Walkshop Feldafing (free)

Walkshop Feldafing (free)

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.

by co-artistic_directors_igneous

FLUIDATA - Yeppoon, Gympie

FLUIDATA - Yeppoon, Gympie

This is the first in a series of blog posts summarising the sections of our FLUIDATA journey throughout Queensland. Departing in February and returning in March, we (Suzon and James) set off in our red Toyota Hiace for Yeppoon and Gympie. In Yeppoon we stayed at the Poinciana Caravan Park and enacted and captured durational performances, took photos and gathered data on boardwalks, in mangroves and along the banks of Ross Creek and Fig Tree Creek, during tidal changes and at dusk when the flying foxes take off. We met fishermen on the creek’s edge and at the “Beach Bar”, a boat-shed where locals catch up. We conducted a FLUIDATA Workshop held at Fig Tree Creek and Yeppoon Library, organised by the Livingstone Shire Council, during which the council put us up at the Coral Coast Flashpackers. We met people from the Fitzroy Basin Association, the Fitzroy Basin Environment Centre and the North Keppel Island Environment and Education Centre. It was heartening to hear stories of successful creek restoration and care programs, and indigenous and non-indigenous fishing tales. We were gobsmacked by the size of the Fitzroy Basin Catchment, and wondered how environmental concerns can be properly dealt with by organisations funded mostly by mining corporations.

In Gympie we stayed at the homestead of local art gallery co-ordinator JG and partner L in the hills just outside the town. We captured durational performances, photos and data in Deep Creek and Gympie Creek, and conducted a Fluidata Workshop held at the Mary River and Gympie Regional Gallery, with local artists from Gympie, Noosa and Tin Can Bay.

As a result of the workshops, participants from both places went on to create and present live online presentations in the international Waterwheel World Water Day Symposium, March 17-23, 2014.

FLUIDATA Creek walks in Yeppoon.

by co-artistic_directors_igneous