Meet Josie J of Raze the Whitebox (republished with updated workshop location*) / by josie j

Today we’d like to introduce you to josie j.

Josie, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
Dialogues and exchanges that can be multi-spectrum and inter-sectional are very attractive to me. I think art is a way to have this full spectrum dialog. My art practice provides me with a place where I could explore something that I have since come to see as ancient, a practice developed long ago. Recently, I’ve been working more and more in body-based practices, more specifically dance.  My practice finds a wide scope, including sculpture, music, sound, woodworking, working with dogs, shoe making, drawing, video, martial arts, and writing.  To be a interdisciplinary artist is a necessity.

The potential for a multi-layered experiential experience is a reason why performance art appealed to me when I attended Los Angeles High School for the Arts (LACHSA). As I continued in my schooling from San Francisco Art Institute (studying with Richard Berger) to Cal State University Long Beach (there, studying with Fred Rose, Bryan Crockett, Kyle Riedel, Todd Grey, and Kristen Morgan), and developing my practice, I found that performance work allowed me to explore all facets of the art method. I continued making and using my body as a medium outside of college, sharing my practice in the LA underground, in museums and galleries, in public spaces and more and more in natural environments.

In 2010, I took a small break from making work and spent some time in Oakland, CA. There, I started to study Ankoku-Butoh with butoh masters Koichi and Hiroko Tamano, first-generation students of Tatsumi Hijikata (the founder of butoh). I still study with the Tamanos to this day. In butoh, I found the same freedom that I saw in the avant-garde performance art scene and the ritualistic endeavors of the spiritual. For anyone who is not familiar with butoh, it is a Japanese avant-garde dance approach that developed in the ’60s-’70s as a response to the aftermaths of WWII and ever growing western influence. Butoh, as it is today, spans many definitions and styles.

To me, Butoh is a dance that encompasses all of human existence and the phenomena surrounding us. These phenomena span the spectrum of human emotions: stillness, chaos, tenderness, darkness. Our internal universe is just as colorful and varied as the features of our external world. The butoh method can be a mode of learning from the world, seeing with the body. Studying butoh has allowed me to further explore my inner self, but also, in doing so, it opened me up to the external world and the way I perceived it.

There is a certain contradiction in butoh that appeals to me. It seems to me that in the “in between” there’s a lot to learn. Butoh traditionally invites the participation of non-dancers and dancers alike, which I find interesting.  Butoh found light in dark issues; it has its birth in the underbelly of daily life. This movement practice holds up the misfits, the outcasts, the others and gives them a voice in their body. Hiroko Tamano once told me: “The dancer’s body is dangerous; it is alive, active, awake and aware.” To me, butoh has an inherent subversion, a need to purge the colonized self, much like my own practice. Watch the birds. Their ancient bodies meditate on the heaviness of a beast like a tiger. Then watch it move like light. Feel a grasshopper leap from your hands, a small explosion in its legs. Watch any wild being comfortable in its own space and skin, gracefully moving, governing itself. I find something powerful there.

As my practice has developed, I’ve begun to focus on practices that hope to hone the self to the point in which it is fully activated, grounded, functioning harmoniously alongside other beings. Part of the reason I enjoy making is the one-to-one exchange you get with the world. For instance, the intent set upon a piece of a tree to make it into furniture: in that act, there are so many active points in which expansion of knowledge and experience are possible. I think that’s why a body-based practice appeals to me so much; it is that one-to-one with the world. Combining all my practices is only natural to me. They all stem from the same core place, I believe.

Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Having the opportunity to go to LACHSA was not only a career-changing path but also a chance to turn my back on traditional paradigms of teaching institutions. I was a bullheaded, but sensitive, child; I had trouble compromising my aspirations, and therefore I had a rocky relationship with public schools. After developing a school phobia in junior high, I was homeschooled for a few years and later attended a special ed school for emotionally troubled kids.

My mother and I never let up, so instead of being sent to a school where kids are just being held until they are 18 years of age to fulfill the legal requirements of education, I pushed to go to the school with a caring and very fun staff. I continued to ask for more in my educational experience, at times hitting a wall but others times, finding some relief. LACHSA helped me not only remain in the institution but have a say there as an artist.

This experience turned childhood aspirations of becoming an artist — a title with profoundly broad possibilities —  into a practice that was all inclusive, an ageless craft. I still think back on the many kids that fell through the cracks of the similar road I walked, not knowing the options and possibilities at their grasp, seldom question to know more.

There were many times at that time of my life that I felt like I had no choice about something that was happening to me, where I felt my future, not in my possession. I feel like this reclamation of the self is a necessary first step if one is to reach one’s full potential.

The immediate self is the body, and to reclaim it, to own it, to navigate it as it should be, to experience it to its full potential is an immediate reclaiming of the lost self. I wish to share this concept. I strive to exist with and beyond the institution so as not to hinder potential growth. I wish to foster inter-sectional dialog without having to worry about limiting ideas of art making.

Alright – so let’s talk business. Tell us about Raze the Whitebox – what should we know?
Raze the Whitebox (www.razethewhitebox) is an umbrella term that includes my art practice and philosophies. It explores art space beyond the white walls of the gallery and museum. It sees art as a continuum that existed before modern ideas of art. As much as it wants to dismantle limiting ideas of what art is, it also wants to widen the spectrum of what is considered high art and meaningful art.

When my practice is presented in a solo form, I use the title divinebrick. This project is a mixture of music, sound, and movement. Usually, I include a sound object that I have made. You can see me at various venues throughout LA. I post dates for performances and other events/ collaborations I may be part of on my website.

Remembering is a form of regaining. As it pertains to my practice that includes the body, I use the term “Corporeal reformation” (CR). It is a way of saying at this moment my body needs a reevaluation, a reorganizing, a re-shifting that is deep and spiritual. A remembering of something that came before, that is so embedded in ourselves that it is a part of well being. I have started to welcome people into this practice. I have opened my dance studio time to share and explore the Ankoku-Butoh methods, and others that I use in my practice and provide the opportunity for other artists to share theirs.

CR sessions periodically are geared to collectively develop art happenings that I call “meditative plays”. Meditative plays are collective experiences to facilitate growth and exploration of themes and concepts drawn from everyone involved. The goal is not only to create a work that affects viewers but its participants too.

These happenings would be presented in theaters, galleries, natural landscapes, and public spaces, to name a few possibilities. Falling into the same category as performance art, dance theater, an ancestral urge to play with something to further understand it, meditative plays strive for a deeper approach that values experience over aesthetics and spirituality over quantification.

CR sessions are not specifically for dancers or non-dancers, it welcomes and challenges people willing to use the art forum as a way to grow spiritually, philosophically and physically. We work as intensely as we play. Sessions usually occur every second Saturday of the month at The Philosophical Research Society in Los Feliz, 11-3pm.*

Is there a characteristic or quality that you feel is essential to success?
Passion seems to be a constant place I find the drive to create. Not just a singular passion but passion for what I believe to passion for just enjoying all the natural wonders of existence. Maybe there needs to be a certain kind of intensity? Intensity about one’s practice and beliefs but also the way one intensely pays attention… and the way one may intensely play. I hope to never lose my childlike wonder. It is important to keep that small voice that says, ”what if I climb that,” ”what’s over there.” Keep that voice that wants to scream with joy, laugh out loud with the core of your belly.

I think a full spectrum of human emotion is as healthy as full movement of the human body. Maybe a certain amount of passion, intensity and grounding. One must be anchored to be able to fly among the trees and not fly off to realms unintended…possibly.

Pricing:

  •       $20 sliding scale. No one turned away for lack of funds, be willing to help in some way.

Contact Info:

*Republished with slight changes. Originally published February 26th, 2019.