How do we deal with grief, loss and healing collectively? Can we gather and together relearn how to care in community? Can we have a look at our cultural patterns and together create new ones?

Introduction:
Camille Sapara Barton, author of the book ‘Tending Grief’:
“… I became aware how little space there is in our Western societies for anyone to process feelings that do not support productivity.
[…]
Grief tending is not the answer to all of our social challenges. […] However, I do believe that tending grief, loss, and lament; reconnecting with these cycles of life, love, and death that are present in our waking days, is essential to come back into right relationship with the world we are a part of and the more-than-human kin we share our home with.
[…]
Grief is not the opposite of joy, but the opposite of indifference. Grief and love are different sides of the same coin.
[…]
Let us reclaim our feelings, compost the numbness, and move towards full aliveness.”

Structure:
We will mainly be doing practical exercises of embodiment and rituals through movement and sound. We might also read something out loud from a book, reflect and converse.

In this 1.5 hour I won’t have any answers but questions and longings. I will bring the book ‘Tending Grief’ by Camille Sapara Barton which offers different grief rituals, as well as some other book on Spiritual Activism. Then we’ll together create the courage to tend to our grief in one way or another. Nothing specific is expected from you and has to happen. Showing up is enough.

To have 1.5hours is a try-out, if we realize we will need more time we can make it longer.

Who is welcome:
It is important that we all make an effort to create a safe space in gathering to practice. A safe space for women, queers, lgbtqa+, bipoc folks, folks with disability, but also white cis-men are welcome to be here; no one will be turned down unless you are discriminating or overstepping boundaries. However, safety is not the same as comfortability; we might not feel comfortable at all times.

(Also, there will be a dog in the space. Please write to me if you are allergic and I’ll try to figure something out.)

Comment from me:
I am both interested in gathering to together face the loss and violence which has happened on the literal earth and soil we stand on (Malmö/Skåne/Sweden); the hurt and violence which is a part of our bodies through our lived life and ancestry; the separation from the more-than-human and other violent relations between us and the other, through colonization, industrialism, the rise of capitalism, patriarchy, the institutional church and the witch processes.

Everyone is holding their own grief, and I wonder if moving through this grief together can be a way to restore and find strength to create a society with less violence in it. As well as access more joy, love and celebration of life. We cannot act or feel the strength to show care for one another or the land that feeds us when we are numb, frozen and repress our grief. To grieve is not to stay in the darkness, but move through and mourn to access life force again. I am within this practice currently interested in the terms Spritual Activism, Political Somatics and Radical Care.

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Where will we be?
In the small studio at Karavan, entrance Rolfsgatan 7B.
(It is a space where no one will hear us and we are by ourselves).

RSVP:
Please email songoftheflesh@gmail.com to join as there is a limited number of people in each session.
It is also possible to drop-in if there is space.

You can join only one session, several or all of them.

When?
Tuesdays 17.30-19.30

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This practice group is a part of the research project ‘Song of the Flesh’, in which the performance part premieres on April 17 + 22nd at Dansstationen. Tickets here: https://www.kulturcentralen.nu/…/song-of-the-flesh-tuva…

This practice session and research project is possible through support from Malmö Stad, Region Skåne, Konstnärsnämnden, Dansstationen and Karavan Malmö.