Internal Organs // Interior Space
Your sinuses are closets. video chat experiments
Stomachs gurgle, hearts beat, but most of our organs don't give us much direct feedback except pain.
Cauldron was an experiment by the Deep Play Institute during pandemic lockdown exploring how to migrate creative facilitation practices to online spaces. Over 3 months, a cohort participations were paired up to facilitate one-on-one somatic and creative experiences.
Over six sessions with my partner, we explored the connection between internal body space and interior spaces. This was all partially in response to a shift in embodied and digital life after the 2020 pandemic- we all spent more time inside and more time online. Our bodies and domestic spaces shifted. Guided meditations, little games, drawings, and discourse.
Session themes:
- onboarding and intimacy
- tongues & aesthetic tastes
- sinus & closets
- bladder & maintenance
- diaphragm & empty spaces
- body in community, organ systems
Sample tidbits:
- Make a sculpture with your tongue
- Guided meditation: You're at the ice cream store. "What are you hungry for?" All ice cream flavors are forms of intimacy.
- Take a field trip to your own closet.
- Put glue on your hands and peel it off.
- Find a spot in your home or body that isn't quite clean. The dust on top of the fridge or gunk in your bellybutton.
- What does it feel like to be thirsty?
- Guided meditation: Ageing in a body, ageing in a home
- Map four people to for organs
- Who is your domestic icon? Do you love her or hate her?
- Tell me everything you know about the topic of "spit" while we both brush our teeth together.
Short excerpt from a session:
Warm up our mouths. Make a hummmmmmmmm. Stretch the mouth around.
Swish around some sound like mouthwash.
Let's degrade some sounds. What's something you've been told that you no longer believe, or that you don't want to believe any more?
A: That I'm not adult enough.
Repeat it.
Repeat it without words.
with vocal chords.
without engaging the vibration of your larynx.
without lungs.
with movement
with internal movement
chew it up and swallow it
Breathe and sit in the aftertaste.