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SESSION 27: interdepending

SATURDAY, 27 May 2023

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SUNDAY, 28 May 2023

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13:45 - 14:45 UTC

Embodied Presence + The Practice of Collective Healing
with the Mindfulness + Movement Research Cluster

TALKS + WORKSHOPS

On Decentering Art as an Individual Endeavor 
A presentation by Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful Espejo Ovalles

It all came to be at the very height of the Covid pandemic, while we were surrounded by the wailing of ambulances in the South Bronx and waited expectantly for the Governor’s daily radio updates on the emergency situation in New York State. I would sit in the backyard to meditate on a rusty pink chair, and observe the downloads that I was receiving as to where to go next creatively. This marked the birth of The Interior Beauty Salon, an organism living at the intersection of creativity and healing, and also serving as a space where that which is not necessarily seen or manifested in tangible ways is seeded, nurtured and given room to grow safely. Examples of this include processes melding art, ritual, ceremony, rites of passage, and consciousness. Now in its third year, The Salon continues to challenge notions of art-making as an individual endeavor, to rethink the future of creativity as being collaborative, and to open up to the concept of building a network of joy within the arts. And similarly, it offers space to visionaries in an unusual confluence of fields and unprescribed ways of being and approaching life. But is it an artwork? In On Decentering Art as an Individual Endeavor, Nicolás will draw on The Salon’s herstory/history/theirstory to launch a conversation on cooperation, kindness, generosity, and care in the arts.

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our time together performing

SaturdaY 27 may 2022
16:00 - 19:00 UTC

In this highly experiential workshop, part conversation, part remembering, part envisioning, part meal and fully rooted in life (as it unfolds), our group is invited to come together to perform the very now as it reveals itself second by second. But please leave watches and clocks behind. Instead bring an old sheet, blanket, or tablecloth; as well as makeup, masking/duct tape, twine, reused paper shopping bags, a pillow to hug, a big fruit to kiss…and/or any other items that we want to be present with us.

The community (even temporarily) forming from our virtual engagement will partake of practices inspired by the teachings on movement, performance art, art in everyday life, theater, somatics, and activism inspired by Anna Halprin, Augusto Boal, Linda Mary Montano, and Luke Dixon. These exercises are meant to re-familiarize us with our bodies so as to facilitate listening, trusting, and comradeship.

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Our Time Together Performing © 2016 Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful Espejo Ovalles/Photo: © 2022 Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful Espejo Ovalles

Syllabus

Walking the Unknown Path
with the Wanderings, co-minglings, and the phenomenology of the sensible research cluster

15:00 - 15:45 - Artist Talk with Dr. Beth Krensky + Q&A (open to all Transart students/faculty/alumni )

15:45 - 17:30 - Wanderings Workshop (closed workshop for Wanderings, Co-minglings, and the Phenomenology of the Sensible Research Cluster)

Artist Talk : Walking the Unknown
Dr. Beth Krensky

Utah-based artist Beth Krensky will give a brief overview of the conceptual underpinnings that inform her work. In particular, she will discuss and show examples of work that embrace the ritual of walking or wandering to create a space of sanctuary. Much of her work draws upon Mircea Eliade’s definition of sanctuaries as “‘places of passage between heaven and earth.” Her objects and performance pieces embrace the inherent liminality of these transitional plains as a way to connect with internal, external, and imagined places.

Bio

Beth Krensky is Area Head and Professor of Art Teaching at the University of Utah. She is an artist working in the border zone between social issues and the sacred who creates objects and performative gestures as a contemplative act. 

She received her formal art training from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University and MIT’s Center for Advanced Visual Studies. She holds an M.Ed. from the Harvard Graduate School of Education and a Ph.D. in Educational Foundations from the University of Colorado at Boulder. She is also a scholar of youth-created art for social change. Her writing addresses community-based art education, youth activist art, and art for social change. Her co-authored book (with Seana Lowe Steffen), Engaging Classrooms and Communities through Art, is used widely in the field of community-based art education.

Krensky’s work has been exhibited broadly throughout the United States and internationally. She is a founding member of the international artist collective, the Artnauts, and is a Fellow with the Jewish Art Salon in New York City. Her work is intended to provoke reflection about what is happening in our world as well as to create a vision of what is possible. In 2022, she was selected as one of five performance art finalists for the 16th Arte Laguna Prize and Yale University exhibited a 20-year retrospective of her art. 

Workshop: Wanderings

This session will focus on approaches to creating and performing objects imbued with personal meaning. We will experiment with ways to explore one’s inner terrain through performance and walking practices and will have time for discussion and Q and A.

Suggested reading or viewing

“Between Spirit and Matter” catalogue (optional)

Embodied Presence + The Practice of Collective Healing
with the Mindfulness + Movement Research Cluster

Nkechi Njaka and the Mindfulness + Movement Research Cluster will host this talk/ panel discussion between Dr. Sarà King and Selma Quist Møeller— two amazing embodied/ somatic practitioners whose work intersect neuroscience, embodiment, social practice, collective healing and accountability.

With each offering a unique and extraordinary perspective on what it means to be well during these times, the collective panel is made up of practitioners, artists, activists, academics, and scientists and their combined work is at the intersection of art, wellness, liberation, social practice, and equitable well-being for all.

Program:
Presenter 1 shares about their work/ practice - 40 minutes
Discussion/ Interview - 20 minutes with both
Presenter 2 shares about  their work/ practice - 40 minutes
Break 10 minutes
Group Discussion 30 minutes (15 minutes in break out group and then 15 as a group)
Close/ Q+A 10

Suggested Reading
suggestions to familiarize with the speakers.
https://mindheartconsulting.com/2019/04/25/the-science-of-well-being-and-social-justice/

Dr. Sará King is a Mother, a neuroscientist, political and learning scientist, medical anthropologist, social entrepreneur, public speaker, and certified yoga and meditation instructor. She is an internationally recognized thought leader in the interdisciplinary field that examines the role of social justice, art, and mindfulness in neuroscience.

She specializes in researching and teaching about the relationship between mindfulness, community alternative medicine, and social justice with an emphasis on examining the relationship between individual and collective awareness as it relates to well-being and the healing of intergenerational trauma.

She currently works as an NIH post-doctoral fellow in Neurology at Oregon Health Science University (OHSU) in the Oregon Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine in Neurological Disorders.

Dr. King is also a member of Mobius, a non-profit supporting compassion in tech, is guest faculty in the MNDFL mindfulness certification program, as well as she is the Co-Director for the Embodied Social Justice Certificate program alongside Rev. Angel kyodo Williams and Dr. Rae Johnson.

Selma Quist-Møller is a psychologist, researcher, and writer, educated from UC Berkeley, UCLA, Copenhagen University, and Lund University. 

In her work, Selma bridges science and trauma-informed mindfulness practices to generate action that cultivates individual, collective, and planetary well-being, health, justice, and growth. She focuses her research on post-traumatic growth, positive health psychology, compassion, and mindfulness. She is passionate about making science accessible for everyone, which she does as a writer for UC Berkeley's Greater Good Science Center and The Danish Center for Mindfulness.

She has written and been a part of various research projects, articles, and book chapters, including a project teaching leaders at Google in a mindfulness-based leadership program for sustainability development. She has helped develop a new measurement of empathy at UC Berkeley with Dr. Dacher Keltner and was the research coordinator at the 'Mind and Body lab' at UCLA, examining the health benefits of prosocial behavior.