Grant received from The Church of Sweden

Uppsala domkyrka, December 4th 2023

We (Gabriel Widing & Áron Birtalan) are excited to announce that our project 𝑳𝒐𝒗𝒆’𝒔 𝑺𝒆𝒗𝒆𝒏 𝑵𝒂𝒎𝒆𝒔 is one of the awardees for The Church of Sweden’s cultural prize in 2023. The award consists of a grant that will help us in the initial stage of the project, studying, rehearsing, wayward dreaming.

⛓️ ✨ 🪨 🔥 🌱 ⛲ 🌀

We plan to make Love’s Seven Names a participatory piece that guides audiences through a series of collective contemplations, inspired by the poem of the same name*, by the 13th-century Beguine mystic Hadewijch. Part erotic lovesong, part theological treatise, 7 Names is a dazzling piece of poetry, whose secretive language can be seen as both a manyfold encounter with the mystical bodies of God, and as a clandestine manual for spiritual techniques that mix more accepted forms of piety with some seriously daring stuff, bordering on magical practices.

By the 1300s, the Church’s attitude towards Beguine women’s communities and their ‘DIY Catholicism’ became more and more hostile. Communities were closed, and women were forced to give up their way of life for fear of punishment. A fellow Beguine, the French Marguerite Porete was sentenced to die for refusing to renounce her book and mystical manual, The Mirror of Simple Souls.

The story of the Beguines ties into a long history of bodies and practices marginalised, silenced and killed by the religious powers that be. In the voices persecuting Beguines, one hears echoes of orthodox Christianity waging wars upon Gnostic and Cathar heresies in the centuries before Hadewijch; as well as the horrors of the witch trials at the hands of both Catholic and Protestant patriarchies in the centuries following. Collaborating on this project with a mainline church body presents a challenge that we are both yet to live through, and at once feel an urgency to take on. We thank the Church of Sweden for trusting us as autonomous artists, opening a dialogue without expecting anyone to ‘clean things up’. Looking forward to what next year brings.

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

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.