Formulations of Assembly,
Workshop-as-Event
Formulations of Assembly, Workshop-as-Event is a hybrid form of social engagement that develops adaptive participatory structures to enrich conditions for mutual understanding and collaboration. It seeks to move away from performing choreography and speech acts associated with iconic events that are often replicated during public protests.
Instead, collaborators are invited to map out their ideas about conflict during discussions and perform the translation of conversations through physical movement. These activities are documented through autoethnographic methods, such as self-reflexive writing and movement notation.
The translation of physical movement helps collaborators formulate more expansive ideas about embodied practice and its relationship to forming assembly and activism.
Formulations of Assembly uses practice-as-research and performance-making to experiment with solidarity and alliance aesthetics by integrating autoethnography, urbanism, movement analysis, somatic practice, and performative writing. The purpose is to develop new terms and strategies for inclusion culture by cultivating understandings across multiple identities and subjective experiences. This form of collaborative research offers creative and participatory tools to strengthen relationships between people.
Formulations of Assembly, concluded with a performative party facilitated by Zoya Sardashti, Margherita Landi, and Silvio Palladino at Mare Culturale Urbano.
We invited a public audience into the theater to taste a handcrafted drink and guess its contents. Then, they were asked to share it with a stranger. Participants chose their favorite article of the Italian Constitution and read it with a microphone. We exhibited documentation from previous workshops, and participants were given an opportunity to write and sketch their vision of how bodily figures should be illustrated on assembly point signs.
Excerpts of Notes Toward a Performative Theory of Assembly by Judith Butler were read out loud as funk, jazz, and hip-hop played in the background. We encouraged everyone to dance, even if they felt shy. At the end, someone sang a love song.
