I am Joanna Kalm, a neuroqueer somatic practitioner and artistic researcher, based in Tallinn (Estonia) and Linköping (Sweden). 

 

I hold a post-disciplinary relationship with contemporary dance (as my first higher education degree), and my artistic research is informed by further studies in cultural anthropology and by feminist new materialist research paradigm, highlighting the performative process of knowledge-making and subjectivity. 

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My work finds its expression as somatic embodiment practices and spaces for embodiment that can be joined by people. Thus, my work can be recognised under the label of social somatics. Discussing-navigating-embodying the shift from normative embodiment towards alternate and diverse expressions is one of the central intentions of my ongoing doctoral research. 

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My practice is informed by the somatic movement approach Body-Mind Centering and related embodiment practices, whereby personal experience is foregrounded as a process to be observed, both in studio-based practice and also in practices presented as artistic endeavours. This makes facilitation of practices my main artistic tool and experience itself a transient artistic "object" to be witnessed. 

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Importantly, the development of performative somatic practices unravels within participatory processes and includes the expertise and somatic sensemaking of other professionals working with somatics, dance and embodiment (based in Estonia). Thank you, Nele Kotli, Laura Kvelstein-Roosimäe, Tatjana Romanova, Helina Karvak, Rasmus S. Jensen, Christin Taul, and Mari Mägi. 

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Foundational for the development of artistic-somatic practices is diffractive work with feminist new materialist and posthumanist philosophy, consciousness studies (including cellular based consciousness theory, embodied cognition), and organism-oriented ontology (including the theory of autopoiesis). Inevitably, my work steers towards philosophy and practice is the place-process in which I/we negotiate relevant questions. 

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Happy to hear from you if any of it resonates. 

 

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