Session 2: post-activism
Kewuley
Grateful for being here. When somebody is sick in a family we are all sick. When somebody is happy we are all happy.
Libation, give life to life. Asé, water.
Ged
Greeting, not as a formality. An acknowledgement to be seen.
Remember how did it feel a moment when you were greeted.
Cliff
Stretch. Dance in a different way, in unique ways, in whatever way you can, with whatever ability or disability you have.
Prompt: activate the sense of hearing in all parts of your body.
Cara Judea Alhadeff
Take off your shoes. Bring in your corporeal intelligence. Rub your feet in the ground, spread your toes, sense the material, the history of its production.
Where are you from?
Close your eyes, visualize yourself as a 9-years old watching me, a jewish, sephardic girl with big curly hair and colorful clothes. The other children put their hands in my hair looking for horns, because as jewish they think I’m Satan, Jesus killer. Mocking the clothes. Asking where I’m really from. My first embodiment of my ethnic body.
Difference between cultural diversity and biodiversity.
Put your hand in your heart and the other in an inanimate object. What is essential is invisible to the eyes. The camel does not see his own hum.
Oikos, the root of economy, ecology, eco, home. How does that feed into our somatic cognition, our cellular memories of what we are touching with our hands and feet.
Sensorium relationality, cellular consciousness when you eat a banana and your body knows how it was produced and its supply chain. Objects are verbs. Their stories are told and we listen with our epigenetic potential.
Break out: think how can you begin to internalize the embodied energy of where those objects come from. Ancestral cellular knowledge.
Ganavya
Can you make music with everyday sounds?
What if everyday is the world singing with us?
The carrier bag theory of fiction
We have not heard about the thing to put things in. That is a new story. And yet old. It is the story what makes the difference.
Jordi
Make or find yourself a carrier bag, special for this practice. Carry it with you for 2 weeks. What are you carrying in it? Put in it also your thoughts.
Kirsta Dragomer
Drawing on the senses. Being in the open-ended undefined space.
Eyes closed through the whole thing and draw whatever sensation comes your way.
A gesture? internal shapes? movement? speed or tempo?
Coming from one or many points of view?
Switch hands. Do two hands at one.
What about your breath? The presence of others?
Sit in that internal focus on the periphery of your attention.
Open your eyes and look at what you draw.
Abayomi
Nico
A post-activist study group. The course’s microbiome, helping make compost.
Let inquiry stay without resolution. A deeper knowing in the unanswerability of the questions.
Rumi:
We fall in love constantly
As we admire and closely watch our own faces
There is a question about who is happier
The onlookers or the soul
Does the wine glass ever get tipsy?
There is wine, the soul, the heart
And this assortment of friends
Where does the work take place?
Love is the religion
Yet we are the blasphemy too
Belief in unbelief
Singing the same song
You cannot grow knowledgeable enough to understand this.
And you cannot remain ignorant enough to understand this.
Craig Slee
Fuck off the processing of these sessions because we can’t get it right.
Get as comfortable as you can. Don’t move, stay still. Notice the session.
Notice your gut, your pulse, moving despite your attempt to control. The world keeps doing its thing. Your body-mind does things without you.
What if the container that is you can be overwhelmed? What if it is porous?
Fail, go back to be still, fail again.
What if the room is bringing these other ideas that are moving you?