Return to Home Workshop 3: Embodied Affective Correspondences

"Returning to Home: A series of re/embodied workshops that focuses our attention to recognising, resetting and restoring."

This series was first envisioned as a three-day workshop utilizing theatre skills in bringing together bodies in movement, play and intimacy. These month’s of compounded challenges of the pandemic, social distancing and isolation, the shift to the digital space, and the surge of rage at the brutal murder of George Floyd - opened up painful questions around what does it mean to be ‘present’ physically? What does it mean to have betogether? What does it mean to allow each other to breathe?

Apart from being simply a substitute holding space, can the digital realm provide conditions that allow for deeper connections and even more radical transformations? Looking to other narratives where the physical body has been denied, negated, or de-valued, the workshop series have been re-made with the priority of sharing space, recognizing our many states of flux and being, redistributing our resources and attention to reclaim being-at-home with ourselves.

Curated by Annie Jael Kwan. Commissioned and produced by performingbordersLIVE

Workshop 3: Embodied Affective Correspondences

by June Lam

“Turning to queer Asian diasporas opens up forgotten histories of racialized intimacy within the received genealogies of liberal humanism, one largely defined by the dialectic of white-black race relations in the black Atlantic” David L Eng, The Feeling of Kinship

“Everything I’ve learned, I’ve learned from my body – from the experience of the ‘cellular body,’ and then from the act of squeezing that experience into a linear form. The feeling, the experience comes first; then there’s the naming of it, calling it into being.” Deborah Hay

What does it mean to live with or take responsibility for a historical event that one has never actually experienced? How do we as queer diaspora restore affective correspondences in spite of intergenerational and epigenetic traumas? The workshop Embodied Affective Correspondences will explore possibilities for bringing the psychic space of ‘home’ into quarantine, using the language of gesture to bridge and restore the connective tissue of culture and selfhood. We will invite members of queer diaspora to share in developing their own invocation ritual, using the tools of exploratory touch, somatic learning and collective movement.

Duration: 2 hours

For workshop 1, please follow this link: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/109158000518

For workshop 2, please follow this link: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/109164205076

Access:

We will provide live captioning throughout the workshops.

If you have hearing impediments and would like us to send you the UTR for a more enhanced live caption experience, please contact us on this email address performingborderslive@gmail.com and we will send it to you near the workshop date.

The workshop will have members of the performingbordersLIVE team to support any needs that might occur throuhout this process and the management of participants where needed.

This workshop is free and open to anyone. If you have any particular access requirement needs or would like more information, please contact us at performingborderslive@gmail.com

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June Lam (b. 1990) is an Australian artist of Chinese and Vietnamese ancestry, living in London and working across sculpture, performance and dance. As a performer of live art, he has worked with modes of somatic learning and movement as a form of gender exploration. In his practice he wishes to challenge the Eurocentric gaze and find new ways of articulating desire as a queer Asian trans body in the world. He also frequently performs work by other visual artists, which has included the UK debut staging of A Life (Black & White) by Nedko Solakov (2020), at Tate Modern; the UK premiere of we shall run by Yvonne Rainer (2018) at London Contemporary Music Festival, Ambika P3 (2018); Tape Piece by Maya Verlaak & Andy Ingamells (2018) for Body as Archive, Slade Research Centre.

Annie Jael Kwan is an independent curator and researcher based in London and working across Europe and Asia. Her background is in theatre studies, cultural studies and modern and contemporary art history, and her practice is located at the intersection of contemporary art and activism with an interest on issues related to archives, histories, feminist, queer and alternative knowledges, collective practice and solidarity. She is a recipient of a Diverse Actions Leadership Award 2019 and co-leads Asia-Art-Activism, currently in residence at Raven Row till November 2020.

performingbordersLIVE is a programme of events and new commissions curated by Alessandra Cianetti and Xavier de Sousa and focusing on the exploration of artistic practices happening within the UK Live Art sector around notions of cultural, juridical, racial, gendered, class, physical and everyday borders. performingbordersLIVE20 is presented in by performingborders and Foreign Actions Productions in collaboration with Counterpoints Arts (London, UK), Live Art Development Agency (London, UK), Contact Theatre (Manchester, UK), East Street Arts (Leeds, UK), Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts (Brighton, UK), The Albany & Deptford Lounge (London, UK), Asia-Art-Activism & Something Human (London, UK), King’s College London, Never Done (London), OROAnike (London), East London Cable (London, UK), Green Rooms Hotel (London, UK), Howlround Theatre Commons (Boston, US), and International Performing Arts Festival – IPAF (Copenhagen, Denmark). Supported by the Arts Council England.

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