A Curriculum for the Non-Unified Self
PARTICIPANTS: Zinzi Minott (Dancer / Artist), Stevphen Shukaitis (Cultural Theorist & Publisher), Fiona James (Artist)
“What the beyond of teaching is really about is not finishing oneself, not passing, not completing…”
Fred Moten and Stefan Harney. The University and The Undercommons.
This event drew on two aspects of Imagist practice. Firstly, a consideration of their approach to the human figure in which the body was fragmented and distorted. Secondly, their coalescing around the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where teachers such as Ray Yoshida, Kathleen Blackshear and Whitney Halstead inspired and provoked their students to develop a style that was informed by alternative art histories and vernacular material cultures. Taking a cue from this foundational Imagist curriculum, which was motivated by a desire to decentralise and diversify, the event considered what an arts curriculum for a non-unified self might look like; one that considers the subjectivities of its students, and the possibility of knowledge production, to be always in flux and contested. The CCA invited practitioners from different disciplines to reflect on the process of the transmission of knowledge and to propose their own curricula as a series of workshops. Aspects of each will be published on our website after the events as a distributable curriculum for the non-unified self.
THE UNRULY BODY
ZINZI MINOTT
2–3:30pm
This workshop is for those bodies that cannot be ruled, are tired of being ruled, exhausted by being ruled, or of not fitting into the rules. Born out of Minott’s own experience of living with, in and through an unruly body both within and outside the dance world you will spend time exploring notions of bodily unruliness. The workshop is open to anyone, with various access needs; movement is led by the individual, so it is possible for participants to work within their own ability and requirements.
For tickets click here. Max participants: 20
COMBINATION ACTS
STEVPHEN SHUKAITIS
4–5pm
A participatory session dramatizing fragments of texts regarding artist collectives and collaboration. Shukaitis reflects on artistic actions that through their organisation enact a critique of capitalism. Drawing on years of research the workshop will explore radical self-instituting forms, recovering these from a historical amnesia, and asserting imagination as supportive of radical politics. No preparation necessary.
For tickets click here. Max participants: 20
YOUS OUR OR SOME
FIONA JAMES
5:30–7pm
Artist Fiona James introduces quantum biology, neurogenesis, post traumatic growth, and heart math, sharing some practical tools that activate a sense of a decentralised self. She builds on the idea that human intellect is radically decentralised, abundantly energetic and ever-unfolding. This counters the suggestion that we might best think or create alone, as autonomous individuals, which ignores what little is known of ‘the quantum’, and is akin to thinking of our bodies and selves as mere task based machines, rather than fluidly shifting networks of information and energy that are constantly expressing complexity.
For tickets click here. Max participants: 20
BIOGRAPHIES
Zinzi Minott’s work focuses on the relationship between dance, bodies and politics. Strongly identifying as a dancer, she seeks to complicate the boundaries of dance and the place of black female bodies within the form. Her work explores how dance is perceived through the prisms of race, queer culture, gender and class. Zinzi is interested in the space between dance and other art forms, and though her practice is driven through dance, the outcomes range from performance and live art to sound, film, dances and object-based work.
Stevphen Shukaitis is Senior Lecturer at the University of Essex, Centre for Work, Organization, and Society, and a member of the Autonomedia editorial collective. Since 2009 he has coordinated and edited Minor Compositions (http://www.minorcompositions.info). He is the author of Imaginal Machines: Autonomy & Self-Organization in the Revolutions of Everyday Day (2009) and The Composition of Movements to Come: Aesthetics and Cultural Labor After the Avant-Garde (2016), and editor (with Erika Biddle and David Graeber) of Constituent Imagination: Militant Investigations // Collective Theorization (AK Press, 2007). His research focuses on the emergence of collective imagination in social movements and the changing compositions of cultural and artistic labor.
PARTICIPANTS: Zinzi Minott (Dancer / Artist), Stevphen Shukaitis (Cultural Theorist & Publisher), Fiona James (Artist)
“What the beyond of teaching is really about is not finishing oneself, not passing, not completing…”
Fred Moten and Stefan Harney. The University and The Undercommons.
This event drew on two aspects of Imagist practice. Firstly, a consideration of their approach to the human figure in which the body was fragmented and distorted. Secondly, their coalescing around the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where teachers such as Ray Yoshida, Kathleen Blackshear and Whitney Halstead inspired and provoked their students to develop a style that was informed by alternative art histories and vernacular material cultures. Taking a cue from this foundational Imagist curriculum, which was motivated by a desire to decentralise and diversify, the event considered what an arts curriculum for a non-unified self might look like; one that considers the subjectivities of its students, and the possibility of knowledge production, to be always in flux and contested. The CCA invited practitioners from different disciplines to reflect on the process of the transmission of knowledge and to propose their own curricula as a series of workshops. Aspects of each will be published on our website after the events as a distributable curriculum for the non-unified self.
THE UNRULY BODY
ZINZI MINOTT
2–3:30pm
This workshop is for those bodies that cannot be ruled, are tired of being ruled, exhausted by being ruled, or of not fitting into the rules. Born out of Minott’s own experience of living with, in and through an unruly body both within and outside the dance world you will spend time exploring notions of bodily unruliness. The workshop is open to anyone, with various access needs; movement is led by the individual, so it is possible for participants to work within their own ability and requirements.
For tickets click here. Max participants: 20
COMBINATION ACTS
STEVPHEN SHUKAITIS
4–5pm
A participatory session dramatizing fragments of texts regarding artist collectives and collaboration. Shukaitis reflects on artistic actions that through their organisation enact a critique of capitalism. Drawing on years of research the workshop will explore radical self-instituting forms, recovering these from a historical amnesia, and asserting imagination as supportive of radical politics. No preparation necessary.
For tickets click here. Max participants: 20
YOUS OUR OR SOME
FIONA JAMES
5:30–7pm
Artist Fiona James introduces quantum biology, neurogenesis, post traumatic growth, and heart math, sharing some practical tools that activate a sense of a decentralised self. She builds on the idea that human intellect is radically decentralised, abundantly energetic and ever-unfolding. This counters the suggestion that we might best think or create alone, as autonomous individuals, which ignores what little is known of ‘the quantum’, and is akin to thinking of our bodies and selves as mere task based machines, rather than fluidly shifting networks of information and energy that are constantly expressing complexity.
For tickets click here. Max participants: 20
BIOGRAPHIES
Zinzi Minott’s work focuses on the relationship between dance, bodies and politics. Strongly identifying as a dancer, she seeks to complicate the boundaries of dance and the place of black female bodies within the form. Her work explores how dance is perceived through the prisms of race, queer culture, gender and class. Zinzi is interested in the space between dance and other art forms, and though her practice is driven through dance, the outcomes range from performance and live art to sound, film, dances and object-based work.
Stevphen Shukaitis is Senior Lecturer at the University of Essex, Centre for Work, Organization, and Society, and a member of the Autonomedia editorial collective. Since 2009 he has coordinated and edited Minor Compositions (http://www.minorcompositions.info). He is the author of Imaginal Machines: Autonomy & Self-Organization in the Revolutions of Everyday Day (2009) and The Composition of Movements to Come: Aesthetics and Cultural Labor After the Avant-Garde (2016), and editor (with Erika Biddle and David Graeber) of Constituent Imagination: Militant Investigations // Collective Theorization (AK Press, 2007). His research focuses on the emergence of collective imagination in social movements and the changing compositions of cultural and artistic labor.
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