Tanzquartier Wien

Misogyny, domestic violence and femicide. Objectification, sexualization and exploitation of feminized labor. The oppressive control of feminized bodies is manifested in various ways around the world, as we see in the regulation, prohibition and criminalization of abortion and contraception. These restrictive laws on reproduction echo the European witch hunts of centuries ago, while contemporary witch accusations remain prevalent in some countries as a consequence of colonization. It is a persistent technology of patriarchal governmentality. At the same time, the normalized extraction of domestic and care labor continues in the neoliberal capitalist world, intertwined with the political and economic inequity between the global South and North.

In the performance Magic Maids, choreographers Eisa Jocson and Venuri Perera destabilize such an oppressive system of feminized bodies, hijacking the archetypes of the witch and the housemaid through somatic dance vocabularies. Here, the stories of demonized women in Central Europe and overseas domestic workers from the Philippines and Sri Lanka intersect through a magical cleaning utensil – a broom.

This is a ritual performance. The two begin by purifying the space with chopped ginger and whispered spells. The audience seats are protected with strings of chili peppers. We are ready to witness the ritual of the broom as transformative agency, guided by two magical “broomologists” dressed in suit jackets.

With simple steps, they walk across the floor, holding a wooden pushbroom between their legs. Swaying from left to right, from right to left. Front to back, back to front. At a rhythmic but monotonous pace. Synchronized. Sweeping is indeed a repetitive motion. Yet, the brooms are not really sweeping but simply following the body’s movements. They look like a tail, a sort of extension attached to their bodies.

We feel a ghostly presence with voices that resonate through the room. The two performers then gradually begin to engage with the different types of brooms: picking up the stick with one leg, swinging their bodies, crawling. Up-tempo beat tuning in. They shed the jacket and untie their long hair. Holding up multiple brooms at once in both hands like a wing costume, they shake their bodies and charm the audience like at a beauty pageant. The body language of seduction and the trained “exotic other” are performed, interlocking with the politics of dominant gaze and desire that capitalize on these power dynamics. And yet we can see this is quite an exhausting performance. This is trained affective labor. Like any service industry workers, dancers and maids are emotionally and physically disciplined, with appropriate behaviors and exceptional skills, to serve and perform for consumption. As if to underscore the situation, the lyrics of “I’m a Slave 4 U” imprint the moment. An incantation by Britney Spears, a sensational pop icon of the female workforce and the subjugated capital body shaped by the working-class condition.

As the performance progresses, the overtly seductive gestures fade and there is a gradual shift in its emotional character: from laughing, howling, animalizing, to monstrous posing like sticking out tongues. Rage, hysteria, and madness – all the characteristics associated with womanhood – are embodied through their bodies. Now that they have lost their smiles, they still radiate intimidating energy. Their broom wings look more like monsters than beauty-pageant costumes, it’s as if they are possessed by mythical demonic creatures. They are becoming with brooms, transforming into something wild.

This transition from excessive beauty to monstrosity illustrates the patriarchal technology of control. From folklore to contemporary cases of gender violence (including rape), female beauty and sexual appeal have often been framed as dangerous, an evil force that seduces men and destroys social order. Thus, the embodiment of the wildness of beauty is a manifestation of rebellion. It is a process of “(re)wilding the domestication of female labor”, in the artists’ words. It is a ritual of unruliness to dismantle the master narrative.

After the scene of wilding, the two artists confront the audience with the questions: “Do you have a Sri Lankan?” “Why don’t you have a Filipina at your home!?” Slight tension in the air. It makes us revisit the centuries-long struggle and global injustice: Who does the housework? Who performs care work? Who will take care of the caregivers eventually? The performers continue chatting about migrant domestic labor exported by the economic systems of both countries and recount cases of violence, from one of the last women (who was also a maid) executed for witchcraft in Europe, to a pregnant maid murdered by her employer’s son not so long ago. Thousands of such stories and the spirits of those affected by brutal gender violence in the intimate space are being erased from history. The state violence of witch hunts was an institutionalized form of femicide to sustain male sovereignty and control over reproductive labor. While midwives who had knowledge of birth control were accused of using black magic, maids became easy scapegoats for their employers who sexually abused them. As Silvia Federici describes, the witch hunt was a “regime of terror” against women – like today’s terrorist labeling – with a rhetoric of criminalizing the untamed, the uncontrollable. This is not the past, but the ongoing present. This is not their story, it’s everyone’s story.

This is where the transformative power of gossip underlying the ritual performance comes in. The destructive mechanism of malicious gossip and gatherings of women have historically been instrumentalized to marginalize and disempower feminized bodies. But what Magic Maids suggests is a potentiality of gossip as a feminist practice of rebellion. How can we practice gossip as a collective tool of knowledge-sharing to dismantle the confinement and exploitation of feminized and non-normative bodies?

As a side note, the overseas service workers parallel the artists’ own positionality and mobility as international artists from the Philippines and Sri Lanka who work for European institutions. Therefore, they ironically say to the audience: “You need us and we need you.”

At the end of the performance, the artists threw away the brooms, spread salt on the floor, and handed the brooms to the audience. Together, we swept the floor. This is an invitation for collective transformation. The broom, once a symbol of feminized domesticity, is reimagined as material and metaphorical agency for collective unruly rebellion.

Miwa Negoro is a curator and researcher based in Vienna and Berlin, working at the intersection of visual arts, performing arts and architecture. Her work examines performativity, modernity and re-narration of histories through decolonial feminist perspectives.