Opening Ceremony | Embodied Arts Festival

It is within the intersections of body memory and history that our bodies are potentially at their most revealing. Memories interrupt history and open up another possibility of embodied living, one that spatialises time and temporalises space. Hence, treating the body as memory and discussing the role of the body in witnessing authoritarian capitalism, memorializing the torture carried out by dominant socio-political structures, thus resisting the narrative erasure reproduced by the imperialism at national and global levels. Oyoun's first curatorial focus EMBODIED TEMPORALITIES offered a community-centered approach as a framework for participants to voice their experiences of ancestry, rituals, trauma, death, loss, and finding expression for experiences that are otherwise un-shareable, and often stigmatised in mainstream public discourses while paving the way for collective healing.

The EMBODIED ARTS FESTIVAL will present and celebrate the outcomes of this body of work.

Join us online for the opening ceremony on April 8th to dive deeper into the topics and get introduced to the projects and the people behind them. We'll be kicking off with a meditation led by Nane Kahle, artist, healer and practitioner of the ancient Egyptian Kemetic yoga system “Tjef Sema Paut Neteru”. The meditative session brings us inwards, wakes up our body, opening up the eleven-day festival, while generating a spiritual, psychic and physical connection among all the people who have gathered around in the physical and virtual spaces of Oyoun.

Following the opening ceremony, the spotlight will be put on Sujatro Ghosh's project: The Geography of Hate. The artists presented by Sujatro explore hate as a tool for systematic violence. The exhibition explores the fundamental anatomy of hate as a creature of subjugation. Two performances - by Farah Deen and Karin Cheng and by Fatmanur Sahin and Team - will be streamed from Oyoun's main stage and then there will be a digital walk-through of the exhibition with Sujatro.

The event will be streamed on Oyoun's Vimeo, YouTube and Facebook channels.

EMBODIED ARTS FESTIVAL

Curators, artists and cultural practitioners have been exploring identities, belonging and embodied memories through diasporic, decolonial and queer perspectives as part of Oyoun's first curatorial focus: EMBODIED TEMPORALITIES. The outcomes, encounters and queries will be presented and celebrated during the EMBODIED ARTS FESTIVAL from 8th - 18th April. View all events here.

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At the intersection of body memory and history, our bodies are potentially most revealing. Memories interrupt the story and open up another possibility of embodied life, one that spatializes time and temporalizes space. Hence, we treat the body as memory and discuss the role of the body as a witness of authoritarian capitalism, remembering the torture inflicted by the dominant socio-political structures, thus resisting the narrative obliteration that imperialism has on the national and global levels is reproduced.

Oyoun's first curatorial focus, EMBODIED TEMPORALITIES, offered a community-centered approach as a framework for participants to articulate their experiences with ancestry, rituals, trauma, death and loss and to find an expression for experiences that otherwise cannot be shared and that are in the mainstream public discourse are often stigmatized even though they pave the way for collective healing.

The EMBODIED ARTS FESTIVAL will present and celebrate the results of this work.

Be there online for the opening on April 8th and dive deeper into the topics - and get to know the projects and the people behind them. We begin with a meditation led by Nane Kahle that will connect us all on all levels. 

After the general introduction, the focus is on The Geography of Hate project. The artists presented by Sujatro Ghosh deal with the subject of hatred as a tool for systematic violence and othering. The exhibition explores the basic anatomy of hatred as a being of submission. Two performances - by Farah Deen and Karin Cheng as well as by Fatmanur Sahin and team - will be streamed from the main stage of the Oyoun, followed by a digital walk-through through the exhibition with Sujatro.

The event will be streamed on Oyoun's Vimeo, YouTube and Facebook channels.

EMBODIED ARTS FESTIVAL 

As part of Oyoun's first curatorial focus - curators, artists and cultural workers - EMBODIED TEMPORALITIES - dealt with identities, belonging and embodied memories from diasporic, decolonial and queer perspectives. The results, encounters and questions that arose from the projects will be discussed during the EMBODIED ARTS FESTIVAL presented and celebrated from April 8th to 18th. See all events here.