Movement Workshop for Groups

Experience contemporary art with your entire body

A movement workshop for groups

Visit De Appel before 15 December and join us for our body movement workshop in which the participants learn to activate their bodies to experience contemporary art. During this workshop, developed especially to coincide with the exhibition of Ben Russell, movement and the body are central themes.Russell’s exhibition IT IS HERE/THIS WILL LAST FOREVER consists of two video installations that present a dynamic portrait of the mining of natural resources in two different parts of the world, in which the artist focuses on the faces, movements and gestures of the men who execute the debilitating labour. The first part takes place in an underground, state-run, industrial copper mine in Bor, Serbia. A second chapter portrays an illegal goldmine in the jungle of the Brokopondo District in Suriname. The video installations are presented in differentiated physical spaces that mimic the sensation of an underground mine. Through a series of exercises with playful elements, the participants are encouraged to adopt an active and exploring attitude towards the video installations. By listening to their bodies, the students learn how the body is an instrument that gathers experiences. By creating more body awareness, the participants can come to profound observations in which the process of personal meaning and its production takes on a central role. Within this process, the educational value is there to learn on a personal, physical, as well as communal level.

Far more than the usual museum visit where people mostly watch and listen, this workshop emphasises the ‘experience of art through the entire body’. By physically investigating and ‘recording’ sounds and images, the workshop activates the people's senses and invites them to engage in a creative dialogue with contemporary art.

During Ben Russell's exhibition IT IS HERE/THIS WILL LAST FOREVER participants can, for example, experience how sound is not only audible but can also be made visible and sensible. The art work Good Luck (Echo) (2018) - consisting of a sound-resonating copper plate - can translate sound waves and vibrations to the body. Participants get the chance to literally touch sound and are encouraged to transform this sensation into vocal sound and body movement. Therefore sound becomes sensible within the individual body on the one hand, while also becoming spatial through physical enlargement on the other hand. Sounds and accompanying impressions travel so to say 'through' the bodies of the participants and transform into unique personal experiences.

Our goal with this workshop is to make people active and intuitive agents towards interpreting contemporary art. By focussing on the openness of contemporary art, participants can generate new insights into themselves in relation to their bodies, the others and society.

This out-of-the-box workshop has been designed by Sarah Lamsweerde and Christian Guerematchi, in collaboration with De Appel.