These blog posts articulate the on-going context of
In-Bodying the Field, Marking Seminar
Blog Post #2: Imaginal Realm for Psyche and Social Change
In-Bodying the Field has the intention to radically shift how we perceive reality using visual arts. Marking is the instrument we use in this audacious endeavor. Marking is defined as traces left by motion or pressure but also as a metaphor. Imagining a musical instrument is apt, although we are less concerned with a rote practice of technical skill and rather seek an embodied evocation realizing another level of relationship. Marking is potentially a conduit that bonds us through the body to the greater biosphere accessible all along but usually bypassed by the Over-culture. We are seeking a practice without a goal but with a strong intention. The world seems ripe for this as we see others pursuing these same goals. In Moral Imagination, imagination is used to embody and explore the unseen, to create a greater connection of us. It is an adventure into creativity for change inviting new possibilities outside the solely reductionist, rational and linear modes of putting together information. It is a practice of collective imagining in order to increase radical kinship with the human and more-than-human worlds, present, past and future.
In this process of In-Bodying the Field, we explore creative expression through somatic inquiry to shift our understanding and perception of here to unexamined systems as a way to participate in the world as collaborators rather than sole agents by:
embracing proprioceptive intelligence to nurture more creative & innovative understanding beginning with the body.- opening a dimensional portal through the imaginal realm.
- expanding these perceptions and orientations through mark-making.
- cultivating awareness of lived experience as in-formation through than the familiar and habitual.
As conduits of the metaverse marking is a means of participating as artist and shamans of ancient times who serve, heal, guide and inspire the community. We found a great resource in Josh Schrei’s The Emerald podcast. The Body as Metaverse speaks of several issues that are germane to our process. For example, our interest in changing the story is leveraged by his discussion of mythic narrative and his deep understanding of those stories as living narrative.
The podcast, Body is the Metaverse, talks about the deep mythosomatic function that we long for that the digital Metaverse or virtual otherworld does not provide. They spark our understanding of our morphing stories as we use myth as a reminder of the greater context. This takes us into nature, into our planet, into our belongingness and therefore into our body. We offer up our experience to others. But at this point, most importantly, we experience for ourselves how the body is the connection to the life of the world that we are an integral part.
https://player.fm/series/the-emerald/the-body-is-the-metaverse
Lavender Bath as Bear of Gravité by Majio
Having gone to bed by myself last night
you can imagine my surprise this morning
when I awakened to a bath being run.
It was a lavender-salts baths with a single candle
sitting in the tub half fluffy above the water line,
water be-draggled below it, was the Bear of Gravité.
To say I joined him/her is misleading, for I as I stepped
into the fragrant steaming bath, I became bear,
seated in stillness, blue feathered wings folded
upward, over-lapped pointing vertically
Total stillness brought one end of the double flame
to bob on the surface without candle in the lavender bath.
The slightest quiver shattering the light language
script on the water surface from intimate whisper
to haggling amongst the market stalls.
So began conversation between movement and light
that only the Bear of Gravité can have.
The inclination is to focus on the screen
of the water’s surface, breaking, dispensing,
fetching, reconnecting the light like ideas,
but what about the language between the candle flame
and the water’s surface and the light in the water?
The air-light, falls not just down but out, up…
it can be cupped, divided, sprinkled or eaten, while
the wet-light defusing loosening its concentration
to mix with lavender.
And yet it is the tension of the screen of surface
that is the playground for marks, a screen of reflections—
stretching, squeezing, melting and twisting,
an original appearance in distillation of essence.
Candle light marks on surface of lavender bath
