This year’s second edition of Floating University’s (Re-)Gaining Ecological Futures festival focuses on the notion and actuation of “ecosomatics” (Greek: soma, body). Ecosomatics asks how somatically informed practices might support experiential (re-)learning and empowerment in the processes of a knowledge formation that seeks an ecological consciousness, and that mobilises actions of care, regeneration and de-colonisation for a planetary stewardship and a response-able being-with the world. 

(Re-)Gaining Ecological Futures is a festival of affective encounters and collective engagements that holistically question how we can learn from the natural world, how to create new synthesis in our technocratic times for a more inclusive and ‘cosmo-logical’ knowing? It shares proposals to reflect and act on how we contribute to shaping and nurturing ecological inter-relations and inter-actions. It critically engages with the human-centred ontology and the dualism between nature and culture. 

All events will take place in English language. Free of charge.

All bodies and cultures are welcome regardless of experience, no special skills needed.

The workshop sessions can be attended independently. Limited number of participants; first come first serve. Please register directly with the respective workshop facilitators.

COVID-19: For everyone to feel comfortable, we kindly ask you to bring an official negative test result from the same day – no matter if vaccinated or not. 

[Workshop]

Fermenting foods is an essential part of nearly all human cultures – and some nonhuman ones as well! Many of us have rediscovered home fermentation during recent lockdowns. This beautiful, productive, and delicious relationship with microorganisms surrounding us can balance some of the fear currently permeating our relationship to the microbial. Besides fostering community between humans on a social level, it can open our perception to the smaller, quieter species among us. Fermentation holds many detoxing health benefits, and extends our metabolisms, putting the digestive process inside our bodies in dialogue with an analogous process happening in the world outside them. In this workshop, we will somatically explore our digestive system in movement, as well as discuss the ecological, political, and spiritual (!) aspects of fermenting our foods. We will also engage in some hands-on fermenting, and each take home some floating ferments at the end! The workshop is open to any and all bodies. If You have any glass jars, knives, cutting boards, graters, vegetables, herbs, spices that You can bring, please do so! We will provide some as well, put everything together, and then work with what is there.

► Registration: david@davidbloom.info

David Bloom (he/him/his) is a choreographer, dancer, teacher, parent, filmmaker, pianist, bodyworker, and fermenting Jewish mystic. His work revolves around questions of Desire, Intimacy, Boundaries, Power Dynamics, Consent, as well as Cross-Pollination, Pleasure, Space, the Digestive System, Fermentation, Sourdough, Beauty, Breath, Time, Spirit, and Transformation. davidbloom.info

A Writing Gathering on Ecosomatics

[Workshop]

The workshop is a collective, sensitive and political space where we practice collaborative thinking through writing. The intention is to reflect on language and the act of naming in relation to the territories that we inhabit and the territories that inhabit us, thinking of territory as the ecosystems within which we live, think, create and move with. Taking inspiration from Latin American thinkers we will reflect on the notion of “ecosomatics” in relation to feminism and decoloniality. Enacting writing as a social and communal practice we aim to re-think and re-write the narratives that we have inherited in relation to how we exist and live, to build new structures for our thoughts, feelings, and eco-relationships. During the workshop, we will work with materials to be shared with the visitors on the opening night to engage and collaborate. All bodies and all genders are welcome. No previous experience is required and each participant is invited to write in the language they feel most comfortable with.

► Registration: writinggatherings@gmail.com

Giuliana Kiersz is a feminist author and artist. Her methods explore our relationship with language, to create fantasies that move the social and political horizon, as well as to practice writing as a collective act to expand the political dimension of words. giulianakiersz.com

[Audioguide]

Transhumanist Cephalopod Evolution – The Audio Guide (TCE) for an ecological, embodied and ethical approach towards “the future” of wet realities. TCE is a psycho-physical training regimen for human enhancement, with the cephalopod as our role model species. We train three key cephalopodic abilities (1) Seeing with the skin. (2) Shapeshifting: a. hyper-awareness of one’s hyper-local environment, and b. self-re-orientation for best resiliency. (3) Distributed Intelligence: cephalopod nervous systems differ radically from the human – 3/5 of its neurons are in the arms. Some say the octopus is a single organism with 9 brains. From another perspective, we can say it is nine organisms housed within a single skin. How can multiple humans(ish+) come to inhabit a single organism with distributed sensory and decision-making capabilities? Beyond negotiation, beyond collaboration: toward shared intention. Transhumanist Cephalopod Evolution – The Audio Guide was developed in collaboration with luciana achugar, inspired by her pleasure practice. This brief introductory audio session introduces the psycho-physical training regimen and guides participants through a few Transhumanist Cephalopod Evolution exercises in the context of Floating University.

► Listen to the Audioguide

Miriam Simun is an interdisciplinary artist working at sites of collision of bodies and rapidly evolving socio-technical-ecosystems. Their practice spans multiple formats including still and moving image, performance, installation and communal sensorial experiences. linktr.ee/mseamoon

An open participatory invitation to read, engage and collaborate with a collective writing that was started earlier in the day as part of the Re-Imagining workshop. You are invited to reflect on language and the act of naming in relation to ecosomatics, the territories that we inhabit and the territories that inhabit us.

► No registration required

Giuliana Kiersz is a feminist author and artist. Her methods explore our relationship with language, to create fantasies that move the social and political horizon, as well as to practice writing as a collective act to expand the political dimension of words. giulianakiersz.com

Somatic Arts and Liveable Futures

[Interactive Lecture, live from THF Radio Berlin, thfradio.de]

This interactive lecture explores the role of the somatic arts in challenging the culture of separateness between humans and nature typical of Anthropocentrism and enhancing the debate on how to grow liveable futures in the face of ecological disaster. We will reflect on the possibility to re-activate our eco-consciousness through embodied practices of interconnectedness with nonhuman living beings and systems. We will discuss the historical and cultural conditions shaping the growing field of eco-somatic practices and evaluate their political implications as acts of caring, collaboration and critical thinking. Natasha Myers’ concept of Planthroposcene will be mobilised as an example of how we can envision the emergence of an assemblage of “scenes or epistemes, both ancient and modern” in which humans can “conspire”, that is, breath together, literally and metaphorically, with other forms of life (Myers, 2020). During the lecture the audience will be guided through some experiential processes of awareness through movement.

► No registration required

Raffaele Rufo (PhD) is a dance and movement artist and educator and a scientist of sensory perception. After touring Europe, Africa and Australia for more than two decades, Raffaele now resides in a nature reserve on the coast of Rome, where he explores the ecosomatic limits of embodiment. raffaelerufo.com

[throughout the evening]

Dancer, Choreographer, and Fermenting Jewish Mystic David Bloom will offer some emergent performative interventions throughout the evening, inspired by his morning workshop around Embodiment & Fermentation.

bb FM is a radio host and music selector by heart. As part of THF Radio collective, she hosts „sounds like“, in which colours are interpreted musically. Within her DJ sets, emotions play a significant role – you can expect electronic and atmospheric soundscapes.

► No registration required

linktr.ee

mixcloud

Movement – Embodiment – the Environment – Water

[Workshop]

Most of us sense that something is not quite right in the world. Scientific and news reports often tell of a soon-to-arrive “tipping point”. And at the same time we can see clearly the effects of human activities: climate change and social stresses. We often feel out of touch with a global economy that is controlled by politics and private corporations. What can we do as individuals? As a way of awakening our “response-ability” we come together during this workshop to feel into these environmental themes and to notice how they move us – how they effect our body and being. We will give special focus to the theme of water, which plays a central role in many social and environmental issues. As water-beings, we explore the properties of water and how these can inform us about our own bodies, as well as our connection with the environment. Through a process of guided exercises, we unleash our creativity, sharing with one another via movement, dance and words. The process is potentially healing for us, in that it brings us in better connection with ourselves, others and the world around us. Please bring comfortable clothing, water to drink. Open to all bodies.

►  Registration: lerber@gmail.com

Liz Erber is a dance artist, focusing on choreography, embodiment, teaching and performance. She lives in Oderberg, Brandenburg, where she founded the non-profit, KuNaKu – Haus für Kunst, Natur und Kultur together with her partner. Her aim is to unite art, cultural understanding, nature and sustainability. lizerber.com

Due to unforeseen family reasons, this workshop has unfortunately been cancelled.

[Workshop]

Resisting Extinction invites us to not only look forward but to look around and notice what we are losing. This ecological crisis is also an identity crisis. Everything is shifting. This workshop offers ecosomatic practices for embodied knowing to repair our relational fields. We will hone our skills: to improvise, to play, to experiment, to be receptive, to be in the unknown and trust we have the resources in our bodies to negotiate, survive, and thrive. Ecosomatics is a dynamic approach to learning and living and asks how embodiment plays a role in building knowledge which can support a transformation for all of us to move from concern, to care, to action when it comes to the ecological crisis. Together we will practice living, breathing, sensing, perceiving, digesting, dying, and decomposing to help us perceive more of the whole scale of the sensitivities and intelligences within and outside of us, the transforming spaces, the before and after with a goal of rebuilding our relational web. This session is for anyone and everybody interested in movement, the body and consciousness regardless of experience. It does not require any special skills, and we welcome all bodies regardless of ability.

► Registration: everybody@bodycartography.org

Olive Bieringa is a dance, performance and visual artist working at the intersection of social and creative practice, pedagogy, and healing. She is a teacher, and practitioner of Body-Mind Centering, program director of Somatic Education Australasia and part of BodyCartography that focuses on re-enchantment of embodiment, relationship, and presence. She is a doctoral candidate at the Theatre Academy, Uniarts, Helsinki. bodycartography.org

[Workshop]

Radical Empathy Lab (REL) is a nomadic, on-going eco-social and research laboratory for a holistic activation of knowledge. It embraces relational –versus informational– learning, and what Brazilian theorist Suely Rolnik calls “the knowing body”. REL works across disciplines and experiments with holistic advances, in which the cognitive intertwines with the non-semiotic and the sensual. Through exercises that find inspiration in Deep Listening, feminist and radical pedagogies and practices of mindfulness, we will rehearse to reconnect to our sensing, knowing bodies, and will practice towards stimulating a micropolitical critical consciousness for our ecological entanglements. The lab explores forms of being together, that allow us to reflect, to at least momentarily re-feel and to undo a reactionary an-aesthesia (Greek: an-aesthēsis: without sensation). By moving from individual to collective activity the lab experiments with the relation between micro and macro dimensions of agency, and with practices that carry the potential to decolonise and de-subjectivate the (social) body and its ecological relationality to the “Other”. Please come in comfortable clothes and bring a mat or blanket to sit on.

►  Registration:  artcontent@gmail.com

Berit Fischer (PhD) is an artist, curator, writer and scholar. Her research includes holistic and experiential knowledge production, affective transformative curation and post-representational practice. Her work often unfolds in forms of affective encounters and relational learning. In 2016 she founded the Radical Empathy Lab. beritfischer.org

Embodying Reciprocity with Plants

[Workshop]

How can a somatic exploration of plants help restore our relationship to physical movement as a radical component of the whole body earth? In this 3-hour outdoor workshop, we will explore a series of impromptu ways to engage with somatic sensations, listen, and empathetically witness the sensory presence of trees, shrubs, reeds, and other plant creatures that inhabit the rainwater pool. Ways that challenge the comfort zone of our urban bodies—as clean, safe, and detached bodies—and humbly acknowledge that we are here because other life forms are here too. The participants are encouraged to be moved by the impulses they receive from what they perceive. The embodiment of this expanded and amplified field of perception enables a knowledge of how to cultivate mutually nurturing relationships with the more than human that is difficult to attain in any other way. Ecokinetic knowledge feeds ecological awareness and re-activates our response-ability as agents for ethical and sustainable living. All bodies are welcome. Please come in comfortable clothing appropriate to the weather and bring a bottle of drinking water with you.

► Registration: raffaele.rufo@gmail.com

Raffaele Rufo (PhD) is a dance and movement artist and educator and a scientist of sensory perception. After touring Europe, Africa and Australia for more than two decades, Raffaele now resides in a nature reserve on the coast of Rome, where he explores the ecosomatic limits of embodiment. raffaelerufo.com