Organized around the notion of ‘pluralism through bodily engagement’ members facilitated a series of performances and activities centered around the act of drawing in conjunction with The 7th Berlin Biennial Draftsman’s Congress in Eisenhüttenstadt.
Our participation in the Draftsman’s Congress of the 7th Berlin Biennial provided an opportunity for manifesting the ideas of several group members, ranging from the radically nonverbal, yogic tracing, drawn bureaucratic cataloging, exquisite corpse navigation, to a sound/drawing feedback experiment.
En route to Eisenhüttenstadt, an exemplar of Soviet urban planning and the first socialist city built in the GDR, Samantha Fox, special guest and new member offered up first hand knowledge from her work there as an urban anthropologist, further elucidating our actions to come.
Upon arrival, the group’s frenetic energy engaged the space with a very direct response to materials and the physicality therein. Covering the walls with a range of drawings, we incited participation through action. Our nonverbal, drawn registration ignited this process, as participants were coaxed to fully exchange the verbal for full immersion into drawn communication. Our workshop concluded with a yoga tracing session led by Elana Katz in which participants were asked to trace the position of their bodies as they were guided through a series of poses. The residue of these actions resulted in a set of drawings cataloguing the particularities of each individual body in time and the group at large through the session.
We departed Eisenhüttenstadt with an excited exhaustion, having evidenced many ideas through our workshop and preparing the ground for future actions.
USArtBerlin Member Participants in the Draftsman’s Congress:
Eiliyas
Samantha Fox
kate hers
Elana Katz
Anna Kostreva
Melissa Longenecker
Paula Ross
Chris E. Shore
Melissa Steckbauer
Mike Terry
USArtBerlin extends a special thanks to Ben Kaden, who facilitated the logistics of our workshop and generously shared his knowledge of Eisenhüttenstadt.
