Fiona James

Thursday 11 August, 7pm
Fiona James: GUTLESS SPEECH (and other impossible thoughts)

GUTLESS SPEECH is the first public edition of For that Rare Diagram Freak, a collective research project supported by Kunstraum, set to develop over four live events throughout the next year. The first edition will feature a physical workshop guided by Andrew Kerton and a performative talk by Fiona James.

(Flexing the rod, undoing the bind, dumbing down loosely)
NO NO NOA NOAW NOAWA

Andrew Kerton’s workshop will draw on a range of somatic practices such as Body Mind Centering, Middendorf Technique and Embryology with the intention of exposing inherent patterns that manifest in the flesh. Though different in technical approach, these methods reference the development of the human body on a cellular scale, suggesting how the brain’s plasticity might be harnessed through movement and rhythm to enhance our capacities for thought and self development.

Through the deployment of vibration and its vocal release, we will consider how the attributes of language are influenced by our material structure and where this knowledge can be directed towards collective frames of agency. How can our simplistic physical fundaments and needs (eg. breath) be used to reconfigure thinking, and how does utterance extend and reinforce from the basics of necessity?

CURE ME OF MY ‘WHAT’?
WHY WOULD I WANT THAT?
(vibrbrbrbrbatory notes)

Fiona James’ performative talk will credit theories influencing the wider project (e.g. Wilhelm Reich’s theories on the orgasm; Schulamith Firestone’s notion of the technical; Catherin Malabou’s use of epigenetics; Reza Negarestani’s brand of in-humanism) while providing points for a discussion that will influence the research’s direction.

As a pre-emptive set of notes, these simple conceptual gestures will be ordered for delivery in light of Kerton’s workshop, allowing the overriding rational to be developed in an exposed collective space. In this way the workshop will serve as conceptual material for consideration, while also influencing the physical conditions that participants bodies can receive and respond to.

 

Image caption: Fiona James, The Leaky Lecture Series, 2015, at FLUID PHOSPHORESCENCE, Residency Unlimited, New York, Curated by Mette Kjærgaard Præst. Photo by Samuel Draxler.

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