Exploring Darkness Through Embodied Writing Workshop

Exploring Darkness Through Embodied Writing Workshop
18:00 – 19:30 (Norwegian time)
20:00 – 21:30 (Moscow time)
These days we see darkness as the opposite of light, as a lack, negativity, margin. But the dualism of light and darkness arose as a symbolic formula for morality only when primordial darkness was split into light and dark. Darkness is also the nocturnal space of the Arctic, a particular material condition, a space of invisibility and, simultaneously, a source of emancipation and alternative knowledge.
Body is a contested field and is inseparable from writing. In a similar way, any theory is inseparable from personal narration, politics, and struggle. By writing I put the world in order, give it a handle so I can grasp it. I write to record what others erase when I speak, to rewrite the stories others have miswritten about me, about you. Body is the foundation of thought. Body is a text.
This workshop on embodied collective writing invites participants to explore the potentialities of darkness and being in the dark as a source of emancipation and alternative knowledge production. Participation is possible in Russian and English languages.
The ideas for the workshop are inspired by fieldwork of Irina Shirobokova who lived and interviewed women in the Murmansk region, and texts by Gloria E. Anzaldúa, Katherine McKittrick, Bayo Akomolafe, Hélène Cixous.
Bio:
Irina Shirobokova, a research fellow at The City University of New York, specializes in political anthropology, urban geography and transdisciplinary research with the focus on feminist and collaborative methods, as well as embodied knowledge production.