Feral Research attempts to not just continue to evolve the dialogue between contemporary dance X visual arts X and urban ecology but to consider it as a springboard for new action, situations, thought and movement spaces to illuminate our kinetic understanding of the world.

COLLECTIVE WEED IMPROVISATION JAM

October 25, November 22, December 20, January 24, February 28, March 28, April 25, May 23, June 11, July 9, August 13, September , October 15, November 12, December 10
Facilitated by andrea haenggi and rotating guest facilitators including Jill Sigman, Lorene Bouboushian, Catherine Grau, Iele Paloumpis, Ellie Irons, Catherine Grau, Christopher Kennedy

Every 4th Tuesday of the month, the dance floor of the sanctuary of weedy species at 1067 PacificPeople becomes a learning lab for cross-pollinate weedy practices. The two and half hours is organized where one hour is a class facilitated by a rotating roster of Weed Facilitators and follows by an open score jam. All movement levels are welcome.
The Collective Weed Improvisation celebrates the idea of By By By Utopia to explore collective situations to improvise and play, movement as potential for healing and constructing social sculptures with humans and urban wild plants, we call weeds. We will begin by “planting” together.

Important Note: Stay from start to finish.

DECOMPOSE– A Movement Field Workshop

April 17, 2016 2:00pm-5:00pm with Carrie Ahern/Andrea Haenggi
This Workshop suggests a space for the participants where they can experience decomposing while alive, allowing release of energy to find connection to the ecosystem around them and gaining a level of awareness. Inspired by the “Body Farm” Ahern will take the participants through the actual stages of their own body decomposing. Haenggi will relate and interrelate the body’s decomposition to that of organic plant matter with inspiration of cuban-american performance artist Ana Mendieta’s work “Siluetas”. Bodies are, after all, merely forms of energy, trapped in lumps of matter waiting to be released into the wider universe. What will happen if we move our bodies alone and together by composing movement scores that allows us to experience the process of decomposition? To decompose is to live too… –Samuel Beckett

THEM – US: SKIN The animal in all of us.

November 22nd, 2015 2 pm – 4 pm, led by wilderness living skills instructor Nancye Good and dance artist Andrea Haenggi
The animal in all of us. Why are we fascinated by animal skin? What is our human – animal relationship?
In this hands-on, experiential two-hour workshop, we discover the process of fleshing and ‘softening’ an animal hide. The ancient traditional process of softening will be done collectively through energetic improvised movements. We will explore physically and verbally the connection between the animal skin and our own skin as we stretch the hide.
We will work with a goat hide, which was given to us by a nearby butchery. Does the ancient skill of hide tanning allow us to connect to nature in a visceral way? Will our dedicated attention and effort in this process enable us to respect the animals that share our world?
At the end of the workshop we will collectively decide what to do with the processed goat hide. This is an adult workshop for people, performers, and artists interested in questions about human-animal relationship.

GREEN BORDERLAND:  A WEEDS WALKING TOUR in dance and plant pigments

September 5, 2015 11am-1pm with Andrea Haenggi and Ellie Irons
Become part of Green Borderland, a performative journey on foot with choreographer Andrea Haenggi and artist Ellie Irons. This lively tour through the culturally and ecologically hybrid terrain of Crown Heights uses walking as its choreographic base to create a poetic relationship with local plant life. Engaging with the resilient spontaneous urban plants so often dismissed as weeds, the we will use color and movement to forge a connection to this diverse, international mix of greenery. As we travel from the rewilded “vacant” lots of Pacific Street to the manicured grounds of the Botanic Garden, Ellie will lead us in identifying and exploring plant’s pigments and life stories, while Andrea will move along with us, inviting us to join her in her steps. When we pause she will configure her body to the landscape to outline spots where spontaneous urban plants have made their homes. Participants will receive a coloring guide to the spontaneous urban plants of Brooklyn and a new empathy, through movement and color, for the weedy green life of Brooklyn.

SHIFT– an Embodied Photographic Practice Workshop

October 25, 2015 11am-1pm with Julie Lemberger/Andrea Haenggi
This workshop is a place to try things out in unpredictable ways. It is for anyone who likes to push what image-making could be. We say everyone is a photographer and everyone is a dancer. We consume and make pictures at an ever-faster rate. Can we gain a new perspective what photography could be if our own body would play an active role? How can the photograph, and the experience of taking it, become the body? Could there be an ecology of images as well? The first half of this 2-hr workshop will be self-study and group explorations of photographymovement assignments guided by the facilitators. The second half will involve a more open anarchistic approach guided by everyone. We are interested in finding a photographic practice in which having “power” in image-making is replaced by one that is, in essence, being-in-the-world rather then commenting on the world.

Andrea Haenggi is leading the participants through a somatic fake/real car crash movement exploration and then they went into the streets to make the pictures: these are some of the participants statements:

Julie Lemberger:

Shuangshuang Huo:

Photo description: I used pano mode in iPhone to shoot this photo without retouching. By using this mode, I got this fractured visual effect, which shows the impact of a car crash. It’s like the last several inconsistent images the person who gets hit can see before losing consciousness.