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

The Unquiet Veil in Amsterdam

I will once again game master Áron Birtalan’s scenario The Unquiet Veil. This time at DAS in Amsterdam.

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 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.

Co-hosting The Unquiet Veil

This week I’ve been working with Áron Birtalan in a part of their PhD project Your Bones Hold the Shape of What’s to Come. The piece is titled The Unquiet Veil – A Living Person’s Guide to Death Magick in Four Unfinished Songs. As iwth many participatory proposals it’s somewhere between a workshop and a scenario and we are guiding the participants through different aesthetically informed activities.

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.

The piece is available for touring. More info here.