Generation 2023
collecting positions
the differences between be and see
In recent years, I began to integrate the Feldenkrais Method in my practice. Developed by Dr Moshe Feldenkrais, a physicist and engineer, the Feldenkrais Method is a school of somatically geared study that seeks to cultivate and refine physiological awareness through slow, sequential patterns of movement. These patterns function to stimulate and underpin a dialogue with one’s body, thereby enhancing one’s sensitivity to the entrenched movement compulsions that we accumulate throughout life.
The Feldenkrais doctrine is geared towards our conditions and process of learning — a potential that can be applied towards other learning systems.
I would like to look together with you at a sequence of basic, distinct positions that we go through as part of the process of maturation, and which are also an echo of the evolution process: from lying/crawling to standing.
I would like to inquire with you: how can we use the fundamental positions as a tool for writing (script) and for understanding space as such, and more specifically, how we relate to space, and how we thus position ourselves, engage and respond to our environments?
Generation 2022
Alternative movements. Minimal struggle
lecture within Evenings with WHW Akademija
DAZ, Trg bana Josipa Jelačića 3/1, Zagreb
05/04 2022 at 7pm
Yael Davids will present the context of her work in which the human body plays a central part. As a Feldenkrais Method practicioner Davids will present this method as a research device for comprehending the inner-workings of structures and prevailing tendencies — bodily, institutionally, artistically. Question to be tackled through this lecture is also how collective heritage and socially charged narratives become intertwined with the individual’s biography and sensibilities.
Yael Davids lives and works in Amsterdam. She studied Fine Arts at the Rietveld Academie, Sculpture at the Pratt Institute and Choreography and Dance Pedagogy at the Remscheid Academie. Her practice draws on a sculptural and performative vocabulary, in which the body is understood as a vessel wherein knowledge, memories, and habits are archived and enacted on a daily basis. As a trained instructor in the Feldenkrais Method, Davids often employs the method as a device for examining how the forces of psychology and physics influence perception, movement, relationality, and self-awareness.