COOP ~ On Tradition – Future Ancestors: let rhythm be your guiding light from Month to Month

Seminar 7: 14 - 20 July 2021

“There exists for each passerby a theme, a melody that is his/hers and no one else's, who has sought it since birth and before all centuries, pars, hereditas mea. How, where to discern it?”

–– Cristina Campo, from “Il flauto e il tappeto”

Maybe we have a common ear, but voice is the unbearable condition of thinking. It's a thought, in a manner of speaking, because after all it's a pain, a tremendous pathos that is cast out in the voice. Man does not tolerate his truth. And therefore his/her is a stutter, this stuttering in this voice, the same one that protrudes and says something that he/she does not tolerate. That's why he/she doesn't say it eloquently, saying it like a babble, like a moan. When you listen to a man, a woman, a child is all in his/her voice. We are one ear in the sense that my listening must help the other to listen to him/herself and have a space of tenderness towards this terrible groan, this pity that has just stammered. My listening should help the other person to listen and soften their gaze towards things that are pain. But for him or her or them these are unbearable. The voice is different, it's not a single, processed thought because voice is the thought of the difficulty one has with oneself, of the unbearable that always has flesh within us, what we think to be and would like to be or what we would like to be, but are not. The other, in order to get to this, must learn to listen to it too and say: It’s pitiful, It’s really tender.

KEY WORDS racial trauma, healing, self-education-unlearning, sensuality, improvisation, perception, more-than-human worlds, reconciliation, cooperation, bowen technique, body, help, inner child, joy, garden with On Tradition/Future Ancestors Group, Films by Francesco Bernardelli, Bowen Technique by Georgi Ilchev

Seminar 6: 3 - 6 June 2021

KEY WORD OVERVIEWS:

Presence, Composition, Storytelling, Energy Resonance, Proximity,

Scale, Rehearsal, Visioning, Re/Imagination, Prayer

Workshop Structure:

3th June/Day 1

10:00 - 13:00

Face to Face with Ghalya Saadawi

In the morning there is the opportunity to start your COOP days with a face to face with Ghalya Saadawi. For this, you can bring a question relating to the COOP or use the dialogue however is most useful for you.

(please sign up in google drive sign up sheet)

Lunch break

14:00 - 16:00 - Coop Catch UP

- Gratitude Diary

- Grounding

- Nourishing Rhythm # 1

After many months of meeting online, we will use the afternoon to reconnect in person, using a series of simple choreographic exercises.

16:00- 17:00 - COOP SUMMIT GUIDELINES by Nikos Doulos

Dinner break

19:30 – 22:00

CURATED COOP EVENING:

For every evening we invite you to curate a series of events. This could be introducing a film, a DJ set list, an activity, or however you would like to use the time.

4th June/Day 2

10:00 - 13:00

Face to Face with guest theory tutor Rachel O'Reilly

(please sign up in google drive sign up sheet)

10:00 - 11:30 Site-Specific Singing with Miyuki Inoue

Miyki Inoue will guide us into her practice of Site-Specific Singing inviting us to listen and interact with the multiple soundscapes both architecture and outdoor, inner and outer, and into the study of our attention moving from each individual body into a collective acoustic entity.

For more information please check her archive: http://inouemiyuki.com/pages/sss.html

Nourishing Rhythm # 2

12:00- 13:00 Discussion about COOP SUMMIT

Lunch break

14:00 - 17:00

Face to Face with guest theory tutor Rachel O'Reilly

16:00- 18:30 Reflection

Dinner break

19:30 – 22:00

CURATED COOP EVENING

5th June/DAY 3

10:00 - 11:30 Site-Specific Singing with Miyuki Inoue

Nourishing Rhythm # 3

12:00- 13:00 Re/Storytelling with Spiritual Mothers /Future Ancestors

Lunch break

14:00 - 16:00

Re/Storytelling with Spiritual Mothers /Future Ancestors

16:00 - 18:30

Reflection

Dinner break

19:30 – 22:00

CURATED COOP EVENING

6th June/DAY 4

10:00 - 11:30 Site-Specific Singing with Miyuki Inoue

12:00- 13:00

Nourishing Rhythm # 4

Lunch break

14:00- 15:00 - Rehearsal

15:00- 18:30 Performance

Dinner break

19:30 -

Coop Catch UP

Gratitude Diary

Poem by Carol

Seminar 5: 16 - 19 April 2021

April COOP Overview:

For the April session we will in particular focus on storytelling and scoring. Working within our smaller groups ‘Spiritual Mothers’ and ‘Future Ancestors’ we will allocate time for the group’s also to work together to intersect the group’s research in a creative assignment. This will focus on how we create intersect between story telling and scoring and wider questions of spirituality, environmentalism, and social justice. For this time, we will also work from the position of quick, intuitive making.

We will also welcome our guest MPA who will share her practice and also be there to be part of guiding and responding to the creative task.

For these sessions there will be also the possibility to inscribe for Rory, Snejanka and also face to face with theory tutor Rachel O’Reilly where you can ask specific questions on references that can be helpful for your practice.

And of course we will welcome Carol with a reading on the poem she is currently developing in relation to the COOP group.

Workshop Structure:

16th April/Day 1

10:00 - 13:00

‘Spiritual Mothers’ and ‘Future Ancestors’Study Group

* Gratitude diary

* Study Groups program

FUTURE ANCESTORS

For our second session we focus on what it means to be a custodian. Starting with the short essay ‘The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction’ by Ursula Le Guin, we will reflect on this essay to think about the different ways we become caretakers of knowledge and of our world. For the session you are invited to think about a story/or piece of information that is important to you that came from another voice and the ways in which you might take care of it, share and let it speak. At what point do we become both the carrier and transmitter? With this in mind, we will further continue thinking about the score as a carrier bag of 3 dimensional time, and how it can be used as a tool of political agency and prophecy. In creating a score, who are we making it for, for what voices or entities, how will they resound, be interpreted/reinterpreted, and for what time?

Preparation For The Session

* The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction:

https://otherfutures.nl/uploads/documents/le-guin-the-carrier-bag-theory-of-fiction.pdf

* Think about a story/voice of piece of information from another that is

important to you and how you would tell that story

SPIRITUAL MOTHERS

For our second session we focus on the reading of the first chapter of the Gospel of Luke. In that sense we enter both the question of prophecy and as well of storytelling. We will experiment with storytelling, what are the stories that are important to us and that need our voices to survive, to be told and illuminated differently. Please find the text in language you are comfortable with. As this is not a religious class, we will concentrate both in our own personal interpretation and as well we will try to observe Luke's emphasis on spiritual versus biological motherhood. We will reflect also on the particularly important place women play in the Gospel, and the manner in which this reflects on the transformation of the experience of language.

Preparation For The Session

* Gospel of Luke, chapter 1:

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke+1&version=NKJV

* Think about what are the most important moments in the story and create a different narrative, what if you are about to tell that story, what will be the hierarchy of events according to your sensibility.

* Assignment #2

Lunch break

14:00 - 16:30 - Time allocated for Assignment #2

17nd April/Day 2

10:00 - 13:00 Face to Face with Rory and Snejanka

10:00 - 13:00 Face to Face with Rachel

10:00 - 13:00 Time allocated for Assignment #2

Lunch break

14:00 - 16:30 Time allocated for Assignment #2

18:00- 20:00 We will be joined by artist MPA. With MPA, she will introduce key aspects of her research relating to her practice as an artist, focusing on questions of the future of spirituality, performance, activism.

MPA

(b. 1980, Redding, CA. Lives in Joshua Tree and Los Angeles) uses meditative, durational, theatrical and actionist modes of performance to engage the energetic as a potential material in live work. She creates a new theatre performance in which she focusses on telepathic techniques to move matter.

18rd April/DAY 3

10:00 - 13:00 Face to Face with Rory and Snejanka

10:00 - 13:00 Face to Face with Rachel

10:00 - 13:00 Time allocated for Assignment #2

Lunch break

14:00 - 16:30 Time allocated for Assignment #2

19th April /DAY 4

10:00 - 13:00

Meeting with theory tutor guest Rachel O'Reilly

Lunch break

14:00 - 16:30 Time allocated for Assignment #2

18:00- 19:00 Presentations

short break

19:15- 20:00 Collective reflection

20:00 Gratitude diary and A Poem by Carol R. Kallend

Seminar 4: 21 - 23 March 2021

Our March session will begin a new chapter of our work where we focus on how we deepen our work together through creative manifestation.

The 3 days will focus on preparing for the concert which will take place on Monday morning. We would especially like to consider what it means to rehearse, repeat and re-contextualise. Acknowledging the challenges of the online format, we would like to propose splitting the session into 3 half days, with extra sessions taking place between March and April so that we can maintain both connection and also energy. To do this, we will create a session for the smaller groups ‘Spiritual Mothers’ and ‘Future Ancestors’ in which we also like the two groups to find creative outcomes that connect the group’s research together. This will especially focus on how we create intersectionality between spirituality, environmentalism, and social justice.

Furthermore, we would like to make 1 on 1, face to face sessions so we can get to know what you are working on in your individual practices.

Workshop Structure:

21st March

10:00 - 13:00 - GROUNDING

* Gratitude diary

* Nourishing Rhythms

* Coop Catch UP

Lunch break

14:00 - 16:30 - Rehearsal Time allocated for Monday’s morning concert.

22nd March

10:00 - 13:00 IMA ABASI-OKON

We will be joined by artist Ima Abasi-Okon. With Ima, she will introduce key aspects of her research relating to her practice as an artist, focusing on questions of language, music, materiality and prophecy.

For this sessions we will also be joined by theory tutor Rachel O’Reilly.

Lunch break

14:00 - 16:30 - Rehearsal Time allocated for Monday’s morning concert.

23rd March

10:00 - 13:00

* Presentation of the Concert & feedback

* with theory tutor guest Rachel O’Reilly.

Lunch break

14:00 - 16:00 - A Poem by Carol R. Kallend and collective reflection.

Seminar 3: 20 - 21 February 2021

Our February session will continue the exploration of each other's stories through the Intersectional Identity Pizza. As we already experienced whether this is a pizza, or any other food or interpretation from your own cultural background. We hope that this practice can enable you to think how you feel comfortable introducing yourself to the group and enable us to get to know each other, the different traditions we come from, and to relate each individual voice to the rest of the group.

Taking the baking further from the pizzas in January we aim for 11 pizzas in February and for that reason we will work during two days in order to avoid indigestion. The pizzas will be interwoven with a series of simple choreographic exercises as part of Nourishing Rhythms. We also aim to work in smaller research groups on Sunday afternoon for some section of time which will allow us to focus on the different research we all bring as individuals that can enrich the Coop and how this will enrich and can interweave with our collective thinking. As part of this, we also hope to set in motion how we can gradually work towards the presentation at the end of the year.

Workshop Structure:

Day 1

10:00 - 13:00 - Grounding and Breakfast Pizza Session

- Gratitude Diary

- Nourishing Rhythms exercises

- Breakfast Pizza Session -

Lunch break

14:00 - 17:00 - Afternoon Pizza Session

Reflection

Day 2

10:00 - 13:00 - Breakfast Pizza Session and Nourishing Rhythms

Lunch break

14:00 - 16:00 - Working in smaller groups

Future Ancestors

Facilitated by Rory, we will think more specifically about what a “Future Ancestor” means to us. Introducing also principles of 7th Generation Stewardship, we will think about how we find resonance between experiences of time, our political and personal experiences and wider environmental concerns. In particular we will also think about the function of the ‘score’ as a creative act as a process of resounding, reconnecting, reconsidering, reimagining and reawakening as a mean to embody a 3 dimensional experience of time. To what extent can we also expand our understanding of what a score can be.

Spiritual Motherhood

Facilitated by Snejanka, we will think more specifically about contemporary forms of sainthood, by looking especially into female voice in different mystic traditions, and the role and forms of a voice- singing, prayer, healing, service- or those marginalised voices within traditions that are sort of seeds of future within the past. Vitae of female saints, marginalised voices within tradition, transmission, embodied knowledge, hermeneutics, re-story telling, experience, nuance, poetry are some of the key words of our exploration together.

16:15 - 17:00- A Poem by Carol R. Kallend and collective reflection

Preparation Needed:

PIZZA

Please prepare your interpretation of 'The Pizza’ based on what you would like to share with the group in a way that you feel comfortable.

For each person we will reserve a time slot of 20-30 minutes.

ACCOMPANYING MUSIC OR SOUND

As an extra element, we would like to invite you to share an accompanying song, music or sound for your Pizza that is important to you which we will interweave within the choreographic exercises.

SMALLER STUDY GROUPS

Sign up your name in the sheet on a google drive when you choose one group based on your individual research work and on your more specific interests. The reason to create a smaller group is to enable us to go more in depth and have more time for discussion for each of you. The sessions of both groups will be recorded so you are not confronted with an impossible task - all produced material of each group will be available for the rest of the group for learning purposes. The idea of separating the group in two smaller units is simply to respond in a more adequate way to the circumstances and the fact that we are working in a larger group and this presents objective difficulty in having time and keeping detail and precision. In that sense it is a preparation work for our further collective thinking session in March where the groups and the themes will converge.

Seminar 2: 19 January 2021

Dear Everyone,

We hope this finds you very well and you are having a good start to the year. With this email, we would like to give you the information for the second session.

On Tradition - Future Ancestors #2

Tuesday 19th January 10:00 - 21:00

online session

https://whereby.com/tradition-future-ancestors

Overview:

For the January session we will continue reflecting on the notion of tradition and the gap between past and future bringing the question of referencing and score. In our morning session we will create space for re-sounding about what are the politics of representation and referencing in the group. How do we reference and what? Why we do reference. This work will allow us eventually to recognise and work towards a common ground of differentiation of struggles and their acknowledgment in their human significance.

This reflection will be followed by the introduction of nourishing rhythm exercise based on the relation between the individual and the group and Intersectional Identity Pizza. Whether this is a pizza, or any other food or interpretation from your own cultural background, we hope the exercise can enable us to get to know each other and think about how we share what we would like to of our lives, to the rest of the group. Sharing 8 pizzas in January, and 8 pizzas in February, we will interweave a series of simple choreographic exercises as part of Nourishing Rhythms that invite us to think about how we meet as individuals, find common ground in our differences. Through these exercises, we further hope to build a vocabulary that invites us to think how we can use 'scores’ to create resounding narratives that acknowledge the gap and its transformative potential.

Workshop Structure:

10:00 - 13:00 - Morning Grounding

- Gratitude Diary

- Collective Thinking: What has stayed with you / Been important to you since the first session? Speaking about issues of reference. How do we enable to explore the COOP through all rich cultural diversity we bring as a group? What meaning we give to the relation between individual and group.

- Nourishing Rhythms

Nourish - from Latin nutrire ‘feed, cherish’

Rhythm - from Green Rhuthmos ‘to flow’

Introductory Choreographic Exercises that focus on scoring, rhythm. What is a score that is important to you? Invite each person to select a piece of music based on something important.

14:00 - 17:00 - Afternoon Pizza Session and Nourishing Rhythms

19:30 - 21:00 - A Poem by Carol R. Kallend and collective reflection

Preparation Needed:

PIZZA

Please prepare your interpretation of 'The Pizza’ based on what you would like to share with the group in a way that you feel comfortable. As an exercise, we are using it as a way to get to know one another, the traditions we are part of, and things that are important to us.

For each person we will reserve a time slot of 20 minutes.

We will create a sign up sheet on a google drive so we know who will present this month, and who in February.

ACCOMPANYING MUSIC OR SOUND

As an extra element, we would like to invite you to share an accompanying song, music or sound for your Pizza that is important to you which we will interweave within the choreographic exercises.

GOOGLE DRIVE

Over the course of the week, we will make a Google Drive which will enable us to put all texts, share references and keep in contact. You will receive an email inviting you to access the file.

Our Best Wishes

Rory and Snejanka