Choreographer Okwui Okpokwasili and curator Sophie J Williamson, consider how time, history and circadian rhythms imprint themselves on our bodies.

In Being Taken for Granite, Ursula K. Le Guin described a kinship with mud as a body that yields, reacts, imprints and responds. Taking this text as a guide they will unravel relationships between the body and the soil from which it is born, considering ways of archeologically excavating and reading bodies – human, non-human and geological – to understand their ever-present dialogue with the past.

From the sedimentary strata of mountains to the narratives secreted in our own gestures, Okpokwasili and Williamson discuss the body as an accumulation and amalgamation of historic interactions. They will consider how lineage, past lives and trauma secret themselves in bodies, and how these silences resurface to reveal our entangled pasts, form us in the contemporary and redirect futures.

Okwui Okpokwasili is a Brooklyn-based choreographer, performer and writer. Her performance work has been commissioned by the Walker Art Center, Danspace Project, Performance Space New York, the Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA, the 10th Annual Berlin Biennale, and Jacob’s Pillow, among other institutions. Her work includes two Bessie Award–winning productions: Pent-Up: A Revenge Dance and Bronx Gothic. She has held residencies at the Maggie Allesee National Choreographic Center, the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, the Rauschenberg Foundation Captiva Residency, and New York Live Arts, where she was a Randjelovic/Stryker Resident Commissioned Artist. She is currently a Hodder Fellow at Princeton University’s Lewis Center for the Arts. Okpokwasili is a 2018 MacArthur Fellow.

Sophie J Williamson is the initiator and convenor of Undead Matter, a multidisciplinary research platform focused on the intimacies of being with the geological. Williamson was Exhibitions Curator at Camden Art Centre (2013 – 21), prior to which she was part of the inaugural team at Raven Row (2009–13) and worked at the Singapore Biennale (2006), Venice Biennale (2007) and Manchester Asian Triennale (2008). Her writing has appeared in frieze, Art Monthly, Elephant and Aesthetica, among others. Residencies and awards include: V-A-C Research Prize Recipient (2020), Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity Curatorial Fellow (2020); and Gasworks Curatorial Fellow (2016). Her anthology, Translation, part of the Whitechapel Gallery and MIT Press – Documents of Contemporary Art series, brings together writings by artists, poets, authors and theorists to reflect on the urgency of building empathy in an era of global turmoil.

Produced by: Zakia Sewell
Music by: Nicolas Gaunin
Design by: Mariana Vale

Supported by Freelands Foundation

Earth and World: Being Mud

Antwerp based RIP DRARI is back with another mixtape, consisting of his own productions only.

13.03.2022 RIP DRARI: Fixation with the future

are you awake? - gaarne & yungmalflieter

The Serpentine’s annual festival of ideas brought together practitioners from the fields of activism, art, anthropology, architecture, literature, music, philosophy, theology and science to focus on ritual, imagination and magical thinking. The 2016 Miracle Marathon took place over two days and in two locations across London, Day 1 at the Serpentine Sackler Gallery and Day 2 at Second Home. The 2016 Miracle Marathon focused in on ritual, repetition and magical thinking to consider ways in which the imaginary can not only predict, but also play a part in affecting long-term futures. The initial concept for the Miracle Marathon was developed together with artist Sophia Al-Maria.

'In Conversation on Land' with Caspar Heinemann and Rebecca Bligh was recorded live during the Miracle Marathon at Second Home.

http://radio.serpentinegalleries.org/

About:
Caspar Heinemann is an artist and writer based in Berlin. They work with mythologies, experimental poetics, magicopolitical hope, and fermentation. Recent projects include readings at Raven Row, Parasol Unit, and Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow, and shows at Cell Project Space, Evelyn Yard, and Kevin Space, Vienna. They recently graduated from Goldsmiths, completing a dissertation entitled ‘FUCKING PANSIES: Queer Poetics, Plant Reproduction, Plant Poetics, Queer Reproduction’.

Rebecca Bligh is a freelance editor and writer living in London. Bligh co-edits living in the future, a journal of science fiction and future-oriented art and writing, which people seem to like. The call for submissions to issue #4 is going out soon; it’s going to be themed on AI.

In Conversation On Land - Caspar Heinemann and Rebecca Bligh

Chassagne stone egg, box in walnut wood, adafruit soundboard, speaker, batteries, button, voice recording
11 x 13 x 11 cm
Edition LEMOW of 5 + 1 AP

You discover a stone egg in a wooden box. As you hold it in the palm of your hand, a voice speaks to you. It catches your attention, sharpens your senses and guides you through an experience. The images coming to your mind are common to all but different for each.

The Mountain, The Tree, Yourself  | English version

Evita Vasiljeva @Quarto Mundo + OSA, December 13th, 2019, Porto, Portugal

Sound composition by Evita Vasiljeva featuring the following pieces:

Evita Vasiljeva, North Atlantic Ocean sound recording, December 12th, 2019 Patos, Spain;
Text recording of Sarah Boulton reading Bluets by Meggie Nelson, 7, Wales, 2019;
Seque - Peldi (Daugavas ūdenslīdējs), 1982;
Text recording of Dan Walwin reading Bluets by Meggie Nelson, 200, Amsterdam, 2019; 
NSRD, Tibetiešu Dziesma / Osendovskis / Ķinā Esmu Bijis Es,1985;
Text recording of Edd Schouten reading Bluets by Meggie Nelson, 78, Riga, 2019, (excerpt);
NSRD un Ieva Akuretere, Kurmja aptuvenie ceļi, 1989;
Text recording of Dan Walwin reading Bluets by Meggie Nelson, 152, Amsterdam, 2019;
Text recording of Dan Walwin reading Bluets by Meggie Nelson, 33, Amsterdam, 2019;
Dzeltenie Pastnieki, Nevaru saprast tā neko, 1985;
Text recording of Dan Walwin reading Bluets by Meggie Nelson, Amsterdam, 2019;
Text recording of Sarah Boulton reading Bluets by Meggie Nelson, Wales, 2019;
Ingus Baušķinieks, Tik necilvēcīgs, 1990;
Text recording of Dan Walwin reading Bluets by Meggie Nelson, 7, Amsterdam, 2019.

Special thank to OSA

The Mountain, The Tree, Yourself | English version

Anaïs Chabeur

Related tracks