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A series of free workout seminars

2015

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www.heavyheavybreathing.com

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Heavy Breathing is a summer series of free critical theory seminars in the form of artist-led fitness classes.Heavy Breathing is a series of experimental movement seminars designed by artists and scholars who combine physical activities with group discussion on ideas related to their creative practice. Critical thinking often feels heady, abstract, and divorced from the body. How do conversations change when we are moving our bodies and out of breath? What new modes of thinking become possible?

Featuring: Larry Arrington, Chani Bockwinkel and Caroline Alexander, Bonanza (with Laura Boles Faw and DJ 8ulentina), Zen Cohen, Xandra Ibarra, Jeepneys (with Brian Tester), Julz Hale Mary, Christina Linden and Claude Linden Smith, Olivia Mole, Christian Nagler (with DJ Kit Clayton), Raphael Noz, Brontez Purnell, Kate Rhoades and Eli Thorne, and Stairwell’s (Sarah Hotchkiss and Carey Lin).

Heavy Breathing classes are FREE and open to the public. Support for Heavy Breathing is provided by Southern Exposure’s Alternative Exposure Grant Program. For more information, including the Heavy Breathing 2016 line-up please visit: www.heavyheavybreathing.com

Organized by Sophia Wang and Lisa Rybovich Crallé

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Olive Mckeon, March 2016

Supple Bodies, Supple Minds: on Moving and Thinking with Heavy Breathing The project of Lisa Rybovich Crallé and Sophia Wang’s Heavy Breathing series— to overlay somatic practices and critical theory classes —is one that I feel a deep affinity with. Crallé and Wang bridge what is a deep chasm between pedagogical contexts for the body (dance class, sports practice, experiential somatic exercise) and those for the mind (reading groups, lectures, discussions). Heavy Breathing combines intellectual and corporeal engagement in a manner that disrupts the codes and conventions of pedagogical spaces, layering the social norms of the studio class onto that of the seminar room. The series straddles the cultural gulf (or even temporal schizophrenia) between a morning spent cranking out analyses on contemporary forms of primitive accumulation and an evening spent doing high knee lifts to bubble gum pop at the Y. Heavy Breathing asks us to rethink who we are in our minds and bodies, how our body practices might intersect, inform, or refigure our intellectual lives, and vice versa. In a silly, colorful, non-precious mode, they re-purpose the fitness class and the theoretical discussion as hybrid aesthetico-pedagogical experiences.

By injecting a deliberate dose of criticality, Heavy Breathing addresses some of the shortfalls and limitations of body-based

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classes. Sports contexts can be overwhelmingly bro-y. Gym culture can perpetuate a patriarchal, fat phobic, anti-joy masochism that reduces sensuous embodiment to a set of timed and measured Taylorist exercises. Yoga classes can be hopelessly appropriative, as a tidal wave of western yoga teachers vie to sell their codified and commodified version of South Asian physical culture. Offering an allegedly groovier, gentler option, one can study a slew of somatic practices, including Feldenkrais, Alexander Technique, Body Mind Centering, Skinner Releasing, Gyrokinesis, Axis Syllabus, and so forth. Somatic practices, both past and present, often posit a ‘natural’ body that one can arrive at by stripping away inefficient movement and getting to the essential structures of the body, engendering a body-based new agey universalism. While many of these somatic practices possess a wealth of knowledge about embodiment, they can be accompanied by a cultural logic that leaves much to be desired, intellectually and politically. As an antidote to these shortcomings, Heavy Breathing incorporates a type of political engagement that can be absent from sporty and somatic contexts.

The series also queries what might be left out of reading groups and seminars where bodies sit, uncomfortable and inert, so that minds can work through their Frankfurt School text of choice. By inserting a deliberate attention to corporeality, the series refuses to separate intellectual activity from body practices. Movement is its own kind of thinking, its own way of making arguments and theorizing about the world. The body is not something to merely be dealt with, taken begrudgingly for walks as one does with a dog, so that the mind can work. Honoring the body as capable of thought and

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articulation involves a feminist rethinking of the spaces of pedagogy and learning. Heavy Breathing is one experiment that challenges the separation of intellectual and corporeal spheres. It reminds even the heaviest of thinkers that they have arms and legs, and that it feels incredible to stretch them. There are moments when the registers of intellectual engagement and embodied practice call for each other: when one hits a wall with talking, thinking, and discussing, and one actually needs to do something with the body. Simultaneously, one can feel stuck with physical practices and in need of some new concepts, categories, or tools for thinking about them. The goals and stakes of movement improvisations, Capital reading groups, and therapy sessions may overlap and inform each other in unexpected ways.

Heavy Breathing’s layering of physical classes with intellectual subject matter is a tall order in that there are so few contexts that are equally committed to theoretical discussion as they are to embodied practices. It is likely that the rigor of one will be short changed for the rigor of the other. It could be a tendency for one dimension to be ironized or for different practices to be layered as non sequiturs, rather than thinking through concretely how movement and theory contribute to each other. The genre of the fitness class comes with a getting through this mode of physicality, where bodies are meant to endure or distract themselves from an experience with loud music or other stimuli. A logic of supplementation may actually detract from being alive to the physical practices themselves, as the body is working many things out on its own. In her ethnographic book about samba, dance scholar Barbara Browning describes a temporal disconnection between movement and writing:

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“There are things I learned in Brazil with my body, and some of these things it has taken me years to learn to articulate in writing. But that is not to say that they were without meaning when I could only speak them through dance” (Browning, xi). What Browning’s observation illuminates is a mode of learning that happens through the body, which actually does not need to be supplemented with language. However silly or serious, the present and future artists involved in the Heavy Breathing series will find their own ways of navigating the tension between the lessons that are learned through one’s body and those that emerge from texts and discussion.

As someone who likes to be out at the demo or the party and also someone that likes to recline and read things, I am partial to Heavy Breathing’s premise as well as the space for play that it sets in motion. It creates a context for being together that encourages a similar rigor in discussion as on the dance floor. Critical theory, as a mode of intellectual inquiry dedicated to radical social transformation, ultimately needs to be consummated by bodies. A revolutionary rupture means nothing if it is not enacted on a corporeal level. Thought must be consummated. Blood must flow into the veins of any utopia that is to come. How this transformation will happen is up to us and our particular flair. In the meantime, we can breathe, think, and dance together, letting our bodies and minds become supple and poised.

Works Cited:

Browning, Barbara. Samba: Resistance in Motion.

Indiana University Press, 1995.

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Aaron Harbour, Curiously Direct, September 2015

Interview with Sophia Wang and Lisa Rybovich Crallé Please give a brief run down of the project and a list

of the collaborators and involved spaces.

SOPHIA Heavy Breathing is an environment for

artists and researchers working at the intersection of

somatic, conceptual, visual, and pedagogical practices.

The motivating concept was to challenge participating

artists to design one hour critical discussion

“seminars” that engage participants in physical activity

as a way of exploring theories or ideas from the

artists’ practice or research. We used the concept of

the “fitness class” as shorthand for what a physical

group experience would look like, but we were very open

to broad interpretations of this challenge. The range of

experiences the artists designed was really inspiring;

we had classes that offered aerobics, resistance

training, running, and Reichian somatics, exploring

topics including Sapphic poetry, 19th century British

gender and class dynamics seen through the lens of

dominance/submission play, and the ubiquitous experience

of anxiety as a symptom of global risk management

practices. I think it was an outstanding experiment.

LISA The series brought together over 25 artists

to lead 12 conceptual fitness sessions over the

course of 12 weeks. Thanks to the support of Southern

Exposure’s Alternative Exposure grant, each session

was free and open to the public. Sophia and I organized

Heavy Breathing in response to our impression that

critical thinking often feels divorced from the body.

We wondered how “heady” conversations might change if

the participants were out of breath, engaging their

bodies as well as their minds. Each participating artist

interpreted this prompt in their own unique way, drawing

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from themes and concepts central to their own practices,

which led to a really diverse and invigorating program.

The sessions met in a variety of venues including

established art spaces (The Lab, YBCA), experimental

spaces (Real Time and Space, The Omni Oakland Commons),

and public areas like Lake Merritt, Golden Gate Park,

and the Chinatown YMCA swimming pool. It was a bit of

a whirlwind getting all the pieces in place, but I am

energized by the conversations it has generated, and we

are hoping to continue the project in new ways in the

future.

Participating artists include: Larry Arrington,

Chani Bockwinkel and Caroline Alexander, Bonanza (with

Laura Boles Faw and DJ 8ulentina), Zen Cohen, Xandra

Ibarra, Jeepneys, Julz Hale Mary, Christina Linden,

Olivia Mole, Christian Nagler (with DJ Kit Clayton),

Raphael Noz, Brontez Purnell, Kate Rhoades and Eli

Thorne, and Stairwell’s (Sarah Hotchkiss and Carey Lin).

Special contributions by Alexiteric Tea Clinic, Jessalyn

Aaland, Sam Hertz, Stephanie Rolfs, Savannah Rusher,

Brian Tester, and Tessa Watson.

This was an incredibly ambitious program to try to pull

off - I can’t imagine the amount of email involved - to

what extent did the eventual sequence of events match

what you initially expected to accomplish?

SOPHIA I am delighted with the outcome of the

series and amazed that we actually accomplished what

we set out to do: 12 different sessions featuring

nearly twice as many artists, concepts, locations,

and experiences. We surpassed our expectations when we

realized how many people are interested in the junctures

we’re exploring: so many more artists, researchers, and

curators than we were able to schedule in, and so many

people from our communities with diverse relationships

to fitness practices and discussion-based pedagogy. So,

I’m certain that Heavy Breathing will live on in many

forms, beyond this first series. We have ambitions to

produce a catalog of the project this fall.

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LISA This notion of disembodied life seems

relevant and disquieting to many people when we stop and

realize how much time we are spending glued to screens.

(And the irony of how much sedentary email-time the

project required was not lost on us!) I am astonished

by the level of interest, engagement, and response

Heavy Breathing has generated. We really had no idea

what we were getting into when we started the project

and it has been a great surprise to see how quickly

and courageously people said “yes” to this relatively

absurd idea. Sophia and I spent the good part of a year

planning, organizing, and negotiating details for Heavy

Breathing. In that span of time the project inevitably

evolved and expanded but it never strayed far from our

initial impulse.

Along those lines of before-and-after, with so many

collaborators at so many venues, there must have been

surprises along the way. Can you relate an anecdote or

two in re: unexpected encounters and moments?

SOPHIA My first great surprise was at our opening

party at YBCA ConVerge: how willing everyone was to dive

into making comical sounds and gestures and laughing

out loud, together. It was late afternoon in the grand

lobby of YBCA, broad daylight, everyone was sober, and

we enjoyed this invigorating, awkward, joyful experience

together. It was a remarkable confirmation of Raphael

Noz’s observation, from the description for his Laughter

Yoga session, that art exhibition spaces are not

sacrosanct and we too rarely act on that knowledge.

I was amazed at how effective Olivia Mole’s

session was at delivering a corporeal experience that

was so responsive to and explicitly in dialogue with her

discussion topic. Freely swimming around, listening to

her voice emanating from the underwater speaker, was a

highly effective way to think about the phlegm-goo that

sustains the boundaries of our bodies and identities.

I decided after this experience that all speculative

theory lectures should be delivered underwater.

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Another amazing moment was during Christian

Nagler’s Cosmoconvulsive Anxiothenics session, in

which he led participants through a series of somatic

exercises drawn from Wilheim Reich’s research, while

discussing global risk management practices and the

calculation and experience of vulnerability. He had

cast such a spell over the room that when it was time to

sustain a moment of silence, the room went absolutely

still: over 100 people on the floor of the Lab laying on

gym mats and moving blankets, not making a sound. It was

a powerful experience.

LISA The level of audience participation has been

pretty astounding. As someone who often shies away from

participatory art events myself, I’ve been extremely

impressed by peoples’ eagerness to engage in vulnerable

physical and intellectual exercises with a group of

strangers. In retrospect, another surprise is how

smoothly the whole series went. We didn’t get rained out

of any venues (thank you, drought!), nobody called in

sick, each event was well attended (a couple of them had

over 100 attendees!) and then of course getting written

up in The New Yorker; that was a huge surprise too.

Why only 12 and not 100 events?

SOPHIA We planned on 12 sessions to offer events

every weekend for three months. It was a tremendous

amount of work to sustain the logistics and public

presence of the project, while also generating and

archiving documentation for the full series. I’ll

gladly do 100 when we can figure out a good pace and

sustainable model for that scale of organizing.

LISA From the get-go we conceptualized Heavy

Breathing as a summer series. Twelve sessions had a

nice ring to it, and it seemed like something we could

handle. Through the process of organizing this series

we have been introduced to a number of incredible

artists and thinkers and writers and researchers

who have expressed an interest in leading a Heavy

Breathing session someday, and we have also received a

ton of positive feedback from people asking when Heavy

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Breathing will happen again. Organizing this series has

been an immense amount of work, but Sophia and I are

hoping to extend the project somehow. We just need to

win the lotto or find some interns or figure out another

way to make the process more sustainable.

We do have plans for ONE MORE top-secret Heavy

Breathing session that will take place at The Lab

next month in conjunction with their 24-hour Telethon

fundraiser. We are still working out the details, but

we are really excited about the artists we have lined

up. We also have a couple invitations to take Heavy

Breathing on the road and overseas… so we’ll see where

things lead!

How has the experience informed future projects for

the two of you as collaborators and as individual

practitioners?

SOPHIA One thing I realized early on is that the

project’s implicit division between activities of the

mind and activities of the body (implied in the way we

framed the challenge) was a false division that many of

the artists we worked with had already and explicitly

left behind. So the project became an opportunity for

people already working somatically and conceptually

to push on that relationship in their work, through

experimental group encounters. It reinforced my interest

in the speculative lecture form as the most interesting

container for the kind of research-informed movement

works I want to make. I’m a rogue academic, but my

training is hard to shake, and I’d still like to find

a satisfying way to work with lecture and essay forms.

Co-organizing Heavy Breathing with Lisa has

been a great complement to our collaborative project,

Manners, which engages our individual practices

towards creating site-specific movement and sculptural

installations. At a fundamental level, we’ve developed

a really effective and trusting creative partnership

through the process of talking through curatorial

decisions and then co-producing weekly events all

summer. The conversations we’ve had with Heavy

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Breathing artists about how to think of movement

within a visual system or how to engage witnesses

as participants have certainly fed our experiments

as Manners, which work in a similar space. This fall

Lisa and I will be working on an outdoor movement

and installation work on the campus of Sierra Nevada

College, with the opportunity to lead a workshop for

undergraduates in the art department. I’m approaching

the workshop as an opportunity to craft a Heavy

Breathing session of our own.

LISA Organizing this series with Sophia has

been an incredible adventure and learning experience.

Heavy Breathing is one cousin in an extended family

of projects we are working on, both together and

independently. The more desk-bound and disembodied

life feels, the more I find myself wanting to return

to my senses – touching, hearing, and seeing the world

around me. The projects Sophia and I are engaged in are

attempts to get physical, or at least to ask questions

about what it means to be physical in this complex and

shifting existential space we share. Heavy Breathing

has been an inspiring (and perspiring) opportunity to

think through some of these questions. We are currently

in the process of distilling the project into a Heavy

Breathing catalog, which will incorporate text, photos,

video, audio, and ephemera from each of the sessions.

If all goes according to plan the catalog will be

released this fall.

In the meantime, this seems like a good

opportunity to plug a Manners piece we are doing at di

Rosa on Sept 26. Sophia is arranging a performance with

Crystal Sepúlveda and Oscar Tidd that will take place

within the sculptural installation I built on site last

month for the Body Talk exhibition curated by Amy Owen.

This will be the second and final performance in the

installation and it is definitely not to be missed. It

will last from 2:00-3:00pm, after a performative and

somatic walk on di Rosa’s grounds led by Renée Rhodes.

We are also contributing to an 8-week visual arts/

movement series at Interface Gallery in January.

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Was it fun?

SOPHIA YES. It was really rewarding to support

so many great artists in experimenting outside of their

dominant idioms. I am so proud to have had a hand in

materializing these amazingly open and experimental

group experiences all summer. Most of all, the range

of people who participated in Heavy Breathing sessions

— many often attending multiple sessions - was the

greatest encouragement of all. In addition to the

enthusiastic presence of our community of fellow artists

and friends, we met so many people who had come because

of press or word of mouth. We wanted these classes to

be appealing and accessible to the general public, or at

least the segment that’s into fitness but interested in

alternatives to the norm. Knowing that we had succeeded

was very gratifying.

LISA It has been an incredibly fun and sweaty

summer. I’ve really enjoyed the range and depth of

conversation that has transpired over the last few

months and I’ll miss the weekly discussion/movement

ritual. It is a little disconcerting to suddenly have

free weekend-time after 12 consecutive weeks of Heavy

Breathing, but I’m looking forward to enjoying some

summer bbqs before the fall is officially upon us.

We are currently working on the Heavy Breathing

catalog and getting ready for next month’s Heavy

Breathing session at The Lab. We will be posting

info about that session, as well as the forthcoming

catalog on our facebook page: www.facebook.com/

heavyheavybreathing. We’d love to hear from

Curiously Direct readers if they have any questions

or thoughts about the project. We can be reached at

heavyheavybreathing@gmail.com. Thanks for the interview

and we hope to see you on Sept 26 at di Rosa!

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Heavy Breathing Begins!

June 18th at YBCA, San Francisco

Special contributions by Alexiteric Tea Clinic, Jessalyn Aaland, Stephanie Rolfs, Savannah Rusher, and Tessa Watson.

HEALING SOUND AND MOVEMENT with Jeepneys. Live music by Brian Tester. Jeepneys leads a group performance of a Pauline Oliveros Sonic Meditation score and a discussion of Deep Listening in relation to perception, empathy, and the body. Wear comfortable layers and socks, and bring something to lie on. Herbal eye pillows and hand-painted Jeepneys space-bodysuits in limited sizes will be available. Click here to listen.

PUMPED UP FOR NOTHING with Julz Hale Mary A rebellious exercise class where you’ll get pumped up to do nothing, while looking luxurious! The harder you try not to try, the more you’ll succeed in this campy, motivational, NOPE-posi workout. Dress lazy, fun, or “glamorously frumpy”: anything loose, silky, bright, sloppy, or wildly patterned. Bring props for activities typically devalued as “doing nothing,” and come ready for NOPE!

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LAUGHTER YOGA with Raphael NozLaughter yoga brings the lightning energy of laughter into spaces that need to be broken open. The hallowed temples of museum spaces can hush voices and inhibit ideas, impacting the health of our communities and our cultures. Come ready to laugh out loud.Click here to listen.

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Imagine somatics + Kate Bush + Ciara: we’ll get sweaty and circular, moving our A$$ muscles and feeling our insides together. Read at least one passage of Sappho (your choice; see resources below), and come ready to project yourself into history while invoking ancient greek women and contemporary goddesses. Wear gym shoes and an outfit that brings out your deep femme/tough exercise queen. RESOURCES:If not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho by Anne Carson Sappho | Poetry Foundation

Sweating to Sappho

June 27th at the Lake Merritt Bandstand

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The Pleasure Principle

July 11th at Real Time and Space, Oakland

“I am looking for the body, my body, which exists outside its patriarchal definitions. Of course that is not possible. But who is any longer interested in the possible?” Kathy Acker How is the imaginary possible? Compound movements, balancing between the push and the pull, thinking through it. Participants will discuss Emily Roysdon’s essay “Ecstatic Resistance” while doing a series of resistant training exercises. Bring a yoga mat and workout gear. RESOURCES: “Ecstatic Resistance” by Emily Roysdon

Session Three

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Script for The Pleasure Principle by Laura Boles Faw (excerpt):

“...While you continue to stretch, I want to quote dancer,

choreographer, teacher and founder of the San Francisco

Dancer’s Workshop, Anna Halprin. Halprin’s groundbreaking

work and postmodernist sensibilities led her to create an

“expressive arts healing movement.” As a side note, she was

also a teacher of the dancer and choreographer Yvonne Rainer

who later would be a teacher of Emily Roysdon.

According to Halprin “There are two ways of working with

the body. Essentially, two ways: one is the mind informs the

body and the mind is telling you what to do. That is one way

of working. The other is when the body itself informs the

mind. Your body impulses guide you. And then you do these

movements, and suddenly they become your movements.

They are a part of your creative process. And you are able from

that point of view to have experiences that go beyond words,

that go beyond your conscious thinking, but are a part of you.

That is the thrill of working with movement. So open up that

possibility.”

Keep stretching and breathing into and out of your body....

Halprin also speaks about movement as “the process of

finding your place in space.” So, find your place within

space and we will continue this training through a series of

one-minute instructions. I will give you one instruction

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per minute and respond to these instructions in any way

you choose. Bonanza will circulate the room and help you

make adjustments.

Laura gives instructions (1 per minute):

Each minute:

1. begin face down, on the belly

2. reach back for the tops of the feet, relax the chin to the

floor

3. relax the glutes, don’t grip, open hips are key

4. as you inhale, lift up, rise

5. inhale and exhale

6. kick into the feet and lift your gaze

7. inhale, exhale

8. soften the jaw, soften the gaze

9. point the toes directly to the sky, arch back

10. release, bend the knees

11. bring the chin back down to the floor

12. swim the hands forward, rest the forehead down

13. ‘windshield wipe’ the legs from side to side

14. release them down, heals splayed open

15. hands to the side, ear to the floor, rest

For the full text, click here.

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Hannah Cullwick and Arthur Munby had a wacky 19th century S&M affair. Get a little taste of their fascinating, though sometimes problematic relationship through S&M-inspired exercises and a lively discussion. Bring a partner you trust and wear clothes and shoes (preferably leather boots) that can get dirty. Queer and trans folks warmly welcomed. RESOURCES:Imperial Leather: Race, Cross-Dressing, and the Cult of Domesticity by Anne McClintock

Getting Dirty with Cullwick and Munby

July 19th at Real Time and Space, Oakland

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A note from Larry: I am choosing this astrological form of periodizing global history-future-time as a technology to bypass dualist thought in all its modalities. The organizational tool of astrological ages is space as time and time as space in which the body is absorbed and absorbent. While I encourage you to familiarize yourself with the structure of astrological ages, I hesitate to share any specific texts about the shifting of ages as I find the discussion of the aquarian ideal of “freedom” still tethered to the problems of verticality and power of the age of pisces (a historical freedom is not freedom). Our notions of freedom are on distant horizons. We do not know what we are gazing at. We cannot imagine the kind of human beings society will produce within this 2000 year cycle, but we can play at their prefigurative forms.

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Innovating Ether

July 26th at Omni Oakland Commons, Oakland

Session Five

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A workout disguised as a mixtape: or the other way around? Chance operations, non-sequiturs, and a lot of walking, looking, and running around. Come dressed for your Saturday night out. Live drums by Adan Ortega!

Pre-Party Dance Party

August 8th at Omni Oakland Commons, Oakland

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Body Paradox

August 15th at The Palace Theater, Oakland

Participants are taken through a series of movement exercises and styles ranging from Butoh to Voguing while embodying wearable sculptures to create a total mise en scène inside The Palace Theater, the oldest theater in Oakland’s Fruitvale district. Discussions include excerpts from Antonin Artaud’s The Theater and its Double and a selection of texts that address bodies, non-bodies, fluidity, queerness, ritual, and transcendence.

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There can be no knowledge without a community of researchers, nor any inner experience without a community of those who live it… Collective swimming with immersive audio. Bring bathing suit or immersible outfit (no cotton please); goggles + nose clips if desired; water bottle recommended. Towels and flotation devices will be provided.

Topos: That’s What She Said

August 16th at the YMCA Chinatown Pool, San Francisco

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TOPOS (excerpt):

place:

the lived sensible relation between two bodies that differ in being.

You are where you are. you are in this place, which surrounds nothing more

than you, which contains you. The first unchangeable limit of that which

surrounds you.

It’s the mainspring of Aristotle’s physics and it comes down to a gendered

and hierarchical containment, so Luce Irigaray has it. Woman contains man.

She’s his first place, the primordial topos is her proverbial and biological

womb – man’s place, his first place, is woman.

For Irigaray this imagining of woman as place, as container, as envelope to

man’s solid ‘thing’, has stuck with western metaphysics since Aristotle, in a

quote:

empire of language that so privileges the male sex as to

confuse it with the human race

end quote.

The secret condition of philosophy, she goes, is a giant coverup,

an obliteration of an inclusive relation between phallomorphism and the

maternal feminine.

Irigaray:

quote:

She does not set herself up as one, as a single female unit,

she is not closed up or around one single truth or essence.

The essence of a truth remains foreign to her. she neither has

nor is a being. And she doesn’t oppose a feminine truth to the

masculine truth.

end quote.

She rereads Aristotle to reject woman–place as an immobile limit

surrounding the man–embryo, and re–presents place as an open envelope,

a place in multiple senses – after all a woman’s place, in his model, is itself

in place, and that place is in place, and that place in place, and so on in an

endless enveloping.

For the full text, click here.

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e Cosmoconvulsive Anxiothenics

August 22nd at The Lab, San Francisco

In this session we will delve deeply into some embodied non-solutions to the problem of global risk management. What are global risk management practices and how do they relate to our nervous systems? Engage in an athletic and de-armoring session of Reichian somatics, full-corpus spasms, and galactic tingles. Wear comfortable clothes. Come prepared to move, breathe intensely, yell, and freak out a little.

**Bring a pillow please** Some issues we might hit on, either discursively or somatically:

ü The fear of life and the network of political unrest insurance

ü The miracle-terror of the vagus nerve

ü The level of co2 in the bloodstream

ü The 18th century grain tradeforming an internal intentional community of alkalinoids

ü Decalcinating and repotassiumizing the nervile chemoducts

ü Blue sky in mind

ü Lloyd’s of London

ü Who am I and why am I so anxious

ü The circulation of financial derivatives

ü Foucault’s critique of the repressive hypothesis

ü Tremoring polar bears

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RESOURCES:

Ulrich Beck, Living in the World Risk Society, 2006

Michel Foucault, Security Territory, Population, Lectures at the College de France, 1979 (especially lecture #2)

Benjamin Lee and Edward Lipuma, Circulatory Risks and the Speculative Habitus

Dusan Makavejev, WR: Mysteries of the Organism, 1971

Claire Souch, Pushing the Boundaries of Catastrophe Modeling, 2014

For the full Waiver of Liability, click here.

To hear the full score, click here.

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Monsters Herding Cats, and Ducks in a Row

August 23rd at Starline Social Club, Oakland

Stretching, rolling, crawling, and light contact improv for adults and baby or toddler friends. Readings of selected excerpts from children’s books and Moyra Davey’s Mother Reader. Bring blankets and comfortable clothes, and practice movements your child makes and/or prepare a movement for both of you to do together.

Settling In Babies In The Middle

But when we consider ourselves more than one at a timeAnd admit we glean movements through copy and mimeWe discover quite plainly that our actions aloneReveal through our bodies all the people we’ve knownThe patterns we’ve formed from symmetries deep inside usGain much of their shape from the others who guide us(Anna Craycroft, Developing Patterns of Movement)

BREATHINGJemima Puddle-duck was escorted home in tears on account of those eggs. She laid some more in June, and she was permitted to keep them herself: but only four of them hatched. Jemima Puddle-duck said that it was because of her nerves; but she had always been a bad sitter.(Beatrix Potter, “The Tale of Jemima Puddle-duck”)

STRETCHINGBut who gives it? And to whom is it given? Certainly it doesn’t feel like giving, which implies a flow, a gentle handing over, no coercion. But there is scant gentleness here, it’s too strenuous, the belly like a knotted fist, squeezing, the heavy trudge of the heart, every muscle in the body tight

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and moving, as in a slow-motion shot of a high-jump, the faceless body sailing up, turning, hanging for a moment in the air, and then—back to real time again—then plunge, the rush down, the result. (Margaret Atwood, “Giving Birth”)

LAYING, HAPPY BABY, AND ROLLING]beautiful he]stirs up still things]exhaustion the mind]settles down]but come O beloveds]for day is near(Sappho from Anne Carson’s If Not, Winter)

SITTING AND CRAWLINGCare is therefore not just like any manifestation of one’s own power to do this or that, but is something that one is empowered to do by someone else to whose needs one responds. If the power to care is of a different kind, could it lead to an alternative concept of what it means to act, not based on the belief that actions result from our own capacities or talents, but built on the realisation that they can also be called forth by the need of the other? (Jan Verwoert from “Personal Support: How to Care?”)

FLAILING AND LEARNING TO STANDhis mother called him “WILD THING!”and Max said “I’LL EAT YOU UP!”so he was sent to bed without eating anything.(Maurice Sendak, Where the Wild Things Are)

COPY EACH OTHERThis act [of recognition] rebounds in the case of the child in a series of gestures in which he experiences in play the relation between the movements assumed in the image and the reflected environment, and between this virtual complex and the reality it reduplicates—the child’s own body and the persons or things around him.(Jacques Lacan from Écrits. A Selection)

FOLLOW THE BABIESTo suffer with and for and against a child—maternally, egotistically, neurologically, sometimes with a sense of helplessness, sometimes with the illusion of learning wisdom—but always, everywhere, in body and soul, with that child—because that child is a piece of oneself.

To be caught up in waves of love and hate, jealousy even of the child’s childhood; hope and fear for its maturity; longing to be free of responsibility, tied by every fibre of one’s being.

That curious primitive reaction of protectiveness, the beast defending her cub, when anyone attacks or criticizes him—And yet no one more hard on him than I!(Adrienne Rich, “Anger and Tenderness” from Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution, 1976)

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We will combine stair trivia and aerobics inspired by ‘80s and ‘90s dance routines to travel up and down the Kezar Stadium steps. Wear comfortable shoes and layered clothing suitable for stretching, light aerobics and stair climbing. Bring water, snacks, and sunscreen. RESOURCES:Watch the YouTube video for the New Kids on the Block song “Step by Step” for inspiration.

Step by StepAugust 29th at Kezar Stadium, San Francisco

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The means for enduring the bombs of whiteness are not going to be exclusively cultural or political; you will have to train: run, invade, perform, smile, and reinvent yourself as a cockroach. Bring running shoes, headphones, mp3 player/phone, water, and weed (optional). Electric wheelchairs welcome! We will run Lake Merritt. Please don’t be discouraged if you don’t run often, we will stop frequently so our cucaracha crew can stay together. For GIFS and more images, click here.

Training For Exhaustion (For The Unintelligible)

August 30th at Lake Merritt Amphitheater, Oakland

Session Tw

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Heavy Breathing Movement Panel Discussion:

Oct 17th at The Lab, San Francisco

The Heavy Breathing Movement Panel was designed as a component of The Lab’s 24 Hour Telethon event: an endurance exercise to fundraise for one of the longest running, truly innovative art and music spaces in the Bay Area. Expanding on the original Heavy Breathing model (where one artist or collaboration leads participants in discussion/movement exercises) the Heavy Breathing Movement Panel took the form of a group discussion combining conversation with movement and embodiment exercises. The conversation explored the topic of critical somatics: thinking with and as bodies. Participants engaged in various movement and embodiment exercises while discussing questions such as:

ü How do our physical states and activities contribute to the way we think, observe, speak, and listen?

ü What kinds of physical movements are intrinsic to your practice, even if they are not visible or foregrounded as the “object” of your work?

ü What might discussion seminars, art classes, poetry readings, lectures, reading groups, etc. look like if we prioritized the ways bodily states can produce and contribute to intellectual and creative work?

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The conversation included: Olive Blackburn, Lydia Brawner, David Buuck, Zen Cōhen, CA Conrad, Ben Furstenburg, Shanti Ganesh, Christina Linden, Julz Hale Mary, Neve Mazique, Lucas Murgida, Christian Nagler, Oscar Tidd, and Dena Beard, as well as members of the Telethon audience.

Moderated by Sophia Wang and Lisa Rybovich Crallé.

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CAROLINE ALEXANDER was born and raised in San Francisco and

graduated with a degree in theater, dance, and performance studies

from UC Berkeley.

LARRY ARRINGTON is a dancer, choreographer, and teacher whose

choreography has been shown at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts,

Z Space, The Lab, CounterPULSE, ODC, The Garage, Cell Space, Mama

Calizo’s Voice Factory, Supperclub, backyards, living-rooms, and in

New York at The American Realness Festival. She has been an artist in

residence at Headlands Center for the Arts, CounterPULSE, Kunst-Stoff

Arts, the Garage, and ODC’s Sandbox Series.

CHANI BOCKWINKEL is a dancer person who works in photography

and video. Her work was most recently shown at AUNTS, NYC and the

Collage Festival in Philladelphia.

BONANZA, the collective practice of Conrad Guevara, Lindsay Tully,

and Lana Williams, centers around ideas of abstraction and questions

of authorship, while dismantling ideas of the heroic artist. They have

exhibited at Tmoro Projects, Interface Gallery, Artists’ Television Access,

and n/a in the Bay area.

8ULENTINA’s name is inspired by Bulent Ersoy, a legendary

transgender Turkish singer. For 8ulentina, DJing is about creating a

personal archive that tells a story; it can take the form of a Turkish

trance remix, an Egyptian Mahraganat track, or a sad R&B track.

JOSHUA KIT CLAYTON is a musician, artist, and deejay based in San

Francisco. He has been releasing and deejaying music in the space that

spans and surrounds techno, house, dub, and noise for over 15 years,

with recordings on a variety of labels including Orthlorng Musork,

Cytrax, ~Scape, DropBeat, Soul Jazz, Context, Parallel, Mille Plateaux,

Vertical Form, Background, Nummer, Musique Risquée, and Car Park.

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ZEN COHEN received her MFA in Art Studio at the University of

California at Davis and her BFA in Media Arts from the California College

of the Arts in Oakland, CA. Her video, photo and performance projects

have been presented in venues such as the Yerba Buena Center for

the Arts, SFMOMA, deYoung Museum, Centro Atlántico Arte Moderno,

ARTSpace New Haven, Vanity Projects, Center for New Music & Audio

Technologies at UC Berkeley, Recombinant Media Lab, SOMArts,

Krowswork, 21 Grand, Roxie Cinema and Artists Television Access (ATA).

LAURA BOLES FAW’s work consists of investigations through

sculptural objects, installations, curatorial projects, and collaborative

ventures. She examines spatial and social constructions and looks to

create new meanings and transformative fictions. She has exhibited

at Scrawl Center for Drawing, Ever Gold Gallery, Alterspace, Meridian

Gallery, the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History, and Vast Space

Projects in Las Vegas.

XANDRA IBARRA is an Oakland-based performance artist from the El

Paso/Juarez border who performs and works under the alias of La Chica

Boom. She uses hyperbolized modes of racialization and sexualization

to test the boundaries between her own body and coloniality,

compulsory whiteness, Mexicanidad, and proper and improper ethnic,

gender, and queer subjects. As a community organizer, Ibarra’s work is

located within immigrant, anti-rape, and prison abolitionist movements.

JEEPNEYS is a Los Angeles-based multimedia artist. Named after

the iconic converted WWII army jeeps of the Philippines, she is of

mixed race Filipina and Slovak heritage and her work focuses on the

complexities of identity, memory, and language through a decolonizing

and critical lens.

CHRISTINA LINDEN began working as Associate Curator of Painting

& Sculpture at the Oakland Museum of California in the winter of

2013. Prior to her tenure at OMCA, Linden worked as an independent

curator and writer based in Oakland with projects at SFMOMA, Kadist

Art Foundation, and Stanford. She teaches as visiting graduate faculty

at the San Francisco Art Institute, holds a Master of Arts in Curatorial

Studies from Bard College, and a Bachelor of Arts in Art History from

New York University.

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JULZ HALE MARY is a multi-media performance artist who exposes

the absurdity of polite society, with a particular focus on interrogating

the white patriarchy by creating campy renderings of feminized

pathologies. Their work has been featured at SOMArts, The Lab, Artists’

Television Access, Submission, The Stud, Seattle LGBT Film Festival,

Boston LGBT Film Festival, and The Center for Sex and Culture.

OLIVIA MOLE was born in London, England in 1975. She attended

The Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art at Oxford University, and

received an MA in Production Design from the National Film and

Television School in the UK. Her work has been shown guerrilla style

in her own garage, at Steven Wolf Fine Arts, Southern Exposure, the

Wattis Institute, and Pro Arts Oakland.

CHRISTIAN NAGLER is an artist and writer based in Oakland,

California. He works at the intersection of bodily movement and geo-

financial systems. Recent projects include Market Fitness and Yoga

for Adjuncts, which pursues economic critique through kinesthetic,

participatory performances. Currently, he is doing graduate research on

issues of performance in economic discourse and completing his first

novel, The Capitalist.

RAPHAEL NOZ is a San Francisco-based artist and educator whose

performances have been shown at The San Diego Museum of Art, Berkeley

Art Museum, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, as well as many galleries

and venues in the Bay Area and beyond. He holds an MFA from CCA and an

MS from Wheelock College in Education, and is currently a Root Division

studio artist.

BRONTEZ PURNELL is author of the cult zine “Fag School,” frontman

for his band “The Younger Lovers,” and founder and choreographer

of the Brontez Purnell Dance Company. He earned a B.F.A. in Theatre

and Contemporary Dance at California State University, East Bay, just

published his first novella,” Johnny Would You Love Me (if My Dick Were

Bigger),” with Rudos and Rubes, and will publish a second novel, “Since I

Laid My Burden Down…,” with the Sister Spit imprint of City Lights Books.

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KATE RHOADES is an Oakland-based multimedia artist. She received

her BFA from the Columbus College of Art and Design and her MFA from

Mills College. Rhoades has been a guest lecturer at the University of

California, Berkeley and has taught art students of all ages. Her work

has been exhibited in art venues, alleys, and hotel rooms across the

United States and Canada.

CLAUDE LINDEN SMITH was born in September 2014. Claude screams

a lot and mostly in a happy way. While rolling used to be a favorite

hobby, as of May 2015 there is a lot of crawling by sliding around on the

belly like a lizard. Standing up with support is also a current interest,

and a good guess is that there will be walking and running by August.

STAIRWELL’S is a hybrid project – part curatorial platform, part social

engagement – run by artists Carey Lin and Sarah Hotchkiss. Founded

in 2011, we organize site-specific exhibitions, interactive events and

facilitated explorations of the urban landscape. We aim to create new

models for audiences to engage with art by shifting exhibitions out of

traditional gallery settings and into transitional spaces like stairwells,

garages, balconies and windows.

BRIAN TESTER has been involved in music and art-focused practices

and collaborations since the late 1990s, bringing a focus on sonic

detail, left field allusion, and an intuitive grasp of improvisation

to each musical project he has been involved in. In addition to solo

appearances, he currently performs in the minimal electronics duo

Spaceburn, and in a constantly morphing variety of bands and projects,

as performer and engineer.

ELI THORNE is a transgender Oakland based hybrid artist born in

Harrogate, England, and raised in Santa Cruz, California. He received his

BFA from UC Berkeley and his MFA from Mills College. His work has been

shown in a variety of spaces in the Bay Area, the greater US, and Canada.

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LISA RYBOVICH CRALLÉ is an interdisciplinary artist based in the

Bay Area. Her installations and collaborative performance projects

incorporate elements of drawing, painting, and sculpture to address the

possibilities of spectatorship and embodiment. Lisa received an MFA

from UC Davis in 2011. In addition to her studio practice, Lisa currently

teaches sculpture at California College of the Arts.

SOPHIA WANG creates and performs movement-based works in

collaboration with performance artists, writers, and visual and sound

artists. She earned a PhD in English from U.C. Berkeley, and integrates

her research and performance practices through writing and curatorial

projects focused on critical somatics: thinking with and as bodies.

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To the community of artists, curators, writers, and friends who offered

their time, ideas, and encouragement in support of this project: Jessalyn

Aaland, Luca Antonucci, Dena Beard, Olive Blackburn, Lydia Brawner, Sarah

Burke, Joshua Kit Clayton, CA Conrad, Keith Denatale, Braden Weeks Earp

/ The Workshop Residence, Courtney Fink, Shanti Ganesh, Aaron Harbour,

Leif Hedendal, Jennifer Hennesy, Keith Hennessy, Sam Hertz, JM Hoff,

Sarah Hotchkiss, Rachel Howard, Bessie Kunath, Christina Linden, Katya

Min, Tom Morrison, Amy Owen, Savannah Rusher, Pat Rybovich, Clarke

Selman, Shimeko, Emma Spertus, Oscar Tidd, Tessa Watson, Kim West,

and David Wilson.

We would be nowhere without: The SF Chinatown YMCA Pool, Edoff

Memorial Bandstand, Kezar Stadium, The Lab, Lake Merritt Amphitheater,

Oakland Omni Commons, The Palace Theater, Real Time & Space, Southern

Exposure, Starline Social Club, and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.

Catalog Design: ALTR

Risograph Printing & Binding: Colpa

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For more information please visit

www.heavyheavybreathing.com.

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