Greetings, from across the waters from California. After returning from the Form in Question Symposium at New York University, we wanted to share some pictures from our time.... The Symposium was looking at many forms of improvisational performance, and included discussions, performances, and practice sessions.
We were able to share the practice and stories about Amerta Movement with a conference of about 150 people gathered from around the US and Europe, in a panel along with the work of the late performance artist Rachel Rosenthal, called Doing by Doing. The Amerta group included Simon Slidders, Sally E Dean, Katya Bloom, Melinda Buckwalter, Marilin Martinez, Julie Nathanielsz, and myself — a rare gathering here in the States, with several Embodied Lives contributors and editors present! Doing by Doing was led by Dan Poirier and Nehara Kelav. 
Some highlights of our panel were Katya inviting the room to move as audience, Sally offering practice on clothing and showing her somatic costuming, and Marilin offering stories about the connection between ritual and performance. -- it was an important addition to the festival overall. 
We brought a copy of Embodied Lives along, indeed.

​Margit

Some images taken by Galih Naga Seno, which appear on his facebook page. With thanks to Galih.

........................................Posted by Margit Galanter

As we approach the book launch and at the same time come more into the ending of the workshop portion of our time in Indonesia together, questions of culture seems to weave through what it means to be practicing here in Java. Culture in the sense of the context, the place, the language, what we are sharing, receiving, and what we are making .... The timing, the patterns around us and if which we are part. This bridges into opening the book with others, and the book of life and living.

On one of the nights of the events, Sally Dean will offer a performance with one of her costumes, and as this event has developed, we felt it would be good in that evening to host a conversation on interculture and performance. We have a list of questions we are whittling away, and we are inviting some people who live in Solo to participate. What is the relationship between the cultural experience of being an audience member and receiving the work, as felt, in the heart?

• what is a fair and mutually beneficial cultural exchange? 
  
• how is culture shared and how is culture owned?
  
• what are the specific ways that we have each worked an integrated pluralistic forms and ideas into our own work?
  
• how does it mean that Prapto has taught so much of his work abroad for the cultural landscape of both the folks from other countries, as well as the artistic landscape in Java and Indonesia?
  
• what are the ways that the cultures and people involved invent new paradigms and aesthetics through the exchange, and what of these feel healthy, and which other veer into appropriation? Is that something felt?
  
• is it actually possible to have an equal exchange amongst cultures from the west and east?
  
• how does amerta movement provide tools for these kinds of questions through the experience of the intercultural history of the work?
  
• how do the financial disparities (for instance in Europe and Indonesia) factor in implicitly and explicitly in our conversations ... what are the systemic and interpersonal economic factors of a cultural exchange?
  
• what are the experiences of witnessing and participating in a performance from abroad in the context of culture?
  

Things like this.... 
........................................Posted by Margit Galanter