The Abyss Between Our Hands – with Áron Birtalan

The Abyss Between Our Hands

On October 20th we will host a seminar and a reading night, exploring technologies of intimacy in artistic practice and mystical theology. Artistic practice and mysticism have both been ways where the unknowable and the unreliable can be touched, felt, communed with. They denote a space where the lines between affective, sensual and intellectual collapse, a space for new kinds of understandings, confusions, joys, troubles. This whole-day event that goes from noon to the morning after brings guided sessions, discussions, music, readings from a 13th-century mystic and communal sleeping hopes to unfold the possibilities for a new theology of touch, informed by mysticism, philosophy and participatory practice. We hope you will join us in reaching out to touch the unknowable and unreliable parts not just of the world, but of ourselves.    

14:00–17:00 – PhD Seminar of Áron Birtalan   This PhD seminar explores technologies of intimacy and permeability and the possibility of a theology of touch. The research unfolds under the influence of three women mystics from the 13-14th century: the beguines Hadewijch of Brabant and Mechtild of Magdeburg and the heretic Marguerite Porete. Focusing on how language, attention and sensation are mobilised through their writings, these historical texts are put to dialogue with current voices in expanded choreography, participatory and relational practices, New Materialist philosophy and contemporary radical theology. Grounding the research in praxis, the work hopes to create space for movements in which virtual and enfleshed bodies contaminate one another, becoming compost for living-dying languages, technologies and epistemologies in art and theology.   The program for the afternoon includes a guided experience, a response from theologian and philosopher Simone Kotva, and an open conversation with the audience. The seminar is a part of artist Áron Birtalan’s PhD research project in artistic practice at Stockholm University of the Arts’ Department of Dance. Read more about the research here.   The PhD-seminar is free to attend but you need to signup via Stockholm University of the Arts.    

20:00–08:00 – Reading Night – Hadewijch   This special event invites you to spend the night at Hägerstensåsens Medborgarhus, reading, listening, falling asleep to the writings of the 13th- century Flemish mystic Hadewijch of Brabant.   Hadewijch was a Beguine, who were women in the Middle Ages living in small religious communities without being members of the Church, like nuns. Her writings, which include poems, songs, visions, letters and prose speak with a voice that cuts through the fabric of time, into the hidden depths of one’s heart. Hadewijch’s mysticism weaves together her devotion to her life as a Beguine, with the lovesick lovesongs of the troubadours, and with dazzlingly dark metaphysics that would make any contemporary philosopher blush. To her, encountering the divine rests within the mystical abyss of love – if one dares to take the leap.   This is an overnight event, where we read until the morning. Your ticket includes dinner and a small breakfast. We will spend the night in the main hall of the building and you can choose to sleep, listen or even help us read. You will be asked to bring your own sleeping gear, and we have a few beds available for guests with mobility needs or travelling in from far. For booking a bed, contact Maren Wolf: marenwolf96@gmail.com.   To participate in the overnight part please book your tickets here. Each ticket includes dinner and breakfast.

For more info about the event read this.    

Artistic Team: Áron Birtalan, Gabriel Widing, Maren Wolf

Seminar Opponent: Simone Kotva (University of Oslo, University of Cambridge)

PhD Supervisors: John-Paul Zaccarini (Stockholm University of the Arts), Erin Manning (Concordia University)

Overnight music: Extracts of the XIV, Sonja Tofik gleemaiden, Macumbista

Support from: Stockholm University of the Arts, Hägerstensåsens Medborgarhus  

Áron Birtalan is an artist, musician and student of theology, whose work explores languages of pleasure and anguish between angel, creature and computer. Simone Kotva is a philosopher of religion working at the intersection of theology, critical theory and earth ethics. Maren Wolf is a designer and artist working with participatory experiences, rituals and playfulness. Gabriel Widing is an artist and game designer, interested in performance, play and participation. Sonja Tofik is a composer and musician based in Stockholm. Her blend of samples, drones, field recordings, feedback and vocals creates a dark and emotional sonic sphere. Extracts of the XIV are ecstasy by song, ecstasy by repetition – perpetual peaks, uplifted and otherworldly. In the place where eternity stands right-angled towards time, XTC sings the XIV century. Macumbista is a little boy that lives in DH’s mouth.  

Content and Accessibility The seminar and the after-event both feature sensitive sound fields and (optional) participatory exercises in attention and sensation. The venue is fully accessible. The seminar touches on topics of religion, grief, ideas about the afterlife, sensuality, contamination, erotics, and the limits of consensual relationships.  

With support from ABF Stockholm

MOBILIZED: An essay pretending to be a game

Mobilized is a participatory performance exploring the power and potential of the smart phone. Rather than asking you to turn it off when entering the theatre, we ask you to keep it ready for use. Your phone will be the portal that takes you and other audience members into the constructed reality of the piece. The format is based on simple instructions and choices that appear on your screen through text, images and sound. The instructions shape different situations and collective movements. The piece is 45 min long and will be performed in English.

CREDITS

Made by: Nea Landin & Gabriel Widing

Sound design: Scott Cazan

Supported by: The Swedish Arts Grants Committee, DansPlats Skog, Site Sweden, Inter Arts Center, Nyxxx

TOUR

Inferno speed date

Hands and mouths
Visuals from Inferno Speed date

Together with Nea Landin I have designed and coded a speed date web app. It was commissioned for Kulturnatten (Museums’ night) at Kulturhuset Stadsteatern. Inspiration came from Dante’s Divine Comedy, where the protagonist wander through the different circles in Hell. The participant start off by choosing what deadly sin they are under the influence of. That will assign them to a crew of sinners with the same “weakness” in common. After that they will go on four random dates and reassemble with their group a few times in between.

The gate to hell
. . .abandon all hope, you who enter here.

At Kulturhuset Stadsteatern

At Kulturhuset we run the speed date four times in an evening for 20-30 participants per showing. The dating is not just about romantic interest. It might as well be about meeting new people. We got some valuable feedback and look forward to develop the design. Photos below by Joakim Rindå.

Participants
Speed date in action
The makers of the speed date
Gabriel & Nea

If you are interested in a speed date, get in touch! It would work well as conference opener or at a festival.

The envious dog
The app follows the medieval iconography, where every sin is represented by an animal. Envy is represented by a dog.

Datenight på domens dag (Kulturnatten, Kulturhuset)

Bild från prototyp

På Kulturnatten, 22 april, 2023 blir det ny-designad, ny-kodad speeddate på Kulturhuset i Stockholm

Kom med på en infernalisk speed-date och lär känna nya vänner, älskare och småjävlar. Din mobil (detta djävulens påfund) kommer att leda dig och de andra förtappade själarna på plats genom en serie rykande möten och situationer. Speed-daten är skapad och leds av koreografen Nea Landin och regissören Gabriel Widing.

  • 19:00, 20:00, 22:00 och 23:00, Panorama
Bild: Erica Jacobson

Mer information om hur du bokar din gratisbiljett kommer inom kort. Först till kvarn! Platserna är begränsade.

Barpianist:  Panayot ”Pancho” Mihaylov

THE IMAGINING BODY: Freestanding course at SKH

Applications are open for a freestanding 7.5p course at Uniarts/SKH that I will put together and teach together with Áron Birtalan. It’s the first time I have the opportunity to create an entire course from scratch on university level and I think these five weeks will be great. If you are active in any performative context consider applying and join us.

Photo: Dorota Gawęda and Eglė Kulbokaitė, YGRG14X: reading with the single hand, 2018. Video still. Courtesy of the Artists.

The course offers you a practical and theoretical intro to the relationships between Imagination, Embodiment, and Interface Technologies in artistic practices. You will be invited to partake in an experimental environment under influence of sci-fi, mystical visions and esoteric magic.

How does imagination shape us and the things we create? Can imagination belong to anyone at all? Is imagination limited to images? How does imagination influence us as bodies? How can imagination become a body? How does the body imagine?

In this course we will look at how these questions are explored in science fiction, media studies, religion and magical practices: From visionary medieval mystics to XX. century ritual cinema, and to techno-queer spells for the end of the Anthropocene. We will bring their ways of working into the studio to see how they can shape artistic practice and thought. Special attention is given to how “technologies of imagination” influence bodily experience in both creator and audience.

This course is open to participants from all artistic disciplines and interests. We encourage you to be open to making, discussing and experiencing art in ways that may seem unusual at first.

Our approach is hands-on and theoretical at once. We believe that on-the-floor engagement and critical thought do not exclude each other, but unfold from one another.

MORE INFO & APPLICATION DETAILS

Mobilized and Control game prototypes at Stockholm scenario festival

I went to Stockholm Scenario Festival this week and played a prototype of Mobilized and a new prototype with the working title Control Game (both made in collaboration with Nea Landin). It’s always great to see new material in the hands of larpers and I got great feedback.

Players and avatars in the Control Game.

The Unquiet Veil at A thinking practice

A Thinking Practice is a practice based symposium addressing collective learning processes in relation to listening, asymmetries, filth, not-knowing and desire. We long for a space to think, feel, organize and practice with others. A space where we, despite knowing that we won’t find any simple solutions, engage with each other in an unknown future.

The symposium is initiated from an interest in working collectively, from the perspective of the fields of choreography and urban planning. We believe that in times of urgencies, in moments of doubt, in seconds of fear, we must gather and think. And thinking does not mean big Thought, but a practice which involves every nerve and every relation. A thinking that involves paying attention to that which is already there in order to imagine what could be. We notice each other because we are at stake to each other.

The focus of the symposium is to practically investigate forms of thinking. We believe that all thoughts are thought from somewhere – in relation to a practice and to thoughts previously thought. We therefore see that how we think is crucial for what we think. Through which practices can we attune ourselves to listen for that which we do not already know? What practices of attention help us to be available for others, for the not-understandable, for the opaque? And how can we encourage each other to think, in all its multitude of practices, in order to create collective change?

PRESENTING AT THE SYMPOSIUM Eduardo Abrantes, Juli Apponen, Eleanor Bauer, Áron Birtalan, Åsa Bjerndell, Amy Boulton, Oda Brekke, Xiyao Chen, Sebastian Dahlqvist, Rosa Danenberg, Laressa Dickey, Disorder, Darya Efrat, Anna Enström, Benj Gerdes, Tiril Hasselknippe, Sara Kaaman, Elke Krasny, Carmen Lael Hines, Ying-Tzu Lin, Pedram Nasouri, Chrysa Parkinson, Kibandu Pello-Esso, Sophia Persson, Pontus Pettersson, Tuija Roberntz, Tove Salmgren, Alexis Steeves, Ellen Söderhult, Cara Tolmie, Ana Vujanovic, Gabriel Widing, Andros Zins-Browne, Jenny Övergaard

PRACTICAL INFORMATION The symposium takes place at Hägerstensåsens Medborgarhus at 10-17 on the 10-11th of June. Detailed program will be announced shortly. Participation is free and a detailed program will soon be presented. Register at: anmalan@medborgarhuset.se.

THE UNQUIET VEIL – A Living Person’s Guide to Death Magick in Four Unfinished Songs

I will co-host this scenario with its maker Áron Birtalan.

The Unquiet Veil is a low-key role-playing experience / fictional workshop where players are guided through playful and mystical activities in which they develop their own practice of ‘everyday death magick’, make a pact with an imaginary entity, and create a spellbook that they take with themselves after the event.

The experience brings together pretend-play magick, electronic music, office protocols and playful more-than-human imagination. It also features a synthesizer that casts spells, a band of singing undertakers and lots of metaphysical bureaucracy.

Coded poetry at Twisted shout #1, Fylkingen

Twisted Shout Poster

I will show my 9-page hell poem the void is positively charged at Twisted shout text-sound-festival at Fylkingen. The list of live acts is juicy:

* Gå på stället vocal duo
* Casey Moir vocal
* Beatboxer Mathias Yilbar
* WOL performance duo
* Performance/talk by Ilmar Laaban expert Jan Malin from Tallin
* Pyspunka – performance piece by Teddy Hultberg

You are very welcome!

Twelve talking dolls: The Subjects

You take care of the dolls. The dolls will take care of you.

Meet the twelve talking dolls. They scream, cry and comfort, threaten and pray, seduce and order, invoke and plead, explain, hypnotize, confess and terrorize. As an audience member you can pick the dolls up and hold them, take care of them and manipulate them. Or just listen. Together with the other participants in the piece, you create the condition that enables the dolls to appear as a part of your human kinship.

The doll is a thing, but also a body. It has arms and legs, eyes and mouth. When you look at the doll, it returns the gaze. It is speaking and singing. It becomes one of all these objects that ting and pling around you, demanding different types of response. We can have feelings for the doll, tenderness and care, but also nervosity or unease. It is in a borderland creature between life and death. The doll is undead. And it wants something from you.

The piece presents unique handmade stoneware dolls equipped with responsive but pre-recorded voices belonging to twelve different actors. The voices create a polyphonic soundscape that the participants enter, shape and are shaped by. They can also choose to just listen and watch.

Here, a door opens to a playful and eerie world where the dolls are in power precisely through being dolls.

Idea, text, composition, dolls: Nyxxx Voices: Nyxxx, Adriana Aburto Essén, John Alexander Eriksson, André Nilsson, Ellen Norlund, Benjamin Quigley, Francisco Sobrado, Ylva Törnlund and Malou Zilliacus. Costume design: Sofia Luna

Tactical Meditations, new Nyxxx piece on tour

green-stilleben

My collective Nyxxx has created a new piece which is currently on tour. The 9 shows in Stockholm were sold-out. And it was exciting to meat the young and engaged audience. The work is more open and improvisatory than our previous avatar shows and we guide the audience through a series of exercises, meditating on present techno-subsumed life conditions.

INVITATION TO TACTICAL MEDITATIONS

Swarms, droning and collective contemplation by and for cyborgs in crisis.

You turn your back to the world and step into a sounding space. You look around. Someone comes up to you with a proposal. You accept. The withdrawal accelerates. You connect to different games, systems and bodies. You explore and produce new tactics. You are droning. You join the swarm. You disconnect. You rest your way into an action. You install a political paradigm. There is a shift of paradigm. You identify, reinforce and modify your strategies for survival. They are now no longer about survival, but about surpassing what you are trying to cope with. You look back at the world from the other side of the black mirror. You touch the screen.

The room opens at 18.00, but you come when you want to  and leave when you’re ready.

The performing arts collective Nyxxx makes works that the audience experience by participating. The collective has previously visited Turteatern & Inkonst with Avatarvaro (2012) and Human Agency (2014).

Stockholm

Premiere 11 February 2016 18.00 at Turteatern, Kärrtorp, Stockholm.

Plays 12, 13, 18, 19, 20, 25, 26, 27 February 18.00-21.00 at Turteatern.

Malmö

6, 7, 8, 9 April 18.00-21.00 at Inkonst.

Copenhagen

15, 16, 17 April 18.00-21.00 at Det Kongelige Danske Kunstakademi.

Nyxxx is Elize Arvefjord, Tova Gerge, Ebba Petrén, Kerstin Weimers, Albin Werle, Gabriel Widing.

TM was produced with support from the Swedish Arts Grants Committee, Swedish Arts Council and Turteatern.