ANIMAterialities – the future of grief
online Duration: ca. 180 minutes each day // Language: Englishone day: 5€, both days: 8€. You will receive the zoom links by mail after buying the ticket. Ticket - buy now
The effects of climate change and the consequences of the ongoing pandemic are frightening. The foundations of our community rarely felt so existentially threatened. What to do?
Political action demands new forms of attention, and of care. Performance artist and philosopher Siegmar Zacharias, together with Neha Chriss, Eroca Nichols and Mithu Sanyal, invites us to participate in a “training for political imagination”, searching for ways on how not to suppress difficult feelings like grief. How can experience the power of collective imagination made possible by shared individual, collective, human and planetary grief? Over the course of two events, they will intergrate words and sonics, ritual, somatic and therapeutic practice, into a training of attention and care. The audience is invited to participate in exploring the possibility how another form of community might come up from individual sorrow.
Siegmar Zacharias has been developing experimental arrangements for “posthumus poet(h)ics”: Her performances, utilising material such as smoke, plants or slime, transmit what it could mean to enter into an exchange with materials that unfold their own presence and dynamics.
Following the FFT’s invitation, Siegmar Zacharias developed the training for political imagination: Posthuman solidarities as a 30-hour performative event on the occasion of the FFT’s 20th anniversary, in September 2019. Also present in 2019 were hacker and activist Neha Chriss (Australia), choreographer Eroca Nicols (Canada) and Düsseldorf cultural scientist Mithu Sanyal. Drummer and composer Steve Heather (AUS/D) is among Zacharias’ longstanding artistic partners.
program
The two-day event offers daily three-hour training units each for a live and online audience.
Day 1 (Fri 13.11., 8 pm – 11 pm)
1. Warm up, welcome and introduction with Neha Chriss, Eroca Nicols, Mithu Sanyal and Siegmar Zacharias
2. lecture performance by Mithu Sanyal (with Siegmar Zacharias)
How can we activate the importance of love for political thought and action? Based on Bell Hook’s “Analysis of Love as Political Action”, this live performance workshop integrates a witch’s kitchen and rituals for the home.
3. Femme meditation with Eroca Nichols: let’s talk about grief, baby
4. ASMR videos by Eroca Nicols
Femme armor as weapons for healing. Earth, Fire, Water, Air (ongoing)
Day 2 (Sat 14.11., 8 pm – 11 pm)
1. Warm up, welcome and introduction with Neha Chriss, Eroca Nicols, Mithu Sanyal and Siegmar Zacharias
2. sonic writing workshop with Neha Chriss
Exploring temporal embodiment through the vagus nerve. A sonic writing workshop for enhancing polyvagal informed solidarity.
3. somacoustic listening session Siegmar Zacharias and Steve Heather
The psychosensory concert explores intimacy and alienation as two dynamic forces of grief work and the possibility of a different coexistence. Touch by sound waves and the presence of those absent.
4. ASMR videos by Eroca Nicols
Femme armour as weapons for healing. Earth, Fire, Water, Air (ongoing)
In der internationalen Koproduktionsreihe Who is speaking? werden die Stimme und der Körper zum Ausgangspunkt für ein verändertes Verhältnis zwischen uns und der Welt. Künstler*innen aus Schweden, Kanada, Australien, Österreich, den Niederlanden und Deutschland loten neue Beziehungen zwischen Menschen und anderen Akteur*innen aus. Zugleich erproben sie ungewöhnliche Formen der Zusammenarbeit, die nicht nur jede*n Einzelne*n verändern, sondern auch ein anderes, ein zukünftiges Miteinander hervorbringen.