LA SELVA 2024

A Call for Participants:

Up to 20 Part- and Fully-Funded Bursary Places at the

‘La Selva’: International Eco-Somatic and Regenerative Arts Residency

Rome (Central Italy), 2 - 6 October 2024

Deadline for Applications 7th June 2024

Apply with google form https://forms.gle/6a5YtC3g5zofQdA79

APPLY here

Photo by Stefania Milazzo (Archeological Park of Ostia Antica)

Created and coordinated by Raffaele Rufo (PhD, IT), Thomas Kampe (PhD, UK/DE) and Teatro del Lido di Ostia (Rome) with local partner organizations. International partner: International Forum for Eco-Embodied Arts (IFEEA). Funding partner: Intercultural Roots (UK)

Info: raffaele.rufo@gmail.com and Thomaskampe3259@gmail.com

WATCH THE SHORT DOCUMENTARY OF LA SELVA 2023:

After the success of last year’s edition, we are inviting eco-oriented artists - dancers, theatre- and performance-practitioners - somatic practitioners, scholars, pedagogues, and curators to participate in the interdisciplinary “La Selva”: International Eco-Somatic and Regenerative Arts Residency. ‘La Selva’ offers up to 20 part-funded and fully-funded bursaries between 2-6 October 2024 in a unique location near Rome entangled between the urban context of Ostia Lido, a vast nature reserve with wetlands, forests, dunes, and the Archeological Park of Ostia Antica.

La Selva offers 5 days of immersive and collaborative arts exchanges and explorations, somatic movement and perception practice, moments of sharing, reflection and discussion and eco-regenerative practices with local activists. The residency will be hosted by Teatro del Lido di Ostia (a public participatory theatre committed to eco-cultural regeneration) and Affabulazione (a cultural center inspired by the work of Pier Paolo Pasolini). The residency is entangled within a web of connections and a dialogue with local artists and cultural actors.

Participants will be accommodated near the sea in the urban area of Ostia Lido and will have access to work in the Archeological Park of the ancient Roman city of Ostia Antica. We are combining participatory practice and interest-led working groups within the sites of the residency with plenary gatherings of tuning, discussing, and sharing with the whole group and the local community. There will be meeting points for the whole group during each day of the residency, including eating and having fun together.

The residency aims to curate a re-discovering of the deep knowledge of ecological connection within the human experience, as a necessary process of care, re-connection, and cultural resistance. It offers an experiential forum for embodied practices concerned with reconfiguring our relation of ‘being with’ body and earth and being human and nature. ‘La Selva’ forms an inspiration for working with nature as an agentic force of somatic experience and with artistic processes as gentle acts of repair.

La Selva residency aims to bring together international and Italian arts practitioners with an interest in embodied, experimental, and critical approaches to environmental and community regeneration. ‘La Selva’ - a Latin expression from Ovidio's Metamorphosis - indicates and evokes the co-presence of humans and forests and other species of the living world. The residency enables participants to develop and share their practices in a unique cultural, ecological, and archaeological environment. The complex environment between sea, forest and city forms a meeting point between decay and the brutal impact of colonisation, as well as an inspiration for recovery and regeneration - where city and nature and past and present overlap a distinctive dramaturgy of the ecological crisis can emerge.

If you are interested, please apply by the 7th of June.

To apply and for more information on bursary schemes, please use this google form https://forms.gle/6a5YtC3g5zofQdA79

This bursary opportunity is part of a Crowdfunding/Matchfunding donation scheme with a deadline of the 10th June 2024.

Coordinators:

Raffaele Rufo (PhD) is a somatic dance practitioner, a mediator and facilitator of artistic and cultural processes, and an independent scholar with international reputation working with ecosomatic arts as a vehicle for individual and social transformation. He is the co-founder of the International Forum for Eco-Embodied Arts (IFEEA) and the co-editor of the special issue on ‘Ecologies of Embodiment’ of the videographic Journal of Embodied Research. His movement-led work on ecosomatics has been published in academic journals and books and presented in festivals and artistic programmes such as ‘(Re)Gaining Ecological Futures’ at Floating University Berlin and ‘Roots’ at the Italian Culture Institute of Bucharest (Romania). His recent ecosomatic pedagogical workshops and interventions include ‘Ecokinetics’, ‘Eco-Spirituality through Dance’, and ‘Returning Home: Body Earth Reciprocity’. Raffaele currently lives within the Natural Reserve of the Roman Coast (Rome, Central Italy) where, in partnership with Teatro del Lido di Ostia (Rome) and Intercultural Roots (UK), he coordinates ‘La Selva’ International Ecological Arts and Eco-Somatic Residency and the cognate local project of land and community regeneration through eco-cultural participatory processes.

www.raffaelerufo.com

Thomas Kampe (PhD) has worked as a performing artist, researcher and somatic educator across the globe for 40 years. He has participated in and directed intimate installations and large-scale participatory site responsive performances since the early 1980’s. Between 2012 and 2022 he worked as Professor of Somatic Performance & Education at Bath Spa University, UK, where he co-directed the Creative Corporealities Research Group. Thomas is a practitioner of The Feldenkrais Method® and guest-editor of the IFF research Journal Vol. 6 (2019): ‘Practices of Freedom: The Feldenkrais Method and Creativity’. He recently co-edited JDSP Vol. 13.1 &2 (2022): ‘Embodying Eco-Consciousness: Somatics, Aesthetic Practice and Social Action’.

www.thomaskampe.com

https://thomaskampe.wordpress

Teatro del Lido di Ostia was established as a public participatory theatre in 1992 and has been operating since then as a segment of a local welfare system that includes culture among the fundamental rights demanded by citizens. The theatre operates through a network of local associations and adopts an eco-systemic perspective to stimulate good social relations, intercultural dialogue between different ethnic affiliations and intergenerational dialogue between different age groups. It takes care of fragile individuals, minors, adolescents, as the next generation to be protected and promoted as protagonists of the public scene of the future. From the management point of view, it bases its mission on the principle of shared administration, in which social partners and public administrations share responsibilities in the running of a public and participatory project. Programming is shared through the identification of those generating themes perceived by the citizenship as sensitive contents on which to orientate the selection of performances and the articulation of training activities. Participation is realized through the methodology of participatory tables and working groups, permanent devices that are permeable to the solicitations coming from below and above, and which, thanks to the institutes of co-programming and co-planning, instruct participatory processes that are necessarily inclusive of the many different local identities.

https://www.teatriincomune.roma.it/teatro-del-lido-di-ostia/

International partner:

IFEEA (International Forum for Eco-Embodied Arts) is an emergent international forum for practitioners, educators and scholars in the growing field of eco-embodied arts. We seek to foster dialogue between diverse embodied knowledges to respond to key ecological and societal questions. We are committed to creating new ways to approach equitable and regenerative futures, and to activate and connect individuals, groups, communities and places as agents of eco-cultural awareness, citizenship and change. We intend to mobilise experiential, sensuous and creaturely ways of ‘being-with’ that challenge dominant anthropocentric knowledge formations.

https://ifeea.earth/

Funding partner:

Intercultural Roots is a Charity organisation registered in the UK that brings together practitioners, artists, scholars and teachers to create collaboratively and develop their practices for health and social change. We achieve this by creating a healthy environment for practitioners and nurturing this as a place in which seeds of artistic practice can flourish to bring positive changes to the world. We seek to harness the combined power of practice, critical inquiry and creativity to address health, education, environmental awareness, social equality and multilingual and trans-cultural collaborations.

https://www.interculturalroots.org/