Disorientation at the Site of the Letter,

Goldsmiths University of London, London | May 2024

One such workshop, Disorientation at the Site of the Letter, focused on the destabilizing effects of encountering maternal archives. Working with breath, touch, and voice, participants navigated the disorienting impact of reading and re-reading a letter that revealed a previously silenced maternal history. The session wove together autobiographical and archival materials, guiding participants through a durational engagement with silence, revelation, and the tensions between presence and absence.

This workshop exemplified the ways in which my research extends beyond theoretical engagement, inviting participants to experience histories that hurt through embodied practice. As with all my workshops at Goldsmiths, it demonstrated the critical potential of embodied methodologies, not only as a mode of inquiry but as a way of fostering new forms of relationality, knowledge-making, and collective reflection.

Through these experiences, my practice continues to evolve, responding to the emergent needs of each space and the bodies within it. These workshops are not static events but living processes; expanding, contracting, and shifting with each iteration.

We move together through the inhale, interval to the exhale, ‘Being faithful to the spacing of breath, this ‘rhythm and melody of the universe’ (Irigaray 2004d, p. 50). By bringing consciousness to our breath, we gesture to the other, commune with the other and return to the self.

Reorientations

The mother-daughter relation becomes a site for exploring how air is shared—between two bodies and within collective bodies. Through repetitive reorientations, these spaces open to communion in breath, offering resilience and possibilities for transformation.

We share air.

We move with and are shaped by the air around us,

often forgetting the ground beneath our feet.

Since the embodied research and movement workshops held in collaboration with artists, dancers, and researchers, these explorations have intertwined, evolving into the embodied circular readings at the core of my research and practice. They form touches, knots, and entanglements within my PhD, bridging theory and artistic practice.