Being in the body
A retreat to the centre of the body and back again, as an individual and a collective body.
Being in the body plays out within a temporary assembled environment that borrows from communal spaces intrinsically linked to the tactile, it sits somewhere between a ‘wellbeing’ studio and late night club. Essentially places where one attempts to reach another level of understanding through the body.
What is the potential of these environments and their capacity to momentarily alter structures and assumptions that feed into and dictate our everyday lives?
How can they allow people from different circumstances or situation to interact more openly?
The spatial design uses projection, transitional furniture, functional sound and light to encouraging the idea of group participation and to enhance and facilitate explorations of the physical, emotional and spiritual body,
We are interested in what happens when a group of people come together through a number of activities including guided meditation, free movement and sensorial exercises within this crafted environment.
These group activities are ‘‘not about having everything illuminated or obscured, but about conspiring and playing with shadows.’ 1
The structure of the event takes influences from the teachings of Anna Halprin and the correspondence between friends throughout history, in particular the writings of Lygia Clark and Helio Oiticica and includes techniques from energy medicine, anti gymnastics and theatre of the oppressed.
There will be two phases, a phase of intimacy and a phase of opening. Starting with a smaller group the event and environment will then open up and adapt becoming a place where people can gather to further explore these ideas of friendship and collaboration by dancing together using free movement and music.
We aim to explore this liminal space between the awakening of the internal voice, or ‘the voices of our invisible selves’ and the awakening, through movement of the physical body, the fundamental meeting point between our practices and collaborative research.
1 SCENOGRAPHY OF FRIENDSHIP, Svetlana Boym 1
Event commissioned by Guest Projects on their tenth year anniversary
Photos and Sound by Ania Mokrzycka
London, 2018
