School of Machines, Making & Make-Believe presents a 5-wk online class on squishy thinking + states of sensitive being + care-full-ness

About this event

How might learning to think with our hands, rehearsing ideas with touch and activating our embodied mind offer methods for navigating critical times with care?

/ Five-week Live* Online class begins 16. September ends 13. October

/ Every Thursday**, 8pm-10pm, CET

/ Small class of participants

/Tickets available through Eventbrite https://www.eventbrite.com/e/soft-tissue-tickets-166175057069

Course Description

“We have to consciously study how to be tender with each other until it becomes a habit” - Audre Lorde.

We are living in a world where the ‘rational’, human brain runs the show - and mind is separated from body. Objective fact trumps subjective feeling - what we can measure is a truth, what we can sense is not and imagination is a ‘taboo’. However, what might be revealed to us if we tended to a problem with our hands? If we used touch to connect inner and outer worlds (or make new ones)? If we rehearsed intentions and ideas through material? If boundaries actually became slippery surfaces for sharing and caring?

Soft Tissue: Squishy Thinking + States Of Sensitive Being + Care-full-ness uses methods from art research to explore how tactile encounters, melty behaviours and boundaryless bodies can shape practices of kinship and care and form a part of our new toolkit for navigating precarious times.

These methods are focused on:

*De-prioritising the intellect and elevating the senses!

*Using feeling, making, handling and gesturing practices to awaken knowledges inherent in our own bodies

*Seeing what emerges when we ‘dialogue’ with different materials

*Developing new codes and gestures for cultivating care-fullness - together

*Actively seeking ways to re-sensitise ourselves

*Conducting all of this with a lightness, warmth and humour!

Each week we will feel our way through a new theme at the intersection of touch x tactility x care. In the company of like-spirited folk we will exercise thinking-through-making and knowing-through-sensing joined by special guest practitioners (or ‘feel-cilitators’...sorry 🤦🏻‍♀️!)

The five themes are: Touch as Reconnecting Tissue; Sensing the Shared Realm; Slippery Skin and Porosity as Generosity; Perforating Bodies and Tending as Practice - Who’s Caring for Who?

This course crafted for School of Machines, Magic and Make-Believe was born from the Soft Tissue research project and the Squishy Sessions research group of practitioners exploring different methodologies at the intersection of tactility, touch and care. Each week we will share an optional reading and a materials list (accessible / low cost).

If you’re interested in joining the course (or have signed up already!) this Soft Tissue Research journal will serve as an excellent primer to some of the thinking and themes we will be venturing into over our five weeks together and get you in a soft-edged state of mind-body...

Linear, PDF version >here<

Non-linear, knotty version >here<

**Please note, this class runs each Thursday with the exception of the final session which takes place on Wednesday, 13. October.

By the end of this course you will have

-activated your body through movement and making!

-learned a whole range of practices for developing your sensing being to take into your creative practice, well being practices and workplaces alike.

- explored liberating methods for using materials as mediums for thinking-with and have a mini portfolio of artefacts and drawings.

-understood gesturing, making and handling as important tools for refocusing, tuning attention, solving problems and communicating.

-connected with like-spirits with the opportunity to build future connections.

Course Outline

Week 1: Touch as Reconnecting Tissue

We will ease into our first week together with some tactile introductions and share our motivations for joining the programme.

This week we will focus on touch as the unifying sense and its capacity to connect inner and outer worlds. We will discuss what is revealed to us (and about us) when we make with our hands and how materials can be used to rehearse care-full gestures. Joined by guest feel-cilitator UCL PhD researcher Lili Golmohammadi, we will reanimate the vocabulary we use to talk about touch and build on it throughout the course.

Week 2: Sensing Shared Bodies

“Our mouths are shaped to speak the sounds of the gushing river, skin sensitised to the breeze.” - David Abram

This week we will focus on sensory perception as a participatory act and how our bodies are shaped to bind us to the wider ecosystem. This week is about re-enmeshing with landscapes and using receptivity and creativity to orient in the world. We will work with objects we have found in our local nature and will be joined by artist-healer Rhona Eve Clews for a specially designed experience, “As your fall full lung exudes a smooth white sheen: an interior encounter”.

Week 3: Slippery Skin and Porosity as Generosity

This week is packed with bubbling, bodily, fizzing and fermenting! ‘Where does my body end and another begin?’ is the driving inquiry as we explore bodily boundaries blurring, collapsing and coalescing. We will delve deep into Subatomic Touch with researcher Georgia Perkins, experience a touching moment with ice with Anastasia A Khodyreva, and recalibrate with a ‘fizzy’ meditation with Hayley Williams-Hindle.

Week 4: Perforating Bodies

Following on from the themes of the previous week, we will explore the dimensions of our own bodies and use exercises to make contact and build new types of relationship with other bodies - human and non-human. We will warm up with some sympathetic touch with Ayshia Taskin, engage in tactile storytelling with Beatrice Zaidenberg and Niamh Schmidtke and perforate our feelings with Lucie Jestřabíková.

Week 5: Who’s caring for who? Tending as Practice

Who or what gives care in our ecology? (Spoiler - it’s not just humans!) We are surrounded by comforting, supporting, care-giving things. How do we assess caring as a practice - a behaviour that needs exercising, cultivating, attention and attending to. We will explore ritual and ceremony and will be joined by Sabina Enéa Téari for embodied thinking.

There will also be plenty of time to slow down and reflect on our five weeks of sensory adventures together!

Who is this course for?

Open to artists, designers, researchers, dancers, technicians, writers, curious and none-of-the-above! You may be looking to exercise your creative muscle and refresh your toolkit after a very strange and detached year…

This course will centre and thrive on active participation so an open-mindedness to take part and curiosity to explore will be key.

The classes are live?*

Classes are 'live' meaning that you can directly interact with the instructor as well as with the other participants from around the world. Classes will also be recorded for playback in case you are unable to attend for any reason. For specific questions, please email info[at]schoolofma.org

About fees

We realise we're living in uncertain times. During this time, we are offering a limited number of pay-what-you-can solidarity tickets for this online class. These are reserved for women, BIPOC, and LGBTQ+ who would otherwise be unable to attend. We are a small organisation with no outside funding and like many, we are also in survival mode and we ask you to consider this when making your donation.

Note: Due to the fact that we are receiving way more requests for Solidarity tickets than we can accommodate, we ask that if you have already taken three that you please purchase a regular ticket in order to make them available to other people. Also, please note that we may send a follow-up email asking you to confirm your eligibility for these tickets. We are trying to make our classes accessible to as many people as possible and greatly appreciate your understanding and support.

VAT

Please Note: For tax purposes, we need to include the 19% VAT on top of ticket price.

IF YOU LIVE IN THE EU AND HAVE A VAT NUMBER— IT IS VAT ZERO! WE ENCOURAGE EVERYONE TO HAVE AND PROVIDE THIS VAT TAX NUMBER.

In order to utilise this feature at checkout, under Registration Type & Tax Receipt Information, select Business (which as a freelancer you technically are). Then enter in your USt.ID.

If you have any questions, feel free to get in touch: info[at]schoolofma.org


Instructors

Becky Lyon elasticfiction.co/

The course will be led by Becky Lyon with special guest hosts each week.**

Becky Lyon is an English x Jamaican artist and researcher working at the intersection of art and ecology. Her practice exists to draw attention to the ‘animacy’ of the more-than-human, illuminate the connections and interdependencies between matter and re-enchant our relationships with the living world. Her work takes multiple forms with an emphasis on collaborative inquiry. She is convener of the Squishy Sessions research group and she leads the ELASTIC NATURE art research club. She has hosted BioTours for Dutch Design Week and workshops for University of the Arts London and The Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm. Recent manifestations of her work include: a sound piece for Feminist Sonic Technologies; a virtual workshop with Alt Lab Lithuania exploring feminist fermentation via Sourdough and a virtual ritual for the Soil Nexus Conference. She has an MA in Art and Science from Central Saint Martins.

For a full listing of guest hosts, please visit our website: http://schoolofma.org/soft-tissue.html