About the workshop
How can we talk about the future and verbalise our present day? Do our voices sound different if we dance first?
Bodytalk investigates how the lessons of nightlife could guide us in finding new ways to discuss societal themes such as the climate crisis and democracy, the futures of togetherness and humanity, our everyday life now and in years to come.
The workshop combines tools from contemporary dance, nightlife and futures research, and looks for paths to discuss our future(s) through bodily activation. We will zoom into the depths of clubs, raves and electronic music to find stimuli for being together and talking about it. We will tune in with techno music as an active meditation – alone together – and shape the room into a space where everyday ways of being and talking do not apply.
We can’t tell the future but we can shape new futures consciously. The world of nightlife has over the course of decades become a place of togetherness where we can leave our sense of time at the coat check, and where repetition, dance and trance are shared tools to form our reality into what we want and need it to be, following the age-old global traditions where repetitive, monotonous beats have always brought people together.
To whom
The workshop is flexible in terms of language – we will use both Finnish and English and adapt to the language background of the participants. The workshop is suitable for all kinds of bodies and no previous knowledge or experience from dance, nightlife or futures thinking are required. We recommend to dress comfortably.
To working group
Formed in spring 2020 by performer-research Simo Vassinen, futurist Roope Mokka and dance artist Maria F. Scaroni, the Bodytalk team investigates the possible unions and crossing points of futures research and contemporary dance methods, with a specific inspiration in nightlife bodies.
The group members share a wide professional, hobby and activist background in e.g. futures studies, methods of participation and cocreation, techno music and club culture, journalism, event management and political philosophy. Bodytalk operates in Berlin and Helsinki with an aim to advance dialogue, exchange research knowledge and conduct experiments in the overlapping territories of art, dance, nightlife and societal research.
The group’s work has been supported by the network of Finnish cultural institutes’ Together Alone initiative. The first Bodytalk experiments took place at the UNTITLED futures festival initiated by think tank Demos Helsinki in June and September 2020.
performance_now festival programme
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