A series of three workshops as one continuous three-week program, through three very different artistic practices. All working with ritual. We connected on and offline from our different homes, temporary residences or studios, based in various countries.
These workshops were: Decolonizing Rituals with Fazle Shairmahomed, The Good Stuff Doesn’t Sit Still with Maureen de Jong | ‘t kleinkookbedrijf, Sense of Place with Arita Baaijens. The online sessions took place on three consecutive Thursdays in November 2020 and ran for about 2 hours. In the week before each session, participants were introduced to the artist and their practice per daily e-mails, which included material for reflection, daily ‘tasks’, incentives and visual inspiration. Everyone was invited to keep a log of each week; as a memory, a trace or a map of their journey through the practice.
With this preparatory offline engagement and commitment by everybody who took part, Dancing on the Edge was seeking to create an embodied experience, where we could be ‘present’ in a way that online workshops don’t usually achieve. All three artists invited us to approach their practice in a very personal, self-reflective way. To draw a line of connection through our past, our bodies, how we relate to our immediate surroundings; with attention for inner rootedness, nourishment, ways of being together. The logs provide beautiful traces of all of this, both in image and word. The visual reflection (GIF in the header) is compiled by designer Corine Datema.
Sense of Place – Arita Baaijens
Landscapes and places are expressive, they are alive, contain wisdom and influence us in many ways. How can we listen to what landscapes have to tell us? Unearthing the key landscapes which have shaped us, we tuned our awareness to the subtle, intricate ways that nature and places communicate with us.
Place = Space + Meaning
‘I don’t feel right unless I’ve got the sea and mountains nearby. People are mostly a product of where they were born and raised. How you think and feel’s always linked to the lay of the land, the temperature. The prevailing winds, even.’ – Haruki Murakami
Traces
Places visited during Rituals of Change
Familiar place but never visited
Often seems abandoned deserted
Busy street but few people in the small park
Quiet not pretty place to be alone lonely
—–
Human x Nonhuman sounds
Sieren honking
Police talking
— Wind
Birds singing
Water (while birds swim through)
Dogs barking
—–
Turning my head
Listening to the leaves and the wind
(on my face)
—–
The Fig Tree in Our Back Garden
It speaks my mother’s tongue, literally
I feel that the tree has my mom’s voice
Significant childhood landscapes
Each Summer,
a week of eternal freedom over at my great aunt’s.
Endless supply of ice cream,
riding on a tractor,
sunbathing on a staircase.
—–
Standing or walking or riding my bike outside the city
In all directions you can look very far
Nearby, I know, is the sea.
Always windy
When there’s no wind time stands still.
—-
Our building stairs
Our communal space
connecting with the neighbours Me & the neighbours’ children running up and down hiding jumping, screaming, singing & calling each other from that window
Our window to the outside world.
To see the traces of the first workshop, click here.
To see the traces of the second workshop, click here.
To read more about the full program, click here.
Credits
Artists – Fazle Shairmahomed, Maureen de Jong, Arita Baaijens
Curator – Natasja van ’t Westende
Creative Producer – Agnes Matthews
Designer Logs & Visual Reflection – Corine Datema
Marketing – Bora Sirin
Produced and initiated by Dancing on the Edge
With support of Amsterdam Fonds voor de Kunst
