Workshop: Queer Arts Initiative at Stanford University

In the next weeks I will be facilitating one more lab/study of cosensing as part of the Queer Arts Initiative, at Stanford University. The workshop, developed for the Queer Students Resouces Center, will engage with some of the teachings from silkworm colonies as a guide for collective change. Caterpillars’ lessons to synch., slow down, anchor, shed, soften and cosense offer valuable clues towards collective transformation, and in this art intervention as training towards liberatory processes, a group of students/co-creators will engage with the question: how do we hold messy transitions together?

This workshop seeks to address not so nice transformations, to make ceremony, and to cultivate opennes to being radically soft, together. Which lessons about collective change- and not only individual death- do silkworms teach us? what types of slowness can we cultivate together by tending to the rhythms of mulberry trees? how do we linger in the possibilities of un-doing and not-knowing together? what kind of aspirations do we need to let go of?

In this workshop we will engage with more than human meditations, movement improvisation, and silk-string-making possibilities. At the end of this 6 week series, we will gather the many images and textures into an oracle card. In a session co-facilitated by the Hypha collective, we will co-create multi species totem- cards for accompanying us in the messiness. We will also have guest artists Dani DEmilia and Sara Amsler come share with us their queer ecologist practices.

The workshop will include guided movement practices (no dance experience required) in an outside area and some masked inside activities. Bring a notebook and come ready to move, learn to transform cocoons into silk, experiment with mushroom dies, write, rest, and let your inner silkworm play!

See the wonderful flier designed by the artist Tyra Huyana Blackwater. And share with all your queer Stanford affiliated friends and community members in the Area.