not just as a response to pain.
KNOTTING TO KEEP TRACK OF TIME 
Testing modes of knotting and ways of working with rope as a mode of keeping track of time, mark beats. Also thinking about the material about rope ladders, anchors, life lines as well as restrictions, bondage, nooses.
M ARCHIVE : AFTER THE END OF THE WORLD - Alexis Pauline Gumbs
​Stories and basket weaving, the rhythm of speech and hands. Mindless task and repetition allowing for a type of meditation & healing practice. The hands making a type of story, keeping pace for words. Also resonates with Ursula Le Guin’s “Carrier Bag of Fiction”. They talk about viewing stories as carrier baskets that hold experience in all its complexity and relationship rather than chasing/centring a single climactic point.
A TIME FOR CHANGE 
The body and grief. Tears waiting to be released, words waiting to be spoken. The latent potential for transformation. Seeds in our bellies, water beneath our skin.
STRETCHED MATERIAL
Something about opening the chest and measuring arm span with the material. A measuring not only of time but also of body and of marking time with the body. Testing full-bodied use of material, stretching and opening of material and of self...
AN ORNATE EGG 
Ostrich eggs were some of the first vessels and water carriers. Going back to this notion of cleansing and also carrying and holding. Carrying and its relationship to mothering - and mothering as a verb. Ostrich eggs were also broken and used as some of the world’s first beads. And beads have a relationship with prayer.
BREATH KEEPS TIME, BELLS KEEP TIME
Bells signifying a full stop, a beginning and an end. Breath can also be used as a full stop (active) but also as the silence around the full stop (space).  Breath being the timer / clock of life - so continuous in motion that it becomes synonymous with rest.  
M ARCHIVE CTD.
“If you can make a basket you can make a boat”. Freedom to sail away created through the repetition of small patterns. Small rituals and actions building to form a freedom practice.
BODY, MATERIAL, VEIL, FILTER 
Becoming intimate with the material I will be working with & seeing the form of the material in relation to my body is very important to my process. Muslin can be used as wash-cloth, swaddling cloth, and as lining. It is an ancient material- breathable, and delicate as well as practical and tough. It has been used to bandage and heal, clean and filter, wrap and secure.
JONATHON BURROWS - Cheap Lecture 
“Repetition is useful sometimes in building the necessity for a change. Repetition is also a way to arrive at a rhythm”. Thinking about intergenerational cycles of repetition and change not only as patterns but as rhythms and therefore as music. Stories passed down and spoken again and slightly changed and altered, ornamented or contradicted as a type of sound sampling or polyrhythm.
INTERNAL PATTERN, LARGER PATTERN 
Thinking that sometimes we cannot see that the patterns in our lives are part of larger patterns happening in generations. Smaller patterns build to create larger ones, often we can only see them in retrospect.
JONATHON BURROWS 
“Words repeated arrive eventually at incantantation” - a series of words said as a magic spell or charm. Relationship to wish & witchery.
DESCENDANTS 
Exploring notions of time being circular. Everything we do and say reverberates in both directions.
BINDING CLOTH / BANDAGES 
Further thinking through the materiality of muslin in relation to my body & gender identity in a piece about women and femme ancestry. The relationship between restriction and healing.
THE SONG LINES 
​How can we use music to map geographies and narrate lives? This vibration and tonal language and landscape. It struck me reading this book that Bruce can never fully hear the song of Australia because he is not aboriginal and so it won’t vibrate in his body in the same way.
SOUNDSCAPE PLANS ​
These drawings were made to represent different patterns of sound and how I wanted to connect them in my soundscape.
PRAYER BEADS
​Worry beads are used across different cultures and religions as a tool for meditation and prayer. The repetitive rolling of beads between fingers could just as easily be replaced by the weaving of baskets or the knotting of rope or beading or peas shelling. The pattern of the rosary as an interesting structure for incantation, storytelling and manifesting.
OSTRICH EGGS, FIRST BEADS, FIRST VESSELS
Researching how ostrich eggs have been used in different cultures (with a focus on Africa) as ornament & as vessel. How this relates to gender norms and gender based trauma.
ABOUT INCANTATION:

This interdisciplinary performance piece deals with interwoven themes of intergenerational race, gender and religious trauma from an intensely personal perspective. These nuanced themes are explored through the interconnected mediums of incantation, repetitive action, and beaded object. Verses of original text tell the stories of five generations of women in Maia's family, weaving together Afro-Caribbean, Irish and Madeiran narratives in a melodic incantation. Although the incantation loosely follows the structure of a ritual of prayer - echoing the mesmeric effect of repeated cycles of prayerful utterance - the piece is secular in nature.
INCANTATION runs at The Chocolate Factory on the 21st and 22nd of September at midday and 2pm, as part of the Dublin Fringe Festival. You can book tickets here. 



Posted: 11/09/19