Warmups and Cooldowns

The project responds to the necessity to claim time and space within and beyond the curriculum. Imagine an intro and an outro, a foreword and a conclusion, a prologue and an epilogue that occurs smoothly and effortlessly during our time in the class, in the studio, in the atelier, the rehearsal room, our desk. We owe that time and that space to allow ourselves to slow down, to share not only artistic practices and interests, but also sensory experience and others’ ways of knowledge. Such needs have -in my view- become more vital after the viral outbreak and in the aftermath, we are still dealing with them.

The first steps of the proposed project to start its formulation into practice, has been selected to be supported by VERSO in 2021. The goal was to create a depository of short warm-up sessions that can be used by anyone in means of their artistic practice (a small number of contributions can be found here https://blog.trans.zhdk.ch/practice/transdisciplinary-warm-ups-repository/). The objective now, through the SoC, is to take a step further, to create a sharing and inspiration platform for students and practitioners. For this reason, I would be eager to work together within small group of interested persons, and also extend the project with an additional cool-downs collection.

By framing thermal metaphors and properties related to temperature and physics, the concept of warmups and cool-downs is a simple and essential engagement of the body in one’s everyday practice. The regular contribution by participants fosters exchange, feedback and evolution of the short-format artefacts, with an open-end character and an yet-undefined and unfinished-research focus.

We will be working with ideas for short warm-ups and cool-downs, that could have an artistic character and they should be non-exclusive, open to a wider audience (meaning not explicitly related to the institution) to use individually or in group; ie meditation, breathing exercises, storytelling, music exercises, singing, movement instructions, walking, dancing, hypnosis, any kind of improvisation and experimental tryout proposals, instructions to handcrafts or no instructions at all. The only requirement is that they provide a frame and an abstract-or-systematic potentiality for poiesis (making, creating) in a broader sense.

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Eirini Sourgiadaki is working across and through a number of art practices (literature, poetry & storytelling, performance, installation), living between Zurich and Athens. She is pursuing a PhD in practice-based artistic research (ZHdK-Linz) with a special focus on Teleportation & Transformation through Storytelling and Technology. She is a research associate in MA Transdisziplinarität of the ZHdK. Born in Crete, grew up in Athens she studied Sociology (BSc), Cultural Management (MSc) at the Departments of Sociology and Media & Communication respectively, both in Panteion University for Social & Political Science, Athens. Additionally she studied Greek and English/American poetry and dance.