Looking for ways to address and attune to the urgent ecological crises of our age, this special i... more Looking for ways to address and attune to the urgent ecological crises of our age, this special issue problematizes the notion of the “more-than-human” and explores the nexus between ecology and embodiment across different artistic disciplines and traditions of embodied research. The editorial evokes our ecosomatic processes of co-editing with the more-than-human, and we offer a poetic commentary alongside video excerpts from the authors’ works, which weaves connective tissues between the works. We conclude by discussing ecologies of embodiment as a bodily felt and cognitively thought generative space between certainty and uncertainty, knowing and not-knowing, sensing and naming.
Looking for ways to address and attune to the urgent ecological crises of our age, this special i... more Looking for ways to address and attune to the urgent ecological crises of our age, this special issue problematizes the notion of the "more-than-human" and explores the nexus between ecology and embodiment across different artistic disciplines and traditions of embodied research. The editorial evokes our ecosomatic processes of co-editing with the more-than-human, and we offer a poetic commentary alongside video excerpts from the authors' works, which weaves connective tissues between the works. We conclude by discussing ecologies of embodiment as a bodily felt and cognitively thought generative space between certainty and uncertainty, knowing and not-knowing, sensing and naming.
El concepto de motilidad, que se refierea la capacidad de ser movil, se introduceen este articulo... more El concepto de motilidad, que se refierea la capacidad de ser movil, se introduceen este articulo y se sugiere como una maneraprofunda de explicar los cambios enlas movilidades forrajeras y la organizacionsocial. La investigacion con las comunidadesforrajeras Baka en el noreste de Gabonmuestra como estan cambiando sus mediosde subsistencia asumiendo la explotacionminera artesanal del oro, y un acercamientoteorico extendido que se requierepara dar un reconocimiento mas claro alimpacto y los desafios resultantes a la organizacionsocial igualitaria de los Baka.El concepto motilidad aporta a la comprensionde las movilidades diversificadas,centrandose no solo en la actual movilidadobservable, sino tambien considerando lasopciones y limitaciones que preceden almovimiento. Entendido como una formade capital de movilidad, la motilidad destacadiferencias, cambios o desigualdades dentro de los grupos sociales Baka y entrelos Baka y las comunidades vecinas.
This commentary introduces fascia, our bodily connective tissue, as a contribution to thinking bo... more This commentary introduces fascia, our bodily connective tissue, as a contribution to thinking body as process beyond mind–body dualisms. Research in the field of Fascia Studies has shown that fascias’ core qualities are shifting and sliding in tensional responsiveness and that its both/and tissue-and-system features challenge clear-cut definitions. Acknowledging these characteristics of human physiology in novel ways, and in particular fascia as our largest sensory organ, becomes relevant to ontologies, alterities and research methodologies emphasizing experience and transdisciplinarity. Importantly, the notion is never to theorize fascia as model or metaphor but as quotidian processual responsive proposition.
How we sense and move our bodies shapes how we relate with each other. Current socio-economic pra... more How we sense and move our bodies shapes how we relate with each other. Current socio-economic practices are reducing generative qualities of relating. Doerte Weig shows how bodily capacities for sensitive tensional responsiveness are relevant to (re)generative cultures, the future of work, lifelong learning, sharing, healing and well-being. She draws together her own experience of living with Baka egalitarian foragers in North-Eastern Gabon, her corporate experience, and her studies on body-ing, somatics and our connective tissue-system fascia. Interweaving neurophysiological shifting-sliding with a radically different ecosystemic awareness opens up potentials for bodying beyond current legal and political limits into enchantingly vibrant and ecosomatically alive futures.
For this special issue of the Journal of Embodied Research we invite contributions that explore h... more For this special issue of the Journal of Embodied Research we invite contributions that explore how the experience of embodiment is embedded within the larger body of the earth. We call artists and researchers of interdisciplinary practices to propose works that weave threads between somatic, audiovisual and textual ways of knowing. We are curious about proposals that document and articulate the shifts of perception unfolding when we relinquish control and attune our human senses to the sentient presence of plants and the many other nonhuman living systems. Contributors are encouraged to engage the inquiry as a process of co-composing with the more-than-human and to reflect on how our relationship with other forms of life can be reconfigured in accountable and collaborative ways.
Motility and fascia: how neurophysiological knowledge can contribute to mobility studies, 2019
What happens if we think together the concept of motility, defined as the capacity or potential o... more What happens if we think together the concept of motility, defined as the capacity or potential of a person to move or be mobile, together with fascia, our bodily connective tissue? This article works from a transdisciplinary perspective to consider how new neurophysiological knowledge may come to matter in mobility studies. Intercultural policy-making in Barcelona, and the proposed Blockchain-based mobility platform IoMob (Internet of Mobility) are shown as two examples of this approach. The key emergent suggestions are, firstly, to give more weight to the complexity of body, bodying and molecular-molar interplay in mobility research, and, secondly, to extend the concept of motility to explicitly include our sensorial body awareness. This has implications for mobile methodologies including participant sensation, and conceptual relevance to current issues in mobility studies such as overcoming stasis-mobility binaries, non-subjective theories of (urban) mobilities, and scalar fluency.
This thesis (http://kups.ub.uni-koeln.de/5238/) offers a first scientific portrait of the Baka in... more This thesis (http://kups.ub.uni-koeln.de/5238/) offers a first scientific portrait of the Baka in North-Eastern Gabon, a group of post-foragers living along the River Ivindo, and the way they practice and conceptualise mobility. The inquiry encompasses the long-term historical and the daily or short-term current mobility of this group, elicited through life histories and participant observation. The central premise of this work is that mobility is relational. Relational refers to interaction of movement and fixity, of position and outcome, and to the understanding of mobility as socially produced. The second concept employed is that of motility, the capacity or potential to be mobile. As motility analyses what comes before observable movement, of potential and actualised outcome as mobility or immobility, it takes up the idea of mobility as relational. The Baka living on the Ivindo migrated from Cameroon and Congo into Gabon over the last approximately 60 years. In contrast to established approaches to forest forager mobility, which focus mainly on resource mobility during an annual cycle, this study considers the long-term and larger geographical perspective and shows that the quality of personal relations between Baka and their neighbours is decisive in mobility considerations. Previously these relations were characterised as a structural opposition between two ethnic groups. This analysis demonstrates the heterogeneity of people and their interactions, in the past and the present, to argue, firstly, that relations are more appropriately conceptualised as multilateral, and, secondly, that an inquiry remains incomplete without considering affections and emotions. A principal mobility factor for the Baka is the search for a good life, meaning economic improvement and freedom from violence. This search coincides with a diversification of Baka livelihoods to include subsistence practices as well as working in the gold sites of Gabon. Employing motility shows the aspirations and limitations of Baka personal and group mobility in gold work. Motility is also understood as ‘mobility capital’ and thereby helps document social change, and how gold work is undertaken with reference to Baka egalitarian social organisation to be successful. By including group and individual as well as different temporalities in the analysis, and detailing the impact of social values on mobilities, motility gives depth to the analysis of mobility.
This article analyses the ritual aspects of 5Rhythms, a contemporary form of movement meditation ... more This article analyses the ritual aspects of 5Rhythms, a contemporary form of movement meditation with no set steps. 5Rhythms aims to effect healing and personal growth through the transformative power of dance, similar to a growing number of practices around the world. The analysis demonstrates that to understand 5Rhythms as a curative healing rite, the focus must be on interactive and sensorial considerations, and on the participant's subjective assessment of feeling better. It is argued that a contemporary understanding of ritual theory acknowledges firstly, the subjective and sensorial turn to include a personal and intentional choice of ritual framework, and, secondly, ritual as standing in co-creative and dialectical relationship with the social. Underlying this conceptualization is an understanding of the body as ontogenetic capacity whose rhythmic and sensorial response is key to acceptance or rejection of healing and ideological framework.
Looking for ways to address and attune to the urgent ecological crises of our age, this special i... more Looking for ways to address and attune to the urgent ecological crises of our age, this special issue problematizes the notion of the “more-than-human” and explores the nexus between ecology and embodiment across different artistic disciplines and traditions of embodied research. The editorial evokes our ecosomatic processes of co-editing with the more-than-human, and we offer a poetic commentary alongside video excerpts from the authors’ works, which weaves connective tissues between the works. We conclude by discussing ecologies of embodiment as a bodily felt and cognitively thought generative space between certainty and uncertainty, knowing and not-knowing, sensing and naming.
Looking for ways to address and attune to the urgent ecological crises of our age, this special i... more Looking for ways to address and attune to the urgent ecological crises of our age, this special issue problematizes the notion of the "more-than-human" and explores the nexus between ecology and embodiment across different artistic disciplines and traditions of embodied research. The editorial evokes our ecosomatic processes of co-editing with the more-than-human, and we offer a poetic commentary alongside video excerpts from the authors' works, which weaves connective tissues between the works. We conclude by discussing ecologies of embodiment as a bodily felt and cognitively thought generative space between certainty and uncertainty, knowing and not-knowing, sensing and naming.
El concepto de motilidad, que se refierea la capacidad de ser movil, se introduceen este articulo... more El concepto de motilidad, que se refierea la capacidad de ser movil, se introduceen este articulo y se sugiere como una maneraprofunda de explicar los cambios enlas movilidades forrajeras y la organizacionsocial. La investigacion con las comunidadesforrajeras Baka en el noreste de Gabonmuestra como estan cambiando sus mediosde subsistencia asumiendo la explotacionminera artesanal del oro, y un acercamientoteorico extendido que se requierepara dar un reconocimiento mas claro alimpacto y los desafios resultantes a la organizacionsocial igualitaria de los Baka.El concepto motilidad aporta a la comprensionde las movilidades diversificadas,centrandose no solo en la actual movilidadobservable, sino tambien considerando lasopciones y limitaciones que preceden almovimiento. Entendido como una formade capital de movilidad, la motilidad destacadiferencias, cambios o desigualdades dentro de los grupos sociales Baka y entrelos Baka y las comunidades vecinas.
This commentary introduces fascia, our bodily connective tissue, as a contribution to thinking bo... more This commentary introduces fascia, our bodily connective tissue, as a contribution to thinking body as process beyond mind–body dualisms. Research in the field of Fascia Studies has shown that fascias’ core qualities are shifting and sliding in tensional responsiveness and that its both/and tissue-and-system features challenge clear-cut definitions. Acknowledging these characteristics of human physiology in novel ways, and in particular fascia as our largest sensory organ, becomes relevant to ontologies, alterities and research methodologies emphasizing experience and transdisciplinarity. Importantly, the notion is never to theorize fascia as model or metaphor but as quotidian processual responsive proposition.
How we sense and move our bodies shapes how we relate with each other. Current socio-economic pra... more How we sense and move our bodies shapes how we relate with each other. Current socio-economic practices are reducing generative qualities of relating. Doerte Weig shows how bodily capacities for sensitive tensional responsiveness are relevant to (re)generative cultures, the future of work, lifelong learning, sharing, healing and well-being. She draws together her own experience of living with Baka egalitarian foragers in North-Eastern Gabon, her corporate experience, and her studies on body-ing, somatics and our connective tissue-system fascia. Interweaving neurophysiological shifting-sliding with a radically different ecosystemic awareness opens up potentials for bodying beyond current legal and political limits into enchantingly vibrant and ecosomatically alive futures.
For this special issue of the Journal of Embodied Research we invite contributions that explore h... more For this special issue of the Journal of Embodied Research we invite contributions that explore how the experience of embodiment is embedded within the larger body of the earth. We call artists and researchers of interdisciplinary practices to propose works that weave threads between somatic, audiovisual and textual ways of knowing. We are curious about proposals that document and articulate the shifts of perception unfolding when we relinquish control and attune our human senses to the sentient presence of plants and the many other nonhuman living systems. Contributors are encouraged to engage the inquiry as a process of co-composing with the more-than-human and to reflect on how our relationship with other forms of life can be reconfigured in accountable and collaborative ways.
Motility and fascia: how neurophysiological knowledge can contribute to mobility studies, 2019
What happens if we think together the concept of motility, defined as the capacity or potential o... more What happens if we think together the concept of motility, defined as the capacity or potential of a person to move or be mobile, together with fascia, our bodily connective tissue? This article works from a transdisciplinary perspective to consider how new neurophysiological knowledge may come to matter in mobility studies. Intercultural policy-making in Barcelona, and the proposed Blockchain-based mobility platform IoMob (Internet of Mobility) are shown as two examples of this approach. The key emergent suggestions are, firstly, to give more weight to the complexity of body, bodying and molecular-molar interplay in mobility research, and, secondly, to extend the concept of motility to explicitly include our sensorial body awareness. This has implications for mobile methodologies including participant sensation, and conceptual relevance to current issues in mobility studies such as overcoming stasis-mobility binaries, non-subjective theories of (urban) mobilities, and scalar fluency.
This thesis (http://kups.ub.uni-koeln.de/5238/) offers a first scientific portrait of the Baka in... more This thesis (http://kups.ub.uni-koeln.de/5238/) offers a first scientific portrait of the Baka in North-Eastern Gabon, a group of post-foragers living along the River Ivindo, and the way they practice and conceptualise mobility. The inquiry encompasses the long-term historical and the daily or short-term current mobility of this group, elicited through life histories and participant observation. The central premise of this work is that mobility is relational. Relational refers to interaction of movement and fixity, of position and outcome, and to the understanding of mobility as socially produced. The second concept employed is that of motility, the capacity or potential to be mobile. As motility analyses what comes before observable movement, of potential and actualised outcome as mobility or immobility, it takes up the idea of mobility as relational. The Baka living on the Ivindo migrated from Cameroon and Congo into Gabon over the last approximately 60 years. In contrast to established approaches to forest forager mobility, which focus mainly on resource mobility during an annual cycle, this study considers the long-term and larger geographical perspective and shows that the quality of personal relations between Baka and their neighbours is decisive in mobility considerations. Previously these relations were characterised as a structural opposition between two ethnic groups. This analysis demonstrates the heterogeneity of people and their interactions, in the past and the present, to argue, firstly, that relations are more appropriately conceptualised as multilateral, and, secondly, that an inquiry remains incomplete without considering affections and emotions. A principal mobility factor for the Baka is the search for a good life, meaning economic improvement and freedom from violence. This search coincides with a diversification of Baka livelihoods to include subsistence practices as well as working in the gold sites of Gabon. Employing motility shows the aspirations and limitations of Baka personal and group mobility in gold work. Motility is also understood as ‘mobility capital’ and thereby helps document social change, and how gold work is undertaken with reference to Baka egalitarian social organisation to be successful. By including group and individual as well as different temporalities in the analysis, and detailing the impact of social values on mobilities, motility gives depth to the analysis of mobility.
This article analyses the ritual aspects of 5Rhythms, a contemporary form of movement meditation ... more This article analyses the ritual aspects of 5Rhythms, a contemporary form of movement meditation with no set steps. 5Rhythms aims to effect healing and personal growth through the transformative power of dance, similar to a growing number of practices around the world. The analysis demonstrates that to understand 5Rhythms as a curative healing rite, the focus must be on interactive and sensorial considerations, and on the participant's subjective assessment of feeling better. It is argued that a contemporary understanding of ritual theory acknowledges firstly, the subjective and sensorial turn to include a personal and intentional choice of ritual framework, and, secondly, ritual as standing in co-creative and dialectical relationship with the social. Underlying this conceptualization is an understanding of the body as ontogenetic capacity whose rhythmic and sensorial response is key to acceptance or rejection of healing and ideological framework.
The question of how moving-with one another takes on new shapes in today’s culturally-blurred urb... more The question of how moving-with one another takes on new shapes in today’s culturally-blurred urban spaces is central to urban design in a post-automobile world. Our conscious and unconscious responses to the diversities in modes of walking and other mobilities - the ‘molecular’ level and registers such as rhythm, sensation or affect (Merriman 2012) - deserve more attention. Fascia, our bodily connective tissue, is central to our movement capacity, and changes its textures and rhythmicities in response to a person’s lifestyle. Combining concepts of temporality inherent in motility and process philosophy with the physiology of fascia advances conceptualizations of movement and mobility practices to correlate with corporeal realities. It takes persevering stasis-mobility binaries into the body and to a non-identitarian capacity level. Experimenting with fascia’s quality of ‘tensional responsiveness’ gives us new vocabularies relevant to sustainable urban planning and future mobility technologies. Fascia offers methodological and theoretical inspiration, materialising the (temporal) move from knowledge of motion to knowledge in motion.
This article discusses the impact of changing music sources in the lives of the Baka, an egalitar... more This article discusses the impact of changing music sources in the lives of the Baka, an egalitarian post-forager group living along the River Ivindo in north-eastern Gabon. The article documents how creating and listening to music takes place in diverse ritual and social contexts. Baka are singing-dancing to traditional songs whilst at the same time listening-dancing to electronically generated music currently popular in Central and West African countries. The simultaneity of musical influences is co-creating new social spaces and practices, influencing bodily movement styles, gender relations and expressions of identity. The article addresses how new technical influences are challenging the ritualised male-female interaction of Baka egalitarian society normally expressed in song-dance. It highlights how the possession and exchange of ‘African’ music is enlarging Baka conceptualisations of identity; and how this type of music is being framed and incorporated into Baka social order and Baka spirit world, replacing and compensating for the loss of established rituals. This leads to general observations on the co-creativeness of sensorial perception, music and sociality.
https://www.ub.edu/artsoundscapes
The ARTSOUNDSCAPES project deals with sound, rock art and sacr... more https://www.ub.edu/artsoundscapes The ARTSOUNDSCAPES project deals with sound, rock art and sacred landscapes among past hunter-gatherers and early agricultural societies around the world. The potential of sound to stimulate powerful emotions makes it a common medium for conferring places with extraordinary agency. Ethnographic and ethnohistorical sources indicate that these sites are often endowed with a sacred significance and, in many cases, they also receive special treatment, including the production of rock paintings. Despite the aural experience being an integral component of the human condition and a key element in ritual, archaeology has largely been unable to study it systematically. Rock art landscapes are no exception and, although some studies have been made, they have largely been reproached for their lack of scientific rigour and subjectivity. ARTSOUNDSCAPES will fully address this weakness by investigating the perception of sound in rock art landscapes from an interdisciplinary approach. Borrowing methods developed in acoustic engineering, the project will assess, from an objective and quantitative perspective, the acoustic properties of rock art landscapes in selected areas around the world. Human experiences associated with altered or mystical states invoked by the identified special sonic characteristics of these landscapes will be further tested by exploring the psychoacoustic effects these soundscapes have on people and their neural correlate to brain activity. The project will also thoroughly survey ethnographic attitudes to sacred soundscapes based on both current premodern societies and ethnohistorical sources. The combination of this array of interdisciplinary approaches will facilitate the ultimate aim of the project: to propose a phenomenological understanding of sacred soundscapes among late hunter-gatherers and early agriculturalists around the world
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Papers by Doerte Weig
The ARTSOUNDSCAPES project deals with sound, rock art and sacred landscapes among past hunter-gatherers and early agricultural societies around the world. The potential of sound to stimulate powerful emotions makes it a common medium for conferring places with extraordinary agency. Ethnographic and ethnohistorical sources indicate that these sites are often endowed with a sacred significance and, in many cases, they also receive special treatment, including the production of rock paintings. Despite the aural experience being an integral component of the human condition and a key element in ritual, archaeology has largely been unable to study it systematically. Rock art landscapes are no exception and, although some studies have been made, they have largely been reproached for their lack of scientific rigour and subjectivity. ARTSOUNDSCAPES will fully address this weakness by investigating the perception of sound in rock art landscapes from an interdisciplinary approach. Borrowing methods developed in acoustic engineering, the project will assess, from an objective and quantitative perspective, the acoustic properties of rock art landscapes in selected areas around the world. Human experiences associated with altered or mystical states invoked by the identified special sonic characteristics of these landscapes will be further tested by exploring the psychoacoustic effects these soundscapes have on people and their neural correlate to brain activity. The project will also thoroughly survey ethnographic attitudes to sacred soundscapes based on both current premodern societies and ethnohistorical sources. The combination of this array of interdisciplinary approaches will facilitate the ultimate aim of the project: to propose a phenomenological understanding of sacred soundscapes among late hunter-gatherers and early agriculturalists around the world