THE CLUB OF WHAT IF, SESSION #10: KATALIN
A playful séance for bodily imagination, whirpooling time and cassette tapes.
other
SUN 12.02.2023
4:00pm — 9:00pm
Z - Zentrum für Proben und Forschung
LANGUAGE, ACCESSIBILITY AND CONTENT
The experience is guided in English, and a good understanding of the language is mandatory.
Players should be comfortable with:
– Being in the dark
– Listening to musical sounds coming from the dark
– Spend most of the workshop in a non-verbal social environment
Moreover, players will be asked to engage in the following activities, that they can scale to their liking:
– Non-performative movement exercises
– Lying down on the floor, or on mats, or sitting by walls
– Breathing and voicing exercises
The experience operates on an opt-in, opt-out policy: every activity will be explained in advance, and you are free to take a step back, scale, or choose not to participate in something that doesn’t feel right! Our policy is that ‘the door is always open’. While as whole, we require you take part in our activities, players are encouraged to voice their needs throughout the experience.
The experience is not accessible for players with severe physical disabilities, or hearing and speech disabilities.
The workshop mildly touches upon the following subjects, as a loose poetic frame:
– Death, dying and the ideas about the afterlife
– Surveillance and exposure
INTRO:
Katalin Juhász passed away on December the 26th 2015 at the age of seventy-two. Unknown to anyone until her death, she left behind a secret archive of audio cassettes containing private conversations, field recordings, ambient sounds and collages.
‘Katalin’ is an experience that takes this remarkable, real-life archive as its starting point to find unknowable languages for the now. We will engage with the archive in ways that feel both familiar and unusual – eventually producing our very own cassette tape. The past is a swirling whirlpool to which we leap into so we may heart what is present.
WHAT TO EXPECT:
The experience takes a total of 4 hours, following a workshop format and including breaks. Players are requested to be present throughout the full length of the experience.
Throughout the experience, we will gently challenge perception through activities of movement, imagination and attention. These activities are designed to be easy, inclusive, and with the possibility to scale them to one’s own individual needs. There is no way of doing them wrong, and guidance will be provided throughout. No previous experience needed, everything will be explained on spot.
Please come in clothes you feel comfortable moving around in.
We will not be doing physically intensive exercises, but it’s a good idea to eat lighter meals before coming.
ÁRON BIRTALAN
Áron Birtalan (they/them) is an artist, musician and student of theology who makes and guides real-life games, mystical practices, unruly thoughts, unusual gatherings and pedagogical initiatives. Through their work, Áron encourages people to form intimate bonds with the unknown – and in there unfold new aesthetics and erotics of curiosity, grief and joy.
Áron currently lives in Stockholm, working on an artistic PhD project. They are also active as a musician and run a three-week children’s camp in rural Hungary