In Autumn 2023, PRAXIS Oslo is collaborating with PRAKSIS to support their R24: Held ~ Experiments in Touch with Touch Praxis.

Free to attend; booking essential. 3 places available. Please write to office@praksisolso.org How do we activate the poetic imagination through the tactile and the material?

Through somatic-based movement and improvisational practices, this research workshop invites participants, to make, move,  wear and create ´Somatic Costumes´ with simple materials.

How can the costumes touch become a portal of perception and imagination?

Somatic costumes are designed to bring awareness, through the sense of touch, to specific psychophysical habits in our bodies. For example, a Balloon Hat brings awareness to the volume and buoyancy of the skull. Or the Tube Costume brings awareness to the boundaries of our skin.

Challenging  the sensorial hierarchy of vision in our performative & design practices, we will explore ‘poetic materiality’ – not just through the visual and verbal, but through the non-verbal and tactile. How can we, through the tangible, touch the invisible?

Please wear comfortable clothes to move in.

Unfortunately, PRAKSIS does not have step free access.

This event takes place as part of Residency 24, Held, which invites a multidisciplinary group of artists and others to explore touch as a creative, time-based medium. The residency is developed with Touch Praxis and takes place in collaboration with the laboratory for the study of dance and movement, Praxis Oslo.

Sally E Dean (NO/UK/USA) is a PhD Research Fellow at Oslo National Academy of the Arts with her project called The Somatic Costume Dressing Room. Her artistic research investigates choreographing attention through the touch of Somatic Costumes. She has been an interdisciplinary performing artist and teacher for over 25 years throughout Europe, USA and Asia between the fields of costume design, dance and somatic practices. Recent publication in ‘Performance Costume - New Perspectives’ (2020), exhibited at A.A. Bakhrushin State Central Theatre Museum, Moscow (2019), and performance with BETWIXT at 14th Prague Quadrennial of  Performance Design and Space (2019). Her work has been supported by the Arts Council England and the British Council. www.sallyedean.com / www.betwixtduo.com

Image: Agnes Saaby Thomsen, NOFOD Conference 2022.