NECROLOGY: Becoming Soil, 2025
A workshop facilitated by Rosalie Bak at Haarlem Artspace & St Mary’s Church, Wirksworth
In Becoming Soil, living human bodies came together to co-sense what it is like to relate to non/living matters and materialities. Drawing on principles from the field of Haptonomy (the practice and study of human relationality and the phenomena of touch) participants were invited to make way for a more sensorial encounter with body, soil and death-care. Unfolding in three parts: ‘Noticing’, ‘Being with/in’, ‘Fermenting’, the creative and somatic exercises played with themes such as tenderness, intentionality, attention and affective touch, while also engaging with the exhibition space, works and surrounding landscapes. An audio-recording with site-specific meditation further guided participants to creep, leak and flow through all surrounding material, temporal, fleshy and microbial entanglements after which they gathered in a process of collective processing of the experience. The ink that was used in the creation of the collective work was made from the ferments of decomposing organic matter.
Curated by Victoria Sharples in partnership with NMRG & Playing Fields. Supported by the AHE Innovation Fund, University of Derby.
Photographs: Victoria Sharples.
A workshop facilitated by Rosalie Bak at Haarlem Artspace & St Mary’s Church, Wirksworth
In Becoming Soil, living human bodies came together to co-sense what it is like to relate to non/living matters and materialities. Drawing on principles from the field of Haptonomy (the practice and study of human relationality and the phenomena of touch) participants were invited to make way for a more sensorial encounter with body, soil and death-care. Unfolding in three parts: ‘Noticing’, ‘Being with/in’, ‘Fermenting’, the creative and somatic exercises played with themes such as tenderness, intentionality, attention and affective touch, while also engaging with the exhibition space, works and surrounding landscapes. An audio-recording with site-specific meditation further guided participants to creep, leak and flow through all surrounding material, temporal, fleshy and microbial entanglements after which they gathered in a process of collective processing of the experience. The ink that was used in the creation of the collective work was made from the ferments of decomposing organic matter.
Curated by Victoria Sharples in partnership with NMRG & Playing Fields. Supported by the AHE Innovation Fund, University of Derby.
Photographs: Victoria Sharples.
