BODYNET-KHORÓS LAB 5
2nd METAHUMAN LAB
Workshop at the METAHUMAN FUTURES FORUM LESVOS 2023
EARTH LIBERATION
Techniques of the body and the reverse of extinction
From 26th to 30th June in Skala Eressos, Lesvos, in between the Village and a land nearby, linked to local community and the fight against speculation and the queer community – EU project related workshop with students, local participants as well as international participants.
At the METAHUMAN LAB we explore we ways of being in the world that may help undo the planetary catastrophe that human dominion has created over the past 10 millennia. Challenging ruthlessly all forms of oppression, non-human and human, and their underlying concepts (of species, gender, race, ability, etc.) we confront the fact that it is the totality of forms of sedentary living and its related overpopulation emerging since the rise of farming that have created the extinction cycle that drags us along all other species.
The lab onto-hacks our most deeply rooted Human Supremacist assumptions and proposes experiential practices and techniques for rediscovering a lost moving-sensing body, which is the only means to undo our toxic ways of living and regain a symbiotic relation to the Earth and its 8,7 million species. From movements exercises based on proprioception, through flexinamic structures and interactive projections, to gathering food and collaborating with animal sanctuaries, this fully vegan event wants to resonate with the significant queer-animalist-ecologist-migrant-diverse community in Skala Eressou, for transforming our ways of living and regaining the dance of life.
The Original Affluent Society theory stemming from the 1960 in anthropology tells us that gatherers hunters lived and live better than sedentary cultures, and for 99% of its history of around 300.000 we lived only like that and we were just one million population: never accumulating, with egalitarianism and respect for other life forms and the environment, moving with the earth and its flows. All modes of oppression have appeared with accumulation and our devastating occupation of the earth with farming, agriculture and cities. But the Lab, building upon Del Val’s movement philosophy suggests that it is the gradual loss of movement in the Sapiens that lies in the roots of the problem. Regaining the moving body is key.
- Metabody techniques, in two modes: Khorós (physical) and Bodynet (online):
- Disalignments – movement techniques based on proprioception and microperceptions.
- Flexinamics – physical flexible and dynamic architecture modules as body extensions.
- Amorphogenesis – non representational VR and amorphous digital intra-active environments.
- Microsexes – cameras on the skin and electronically processed voice for a body without anatomy.
Programme:
(First day introductory session, with evening projections at the Village.)
- Mornings: Micromovement + performative theory (Ontological therapy) in the Deck of Ohana.
- Texts for discussion:
- Micromovement:
- Disalignments – movement techniques based on proprioception and microperceptions.
- Lunch: Cooking Vegan
- Afernoon: Metawalks: disaligned wanderings where we:
- non-verbally explore environments and their affordances and textures, through multisensory integration and kinesthetic, proprioceptive variation (micro-dancing, small movements, torsions, touching, lying, crawling, smelling, hearing…)
- gather food, wild plants
- consider ways of inhabiting the ecosystem without urbanisation, looking for organic materials for building temporary “nests”, dynamic architectures, learning from animals and plants,
- walk (preferably barefoot) outside of human paths and disaligning bipedal posture
- play with Flexinamics structures at the beach
- go to the Donkey Centre or other animal sanctuaries to help
- interact with human and non-human communities
- Evening: Vegan dinner and occasionally interactive projections ofAmorphogenesis or Microsexes at the village by the Sea.
- Ongoing: exploration of more-than human, non-verbal, disaligned ways of togetherness.
Worshop imparted by:
- the non-binary metahuman philosopher-artist-activist Jaym* del Val/ValJayK sharing ideas and techniques developed over 20 years and presented in over 30 countries.
- in collaboration the French choreographer and Bodynet-Khorós project partner Jean-Marc Matos
Participants are also welcome to share their practices.
Fully VEGAN event.
Inscriptions for the workshop here: metabody [at] metabody.eu – for local students, local participants (including refugees and other minorities) a well as internationalparticipants – important to stay for the five days.
We have discount prices for accomodation for participants.
With the Support and Sponsoring of Ohana Collective Queer Ranch and Rooms Lesvos – www.ohanalesvos.com
Funded by the European Union:
See here images of the 2022 Metahuman Lab.
2022 Pictures by Alison, Maria and Jaime
The workshop, part of the Metahuman Futures Forum 2022 Lesvos, proposes a ruthless reflection on the deepest problems of our times and their interrelated nature, problems that are vastly ignored in most existing forums and that we will summarise under the topic of Extinction: the current 6Th Great Mass Extinction, as the process caused by the dominant human way of living emerging over the past 10 millennia, at least since the birth of agriculture, linked to overpopulation, a devastating occupation of the Earth, slavery and extermination of every other life form (including many humans). It also proposes to launch practices that aim towards a deep transformation of the dominant ways of living: a metahuman mutation.
Metahumanism highlights and pushes further the inseparability of Queer, Vegan, Environmental, Migrant, Indigenous, Neurodiverse, and other movements and proposals for undoing the dominance of a devastating form of domination that erases diversity on Earth in all its forms, and unleashes a mass extinction that drags the dominant species into the abyss as well as threatens 8,7 million other species. It proposes a ruthless critique of Human Supremacy and change of ways of living by regaining a lost capacity to sense as a body and to vary our movements, for moving with the world and not against it, stopping to be The Plague. It will also address critical approaches to digital and algorithmic culture of surveillance and control. The reply is always in the BODY, sensing, moving with others, not against others, indeterminately.
The workshop will include:
- Ontological therapy: Philosophy and Theories on Trash-humanism (Extinction) and the Metahuman alternative (Planetary Health), for unding the roots of Human Supremacy, Extinction and the Planetary Holocaust,
- including disalignment modules for self-analysis of alignments with human supremacy dogmas (onto-therapy).
- Disalignments: Movement and perception exercises and improvisation techniques based on proprioception and non-conscious micro-movements, and voice, including different technologies of the Metabody project, involving dynamic portable architectures and interactive digital projections:
- Cooking VEGAN food together, as well as living together in the spaces for the week, exploring disaligned non-verbal modes of intra-action for a metahuman society to come, testing out the proposals of the Metahuman Alternative: https://metabody.eu/metahuman-futures/
- NOTE: EXCLUSIVELY VEGAN EVENT
- Ongoing improvisation and disaligned choral explorations of public space, city, beach, etc. as disaligned contemporary revival of the Dionysian chorus.
- Including walks and excursions in the surroundings for exploring symbiotic relations and gathering techniques and edible plants.s)
