CHALLENGING ‘GETTING THERE’ AND EXPLORING ‘BEING HERE’

Starting Place: Feldafing Railway Station
Time: 3–6pm
Date: Sunday, August 13, 2017
Cost: Free
Contact: James -- mob: 0176 6841 4086

Suzon Fuks and James Cunningham (Co-Artistic Directors, Igneous) will lead participants through a series of processes developed since 2007 and deepened during their 2014–15 project ‘FLUIDATA’ which included over 2 dozen slow creek walks throughout Queensland, Australia.

‘Seeking alternatives to the received lifestyle of instantaneousness, productivity, and “getting there” (the straight line), we make the deliberate decision to slow down, allowing our bodies—and our digital devices—to absorb the landscape and the moment–”being here”. Unhurriedly, we walk “the way of the water” (the meander).’

The workshop involves grounding through body-based awareness, slowing down, being deliberately still, and allowing one’s body to absorb the surroundings and the moment, and includes walking “the way of the water” down a section of Starzenbach creek in Feldafing.

The session will allow for discussion around the ways in which the manufactured infrastructures we traverse daily, corral us into lives of instantaneousness, productivity, and “getting there”—and exploration of alternative notions, such as “being here”, reversibility, curiosity and wonder in what already exists, and making connections between inner and outer worlds.

Participants need to have somewhere secure they can leave their bags so they are free of them when doing the activity (eg. car at station or Villa Waldberta, 10min walk away).

Note: we may be walking in the natural creek bed with water up to knee level.

WHAT TO WEAR:

1. Pants: appropriate for “muddy explorations” or shorts
2. Footwear: gumboots or well-soled sandals
3. Sunscreen, hat and long sleeves.
4. Have towel ready for change of outfit after activity.

FACILITATOR’S BIOGRAPHIES:

SUZON FUKS is an artist bridging art, science and the environment, using body-based practices, the moving image, photography and interactive technologies. She initiated the Water-wheel.net global community and platform. Her current focuses are water issues, refugees and knowledge transmission.

JAMES CUNNINGHAM is a performance, movement, video and networked performance practitioner working in social, environmental and architectural surroundings, exploring the limits of bodily perception, performativity and the relationality of one’s self with others, objects, and environments.

IGNEOUS, Australian multi-arts organisation established in 1997, has been directed by James Cunningham and Suzon Fuks since its inception. Igneous’ work has received national and international recognition across a broad spectrum including networked performance, dance, screendance, new media, disability, puppetry, live art and visual theatre. Their interests lay in research, processes, interaction and diversity.