Planetary Embodiment: Decay and Transformation in Language, Culture and its Narratives

Luïza Luz
Planetary Embodiment: Decay and Transformation in Language, Culture, and its Narratives

Autonomous Tutorial, English, 2 SWS, 2 ECTS
Tuesday - Friday 1.-4.11.2022), 10-18 h, Hardenbergstr. 33, Quergalerie (EG)

Online info session: Monday, 24.10., 12 h: https://udk-berlin.webex.com/udk-berlin/j.php?MTID=m809b5a20bdccacc2e88c01248b0e8ce2
Meeting Kennummer: 2731 306 0602, Passwort: 3NsMv5iMts7

Registration starts 17.10.2022 via Moodle: https://moodle.udk-berlin.de/moodle/course/view.php?id=1689
Moodle Einschreibeschlüssel / Moodle Enrollment Key: embodiment


This world is made up of narratives. Some include, and others exclude. By critically engaging with them, we can choose to maintain, or question established paradigms. It may be that the future we are looking for, is already available, but simultaneously hidden by the power of narratives that reproduces the “isms”: modernism, capitalism, individualism, colonialism, imperialism, and so on. These exclusionary narratives contribute to the maintenance of imbalanced power relations inside and outside institutions.

In this edition of Planetary Embodiment, we’ll continue our investigation of life, death, and transformation, focusing on language, culture, and narratives. What’s decaying, and what’s being born? In which way does the language of art and academia include or exclude? Which nomenclatures do we need to recover or imagine to achieve liberation for humans and more than humans?

The sessions will be conducted from and within the awareness of our individual and collective bodies, emotions, and thoughts. We believe that knowledge and care must be indistinguishable, and the classroom an intimate-safe space - one that is cultivated in togetherness. While we address structural issues on macro-political scales, we also reclaim our responsibility and autonomy. The meetings will be both theoretical, and practical.

This time, we’ll also have the Seminar in an immersive format. The proposal is to build up a temporary classroom in the foyer of Hardenbergstraße as an autonomous zone for a temporary communal experience.

During the program, we’ll have guests to co-create this ecosystem:

Planetary Embodiment Zine with Gal Sherizly & Andrea Galano Toro:
Gal and Andrea met in the previous spring seminar of Planetary Embodiment and the Privilege of Dreaming. During the seminar they started a collaborative publication that would serve as space for dreamy fragments, recipe for dreaming, documentation, and a glossary for Planetary Embodiment. In the upcoming seminar they will lead a writing workshop with the students, where they will co-create a recipe for dreaming, and co-write a glossary including their own descriptions of various terms discussed in the course of the seminar.
“It matters what matters we use to think other matters with (...) what descriptions describe descriptions, It matters what stories make worlds, what worlds make stories.” (Staying with the trouble, Donna Haraway)

Storytelling with s.e.e:
We seek to reharmonize beings through story. We seek to reclaim joyous beauty and encourage others to do the same. Our radical approach to performance is rooted in an ancestral inheritance of rebellion against colonialcapitalism. Our body is a vessel who opens to the forces of Chaos & Creation hoping to share the fruits of this communion that they may inspire. We speak of hope&horror, pain&pleasure, kindness, creulty & unnamed passions of the spirit.
We are teacher-student.
student-teacher. 
fumbling, humble, radiant creature of the Sun.
grounded, powerful, playful child of the Earth.

Requirements for the ungraded Studium Generale credits: active and regular participation.

luïza luz is a transdisciplinary artist, researcher, and avant-pop musician born in brasil. In their work, luz engages with processes of decay, magic and transformation in knowledge production, and natureculture narratives. They have a special interest in written and vocal words – that then become images, lectures, sound performances, installations, and collaborative ecosystems. Besides being a master's student at the art in context institut at the university of arts of berlin, luz teaches the seminar "planetary embodiment” for students and non-students, and integrates a broader movement towards structural change by rooting the climate and humanitarian crises in colonial history. More info on: www.luizaluz.com