In an accelerated, wounded world, with hearts, minds and lives filled with anger, sadness, judgment, hate, uncertainty and separation, granting someone or something time and undivided attention becomes a potent tool for counteracting these states of emotional emergency.
Yet, how do we pay attention in a way so it can unfold its power? This is where perception comes into play. Julischka’s thesis is: The act of looking really closely at someone or something, is something so radically caring it leaves little space for indifference or devaluation. Various techniques, some of which are borrowed from the visual arts context, can aid us here. Both time and attention play central roles in the performance field; so do body and space/site. Reason enough to investigate them thoroughly and carefully.
While eyesight is many people’s primary sense of perception, it is not the only one. The eye can tell us only ever one part of the story. To fully perceive an object, a space or a person, to explore their full nature, we need to make use of all our senses. Each of them will provide us with different information. Listening to all of it and perhaps even letting another sense be the primary narrator of the story can be truly eye-opening (pun intended!).
In the course of these three days, participants will engage in multisensory explorations of the (indoor/outdoor) space, as well as our (dressed/undressed) bodies, dive into the dynamics of looking and being looked at, make themselves available to each other as material in precisely guided settings, ask questions to the site(s) which we inhabit, make recordings (written, mental or visual notes) and practice to verbalize our experiences and findings. There are solo, duo and group exercises.
This workshop is strongly inspired by Julischka’s own performance practice, her love affair with site responsive, contextual work, her 18 years of experience as a nude model and a lifetime of navigating the world as a queer/crip subject.
Julischka Stengele