Grab yourself by the ears and dance

Grab yourself by the ears and dance

Grab Yourself by the Ears and Dance is a Lab.Zone designed to support students in their artistic practice and collective projects throughout the creative process. Using a joyful blend of strategies drawn from popular education, self-taught experiences, so-called alternative pedagogies, empowerment, and anarchist thought, we will work to situate our practices in a way that respects our specific sensitivities and poetics. Grab Yourself by the Ears and Dance places a specific emphasis on the notion of care: care for our unique methodologies, care for our gestures, care for the materials and the choices we make in selecting them, and care in how we handle our references. This Lab.Zone is for everyone, especially studio mice, snails and tumbleweeds, doodlers, those who use just a bit too many post-its, and anyone who regularly wonders what they’re actually doing.

This Lab.Zone includes regular collective discussion sessions on works in progress, invitations to spatial and thus communicative setups that challenge Western institutional norms, dialogues with guests who participate in our school’s life without being part of the teaching staff, and exercises for sharing skills amongst ourselves. We will also have the pleasure of meeting artists and craftspeople in their workspaces, so they can share their own methodologies and expertise with us.
At the end of the year, participants in Grab Yourself by the Ears and Dance will join students from Roxane Bovet’s Think.Zone Collective Organizations, Anarchist Thought, and Artists’ Experiences for a collective surprise project full of humor, rigor, and love for our practices.

The title of this Lab.Zone is a hommage to my grandmother, who, during my childhood, would say this phrase when encouraging me to entertain and occupy myself independently whenever I asked for too much attention while she was busy around the house.

Image: Gladys Nilsson, Sandwich Board Beauties, ink on paper, 21 x 27,9 cm, 1965