What do our bodies embody?

The EMBODIED ARTS FESTIVAL is celebrating the first curatorial focus of the intersectional art and culture center Oyoun from 8th - 18th April 2021 and examines topics such as hybridity, collective memory, and body politics in postmodernism.

The body is an essential tool for conveying our identities, yes, it enables us to reinvent these identities. Identities are always political: How do we deal with social expectations about the correctness of individual identities and with overlaps or challenges to these expectations? What happens if we avoid these expectations? The body changes, transforms and unfolds as a demand on the (un) made of the self, identity and belonging. 

During the 8-month research, archiving, exhibition and performance project: EMBODIED TEMPORALITIES, the invited curators, artists and cultural workers examined embodied memories, trauma and identities from diasporic, decolonial and queer perspectives. The results of their work will be presented, celebrated and further developed as part of the EMBODIED ARTS FESTIVAL. 

With more than 20 performances, film screenings, discussions and interactive interventions, the participants go in search of answers to questions such as: How do we break taboos about menstruation, gender norms, sexuality (s), death and grief? How can we collectively heal trauma? How can our bodies transform from a bundle of social constraints into a manifestation of flourishing life? Where does hate come from, how does hate work and which path leads from hateful to hated?

The EMBODIED ARTS FESTIVAL will uncover possibilities for (collective) healing with the language of art and explore and diversify these in creative collaborations from intersectional, anti-fascist and decolonial perspectives.

The curators:
Sujatro Ghosh, Sana Rizvi, Nane Kahle, Kopano Maroga, Dr. Maiada Aboud, Gugulethu 'Dumama' Duma, Exoce Kasongo, Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley, Cornelia Becker + Kerim Becker, Avril Stormy Unger, Ahmad Hijazi (Cyclomorphosis)

We will open our digital doors to our audience with streams and live Q & As. We very much hope that we can open our physical doors during the festival as well, albeit probably only for a limited number of visitors. Now we have to wait and see how the lockdown rules develop. We are updating information on this on our website. 

Here you will find the press release, a press kit with further information on the curators, their projects and the digital festival program as well as pictures for reporting. 

We are happy to organize interviews with individual actors about their work. Get in touch!

Contact:
Dami Choi
press@oyoun.de 
+49 (0)30 6805 0860