Saturday 12th October, 2024
Woodland Retreat London, 42 Muswell Hill Road, N10 3JP
1pm - 3 pm​​​
In partnership with Woodland Retreat London and Queens Wood Cafe you are warmly invited to an eco-somatic movement workshop on Saturday, October 12th, from 1 pm to 3 pm, at Woodland Retreat London, 42 Muswell Hill Road, N10 3JP
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I will facilitate an embodied experience exploring being in relationship with the ancient woodland and becoming creaturely through slow-somatic movement and performative play. I will offer prompts, invitations and provocations developed from my practice encountering companion species as movement teachers, which you can use as entry points to play with, mould, resist or reject to follow your sensations, impulses and desires as they unfold. All are welcome; no prior experience in somatic movement is required to participate. Kindly note that this event will partly take place outdoors in a public space, and we will likely also encounter human and non-human others as part of the experience.
This movement philosophy emerged from my doctoral practice research on becoming more-than-human in response to the question: Can embodied research practices perform entangled storytelling to resist or undermine hierarchies of being? Companion species, a term I adopt from Donna Haraway’s text ‘The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People, and Significant Otherness’, played a key role in the collective and entangled storytelling practice research on living in uncertain times.
“From the snake that taught us how to honour life transitions through shedding its skin, to the bear that encouraged us to reflect on hibernation and the importance of rest, and the koala bear that gracefully stumbles as it loses its balance. This embodied movement practice offers entry points into thinking with the body, as Haraway proposes, as a fierce response to the violence of Capitalist ideologies and Anthropocentric thinking so we can consider possibilities of recuperation both on a personal bodymind level and multispecies environmental justice.”
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We look forward to moving with you!
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Click on the pointing finger below to reserve your spot for this event. Do get in touch if you are interested in discussing hosting this workshop at your venue.
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Notes.
The concept for this practice was developed from Donna Haraway’s texts ‘The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People, and Significant Otherness’ and ‘Staying with the Trouble’, Joanna Macy’s article ‘Greening of the Self: The Most Important Development of Modern Times’, and movement praxis research on becoming more-than-human.​​​
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Sunday 25th August, 2024
Queens Wood, Queens Wood Cafe, 42 Muswell Hill Road, N10 3JP
10 am - 11.30 am​​​​
In partnership with Woodland Retreat London and Queens Wood Cafe you are warmly invited to an eco-somatic movement practice sharing where I will facilitate an embodied experience exploring the body as a decolonial tool, a concept I developed from Ben Spatz’s text ‘Blue Sky Body’, Robin Wall Kimmerer’s text ‘Braiding Sweetgrass’, and movement praxis research on ‘becoming indigenous to a land’.
We will meet outside of Queens Wood Cafe, 42 Muswell Hill Road, N10 3JP, at 10 am before wandering into the wood together. I will offer prompts, invitations and provocations I developed from my own practice of encountering the wood as a movement partner, which you can use as entry points to play with, mould, resist or reject to follow your own sensations, impulses and desires as they unfold. All are welcome; no prior experience in somatic movement is required to participate. Kindly note that this event will take place outdoors, in a public space, and we will likely, therefore, also encounter human and non-human others as part of the experience. Following the movement exploration, we will then make our way back to Queen’s Wood Cafe to share brunch together, for those who wish to stay.
This movement philosophy emerged from my doctoral practice research on the body as a decolonial tool focusing on 'becoming' and 'fostering relationality with the more-than-human' as a way of cultivating indigeneity. The movement experience offers embodied practice that seeks to undermine dominant discourses in global mental health, an understanding of indigeneity that focuses on nomadic theory, and the ‘here and now’. Through this movement philosophy, I seek to centre the experience of survivors, refugees and migrants who fled violence in their migration journeys, advocating for the right to forget and starting anew, as well as honouring lineage in decolonial discourses on embodiment.The event is by donation only but please book a ticket via link in bio so we know to expect you. Kindly send an e-mail to fabienne.formosa@gmail.com if you have any questions or if there is anything you would like to discuss about the event before Sunday.
We look forward to moving with you.
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Click on the pointing finger below to reserve your spot for this event. Do get in touch if you are interested in discussing hosting this workshop at your venue.
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4.9.2023 - 8.9.2023 Brighton, United Kingdom.
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​Generously funded by the Visual Cultures department at Goldsmiths College, we organised a Counterfield Collective research writing retreat together with peers from the department. During the retreat we shared research, practice and a second Counterfield publication. We invited a performance artist and scholar to meet us in conversation and through their practice. They shared some material from their PhD beforehand so that we could engage in dialogue with them. Thursday morning, despite several technical difficulties and internet disruptions we share a conversation with Dr. Carolina Novella.
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You can learn more about Caro's work and the documentation of an oncogrrls process via the link below:
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Video -(documentation of an oncogrrrls process) https://vimeo.com/156509359?share=copy
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A glimpse into the conversation through the video link above and the publication that emerged from the retreat below:
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https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/35219/1/Counterfield%20II.pdf
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P.O.R.C.H. - Ponderosa Ongoing Research and Collaborative Happenings. The unknown and all the creatures and plants.
Video credit: Carolina Novella @ Ponderosa
7.7.2023 - 14.7.2023 at Ponderosa Lunow-Stolzenhagen
Germany
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Generously funded by the Visual Cultures department at Goldsmiths College, I participated in the first week of P.O.R.C.H/ Veranda focusing on Practice with Abby Crain (USA), Layton Lachman (DE), and Ivanka Tramp (DE).
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"the unknown and all the creatures and the plants, invites expansive collective dancing, individual practice, deep rest, and serious play. Morning class will be based in Open Source Forms, an improvisational and experientially focused dance based movement practice which is fluidly expanded from Skinner Releasing Technique. Through the use of non-anatomical images, gentle hands-on work, and play between energetic states, the class leads participants toward unruly, vibrating, multidirectional and multidimensional dances."
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I also shared my practice as a performance as part of the weekly practice sharings.
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You can read more about the annual programme and all the wonderful things Ponderosa has to offer via the link below:
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Residency
Eco-Somatic Residency: Human-Nature Connect, Ingleton, Yorkshire Dales, UK.
Video Credit: A short film by Amaia Mugica and Bruno Rocha for Third Sector Renewables in partnership with Intercultural Roots, Move2Change and quietnote. Funded by The National Lottery Community Fund and BA Better World Community Fund.
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Together with a collective of 30 artists including movers and dancers, vocalists and musicians, circus and theatre performers and more, we were filmed being with our practice in site-specific chorus with and within the beautiful hills, limestone pavements and caves near to Ingleton.
https://www.interculturalroots.org/project/human-nature-connect
Symposium
Arts of The Body: somatic and social change, 28 – 30 October 2022, Open House Hackney, London.
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Together with Dr. Thomas Kampe and Julia Pond we collaboratively presented our practice-research offering three approaches to how personal and social transformation might co-develop through critical practices of embodiment.
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The working group formed part of a 3 day practice-as-research symposium centering the theme "To Be With" through a prismatic lens of artistic and somatic language and discourse.
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Commission
Artist Soup Kitchen - Profound Silliness: The Fool as an Egg-Spurt.
A Collaboration with AirSpace Gallery Fool-in-Residence, Huge Sillytoe for a conversation around what it means to be a fool in contemporary society.
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Saturday 17th of September, 2022 from 12pm - 4pm
AirSpace Gallery, 4 Broad Street, Stoke-on-Trent, ST1 4HL.
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Profound Silliness will explore the deep meaninglessness of fooling, rallying against the commonplace rejection of nonsense as trivial to excavate some of the endless ways in which acts that go beyond the realms of the sensible may express feelings, ideas, and possibilities that cannot fit on the strictly delineated pages of the 'normal'. Major themes will include (de)constructions of madness, anti-authoritarianism(s), eggs, and spurts.
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SOUP: A Fool's Soup - Turmeric* Vegetable soup served with Egg (v,vg)
* Curcumin, the bioactive compound found in turmeric, has been linked to treating anxiety, depression and inflammation
BREAD: Home made Crusty and Gluten Free alternative
Click on the pointing finger below for more information and to book your spot. Do get in touch if you would like to invite us to speak at your event.
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Conference
Embodied storytelling and the ecological entanglements of distress: practice-led research of mad experience in a time of crisis. Ph.D. presentation, University of Iceland, 2022 IFTR Conference.
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https://iftr.org/working-groups/embodied-research/erwg-2022-cfp
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Psychology of Women and Equalities
"Women, equalities and shifting political landscapes"(POWES, 2019)
Poster presentation at Powes Annual 2019 Conference
Cumberland Lodge, Windsor, UK: 10-12th July 2019.
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"theorising feminisms; femininities; masculinities; non-binary gender; gender identities; parenting; gender violence and sexual exploitation; sexualities; mental health; health; sport; education; work; qualitative/critical methodologies; social justice; activism; race; disability; class; intersectionality."
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