Field of possibilities

A few thoughts and a workshop around some possibile uses of improvisation

Over time, I began to realise how important improvisation is in my life and practice. It certainly is thanks to contact improvisation, but over the years it has also become an important tool supporting my teaching and work.

For some time now, thanks to my ongoing collaboration with Daniela Lorenzi of Atelier A14 in Milan, I have had the opportunity to experiment with it in the printing process, as part of my research on somatic image making.

Working together, we discovered how incorporating improptu gestures and elements can help add variability to a process that is often oriented towards the re-production of identical images.

The results of this collaboration prompted us to think about how to share this experience with other people. In February this year we offered the first workshop Field of Possibilities: improvisation in the printing process, which was attended by a group of participants from the worlds of design, illustration and printing.

The workshop included several somatic warm-ups, which prepared the ground for an exploration the possibilities of real-time composition, eventually transferring the compositions onto paper through blind embossing and screen printing.

A new edition of the workshop will take place in Milan on 16-17 November. For info you can write to a14@a14.br.com.

Some old and fresh news

In the (more than one) year since my last post, many things have happened, including talking about Somatic research for design at Université de Strasbourg and at the Corpo-Real Interior Design Masters of ArtEZ Zwolle. Hope to write more about it in the near future.

I also participated with Emma Hoette at the EURAU24 Conference In-Presence/Body in Space which took place last June at Politecnico di Milano: our performance/presentation was called The art of arriving. A somatic approach to a critical understanding of the built environment. A text of the same title is now available in this open-access publication. During and after the conference Emma and I have had many conversations about how often the discourse about the body in design is presented in a disembodied way - and how conferences should reconsider how research is presented.

Finally, for my Italian-speaking readers, I was recently interviewed by Giulia Giordano, a student at the MA at IUAV University in Venice, as part of her thesis research on somatic education. We discussed several issues around somatics, improvisation, teaching and design. You can read it on my Medium page.

As usual, you’re more than welcome to get in touch at es@es-se.it.