VOKRUG DA OKOLO
Practices of Becoming New Kinds of Beings
(St. Petersburg, Russia)
Vokrug Da Okolo invites all who are willing to take part in a workshop on body- and space-oriented practice. Participants will move from slowly investigating their own bodies (proprioception) and their environment (exteroception) to having the chance to become someone or something completely other.
Inside every contemporary artist dwells a witch, a bearer of knowledge. This knowledge is non-linear; it is under the spell of an affect of sensory and bodily transformation. If several witches gather in one space, their magic grows more potent. Vokrug Da Okolo’s workshop is home to four practicing veštice (sorceresses). By entering the same space as the sorceresses, the viewer will become part of a shared ritual of transformation. There is no telling quite where this witching practice will take us, but Vokrug Da Okolo’s instructions will likely lead to the discovery of a new kind of being, allowing viewers to shape the invisible reality of the world through the action of their bodies.
Vokrug Da Okolo is an independent art laboratory formed in 2012. The collective is made up of four core members (Zhenya Myakisheva, Darya Bresler, Vlada Milovskaya, and Leyla Alieva). It is organized horizontally; its members and total size vary from project to project. The collective uses a synthetic method: its shared art practice involves aggregating individual empirical approaches and studying and applying the experience of other formations and collectives.