Event | Fuck Healing (?) – Living the Wounded Life

Event | Fuck Healing (?) – Living the Wounded Life
Date: July, 2nd, 2022, 17:00 – 23:00
Location: Treehouse NDSM, TT. Neveritaweg 15, 1033 WC, Amsterdam-Noord
Organizers: Bethany Crawford, Erica Biolchini, Dina Mohamed, and Patricia Pisters
Registration: Open to everyone (if you want to receive credits, please do register beforehand with b.l.i.crawford@uva.nl)
Credit: 1 ECTS

The programme ‘Fuck Healing (?) Living the Wounded Life’ presents an evening of performances and visual art that work with practices of reintegration and reclamation of wounds experienced materially, historically, narratively and psychically. The programme critically interrogates notions of “healing” as proximate to hegemonic regimes of conformity and normative perceptions of health.  “Fuck Healing” questions the merits of our wounds, the divergent momentum they present, and recognises the future modes of “becomings” that “breaking” may allow us.

Details

The programme, developed as a conceptual response to the exhibition “Momentum” at Treehouse NDSM (20th May – 12th June) considers the momentum generated through breaks, ruptures, and woundings. The performances and visual art presented, work with the psychosocial and historical woundings of systemic exclusion, marginalisation and oppression, yet emphasise the empowered reclamation of “wounded” alterity through modes of creative expression. The theoretical framework, informed by Gilles Deleuze, intends to highlight that the systems of power and dominance we are embedded in wound us all, yet we have the power to “counter-actualise” these wounds, through their reclamation as sources of mutual-identification with wounded others, and as a source of generative becomings which challenge the hegemonic systems of power.

“Fuck Healing (?) Living the Wounded Life” brings into dialogue various Amsterdam based institutions through the collaborative organisation and curation of the programme by Treehouse NDSM residents Bethany Crawford and Dina Mohamed, the Netherlands Institute for Cultural Analysis rMA council member Erica Biolchini, and the Amsterdam School of Cultural Analysis board member Professor Patricia Pisters. The projects intends to strengthen the network between academic and artistic communities of Amsterdam, whilst contributing to contemporary discussions on alternative therapies and the reintegrative power of creative making in response to woundings and traumas. In light of recent socio-political events, and the layered trauma of the covid pandemic, this programme intends to think with the contingencies generated by ruptural events as a method to reimagine potential futures.

Artists and Performers

“Fuck Healing (?) Living the Wounded Life” will feature work and performances by the artists Vita Buivid, Clara Saito, Eric Peter, Dina Mohamed, Francesca Hawker, Marc Norbert Horler, Gayatri Kodikal, Erica Biolchini, Bogna Bochinska, Weronika Szufranowicz, Marie Tučková, Bethany Crawford and Clementine Edwards.

The UZVAR collective, a student-led charity from The Royal Academy of Art based in Den Haag, will be present to collect donations through an exchange of artworks for the regional volunteering groups providing humanitarian aid in the cities of Ukraine severely affected by the current war.

Also present at the event, to help you fuck healing literally, there will be a pop-up by Tailbone, a Rotterdam based sex-positive shop that centers Queer lived experiences and creative community.

Credits (1 EC)

Registration: b.l.i.crawford@uva.nl

Written reflection brief

Participants will submit a written reflection on the event of no more than 800-1200 words. The written reflection can be a theoretical text that references the required literature in relation to the overall event, or a specific artwork within the programme, but we also welcome more creative responses. These could take the form of creative writing (such as poetry or short stories), a moving image work, or any other creative format. The written reflection may be informed by references beyond the provided literature and to personal experiences which the participant felt enriched their experience of the event. All formats and content that relate to the broader programme thematic will be welcomed. The submitted written reflections will be consolidated and circulated as a publication either online or as a material catalogue.

Required readings

• Deleuze, Gilles. “The Event”, in The Logic of Sense, translated by Mark Lester. Columbia University Press, 1990.
• Deleuze, Gilles. “Empiricism and Subjectivity”, in Empiricism and Subjectivity: An Essay on Hume’s Theory of Human Nature, translated by Constantin V. Boundas. Columbia University Press, 2001.
• Buchanan, Ian. “Transcendental Empiricist Ethics”, in Deleuzism: A Metacommentary. Duke University Press, 2000.