Chani Bockwinkel

RTS goodbye, archive part 2. As I went looking for remnants of my practice in this room and though I edited so many film projects here, turns out the archive is mostly of movement rehearsal & performances. Until today I hadn’t realized how having this studio kept my performance practice alive amidst all my filmmaker work. It felt really hard to want to perform on a conventional stage after my mom passed, but this little cement room was just casual enough that I could play and rehearse and improvise. Here are some very random and also special moments of performance rehearsal or just casual improvisation. Bless u freaking perfect little hideaway I miss so much

RIP my beautiful studio. I miss you v.much. This perfect room- my first art studio, a place that held enough space for my creative practice to truly grow. I painted, storyboarded, did photo/video shoots, edited new films, wrote grants, wrote scripts, danced, performed, gossiped. This room held me in the acute grief of my mother’s death, gave me an expansive space to be with myself however I was. I went looking for remnants of my practice in this room and though I edited so many film projects here, turns out the archive is mostly of movement rehearsal & performances. (See second post) I was such a deep joy to host underground performances v/ my beautiful friends. Thank you for the joyous closing ritual, was a delight to peep! I moved the bay 15 years ago & made weird little films and dances in my bedroom,& I didn’t know if I was a “real artist” Having art space gave me a sense of valuing myself + my practice central to my life. Regardless of grants or future studio space I take that internal feeling with me. Thank you to all the past RTS community! What a beautiful building and project. Grateful there will be a new RTS (despite the hard work it has entailed)! Black and white photos by @artofruy Men can rot in hell note I found posted in the corner of my studio which I must have made one day and delighted me to find

So it seems the world is currently excited about films that center female religious prophets! I’ve gotten so many texts about the new Anne Lee/Shaker film. & folks wanting links to my film. So we are wanting to make a spring/summer little screening tour! Kinda wild all the parallels between our films And to see such a similar project but made with millions 🫠🥴. Tho I kinda wish I could say they ripped us off, I truly don’t think they saw it. But even the reviews sound like they could be of our film. We called ours a “poetic retelling” and the Anne Lee film director refers to hers a “speculative retelling”. Help get the queer very very indie but very beautiful version out there more! Looking to screen in the northeast like NY, Northampton, Boston, etc and west coast Seattle & LA. Connect us with your cinema people, art people, museum people, academic people. We have loved small screenings with interesting conversations. It’s a weird and rich project OR maybe u know someone at MUBI? Or have a producer buddy who would be interested in helping us rustle up a few screenings? Plz repost/send this post to your pals or connect us via email.

Today is my Oma’s first yahrzeit she was a subtle diva who left this earth on holocaust remembrance day. I miss her so much, I wish I could just be sad and hold her in memory today. But it’s hard while feeling so much grief & rage toward the current violences (at home and abroad) which parallel much of what she experienced in Germany in the 1940s. 🧊is a violent menance. Those of you who are turning an eye or normalizing this, I hope that you can take a minute with yourself. Even if we “disagree” about immigration policies. They are kidnapping and shooting people. Renee Goode and Alex Pretti were people like me who protest and who were out trying to protect their neighbors. This public refusal did not happen on mass scale in my Oma’s hometown. Her own elementary school teacher turned against her and threw rocks at her. That sense of betrayal stuck with her for her whole life. No one’s life is more valuable than anyone else’s. All lives are fucking precious. My Oma remembered the people that risked their lives in order to help them to safety& she never forgot that. She always felt solidarity with other immigrants and other marginalized people. She knew what it was like to have people decide your life didn’t count, that your “difference” made you less. So she acted with curiosity and respect across lines of difference. She always asked questions. She was also so many things beyond a survivor. In her 80’s she did her jazzercise, learned new languages, made young friends. She loved to get quality 1-1 time and respected my life choices as long as she knew it made me happy. She always had to get dessert, but would make someone else order it. She always had her nails done in the subtlest shades u could barely tell why they looked good. She loved opera and she loved sitting by the ocean. I miss her cheering me on and always saying “I can’t wait til your film wins an Oscar!” She used to call me a women’s libber. She had been through so much but also kept a beautiful type of optimism. I don’t think she expected to live such a love filled life. She felt very lucky and expressed it often.

Sagittarius season is over & It’s been another birthday/ solar return for this guy. A hard one. Snake year rly doing its thing, more skin to shed. Thinking about the last 3 yrs of my Oma, my grandma, & mom passing. All very different but STRONG women. There is this part of death process where you begin to really feel the beautiful ways your loved ones live within you . & there is opening that since now they are gone you can start to choose to let go of things you learned from them. I’ve always admired my matriarchs. these women were fucking tough and independent. My mom’s lineage coming from holocaust survivors, were not only full of strength but also compassion, gratitude, self sufficiency and no complaints. But I think I am trying to re-define what being strong means to me. Though I knew it conceptually—everyone deserves space to unravel or be unwell & I’m not totally sure any of my beloved ancestors got to really do that. I’m filled with much gratitude for the ppl and practices that have held me, opened me up, surprised me in this year. Thank u to my closest beloveds for all the TLC. Thank u for a mental health sabbatical. Thank u to the very very cold North North Atlantic Ocean for freezing my ass off daily when I needed it most. Thank u to the soft rolling mountains of New Foundland, which used to be an ocean floor pre-Pangea, for reminding me that human time is so small. Thank u to all the martial arts practices, the soft ones that hold me and the hard ones that help me feel my edges. Thank u to all my teachers brilliantly holding and generously sharing their lineages. Thank u to freestyle dance practice. Thank u to my Monday night singing crew. Thank u to my artists friends. Thank u to my film / art buddies who hired me and brought me on to their creative projects it was a gift to be in process with you! Thank u to all the weirdos who help me remember there are 10,000 joys and 10,000 sorrows and there are all kinds of strange delights that I have not yet imagined. Shout out to everyone else who had a hard year🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🤍🤍🤍🤍 Grateful to feel happy to be here. And keep loving on being a body in this very crazy and accelerating world.

Wanted to finally post the images from the office themed show I curated and hosted at the @sf_arts_commission . It was such a special, weirdo beautiful and hilarious night. Just thinking about it puts me in a better mood. All the performers were 😍😍😍!!. & thanks again to @spikeleila & @yung_sch0lar for the invitation. & @mocobycoco for the gorgeous perfect silky wall u built! Just putting it out into the universe maybe I am ready to actually do live performance again?? This was a good soft start and maybe I am ready 4 more? All photos by @machinecollectingdata ! & thank u to @windowonder for being my special business man model. @aiano_ for being my stage mom and braiding my hair

Thinking about my Oma today. It is the first new years with her being gone. Her absence is deeply felt but i was able to honor her in a special way. Last year when meeting a friend of a friend it somehow came out his family had this mysterious German Jewish potato dish recipe that was lost in diaspora. No one alive in his family knew how to make it and couldn’t find the recipe online. Henry had never even tasted it. It turns out it was verrry similar to this dish my Oma used to make every Rosh Hashanah. This recipe was my Oma’s Oma’s Oma’s and yesterday I got to teach Henry how to make it. We even made it in the actual pot his family used to cook it in before the recipe was lost. I missed having my Oma to call and ask small questions to, but she would have loved that i was sharing it. Henry asked about how it was passed down given the holocaust. And I realized that even tho my family had lost everything and couldn’t take anything but a suitcase with them, my great grandmother Alice could take this. N@zis couldn’t take away this inheritance & what a gift that is. And while cooking just thinking so much about the current genocide and all of the people losing their homes and lives and how people shouldn’t have just have their recipes. They should have the homes and histories and people they love. Never Again is for everyone. And as soon as we dehumanize anyone we risk that people will do that to us and the people we love. This is a clip of my Oma speaking about how they couldn’t believe this could happen to them because they were upstanding German citizens. Fascism can dehumanize anyone, we need to protect each other. Fuck ICE, free P@lestin3 , protect trans lives and may we all stand in shared dreams of solidarity, kindness and liberation. Love you mom Oma and Alice for being my ancestors!

One more fall offering. I miss talking about art in progress and workshopping work with people. So I am hosting a peer 2 peer film/video feedback night at real time and space. No need to RSVP just come thru. We have space for 1-2 other folks to share work! Email me if u wanna be on a future email list/ share some sketches. Queer centered space, but not exclusive if it feels like u want to be there please come! If it’s groovy I might do it monthly.

SAPPHO & SWEAT starts again! 5 week series. Queer dance class all levels. Let’s move and be human bodies together outside. If u think dance class “isn’t 4u” come try anyway! NO stressful choreo I promise. A lot of things 2 be overwhelmed by right now and I can’t say dancing to Kate bush will fix anything, but it can certainly offer something. Childhood dance pic 4 algo. I really have been doing goofy clown shit my whole life. Come join🙃.

Took a break from this digital space & from the Bay to do some self tending. grateful for grounding time with rocks, trees, the freezing way north ocean & different parts of my creative community. made some short films. got to be behind & front of camera & reconnect with that feeling of making weird stuff for pleasure & curiosity— which I’ve missed. Looking forward to sharing these strange filmic gems in the future✨ I’ll be heading back to the Bay soon and want to invite projects/productions/gigs in for the fall. Open to many kinds of production work. Always glad this is the job I have, looking forward to using my 🎥 in new and familiar ways. Thanks to @madronasnakesmith @catching_on_the_nose , Aidan, @tbdski and the kind strangers in the northern maritimes for your collaborations.

It was my mom’s second yahrzeit (year time) a few weeks ago. It was both harder and easier than the first one. I took myself on a solo backpacking trip for the first time. Death teaches you so much about yourself and so much about life and that there really is no right or wrong way to grieve. I have learned that in this particular maternal death process, that to mark these difficult days I have wanted to meet my own edges and to feel/see things that I hadn’t while she was alive. I have also learned some people want those hard days to be very quiet and average. & those are both good choices. I was so grateful for the trees and the mountains, the vastness of it all. The feeling of freezing lake water, mountain wind and the tiny little flowers that pop up. It was a hard trip and a beautiful trip, trying to continue to integrate deep loss is truly a long and mysterious process. The waves of acceptance, frustration, gratitude & sadness just come and go. I can do all of the beautiful meditation and grounding movement practices that I know, but the process has its own rhythm that I am not in command of. This was the first yahrzeit where my Oma was missing too and that was hard in ways I didn’t expect. I am glad she is no longer in pain, but having two key anchors gone feels a bit like an uprooted plant. Grateful that the sierras are so old and tall and sturdy and they have known more cycles of seasons than I can imagine. And for me feeling a part of larger cycles of time can help the sadness. Shout out to my mom & her ever loving presence. Shout out to everyone who goes thru these big death portals and how they change you in deep ways. Love to everyone who is grieving and wishing that folks get the space to find their own weird rituals to meet the moments.

There is so much going on… & also want to invite you for some strange arts pleasure. I am hosting a performance at the @sfac_galleries . We will be taking over and transforming the back office. Audiences will peer through small peep holes to watch these office themed performances. —The only wall/border I can get behind right now. — Come see the beautiful gallery show and the incredible stacked line up of performers. I will not be performing this work, but this video excerpt from a piece I made with @tbdski & @catching_on_the_nose & Aidan is the best approximation I have of the vibe we will be bringing. 🔥💼🖨️⛓️ June 20th 8pm, free Happy to offer something for pride month, but queer as in sovereignty for all, queer as in no borders, queer as in land back Performers include: @gabriele.mov @aiano_ @kochinarude @styles__alexander @silkymaria_ @barracudaaaaaaaaaa