Being Moved & Finding Home

Simon Mayer
Institute of Fine Arts and Media Art, Site Specific Art
2024W, Vorlesung und Übungen (VU), 2.0 ECTS, 2.0 semester hours, course number S05231

Description

Being Moved & Finding Home:

BUILDING BRIDGES

"Queering, Tradition and the feeling of home"
A workshop on bubbles and bridges

Discussions, sharing practices, selfcare, dance, movement&voice work.

Which bubble do I belong to? Where do I feel home?
How do I build bridges between the bubbles I belong to? How does my artistic practice build those bridges? How does it support my artistic practice to get out of my bubble?

In times of war and crises, where lack of dialogue and cold distance often rules over common ground and compassion, the art of building bridges is more needed than ever.

Imagine you start a participatory project in the Austrian countryside, interacting with different communities, that are far away from your way of thinking and your bubble. How to build a good base for this project? How to tune into this field of work? How to work sustainable (artistically and for your own well-being)?


In this workshop the topic of building bridges and finding home will be central. Especially in site specific, participatory or immersive projects we are often interacting with places, venues, communities or people outside of our personal context or bubble. We might face the challenge of understanding and feeling the field we are working in. As every bridge needs a good fundament we will share ways of how to prepare a good base for our „building bridges“ projects.

This workshop aims to share tools and experiences (performance practices, physical exercises/experiences, writing, dialogue) in order to reflect and practice building bridges in a safe and sustainable way - first to myself, then to the other and within the collective/project. Like this we discover how to interact and co-create by building a bridge between our well-being and our artistic practice, respecting ones own boundaries and the boundaries of others.
In order to have a clear example I will introduce my project „Volxfest“ which recently was presented in the context of the European Cultural Capital Bad Ischl/Salzkammergut. A project that is focused on the art and power of celebration, tradition and queerness, the embodiment/body expression of „home“, identity&diversity and the interaction with local communities (f.e. folk-dance groups and queer communities) by creating a celebration together. I will share my experiences of creating a participatory/immersive and site specific project within very conservative and traditional places and how the project found its ways to co-create with those narrow structures. And from there we will create our own projects of interaction.

Simon Mayer s work body is defined by creating places of interaction between worlds, people, contexts and perspectives that hardly meet. In other words building bridges. Simon will introduce his work as a hybrid artist (musician/composer, choreographer/dancer, curator, facilitator), jumping back and forth between projects for classical black box theaters (mainly in cities) and site specific, participatory, interactive art and community projects (mainly in the countryside). He will share his research and artistic works around the topic of „building bridges“ - with focus on site specific projects - through videos, discussions and by concrete physical practices. From the bridge between stability and instability - the „states of being moved“ (flow and trance states) until his work around home, stability and tradition. The bridges between tradition (traditional dance, music, customs), queerness and contemporary/experimental approaches (creating new traditions). The bridges of interaction between performer and audience and the bridge between different communities within a community project. In other words this workshop is about the art of interaction. Interaction between instability and stability.
He will share exercises to build a strong base for any artistic project by movement, voice and breathing practices, selfcare and self-empowerment exercises and by finding physical answers to the questions: „Dear body, what would you like to teach me right not? What do you need?“
These questions will lead into the interaction with our understanding and feeling of „home and tradition“. „What does home mean to me? What does tradition mean to me? What is a body expression or embodiment of home?“ … and how does this translate into my artistic practice.
How can I invent new/my own tradition or feeling of home? And how can this build a base for my artistic practice and for understanding traditional communities I might work with in my projects?

More information on the work: www.simonmayer.at

 

Examination Modalities

Minimum 90% presence

Comments

Please bring a yoga mat, comfortable cloths to move/training coths, wax creyons (f.e. jolly) and A3 Paper to draw. 

THIS COURSE NEEDS COMMITMENT: PLEASE BE PRESENT FOR THE DURATION OF THE ENTIRE COURSE! This is important for your own process and the process and experience of the group. In case you have a conflict of dates, being late or with other courses inform me soon enough. Thank you!

Key Words

Site Specific Art, Music, Movement, Well Being, Tradition&Queering, Arts Communication, Participatory Performance, Performer Facilitator Training

Dates

10 January 2025, 10:00–11 January 2025, 15:00 Seminar Room Site-Specific Art and Sculpture and Space , "10-15:00 on both days"
17 January 2025, 10:00–18 January 2025, 16:00 APL Studio, Georg-Coch-Platz 2, 1010 Wien, Hochparterre , "10-16:00 on both days"

Course Enrolment

From 26 August 2024, 00:00 to 04 November 2024, 00:00
Via online registration

Fine Arts (2. Section): Artistic Practice in Technical Context: Free Electives out of Artistic Practice in Technical Context 605/203.80

Co-registration: not possible

Attending individual courses: not possible