Bodies of
Cultures
Communities
& Places
BERLIN
19
20
21
NOVEMBER
2021
BODY IQ 2021 celebrates Bodies of Cultures, Communities & Places
BODY IQ Festival 2021 aims to address questions of embodied recovery & revisioning in the context of global ethical, social & ecological crises and change. Somatic practices have moved beyond a field of sensorial, experiential and emancipatory learning into wider educational, therapeutic, artistic and social-justice contexts.
BODY IQ Festival recognises the urgent need for meaningful re-embodiment of increasingly digitalised cultural communities in a pandemic and post-pandemic world.
BODY IQ Festival 2021 offers a forum for practice exchange, practice-theory dialogue, debate, experiment, networking, application and articulation of potential for somatic-activisms beyond the field into a diverse range of cultural and social environments. The three-day festival offers workshops, talks, panel-discussions and performances with international presenters. The festival will offer live and online participation and modes of communication in line with codes of safer practice.
• somatic research
• somatic culture & arts
• somatic activism
• somatic community
// How do we articulate somatic-informed practices as sensitive tools for social and political transformation?
// How do we address hidden and embodied ideologies, modes of exclusion, oppression and privilege within our growing field?
// How do we take responsibility for mobilising, activating and organising meaningful ethical embodied interaction in a rapidly changing world?
// How do we move beyond a historically inscribed ‘whiteness’ of the field towards a making space for global-majority bodies of culture?
// How can somatic practices contribute toward a re-embodiment of attention and sustainable human interaction with a living world?
BodyIQ 2021 includes topics such as:
//Critical Somatics //Somatic Activisms //Social Somatics & Applied Somatics //Somatics and the creative processes in dance //Cultural Somatics and Critical Whiteness //Somatic Performance Cultures //The Power of Touch in a post-pandemic world //Moving Masculinities & Gender //De-Colonising the Field //De-Centering Whiteness //Somatic Education for different Age-Groups //Somatics and diverse abilities //Re-moving Trauma; Somatics in the Digital Age //Intercultural Somatic Networks //Eco-Somatics, Post-Humanism & Eco-Crisis //Re-Embodiment and/as Re-Empowerment //Somatics as micro-activisms in city-environments //TheorisingCritical Somatic Practices
Diversity, inclusivity & accessability
The BODY IQ FESTIVAL team is committed to providing a welcoming and safe environment for all participants, practitioners, artists and teachers.
We aim to actively contribute to a world in which everyone feels accepted, valued and in charge of their own visibility and action, beyond it being just lip service.
Diversity:
We welcome bodies of all sizes, skin colors, cultural backgrounds, gender identities, class backgrounds, dis/abilities and ages. While we welcome all, may the margins and the more complex body stories be centered and held in comfort. We do not accept any kind of discrimination or harassment.
This year’s festival call was influenced by our wish to bring practitioners and artists together who are exploring embodied practices from underrepresented social positionings and cultural knowledge bases within the somatic world. Body IQ Festival embraces participants from around the globe with different levels of experiences of somatic practices, social positioning and cultural heritage to learn from each other. As we are in a process of shifting towards greater accessibility, we are welcoming
more diverse participation and a more complex audience. By doing so we are aiming to become a space and event that is informed by a greater plurality of experiences. We welcome dissent and passionate debate, while encouraging listening and moving with love, care and trust as part of this process.
Accessibility:
Improved accessibility has been an important concern for us in curating this year’s festival.
We are happy to announce that we were able to make some significant improvements for BODY IQ FESTIVAL 2021: We added three new festival locations that are widely accessible (ground floor location, step free entrance, wheelchair friendly bathrooms).
A program of online events is offered for attendees who cannot pay for travel and lodging. Bathroom facilities will not be gendered into man/woman divisions.
BODY IQ FESTIVAL 2021, as all past editions, is a self-funded event. Unlike academic conferences, where presenters are asked to pay a fee to deliver their own presentations, we are budgeting to pay a fee to all presenters. We are also offering free festival participation for volunteer supporters, while curating a practical and reflective program with leading practitioners from around the globe.
We have spent a considerable amount of time applying for funding to offer further bursaries or free spaces for participants with limited resources, but at the time of the program publication have not been successful in receiving significant financial support.
We offer a range of ticket categories at different prices to offer choices for participants to choose a ticket they can afford. Please note our Covid-19 related requirements for on-site access.
We are very excited about this next step towards further accessibility and growing together as a widening community!
Safer Space
As we are entering together a new quality of space and interaction, we invite everyone to orient themselves and their actions in line with the agreements for multicultural communication set out by the East Bay Meditation Center (read more...)
Care & Integration Concept
If somatic practices have one thing in common, it may be pausing and letting sink in, what we just experienced. Pause and collective co-regulation is substantial for information to settle in our bodies and building community with each other. When experiencing triggers or other traces of power structures within our own body, we can be supported by the community around us.
We are happy to announce that we have a new and shiny care and integration concept
Online Community Calls before and after to bring the online and on-site community together to create the container
Care Creatures on site
We are so very thankful for the practitioners and therapists that joined the crew as Care Creatures. If you are in need of support to self-regulate, they will have your back.
BIPOC and Trans/NB/Inter bodies only spaces
Integration and Intention for the Day session (Saturday/Sunday morning session
Partners
BODY IQ FESTIVAL 2021 works with international pioneers in the fields of 'Social-, Eco- & Cultural- Somatics', 'Somatic Arts Activism', 'Community & Disability Arts' and 'Embodiment & Social Justice'.
The festival offers three days of workshops, lectures, panel discussions, open spaces, digital platforms, installations and live performances. All events will take place following the pandemic regulations. A parallel online programme will take place.
BODY IQ FESTIVAL 2021 happens in four different locations:
Somatische Akademie Berlin, Zentrum for Yoga & Stimme, Labor Gras (with access for people with disabilities or mobility impairments), the Ölbergkirche Kreuzberg (with conference & workshop rooms), and the Aquarium (with access for people with disabilities or mobility impairments).
* The title of BODY IQ Festival 2021 has been inspired by the term Bodies of cultures, coined by Resmaa Menekem, Healer, Trauma Specialist and Author of the book 'My Grandmother's Hands’ (2017). His ground breaking work raises our awareness of the somatic sources of racial trauma. It suggests that the power for change is to be found in our bodies, and how our brains have been wired through centuries. It refers to white-body supremacy which through colonialist European oppression still impacts our daily life today, and how black, brown, POC bodies are being perceived. Menekem also coined the inspiring term Somatic Abolitionism as an emergent 'living, embodied anti-racist practice and cultural building —a way of being in the world’.