In 2023 Joy Mariama Smith and I started collaborating, researching intimacy and friendship practices. We shared some first work from this collaboration at Oude Kerk in Amsterdam on Aug 24th and Sep 1st 2023.
This circle, brought together by artist and educator Joy Mariama Smith, explores, together with many others, intimacy and how it is intrinsic to the sacred. Consent practice is at the root of this investigation. What is intimacy and how do we experience it amidst vastness? This is the ongoing research question of this circle, calibrating intimacies.
Imbedded in the research practice of the common or commoning of uncertainties around expressions of intimacy and how it is intrinsic to the sacred. The performers will use the Oude Kerk as the primary site for these explorations. Approaching research on intimacy from a multi-modal place to align with the multiple uses of the O.K. Consent practice is at the root of this investigation. Our method and reason for coming together is to research collectively via discourse, vocalization and movement. The yield of the research is understanding the reciprocal relationship between the sacred and the intimate.
The public manifestation is an invitation to witness/support/immerse/engage with our research. We will do movement and vocal research around the collective space of safety/sacred/sanctuary. We will dance with each other and through each other, we will improvise and choreograph. We will speak without talking, we will make nonsense out of sense making. We will vocalize without being verbal.
I use dance here in the literal, and expansive sense, as well as senses that have yet to be revealed. The dance of relation. Human and non-human, space and body, time and space, person to person.
The next circle meeting in this series will take place on Sept 1st. Please bring your own headphones in order to listen to the audio recording.
Collaborators/Cohort/Circle
Eroca Nicols (sept 1st)
Paca faraus (sept 1st)
Philipp Meyer-Hege (aug 26th)
Mijke van der Drift & Jay Bernard (aug 26th & sept 1st)
Joy Mariama Smith (aug 26th & sept 1st)
Justin F Kennedy (aug 26th)
Dylan Spencer-Davidson (aug 26th & sept 1st)
Ciro Goudsmit (sept 1st)
Laura Fernandez Antolin
Alyssa Reiziger.
For more information about It’s OK… look here.