HB/AV TRACKS:
Artist-led audio and video movement workshops. Stream or download for free!
Ross Simonini: To Your Under (2020, 11:00)
Heavy Breathing presents, To Your Under,
a brief exercise in pedal dexterity, neural elasticity, subliminal reality, and fluid personality. By Ross Simonini, read by Audrey Vignoles.
Heavy Breathing presents, To Your Under,
a brief exercise in pedal dexterity, neural elasticity, subliminal reality, and fluid personality. By Ross Simonini, read by Audrey Vignoles.
Bio
Ross Simonini is an interdisciplinary artist. Recently, he’s been living nomadically, mostly in California. He exhibits his work internationally, at various galleries, biennials and museums. For many years, he was a professional musician and now he makes music as ROOS and with the duo, NewVillager. His novel The Book of Formation is out with Melville House Books and he contributes dialogues to ArtReview, The Believer, and various other publications. He is currently the host of Subject Object Verb, a new podcast from ArtReview.
Ross Simonini is an interdisciplinary artist. Recently, he’s been living nomadically, mostly in California. He exhibits his work internationally, at various galleries, biennials and museums. For many years, he was a professional musician and now he makes music as ROOS and with the duo, NewVillager. His novel The Book of Formation is out with Melville House Books and he contributes dialogues to ArtReview, The Believer, and various other publications. He is currently the host of Subject Object Verb, a new podcast from ArtReview.
Laura Hyunjhee Kim:
Hi-Feel Lo-Tech Workout (HFLTW): Relaxation and Recovery (2020, 22:21)
Have you been feeling unfamiliar guttural sensations but have not been able to pinpoint the cause? This virtual workshop has been designed for mind-body-conspicuous humans who experience increased feelosophical flows triggered by the subtle yet rapid changes from living-through-feeling in the technological environment. Through a series of intentional and meaningful synergistic micro-movements, the Hi-Feel Lo-Tech Workout (HFLTW): Relaxation and Recovery session aims to help you get in touch with your own embodied emotions -- those that are often felt before touched and sense-made before made-sense into. Together, in collaboration with a household cylindrical object of your choosing, we will focus on releasing muscle tension by means of self-myofascial release and return to a paused-state-of-condition that is mindfully present in-the-real-life-now.
Instructions for listener/viewer-participants:
To participate in the virtual workout remotely in the comforts of your own space of choosing, please prepare a foam roller or a cylindrical object that resembles the shape, size, and density of a foam roller that does not feel overwhelming on the body (ie. disconnected Amazon Alexa).
Optional:
Suggested readings:
Hi-Feel Lo-Tech Workout (HFLTW): Relaxation and Recovery (2020, 22:21)
Have you been feeling unfamiliar guttural sensations but have not been able to pinpoint the cause? This virtual workshop has been designed for mind-body-conspicuous humans who experience increased feelosophical flows triggered by the subtle yet rapid changes from living-through-feeling in the technological environment. Through a series of intentional and meaningful synergistic micro-movements, the Hi-Feel Lo-Tech Workout (HFLTW): Relaxation and Recovery session aims to help you get in touch with your own embodied emotions -- those that are often felt before touched and sense-made before made-sense into. Together, in collaboration with a household cylindrical object of your choosing, we will focus on releasing muscle tension by means of self-myofascial release and return to a paused-state-of-condition that is mindfully present in-the-real-life-now.
Instructions for listener/viewer-participants:
To participate in the virtual workout remotely in the comforts of your own space of choosing, please prepare a foam roller or a cylindrical object that resembles the shape, size, and density of a foam roller that does not feel overwhelming on the body (ie. disconnected Amazon Alexa).
Optional:
- Comfortable clothes (ie. pajamas)
- Blanket or a cushioned mat (ie. yoga mat) for extra support
Suggested readings:
- Returning to Health: With Dance, Movement and Imagery, Anna Halprin and Siegmar Gerken, LifeRhythm Books, 2002
- How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain, Lisa Feldman Barrett, Mariner Books, 2017
- A Somatic Movement Approach to Fostering Emotional Resiliency through Laban Movement Analysis, Tsachor RP and Shafir T, Front. Hum. Neurosci. 11:410., 2017
- Entering the Blobosphere: A Musing on Blobs, Laura Hyunjhee Kim, The Accomplices / Civil Coping Mechanisms, 2019
Bio
Laura Hyunjhee Kim is a Korean-American multimedia artist who contemplates and reimagines digitally constructed on/offline (non)human experiences. Thinking through making, she performs moments of incomprehension: when language loses its coherence, necessitates absurd leaps in logic, and reroutes into intuitive and improvisational sense-making forms of expression. Her current projects examine the influences of consumer technologies on human and (non)human interaction and the feelosophical experiences of the body. She is the founding director of Synthetic Empathic Intelligent Companion Artefacts (SEICA) Human Interaction Labs, founder of The Living Lab, co-founder of sharing turtle™ (with libi rose striegl), and one of the collaborators at the Centre for Emotional Materiality (founded by Surabhi Saraf ). Kim is the author of Entering the Blobosphere: A Musing on Blobs, which was published by The Accomplices / Civil Coping Mechanisms (June 17, 2019) and the coauthor of Remixing Persona: An Imaginary Digital Media Object from the Onto-tales of the Digital Afterlife with Mark Amerika, published with Open Humanities Press (November, 2019).
Kim has shown work in numerous on/offline exhibition spaces, screenings, and festivals around the world. She received the ArtSlant Award in New Media (2013), New Media Caucus Distinguished Scholar Award (2019), and Judson-Morrissey Excellence in New Media Award (2020). She was an artist-in-residence at the Internet Archive (2017), Korea National University of the Arts (2017), Black & White Projects (2016), and at the Museum of Human Achievement (2019) and Electrofringe with artist libi rose striegl (2019).
Kim received a B.S. in Art from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and M.F.A. from the New Genres Department at the San Francisco Art Institute. She is a Ph.D. Candidate in Intermedia Art, Writing and Performance (IAWP) at the University of Colorado Boulder.
Laura Hyunjhee Kim is a Korean-American multimedia artist who contemplates and reimagines digitally constructed on/offline (non)human experiences. Thinking through making, she performs moments of incomprehension: when language loses its coherence, necessitates absurd leaps in logic, and reroutes into intuitive and improvisational sense-making forms of expression. Her current projects examine the influences of consumer technologies on human and (non)human interaction and the feelosophical experiences of the body. She is the founding director of Synthetic Empathic Intelligent Companion Artefacts (SEICA) Human Interaction Labs, founder of The Living Lab, co-founder of sharing turtle™ (with libi rose striegl), and one of the collaborators at the Centre for Emotional Materiality (founded by Surabhi Saraf ). Kim is the author of Entering the Blobosphere: A Musing on Blobs, which was published by The Accomplices / Civil Coping Mechanisms (June 17, 2019) and the coauthor of Remixing Persona: An Imaginary Digital Media Object from the Onto-tales of the Digital Afterlife with Mark Amerika, published with Open Humanities Press (November, 2019).
Kim has shown work in numerous on/offline exhibition spaces, screenings, and festivals around the world. She received the ArtSlant Award in New Media (2013), New Media Caucus Distinguished Scholar Award (2019), and Judson-Morrissey Excellence in New Media Award (2020). She was an artist-in-residence at the Internet Archive (2017), Korea National University of the Arts (2017), Black & White Projects (2016), and at the Museum of Human Achievement (2019) and Electrofringe with artist libi rose striegl (2019).
Kim received a B.S. in Art from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and M.F.A. from the New Genres Department at the San Francisco Art Institute. She is a Ph.D. Candidate in Intermedia Art, Writing and Performance (IAWP) at the University of Colorado Boulder.
Liat Berdugo: Internet Aerobics (2020, 18:35)
Filmed in a computer Lab, Internet Aerobics is a 20-minute aerobics workout routine about the internet, streaming to you through the internet. Aerobics props of long, blue ethernet cables are used, and hyperlink blue is celebrated as the color of online opportunity -- of links that have not yet been clicked. Aerobics moves embody multiple facets of online life, with packets of information speeding through wifi networks, routers, data centers, fiber optic cables -- often times at different speeds due to the lack of net neutrality laws. This workout routine is an invitation to you to sweat along in front of your own browser tab while thinking about and moving through the very makeup of the Internet, itself.
Instructions for participants:
Most aerobics use some kind of prop, and for this routine you’re going to need some kind of long cord, ideally an ethernet cable you have stashed away in your closet from before the days of wifi. But any cord will due, like a cell phone charging cable, an extension cord, or heck -- unplug your computer and use that! Also, make sure you have some space in front of your computer to move your body around. This aerobics routine isn’t about getting the steps right -- it’s about moving and thinking with and through internet infrastructure. As long as you’re moving, you’re good.
Suggested readings:
Filmed in a computer Lab, Internet Aerobics is a 20-minute aerobics workout routine about the internet, streaming to you through the internet. Aerobics props of long, blue ethernet cables are used, and hyperlink blue is celebrated as the color of online opportunity -- of links that have not yet been clicked. Aerobics moves embody multiple facets of online life, with packets of information speeding through wifi networks, routers, data centers, fiber optic cables -- often times at different speeds due to the lack of net neutrality laws. This workout routine is an invitation to you to sweat along in front of your own browser tab while thinking about and moving through the very makeup of the Internet, itself.
Instructions for participants:
Most aerobics use some kind of prop, and for this routine you’re going to need some kind of long cord, ideally an ethernet cable you have stashed away in your closet from before the days of wifi. But any cord will due, like a cell phone charging cable, an extension cord, or heck -- unplug your computer and use that! Also, make sure you have some space in front of your computer to move your body around. This aerobics routine isn’t about getting the steps right -- it’s about moving and thinking with and through internet infrastructure. As long as you’re moving, you’re good.
Suggested readings:
- Ingrid Burrington, “A Network of Fragments” (The Atlantic, 2015)
- Kyle Vanhemert, “A Field Guide to the Internet Infrastructure That Hides in Plain Sight” (Wired, 2015)
- John Urban, “A Few Things You May Not Have Known About Ethernet Cable Construction” (2014)
- Rus Shuler, “Protocol Stacks and Packets” from “How Does the Internet Work?” (2005)
- Electronic Frontier Foundation on Net Neutrality
- Cecilia Kang, “Justice Department Sues to Stop California Net Neutrality Law” (New York Times, 2018)
- Guide to some other Bay Area Internet Service Providers (ISPs) beside the big corporations
- Keith Shaw, “What is DNS and how does it work?” (Networkworld, 2018)
- Tom Riecken, “Learning ASCII Character Codes Is Surprisingly Easy If You Follow This Guide” (2018)
Bios
Liat Berdugo is an artist, writer, and curator whose work focuses on embodiment and digitality, archive theory, and new economies. Her work has
been exhibited in galleries and festivals internationally, and she collaborates widely with individuals and archives. She is the co-founder and curator of the Bay Area’s Living Room Light Exchange, a monthly new media art salon; an artist-in-residence at the Internet Archive; and an assistant professor of Art + Architecture at the University of San Francisco. In her past life she was probably an aerobics instructor.
Margaret McCarthy is a San Francisco-based artist whose work has received coverage on CNN, Mother Jones, and Fusion. She is an ensemble member and Co-Artistic Director of the SF Neo-Futurists. She has performed at SOMArts, Artists' Television Access, and the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.
Vanessa Hope Schneider is a writer, performer, and alum of the SF Neo-Futurists. She wants you to know that she knows about modern art.
With infinite thanks to artists Elisabeth Nicula and Charlie Macquarie for their help with filming, and to Emily Martinez for brilliant graphics!
Soundtrack credit:
Liat Berdugo is an artist, writer, and curator whose work focuses on embodiment and digitality, archive theory, and new economies. Her work has
been exhibited in galleries and festivals internationally, and she collaborates widely with individuals and archives. She is the co-founder and curator of the Bay Area’s Living Room Light Exchange, a monthly new media art salon; an artist-in-residence at the Internet Archive; and an assistant professor of Art + Architecture at the University of San Francisco. In her past life she was probably an aerobics instructor.
Margaret McCarthy is a San Francisco-based artist whose work has received coverage on CNN, Mother Jones, and Fusion. She is an ensemble member and Co-Artistic Director of the SF Neo-Futurists. She has performed at SOMArts, Artists' Television Access, and the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.
Vanessa Hope Schneider is a writer, performer, and alum of the SF Neo-Futurists. She wants you to know that she knows about modern art.
With infinite thanks to artists Elisabeth Nicula and Charlie Macquarie for their help with filming, and to Emily Martinez for brilliant graphics!
Soundtrack credit:
- “World Wide Web” by Nick Borgen
- “DNS” by UV Protection
- “Internet Crash” by Promoe
- “Internet” by Tyskarna Fran Lund
- “Get Off the Internet” by Le Tigre
- “Computer Love” by Zapp & Roger
P Sazani, every particle of sand carries a piece of the mountain away (2020, 30:24)
every particle of sand carries a piece of the mountain away is a three-part essay on erosion as a tour of the coastline of Vandenberg Air Force Base: a large, restricted base on the central coast of California. Along the way, the landscape will encourage participation in movement and writing exercises. With a pen and paper handy, prepare to consider edges (of bodies, of sentences, of continents) as sites of decay, renewal, and, crucially, encounter.
Here are some soft suggestions for further reading — for either before or after listening:
The title of this piece is a line taken from Bill Nye’s episode on Erosion, Season 5 Episode 14, which I highly recommend: it is excellent. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27dUMzUJvl8
every particle of sand carries a piece of the mountain away is a three-part essay on erosion as a tour of the coastline of Vandenberg Air Force Base: a large, restricted base on the central coast of California. Along the way, the landscape will encourage participation in movement and writing exercises. With a pen and paper handy, prepare to consider edges (of bodies, of sentences, of continents) as sites of decay, renewal, and, crucially, encounter.
Here are some soft suggestions for further reading — for either before or after listening:
- Renee Gladman’s introduction to her book Prose Architectures, Wave Books, 2017
- Karen Barad’s “Transmaterialities: Trans*/Matter/Realities and Queer Political Imaginings” from GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 2015
The title of this piece is a line taken from Bill Nye’s episode on Erosion, Season 5 Episode 14, which I highly recommend: it is excellent. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27dUMzUJvl8
Bio
P Sazani is a writer, artist, and teacher living and working in Los Angeles. She writes science fiction about religion, poetry about matter, and essays about performance. She is one half of the All-Wash-Away Sacred Harp Singers of Los Angeles (AWASH), an experimental publication collective interested in semiotic disaster. Through AWASH she edits DanceNotes, a chapbook series that publishes experiments in dance notation. Her writing has been performed in Los Angeles at REDCAT, the Pasadena Museum of California Art, the Women’s Center for Creative Work, the mortuary, and Beyond Baroque, and has been published by Wolfman Books, Vallum, and Riting. She is currently finishing a fellowship at CalArts.
P Sazani is a writer, artist, and teacher living and working in Los Angeles. She writes science fiction about religion, poetry about matter, and essays about performance. She is one half of the All-Wash-Away Sacred Harp Singers of Los Angeles (AWASH), an experimental publication collective interested in semiotic disaster. Through AWASH she edits DanceNotes, a chapbook series that publishes experiments in dance notation. Her writing has been performed in Los Angeles at REDCAT, the Pasadena Museum of California Art, the Women’s Center for Creative Work, the mortuary, and Beyond Baroque, and has been published by Wolfman Books, Vallum, and Riting. She is currently finishing a fellowship at CalArts.
Clay AD and Rusti,
Dysphoric Feelings / Euphoric Bodies (2020, 84:38)
In this experiential audio workshop Clay (They/Them) and Rusti (She/They), friends and somatic bodyworkers, use their own bodies and experiences as a form of collaborative research, attempting to understand this thing called Dysphoria. This inquiry began when Clay was unable to find resources on this topic and invited Rusti to explore dysphoria somatically together, both from the perspective of being trans and experiencing dysphoria themselves and working with trans and gender variant clients in their respective practices.
Starting from embodied research, they asked themselves questions such as, "How would you describe or give language to what happens in your body/mind when you experience gender dysphoria?”, and “Is it always useful and strategic to be embodied when you’re experiencing dysphoria?”
In exploring the ways that dysphoria is both a social phenomenon and an individualized felt sense that differs for different bodies, a tool kit of body practices emerged to begin to unravel the boundaries and fault lines of gender dysphoria’s tangled relationship between self and other. Clay and Rusti found themselves in a messy cosmos outside of patholozation, where the body’s knowledge innately holds physicality, politics, autonomy and ancestors.
Workshop Instructions:
This is for trans and gender variant people who would like to dive deeper into understanding and working with their dysphoria. We hope the workshop can act as a stable frame to explore these topics, but we recognize this is very intense work so please take care of yourself. You can always pause the workshop and come back, or stop it. Ideally it would be great to practice in small groups for discussion afterwards, but it can also be practiced alone. Find yourself in a quiet room, in comfortable clothes; there will be minimal movement, but during practices we will suggest you change position (sitting/standing/laying) occasionally.
RESOURCES:
Dysphoric Feelings / Euphoric Bodies (2020, 84:38)
In this experiential audio workshop Clay (They/Them) and Rusti (She/They), friends and somatic bodyworkers, use their own bodies and experiences as a form of collaborative research, attempting to understand this thing called Dysphoria. This inquiry began when Clay was unable to find resources on this topic and invited Rusti to explore dysphoria somatically together, both from the perspective of being trans and experiencing dysphoria themselves and working with trans and gender variant clients in their respective practices.
Starting from embodied research, they asked themselves questions such as, "How would you describe or give language to what happens in your body/mind when you experience gender dysphoria?”, and “Is it always useful and strategic to be embodied when you’re experiencing dysphoria?”
In exploring the ways that dysphoria is both a social phenomenon and an individualized felt sense that differs for different bodies, a tool kit of body practices emerged to begin to unravel the boundaries and fault lines of gender dysphoria’s tangled relationship between self and other. Clay and Rusti found themselves in a messy cosmos outside of patholozation, where the body’s knowledge innately holds physicality, politics, autonomy and ancestors.
Workshop Instructions:
This is for trans and gender variant people who would like to dive deeper into understanding and working with their dysphoria. We hope the workshop can act as a stable frame to explore these topics, but we recognize this is very intense work so please take care of yourself. You can always pause the workshop and come back, or stop it. Ideally it would be great to practice in small groups for discussion afterwards, but it can also be practiced alone. Find yourself in a quiet room, in comfortable clothes; there will be minimal movement, but during practices we will suggest you change position (sitting/standing/laying) occasionally.
RESOURCES:
- Trans Liberation and Feminism Self-determination, healthcare and revolutionary struggle by Michelle O’Brien (2003)
- Towards an Autonomous Trans Healthcare Zine by Power Makes Us Sick (2018)
- The Politics of Trauma by Staci Haines
- Queer Phenomenology by Sara Ahmed
- Trans Bodies and the Failure of Mirrors by S.J. Langer
- We Both Laughed in Pleasure: The Selected Diaries of Lou Sullivan Edited by Ellis Martin and Zach Ozma
Bios
Clay AD was born in Indianapolis Indiana and now lives in Berlin where they are a somatic bodyworker, artist and writer. In their interdisciplinary practice they honour and explore illness, ecology, science fiction, transformation and the politics of care under capitalism -- by themselves, collectively and with their clients. They are a certified practitioner of the Pantarei Approach and their somatic work is informed by their background in improvisational dance, and personal practice of breath-work, meditation and visualization. Their first novel, "Metabolize, If Able" is available through Arcadia Missa Press UK and was named a finalist in the 31st Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ Sci-Fi, Fantasy and Horror. They writing has been published by Pilot Press, Futures Journal, Hematopoiesis Press, and Monster House Press. They have led somatic and writing workshops at NGBK Berlin and Shedhalle Zurich, and read internationally including at the Institute for Contemporary Arts London. They received their BFA from Cooper Union in 2014.
Clay's art and writing can be found on instagram at @pastacomplex and their somatic work @sentientsomatics
Rusti (she/they) is a somatic organizer and practitioner currently living in Philadelphia, PA. She holds a MA in Embodiment Studies from Goddard College and has been training with the Strozzi Institute and generative somatics since 2016. She has also been a practicing LMT since 2011. Rusti is driven by a deep belief in the capabilities that our bodies hold to help us navigate, heal from, and disrupt the social conditions we exist within and are shaped by. She is the author of "Social Bodies: The Shaping of Internal and External Worlds", as well as various articles and zines. She facilitates various somatic workshops in Philadelphia, using embodiment as a tool for social research and collective healing. ThirdspaceSomatics.com IG: @thridspace.somatics
Sound Credit:
The sound editing was done by Kai Merke.
Kai Merke is a nonbinary trans artist and works in the fields between activism, stage art and sound production. They graduated from Inter-University Center Dance Berlin (HZT) at University of the Arts Berlin in 2018. They are currently founding a dance studio cooperative in Copenhagen (DK), and work as a freelance choreographer, performer, sound producer and dramaturge. They co-founded Queer Producers, a weekly sound laboratory for queer sound artists based in Copenhagen, and work for FCNN (Feminist Collective with No Name) with Mariana Nobre Viera, Azahara Ubera, Emilie Empo Enlund, Xenia Taniko Dwertmann, Alejandro Karasik, Litó Walkey and Jules Fisher among many others. Kai is specialized in physical correlations between voice and movement through close a mentorship by voice anthropologist Ulrike Sowodniok since 2015. Kai's work on instagram: @kai.merke and jo.hotglue.me
Clay AD was born in Indianapolis Indiana and now lives in Berlin where they are a somatic bodyworker, artist and writer. In their interdisciplinary practice they honour and explore illness, ecology, science fiction, transformation and the politics of care under capitalism -- by themselves, collectively and with their clients. They are a certified practitioner of the Pantarei Approach and their somatic work is informed by their background in improvisational dance, and personal practice of breath-work, meditation and visualization. Their first novel, "Metabolize, If Able" is available through Arcadia Missa Press UK and was named a finalist in the 31st Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ Sci-Fi, Fantasy and Horror. They writing has been published by Pilot Press, Futures Journal, Hematopoiesis Press, and Monster House Press. They have led somatic and writing workshops at NGBK Berlin and Shedhalle Zurich, and read internationally including at the Institute for Contemporary Arts London. They received their BFA from Cooper Union in 2014.
Clay's art and writing can be found on instagram at @pastacomplex and their somatic work @sentientsomatics
Rusti (she/they) is a somatic organizer and practitioner currently living in Philadelphia, PA. She holds a MA in Embodiment Studies from Goddard College and has been training with the Strozzi Institute and generative somatics since 2016. She has also been a practicing LMT since 2011. Rusti is driven by a deep belief in the capabilities that our bodies hold to help us navigate, heal from, and disrupt the social conditions we exist within and are shaped by. She is the author of "Social Bodies: The Shaping of Internal and External Worlds", as well as various articles and zines. She facilitates various somatic workshops in Philadelphia, using embodiment as a tool for social research and collective healing. ThirdspaceSomatics.com IG: @thridspace.somatics
Sound Credit:
The sound editing was done by Kai Merke.
Kai Merke is a nonbinary trans artist and works in the fields between activism, stage art and sound production. They graduated from Inter-University Center Dance Berlin (HZT) at University of the Arts Berlin in 2018. They are currently founding a dance studio cooperative in Copenhagen (DK), and work as a freelance choreographer, performer, sound producer and dramaturge. They co-founded Queer Producers, a weekly sound laboratory for queer sound artists based in Copenhagen, and work for FCNN (Feminist Collective with No Name) with Mariana Nobre Viera, Azahara Ubera, Emilie Empo Enlund, Xenia Taniko Dwertmann, Alejandro Karasik, Litó Walkey and Jules Fisher among many others. Kai is specialized in physical correlations between voice and movement through close a mentorship by voice anthropologist Ulrike Sowodniok since 2015. Kai's work on instagram: @kai.merke and jo.hotglue.me
Jean-Thomas Tremblay, Breath/Measure/Commons
(2020, 10:56)
I am writing a book on aesthetic responses to a contemporary crisis in breathing. This social, political, and environmental crisis is typified by the increased pollution, weaponization, and monetization of air and breath, the consequences of which are unevenly distributed. Breath/Measure/Commons is an experiment that transposes the questions of exemplarity and generalizability I have been considering into the form of the meditation. Reading about other people’s breathing makes me aware of mine—but my breathing tells me very little about other people’s experiences. This is what I try to convey in a meditation that centers engagements with breathing within Black and Indigenous Studies: the limits of what breathing enables us to measure, or, put differently, how breathing registers the unevenness of the atmospheres we inhabit.
The track includes instructions for a creative exercise. Listen on your own or with others, indoor or outdoor. As long as there is an environment to be sensed.
(2020, 10:56)
I am writing a book on aesthetic responses to a contemporary crisis in breathing. This social, political, and environmental crisis is typified by the increased pollution, weaponization, and monetization of air and breath, the consequences of which are unevenly distributed. Breath/Measure/Commons is an experiment that transposes the questions of exemplarity and generalizability I have been considering into the form of the meditation. Reading about other people’s breathing makes me aware of mine—but my breathing tells me very little about other people’s experiences. This is what I try to convey in a meditation that centers engagements with breathing within Black and Indigenous Studies: the limits of what breathing enables us to measure, or, put differently, how breathing registers the unevenness of the atmospheres we inhabit.
The track includes instructions for a creative exercise. Listen on your own or with others, indoor or outdoor. As long as there is an environment to be sensed.
Bio
Jean-Thomas Tremblay is an assistant professor of English at New Mexico State University. Their scholarship in the environmental and medical humanities, literary and cultural studies, and feminist, queer, and trans studies, has been published in differences, Women and Performance, Criticism, Post45, New Review of Film and Television Studies, and Critical Inquiry. Their public writing has appeared in such venues as the Los Angeles Review of Books, Public Books, The Rambling, Full Stop, Arcade, Make Magazine, and Chicago Review.
Jean-Thomas' monograph in progress, Breathing Aesthetics, argues that breathing has emerged, since the 1970s, as a medium that configures embodiment and experience as effects of biopolitical and necropolitical forces. Within a crisis in the reproduction of life marked by the air's pollution, weaponization, and monetization, articulations of individual and collective survival and persistence must grapple with the management and dispersal of the risks of breath. Breathing Aesthetics surveys minoritarian contexts where the aestheticization of breathing generates medium-specific and historically, culturally, and environmentally situated tactics and strategies for living under precarity. Jean-Thomas is also editing, with Drew Strombeck, the collection Avant-Gardes in Crisis: Art and Politics in the Long 1970s.
More information on past and upcoming projects is available at jttremblay.wordpress.com.
Jean-Thomas Tremblay is an assistant professor of English at New Mexico State University. Their scholarship in the environmental and medical humanities, literary and cultural studies, and feminist, queer, and trans studies, has been published in differences, Women and Performance, Criticism, Post45, New Review of Film and Television Studies, and Critical Inquiry. Their public writing has appeared in such venues as the Los Angeles Review of Books, Public Books, The Rambling, Full Stop, Arcade, Make Magazine, and Chicago Review.
Jean-Thomas' monograph in progress, Breathing Aesthetics, argues that breathing has emerged, since the 1970s, as a medium that configures embodiment and experience as effects of biopolitical and necropolitical forces. Within a crisis in the reproduction of life marked by the air's pollution, weaponization, and monetization, articulations of individual and collective survival and persistence must grapple with the management and dispersal of the risks of breath. Breathing Aesthetics surveys minoritarian contexts where the aestheticization of breathing generates medium-specific and historically, culturally, and environmentally situated tactics and strategies for living under precarity. Jean-Thomas is also editing, with Drew Strombeck, the collection Avant-Gardes in Crisis: Art and Politics in the Long 1970s.
More information on past and upcoming projects is available at jttremblay.wordpress.com.
Layton Lachman and Samuel Hertz, The more a path is used, the more a path is used (2020, 51:21)
Layton Lachman and Samuel Hertz draw from their long-standing artistic collaboration--as well as Lachman’s practice of Open Source Forms--in order to offer a guided movement experience. This workshop gives a taste of an Open Source Forms class, which is usually facilitated in a group setting, and is set to a soundscape composed by Hertz. Open Source Forms, developed by Stephanie Skura, is deeply rooted in & fluidly expanded from Skinner Releasing Technique, utilizing images and hands on exercises to instigate a letting go into new modes of moving. The work is based in improvisation and a journeying together through different energetic states, with the desire to access different awarenesses in ourselves. We will traverse personally and collectively, sometimes diving headlong into a concept, while other times listening and looking at it obliquely. As well as moving, we will spend time writing and reflecting on our experiences.
Some things to note:
The session is experiential, meaning that whatever sensation, imagination, feeling, emotion...whatever comes up during the next hour is a valid experience! There is no one way in which to experience this session. It need not look a certain way.
Make sure that you have some space to move around. Also make sure that you feel comfortable in whatever space you are in (a closed door in often helpful) because we might find ourselves in some states of consciousness that are deep and possibly vulnerable.
This session is best listened to through a sound system to prevent obstructions to movement, however, is it also possible to listen to it on headphones.
Let things take as long as they need. Your timing might be different than the pace that we suggest, however, feel free to let your own interest and internal timing guide how long you stay in something. You can always pause if you need more time.
At the end of the session I will say, “now we can move into writing.” It’s nice to have your notebook and pen ready. This writing period is to digest our experience. It can be written in stream of consciousness, it can be a drawing, or any kind of marks on the page that help us process our experience. Give 5-10 minutes to this processes of reflection.
Layton Lachman and Samuel Hertz draw from their long-standing artistic collaboration--as well as Lachman’s practice of Open Source Forms--in order to offer a guided movement experience. This workshop gives a taste of an Open Source Forms class, which is usually facilitated in a group setting, and is set to a soundscape composed by Hertz. Open Source Forms, developed by Stephanie Skura, is deeply rooted in & fluidly expanded from Skinner Releasing Technique, utilizing images and hands on exercises to instigate a letting go into new modes of moving. The work is based in improvisation and a journeying together through different energetic states, with the desire to access different awarenesses in ourselves. We will traverse personally and collectively, sometimes diving headlong into a concept, while other times listening and looking at it obliquely. As well as moving, we will spend time writing and reflecting on our experiences.
Some things to note:
The session is experiential, meaning that whatever sensation, imagination, feeling, emotion...whatever comes up during the next hour is a valid experience! There is no one way in which to experience this session. It need not look a certain way.
Make sure that you have some space to move around. Also make sure that you feel comfortable in whatever space you are in (a closed door in often helpful) because we might find ourselves in some states of consciousness that are deep and possibly vulnerable.
This session is best listened to through a sound system to prevent obstructions to movement, however, is it also possible to listen to it on headphones.
Let things take as long as they need. Your timing might be different than the pace that we suggest, however, feel free to let your own interest and internal timing guide how long you stay in something. You can always pause if you need more time.
At the end of the session I will say, “now we can move into writing.” It’s nice to have your notebook and pen ready. This writing period is to digest our experience. It can be written in stream of consciousness, it can be a drawing, or any kind of marks on the page that help us process our experience. Give 5-10 minutes to this processes of reflection.
Additional Reading & Listening:
https://soundcloud.com/endoftheworldshow/sister-interview-on-pleasure-activism
https://web.archive.org/web/20181021195049/http://www.generativesomatics.org/content/theory-what-politicized-somatics
(using the WayBack Machine for https://generativesomatics.org/ which is located in Oakland)
Pauline Oliveros. "Auralizing in the Sonosphere: A Vocabulary for Inner Sound and Sounding" in Journal of Visual Culture 10(2). 2011. pp. 162-168.
Sara Ahmed. "What's the Use." Duke University Press. 2019
Bios
Samuel Hertz is a Berlin-based sound artist and researcher working at intersections of Earth-based sound, sonic sensualities, and climate change. Alongside his performances exists a strong research component based in Anthropocene studies, encompassing relationships between sound, geography, climate, and social ecologies working with institutions such as HKW/Max Planck Institute (DE), RHUL Centre for GeoHumanities (UK), and the University of Leeds (UK).
Layton Lachman After working in the San Francisco Bay Area for seven years, Layton Lachman is now emerging as a Berlin-based artist. They are working in dance performance and continue to be deeply invested in the politics of alternative modes of artistic collaboration, curation, and social organizing. Their research is often in the realm of somatics and finding methods of utilizing these experiential practices in the creation of immersive worlds of sensorial complexity and perceptual disorientation.
https://soundcloud.com/endoftheworldshow/sister-interview-on-pleasure-activism
https://web.archive.org/web/20181021195049/http://www.generativesomatics.org/content/theory-what-politicized-somatics
(using the WayBack Machine for https://generativesomatics.org/ which is located in Oakland)
Pauline Oliveros. "Auralizing in the Sonosphere: A Vocabulary for Inner Sound and Sounding" in Journal of Visual Culture 10(2). 2011. pp. 162-168.
Sara Ahmed. "What's the Use." Duke University Press. 2019
Bios
Samuel Hertz is a Berlin-based sound artist and researcher working at intersections of Earth-based sound, sonic sensualities, and climate change. Alongside his performances exists a strong research component based in Anthropocene studies, encompassing relationships between sound, geography, climate, and social ecologies working with institutions such as HKW/Max Planck Institute (DE), RHUL Centre for GeoHumanities (UK), and the University of Leeds (UK).
Layton Lachman After working in the San Francisco Bay Area for seven years, Layton Lachman is now emerging as a Berlin-based artist. They are working in dance performance and continue to be deeply invested in the politics of alternative modes of artistic collaboration, curation, and social organizing. Their research is often in the realm of somatics and finding methods of utilizing these experiential practices in the creation of immersive worlds of sensorial complexity and perceptual disorientation.
Danielle Wright
White Culture, White Privilege and Your Mind/Body
(2018, 18:33)
Resources:
Paying Attention to White Culture and Privilege: A Missing Link to Advancing Racial Equity by Gita Gulati-Partee and Maggie Potapchuk
www.racialequitytools.org/resourcefile…lati_AB3.pdf
"I May Have Privilege If ..."
www.aacap.org/App_Themes/AACAP/d…e_privilege_if.pdf
The Problem with Privilege by Andrea Smith
andrea366.wordpress.com/2013/08/14/th…andrea-smith/
Citizen by Claudia Rankine
www.graywolfpress.org/books/citizen
Racism 101 by Dr. Joy DeGruy
www.youtube.com/watch?v=0mgYq5XKvLI
Angela Hennessy's work (esp. the School of the Dead manifesto)
www.angelahennessy.com/
Lukaza Branfman-Verissimo's work
www.lukazabranfman-verissimo.com/
White Culture, White Privilege and Your Mind/Body
(2018, 18:33)
Resources:
Paying Attention to White Culture and Privilege: A Missing Link to Advancing Racial Equity by Gita Gulati-Partee and Maggie Potapchuk
www.racialequitytools.org/resourcefile…lati_AB3.pdf
"I May Have Privilege If ..."
www.aacap.org/App_Themes/AACAP/d…e_privilege_if.pdf
The Problem with Privilege by Andrea Smith
andrea366.wordpress.com/2013/08/14/th…andrea-smith/
Citizen by Claudia Rankine
www.graywolfpress.org/books/citizen
Racism 101 by Dr. Joy DeGruy
www.youtube.com/watch?v=0mgYq5XKvLI
Angela Hennessy's work (esp. the School of the Dead manifesto)
www.angelahennessy.com/
Lukaza Branfman-Verissimo's work
www.lukazabranfman-verissimo.com/
A mindful approach to racial equity work.
Danielle Wright is a interdisciplinary visual artist drawn to the politics and poetics of witnessing. Her work examines language, materials, and the language of materials while exploring how notions of identity, intimacy, and trauma overlap/intersect. She is fascinated by where “you” end and “I” begin. As such her work aims to soften delineations between artist and viewer/participant. In addition to her studio practice, she serves as a Teaching Artist at Creativity Explored, a nonprofit art gallery and studio for adults with developmental disabilities in the Mission District of San Francisco.
Website: www.daniellewright.info
IG: @mzwrightnow
Danielle Wright is a interdisciplinary visual artist drawn to the politics and poetics of witnessing. Her work examines language, materials, and the language of materials while exploring how notions of identity, intimacy, and trauma overlap/intersect. She is fascinated by where “you” end and “I” begin. As such her work aims to soften delineations between artist and viewer/participant. In addition to her studio practice, she serves as a Teaching Artist at Creativity Explored, a nonprofit art gallery and studio for adults with developmental disabilities in the Mission District of San Francisco.
Website: www.daniellewright.info
IG: @mzwrightnow
Carrie Hott
Ten Machine Sleep Session (2018, 17:21)
Resource:
www.conair.com/c/25d42h54/soothi…-sound-machine/46
Ten Machine Sleep Session (2018, 17:21)
Resource:
www.conair.com/c/25d42h54/soothi…-sound-machine/46
Listen in a dark room, lying down, eyes closed, and imagine being surrounded by ten sound machines and a coach, guiding you through sleep therapy on a megaphone. This track was made by collaging together and adapting segments from several sleep scripts found online, accompanied by all ten tracks from one Conair Sound Therapy Machine, including Tropical Forest, Thunderstorm, Summer Night, Ocean Waves, White Noise, Heartbeat, Songbirds, Waterfall, Running Stream, and Rainfall. As someone who struggles with sleeplessness and insomnia, I created this from various sources for others who have trouble sleeping, and need to drown out as much as possible.
Carrie Hott is an interdisciplinary artist based in Oakland, California. Her work is informed by a roving research practice that explores the current and historic infrastructural systems that mediate our collective experiences and perceptions.
Website: www.carriehott.com
Carrie Hott is an interdisciplinary artist based in Oakland, California. Her work is informed by a roving research practice that explores the current and historic infrastructural systems that mediate our collective experiences and perceptions.
Website: www.carriehott.com
Christian Nagler
Cosmoconvulsive Anxiothenics
(2018, 22:28)
Readings:
1. Ulrich Beck, Living in the World Risk Society, 2006
2. Michel Foucault, Security Territory, Population, Lectures at the College de France, 1979 (especially lecture #2)
3. Benjamin Lee and Edward Lipuma, Circulatory Risks and the Speculative Habitus
4. Dusan Makavejev, WR: Mysteries of the Organism, 19715. Wilhelm Reich, The Mass Psychology of Fascism, 1933 and Character Analysis, 1933
6. Claire Souch, Pushing the Boundaries of Catastrophe Modeling, 2014
7. Peter A. Levine Nature's Lessons in Healing Trauma
Cosmoconvulsive Anxiothenics
(2018, 22:28)
Readings:
1. Ulrich Beck, Living in the World Risk Society, 2006
2. Michel Foucault, Security Territory, Population, Lectures at the College de France, 1979 (especially lecture #2)
3. Benjamin Lee and Edward Lipuma, Circulatory Risks and the Speculative Habitus
4. Dusan Makavejev, WR: Mysteries of the Organism, 19715. Wilhelm Reich, The Mass Psychology of Fascism, 1933 and Character Analysis, 1933
6. Claire Souch, Pushing the Boundaries of Catastrophe Modeling, 2014
7. Peter A. Levine Nature's Lessons in Healing Trauma
In this session we will delve deeply into some embodied non-solutions to the problem of global risk management. What are global risk management practices and how do they relate to our nervous systems? Listen, follow along and engage in an athletic and de-armoring session of Reichian somatics, full-corpus spasms, and galactic tingles. Wear comfortable clothes. Prepare to move, breathe intensely, yell, and freak out a little.
IG @christiannagler
Performer Bios
Amelia Charter is an artist, performer and teacher living in Los Angeles.
Kevin Nagler is an artist currently located in Abiquiu, New Mexico
Susannah Schoff is a teacher who lives in Alameda, CA
IG @christiannagler
Performer Bios
Amelia Charter is an artist, performer and teacher living in Los Angeles.
Kevin Nagler is an artist currently located in Abiquiu, New Mexico
Susannah Schoff is a teacher who lives in Alameda, CA
Chani Bockwinkel
Sappho and Sweat
(2018, 23:06)
Sappho and Sweat
(2018, 23:06)
A luxurious and sweaty strange dance class to perform alone in your room. A thunderfuck of somatics, athletics and the burning words of Sappho's poetry.
"...that loosener of limbs, bittersweet creature against which nothing can be done.” — Sappho
Thank you to: all of the incredible musical artists on my Sappho Playlists, your music makes it all possible. To all the beautiful bodies I've danced with in group Sappho class. And all the freaky dance teachers who comprise my lineage.
Readings:
Anne Carson, If Not Winter, Fragments of Sappho
Tom Meyers, Anatomy Trains
Irene Dowd, Taking Root to Fly
Mary R. Lefkowitz, Women in Greek Myth
"...that loosener of limbs, bittersweet creature against which nothing can be done.” — Sappho
Thank you to: all of the incredible musical artists on my Sappho Playlists, your music makes it all possible. To all the beautiful bodies I've danced with in group Sappho class. And all the freaky dance teachers who comprise my lineage.
Readings:
Anne Carson, If Not Winter, Fragments of Sappho
Tom Meyers, Anatomy Trains
Irene Dowd, Taking Root to Fly
Mary R. Lefkowitz, Women in Greek Myth
Christina Linden
Monsters Herding Cats, and Ducks In A Row (2018, 10:00)
Monsters Herding Cats, and Ducks In A Row (2018, 10:00)
Audio guide for a session of stretching, rolling, crawling, and light contact improv for adults and their baby or toddler friends. Readings of selected excerpts from children's books and Moyra Davey's Mother Reader. Bring your own music.
Claudia La Rocco
If we are to have magical bodies we must have magical minds
(2018, 18:40)
If we are to have magical bodies we must have magical minds
(2018, 18:40)
This is a somewhat condensed version of my contribution to the Heavy Breathing series, which I performed at the UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive in 2017. It is a splice of my two practices, shuttling between very different or maybe very similar modes: my writing, and my teacher’s notes. Some of the writing is new and some of it is previously published; some of the notes are edited, and some are not.
Kate Rhoades + Eli Thorne
Dirty Work
(2018, 22:11)
Dirty Work
(2018, 22:11)
We lead couples in a strength training workout based on a chapter from Ann McClintock's book, Imperial Leather which investigates gender, violence, class, and BDSM in Victorian England. Participants will take turns being submissive or dominant and get dirty while building muscle.
Special thanks to Stephanie Ellis.
Special thanks to Stephanie Ellis.
Tom Comitta
Born to Run
(2018, 45:34)
Born to Run
(2018, 45:34)
Born to Run is an audio chapbook that collages descriptions of running and jogging from over 60 novels. There's everything in here from Stephen King's The Running Man to Cynthia Voigt's The Runner, with a sprinkling of Charles Dickens, Agatha Christie and Samuel R. Delany. To experience this piece, a listener would get on a treadmill, elliptical or any artificial exercise device, put on headphones and press play.
Thank you to Sophia Wang and Lisa Rybovich Crallé for creating a space and context for this piece. For more information on literary supercuts — mine and others — check out this conversation between me and Jez Burrows published by The Believer in May 2018:
https://logger.believermag.com/post/comitta-burrows
Tom Comitta is the author of ◯ (Ugly Ducking Presse), Airport Novella (Troll Thread), SENT (Invisible Venue) and First Thought Worst Thought: Collected Books 2011-2014 (Gauss PDF), a print and digital archive of 40 "night novels," art books and poetry. In 2017 he and Fire Drill staged Bill: The Musikill, an
experimental musical, as part of Minneapolis's Momentum dance festival, commissioned by The Walker Art Center, The Cowles Center, and other local organizations. Previously based in the Bay Area, he now lives in Los Angeles.
Thank you to Sophia Wang and Lisa Rybovich Crallé for creating a space and context for this piece. For more information on literary supercuts — mine and others — check out this conversation between me and Jez Burrows published by The Believer in May 2018:
https://logger.believermag.com/post/comitta-burrows
Tom Comitta is the author of ◯ (Ugly Ducking Presse), Airport Novella (Troll Thread), SENT (Invisible Venue) and First Thought Worst Thought: Collected Books 2011-2014 (Gauss PDF), a print and digital archive of 40 "night novels," art books and poetry. In 2017 he and Fire Drill staged Bill: The Musikill, an
experimental musical, as part of Minneapolis's Momentum dance festival, commissioned by The Walker Art Center, The Cowles Center, and other local organizations. Previously based in the Bay Area, he now lives in Los Angeles.
HEAVY BREATHING MEDIA
Download or view the Heavy Breathing Reader (2016)
Produced in collaboration with the UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Arhive (BAMPFA)
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Produced in collaboration with the UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Arhive (BAMPFA)
Download or view the Heavy Breathing Catalog (2015)
Designed by ALTR Studio and Printed by COLPA PRESS
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Designed by ALTR Studio and Printed by COLPA PRESS
Order a Heavy Breathing Poster (2015)
Designed by ALTR Studio and Printed by COLPA PRESS
[ CURRENTLY SOLD OUT ]
Wipe your sweat away! Order a Heavy Breathing Bandana
Designed by Savannah Rusher
[ CURRENTLY SOLD OUT ]
