Embodied Temporalities – Tracing the memories our bodies hold

What memories do our bodies hold? What can our bodies tell us about our past and future selves? Embodied Temporalities is a research, archiving, exhibition, and performance partnership under the artistic direction of Madhumita Nandi. The partnership gives visibility and recognition to artistic works of minorities and issues relevant to identity, non-normativity, participation, class struggles, migration, local and European border policies, and their impact on people’s lives.

Made up of Oyoun (Germany), Birmingham LGBT (UK), Dafa Puppet Theater s.r.o. (Czech Republic), Play Perform Learn Grow (PPLG) (Greece), Föreningen LiveGreen (Sweden), Embodied Temporalities invites cultural practitioners to explore identities, belonging, and embodied memories through diasporic, decolonial, and queer perspectives. What makes Embodied Temporalities unique is the diversity of its infrastructure, the lightweight collaboration model, and the way the artistic work adapts to each new context when touring.

The touring process is rooted in community engagement thereby not imposing values but rather empowering and addressing the needs of the local community. Whether it is in the shape of a residency and workshops in the UK, artistic mediation and live performances in rural/semi-urban neighborhoods in the Czech Republic, or curating nurturing and powering exchanges between performers and refugee audiences through trauma-informed artistic workshops in Greece, it all comes together in an immersive virtual reality at LiveGreen’s Festival Planet. It is clear the partners purposefully chose one another.

Even more so, the artistic works mainly consist of the artists themselves and use a waste minimising approach (using local infrastructure, repurposing materials, energy resources, social wellbeing for a safe and healthy work environment, etc.). As a result, such a collaboration model is bound to leave a positive impact on the environment and economic sustainability as it can be easily repeated and reproduced in times of scarcity.