Inhabiting
Dear friends,
What I find so special about Amiglia — among many things — is that it is a living playground. A place where we have room to move, to explore, to experiment, to research, to create. We have soft and warm spaces welcoming our bodies to dance, roll, and rest. We have barns and tools to craft things. We have endless outdoor space to breathe fresh air and connect to more-than-human nature.
Amiglia is a wonderful place for artists. That’s why I am so happy and grateful to announce the week I will be leading with visual artist Mathilde van Beekhuizen.
Nobody’s Dance morning practice
Daily two-hour session of non-duality-informed practice: dream sharing, meditation, movement, inquiry.
Daily two-hour session of observing, ‘landscaping’, tracking, drawing, mapping, transforming, interconnecting.
Art- & nature-based learning
Moving Language
If you use Instagram, you can find some of my musing on the theme of Inhabiting by clicking the picture above. Mathilde has been doing her own explorations - the land of Amiglia fits wonderfully well in her hand.
Where did we get the title Inhabiting?
Last September I went to Corsica to find a voice I had fallen in love with.
The group A Filetta consists of six a cappella singing men, and I had the opportunity to interview Jean-Claude Acquaviva, who has been one of the voices for almost 50 years. I loved how passionately he shared the story of A Filetta, and he moved me profoundly when he said: when we sing, we have to inhabit every word!
When I told Mathilde about this, she was also intrigued, and we pondered: What does it mean to inhabit words?
Maybe you can just hear it. I hear an urgency to sing — I believe that is what moves me so much. The interview appeared as a written article in the last edition of Vruchtbare Aarde. You can find some of my favourite songs of A Filetta in this playlist.
Some words of Mathilde about Inhabiting:
We will explore how this place (and our bodies) unfold when we inhabit them attentively. Why is it sometimes difficult to stay with what is present? Why does the world feel easier to access through a small screen than through direct experience?
Together, we will map the house and landscape by living in them — through movement, observation, actions, fieldwork, and playful assignments. We will explore what remains out of sight and how insight can emerge through attention, repetition, and curiosity.
The week at Amiglia alternates between individual and group work. Zoe and I will guide the process, supporting each other and the group through a series of open-ended instructions. Participants’ findings can be recorded in a handmade logbook to document observations, questions, drawings, notes, or other traces of their experience.
Rather than working toward a predefined outcome, the workshop offers a foundation for free (artistic) practice. It is an invitation to discover fascinations that are not planned in advance — fascinations that surprise you and emerge from being fully present in a place.
