“Thinking-with should always be a living-with, aware that relations of significant otherness transform those who relate and the worlds they live in.”

— Maria Puig de la Bellacasa

 

The Fieldwork Scores workshop focuses on the relationship between humans and the world of plants.

The scores devise relationships between the twelve principles of permaculture (a system for designing regenerative ecosystems) and the twelve systems of the human body (circulatory, nervous, muscular, etc.) in order to practice different perspectives of interacting. The scores invite us to move and think in the presence of plants, and because of their presence.

They aim to cultivate a kind of intimacy with certain plants, which is not necessarily related to empathy or to a horizontal correlation between their lives and ours, but rather to the intimacy of creating a temporary community.

We prepare for our practice with Feldenkrais Method lessons—sharpening our sensitivity and perception, opening new paths of movement—and apply its principles as a driving force for the deep curiosity needed for encountering other bodies; questions that do not require answers; and visible or invisible dances and choreographies that we are already co-creating with other organisms.

The activation of scores addresses the body, the senses, dance, and the movement of attention and thought—that is, the primary fields of experience of our connection with the world, nature, and other species. We then explore ways of capturing and recording our embodied experiences, forming a collective archive through which to reflect on our relationships with the rather unfamiliar Others who often surround us: plants.

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Mariela Nestora works within the field of dance and performance as choreographer, researcher, co-curator and mentor and is based in Athens, Greece. Mariela’s artistic work is motivated by experimentation and collaboration in a world marked by ongoing, multiple crises. Dance and choreography are her ways of processing, reflecting on, and relating to the world. She is also a teacher and practitioner of the Feldenkrais Method and integrates its knowledge of human movement and the nervous system into her dance and choreography practice.