24-29 sep
the sun practice; september 24th
utopia, an embodied approach to; september 29th
maximum number of attendees: 40
please register by writing to annaidagrip@gmail.com
these events are made possible with the support of Hallen I Farsta and ccap as part of PASS I HALL
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about the sun practice:
2021 will mark a decade since i first stumbled upon the sun practice in my bedroom on the third floor of a building that around the corner from parvis de saint-gilles. the afternoon was sunny, the world quiet.
to commemorate this occasion, i started working on a documentary film which will follow Edvard Stokstad (who is also making the film) studying the practice. september 24th is when Edvard's going to see the practice for the first time.
you are invited to be our witness.
the documentary will also follow me writing a lecture performance with which i'm hoping to tell the story of the sun practice and how i think it reads butler and austin's work on the notion of performativity.
the lecture will be performed along-side edvard's take on the sun practice. together, i hope, the two works will offer an embodied perspective to performativity and possibly say something about all the ways in which this deconstructionist theory can be used to actually construct an embodied and a queer futurity.
shared on the 24th:
excerpt of YOU
stories
the sun practice
about utopia, an embodied approach to:
i presented this dance talk recently at the Bucharest International Dance Film Festival. because some of the stories told in the lecture concern the history of Stockholm, i thought it'd be really fun to share them with you.
here's what i wrote about the lecture.
Much of my thinking these days is engaged in the attempt to explain to myself the extent of the influence Descartes and his work on what is popularly referred to as the theory of the mind-body split had on the way in which standards of value become defined and successfully upheld in the context of the neoliberal and colonising, culturally white west. In this talk that I was invited to give, I will try my best to present evidence of the way the theory of the mind-body split is integrated in the white western cultural canon by portraying the way the theory manifests in practice, in the assumptions that cultural white westerners traditionally make, for example, and/or in the way in which cultural white westerners traditionally jump to conclusions. In other words, I will be attempting to tell the story of how I think a theory that discriminates against the body became not just embodied (!) but embodied as a dominant global culture whose practices are competitive, anxious, self-centred, object-oriented and obsessed with power. This is the story of dystopia, one we’re all – I’m sure – already intimately acquainted with.
The reason I’d like to tell you the story of dystopia is because deep within its folds lays hidden another story, the story of utopia. This is the story of an integrated dynamic between the mind and the body; the story of embodiment in which reality is not measured in “hard facts” but is a matter of negotiation, participation and motivation.
If utopia (this is a mind exercise), folded within dystopia, exists in the state of a seed exists in relative to the soil inside of which it is buried, my hope is to be able to suggest what it is that we need to know, what elements there are that we need to be able to relate to in order to encourage utopia to sprout and grow. This is the final story I'd like to tell on this occasion, this is the story of gardening.
