the synesthetic body
Alessio Castellacci
Aug 22 – Aug 26, 2016
introductory week
This first week aims at clearing the space from preconceived assumptions and expectations regarding one’s own creative process, to enter a state of receptiveness and precision, where playfulness and pleasure are the main driving forces.
A synesthetic experience takes place every time the information gathered through one organ of perception (ear, eye, skin, mouth, nose) triggers a sensorial impression by automatic free-association in another perceptive organ. On a larger scale, this dynamic reminds us of the elusive nature of creativity and how this is deeply rooted in the sensing body. From this point of view, the phenomenon of synesthesia will serve as a conceptual catalyst to reveal the non-linear dynamics underlying any creation process.
Each day we will dedicate our somatic investigation to one specific sense and its inner and outer modes of existing and exchanging information with the environment (touching/propriocepting, seeing/ imagining, hearing/audiating, tasting-smelling/ clairscent and clairgustance). We will approach each sense through a sequence of analytical exercises (i.e. observing, individuating, describing, noting, naming) followed by right-brain experiential journeys (i.e. merging defined elements into new ones, letting go of linguistic knowledge, knowing from the inside, inhabiting spaces of ambiguity, perceptive empathy). By taking time to perceive with each sense and investigate the web-like relationships between apparently independent perceptive pathways, we will tune our instrument, the body, to the complexity around it, developing a new habit of readiness to inner/outer impulses of any nature, in any moment, in any constellation that a stage or life can offer us.
Ultimately the practice is to enter a state of flow and sensual inspiration (Latin inspirare: to breathe into), where the action of perceiving and the one of moving and creating are faces of a same spinning planet.
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Alessio Castellacci (Berlin) is a performer, teacher and sound composer based in Berlin. In the last ten years he has developed a pedagogical approach for voice & movement improvisation based on somatic work and self-observation, which he shares regularly with research groups throughout Europe. After graduating in Developmental Psychology at the Italian University, at 25 he approached contemporary dance by chance, moving soon after to the Netherlands to study experimental choreography at the Dance Maker BA/Artez, where he graduated in 2005. The desire to combine his experiences and understanding of music and dance brought him to begin a personal research on the voice as an extension of the body, bringing together his studies of developmental psychology and mindfulness techniques within the context of sound and movement improvisation. Crucial experiences were the short but fruitful apprenticeships with Meredith Monk, Patricia Bardi and Mark Van Tongeren´s overtone choir.
He has collaborated as a performer, sound composer and voice mentor with different artists (Dani Brown, Tino Sehgal, Jeremy Wade, Piccoli Production, M.F. Scaroni, H.M.Kim, Sasha Waltz Kinder Tanz Company, Peter Pleyer a.o.). Alessio is part of the artistic collective Fingersix with whom he shares a practice of long-distance support and friendship. He likes the idea of life-long learning, and fancies the sound of the word late-bloomer.
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photos:
Sandhya Daemgen
Marion Borriss
Ksenija Spanec
Lisa Stewart
Paula Onet©WASP