Embodied relations

SELF, SOCIAL, AND OTHER(S) IN CONVERSATION

Relating is the basis for our self-formation, our ability to embrace other(s), and interact with/within the collective. It is the gateway to our dialectical reasoning and our connection with the earth, its habitat, life forms, and communities. As a result, relational thinking and acting increasingly find their way into sustainability and climate discourses. Embodied practices, autoethnographic approaches, and participatory engagement disrupt disciplinary and sectoral silos, situate the research within its specific context, and blur the distinction between researcher and researched. However, when opposing viewpoints, and environmental and economic concerns and impacts collide, how can we find common ground for dialogue and action? How do we reconnect, and integrate the complexity of life and knowledges into a social whole?

What happens when you experience the unheard?

Multi-disciplinary researchers, activists, and artists are invited on an experiential journey of two days to challenge our ‘self’ as a source of knowledge. We will train our social muscles of discourse between self and others, to knit new knots of relationships. Sonic exploration, expanded perception, and listening and voicing as attention methods will guide us to explore our dialogical selves in analytical thought and in non-neutral interaction.

The workshop aspires to raise our bodily awareness, our resonance with space, and our context-consciousness to illuminate our intentional and unintentional disregard for content. Deep listening and listening-notation-translation will give voice to the unheard in our specialization, and reveal the relational materiality of our conversations. In the final act, the volunteer participant is encouraged to become a performer him/herself and experience reflective art-science practice from an embodied perspective.

SHiFT, Flechtwerk association and performers (alphabetical order):
Julia Bentz, Dominika Glogowski, Mariella Greil, Werner Moebius, and Lucie Strecker

May 30: In collaboration with Angewandte Performance Lab,
Haus für Kunst und Wissenschaft, Georg-Coch Platz 1, A-1010 Vienna

May 31: In collaboration with Zentrum Fokus Forschung,
Rustenschacherallee 2-4, A- 1020 Vienna