“One may engage in strategic performance in the interest of survival employing the same skills one uses to perform in the interest of ritual play, yet the performance standpoint alters both the nature and impact of the performance.”
- bell hooks, Performance Practice as a Site of Opposition

In his unpublished notes for a book on Beethoven, Theodor W. Adorno wrote, “The will, the energy that sets form in motion in Beethoven, is always the whole, the Hegelian World Spirit”. In Beethoven’s Fifth, the work of synthesizing the individual with the world spirit is accomplished through overcoming the difficult struggle of tensions: between inner and outer, between the opening motif with everything that is to come, the syncopation, the abnormal disturbance of the rhythm, the rift between surface and subcutaneous elements, the range from fortissimo to pianissimo that overwhelms the individual and absorbs them into the world spirit.

As Adorno writes of the Fifth, “The aesthetic integration of the symphonic structure is at the same time the pattern of a social integration.” However, the question must be raised, what remains of this “social integration”? What experiences and histories, including of Beethoven’s own experiences, does this synthesis obfuscate? catherine SCOTI scott creates a language in “Love as an Action” to explore the experiences and traumas of the black female body that have been sacrificed for this story and remain unacknowledged. The creation of a narrative about Beethoven’s identity stands in direct contradiction to the dissonance in his music. It was well known to the Viennese elites that Beethoven had African roots …  

catherine SCOTI scott is a performance artist, dancer, cultural worker and ethnologist based in Los Angeles. She received her MFA from Otis College of Art & Design, BA in Political Science and studied a masters in Dance and Ethnology at UCLA. She performed at Palm Springs Museum of Art, Made in LA 2018, REDCAT, 18th Street Art Center, Highways Performance Space, Beta Main Museum and Ben Maltz Gallery in Los Angeles and  has held workshops at Open Engagement in Chicago and at USC in Los Angeles.

In her work she fuses narrative and movement to create a message and heightened awareness of the human condition. Working from a conceptual framework of art as transformation, her practice explores how to engage with others through, experiences, objects, and ideas to shift thinking and actions around issues of inequity, social justice and quality of life. The performed body becomes a vessel of embodied knowledge and a repository of individual and collective history. By utilizing mixed media, photography, spoken word and food she creates rituals, and deep sensory experiences.

Shaped from a lifelong experience and commitment to spiritual, social and political growth instilled at an early age in a family of activist and artist I came of age in the 70’s. This shaped her values and influences. From Katherine Dunham to Paulo Friere these influences shaped her choice of medium, content and presentation. She appropriates multiple media and aesthetics to inform her work combining music, movement, and visuals to communicate both personal and collective memory through a multi-sensory experience. Early study in dance and performance influenced her to perform narratives.