Workshop::Listening Bodies::ASMR::Michael Reiley McDermott & Monica Gentile

Wednesday 28.11.2018

Please bring a pair of headphones as we will be working with amplified tingle making objects for the workshop.

Former Liebig12 resident Michael Reiley McDermott along with his collaborator, Monica Gentile will lead a class exploring the threshold of listening. Their project, Listening Bodies, pairs Deep Listening and Somatic Body practices.

Through body, mind and sensory experience we will explore topics such as, Somatic Practices, Deep Listening, mindfulness of listening, synesthesia and the history and frontiers of Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR).

ASMR is an experience characterized by a static-like or tingling sensation on the skin that typically begins on the scalp and moves down the back of the neck and upper spine. It has been compared with auditory-tactile synesthesia and may overlap with frisson. ASMR signifies the subjective experience of “low-grade euphoria” characterized by “a combination of positive feelings and a distinct static-like tingling sensation on the skin”. It is most commonly triggered by specific auditory or visual stimuli, and less commonly by intentional attention control.

Listening Bodies is a teaching framework developed by Italian choreographer and Movement Researcher Monica Gentile and American composer and sound artist Michael Reiley McDermott. Their work includes exercises in Movement Research/dance improvisation and partnering, Deep Listening, breathing techniques, sound-walks, guided meditations, mindfulness of listening and singing performance scores. Listening Bodies integrates Monica and Michael’s interest in physiology, anatomy, somatic practices, paleontology, evolutionary biology, neuroscience, and artificial intelligence.

Michael Reiley McDermott is a composer, musician, coder and sound designer. He has created works for video, dance, stage, installation, smartphones, multi-speaker arrays, wind sculptures, wishing wells and sleeping/dreaming. His practice explores the relationship between present moment awareness, deep time and humanity’s personal connection through listening. His work integrates a daily practice of meditation, Deep Listening and textured sound worlds through a process he calls “sonic photography”. This process involves site-specific recordings of physical spaces re-imagined using photographic development and collage techniques. His aim is to reframe the everyday world as both a grand statement that stretches out in both directions of time and as an ephemeral instant of precious connection.

In 2016 he completed a certification program in Deep Listening studying with Deep Listening pioneer Pauline Oliveros. He was recently Artist in Residence at <fidget>, Composer in Residence for Temple University’s BEEP Ensemble and Composer in Residence at Village of the Arts and Humanities. Over the past two years, he has been traveling at artists residencies around the world in Brazil, Iceland, Germany, Thailand, and India working on a sound design project of extinct animal sounds called Echozoo.

michaelreileymcdermott.com

Monica Gentile’s choreographic work and physical research investigate the embodiment of animalistic qualities, trance, minimalism, and the states of the body, energy, and breath. In particular, she is interested in investigating contrasting concepts within the body (presence/absence, solidity/evanescence) with a visual and imagery based approach. Her intent is to reveal these paradoxical states through evocative choreographic elements and in the construction of hybrid figures with the body and its gestures. Her work is characterized by a strong presence – creating an atmospheric/imaginary space around the body and expressing connections to forms found in nature, landscapes, and the geographical. The point of reference in her work is not only the body itself but how we place it and perceive it in relation to what surrounds us.

She graduated at the University “DAMS THEATER” at the Faculty of Philosophy and Literature of Bologna. She is a dancer, choreographer, Yoga Teacher and a martial arts practitioner (Kung fu and Aikido). Her dance practice is based on Movement Research and Somatic Practices. The choreographers and artists she has worked with have brought her to understand artistic practice as a political, ethical choice, related to the artist’s surroundings: Virgilio Sieni (Director of the Biennale Danza, Venice), Simona Bertozzi, Anna Albertarelli (working in the companies Gohatto and Vi-Kap), Michele Di Stefano (MK), Sonia Brunelli (Barokthegreat), Cristina Rizzo (Kinkaleri) with whom she formed the group of research CAN I. More recently in Berlin Peter Player, Maria Francesca Scaroni, Renate Graziadei, Maya Carroll and Julyen Hamilton, Keith Hennessy, Clara Furey, Nita Little

From 2011 she attended the School of Hatha Yoga ISYCO through the Department of Oriental studies of the University of Torino where she got the Degree of Hatha Yoga Teacher. She has been teaching since 2010 and has a wide range of experience with her body and a broad knowledge of the body’s anatomy and Indian physiology. In 2015 she became Laughing Yoga Leader, working with Chronical pain patients at the Immanul Klinik (Berlin). In 2018 she collaborated with the Choreographer Alessandro Sciarroni in the production ”Augusto” as a Laughter Yoga Coach. monicagentile.wordpress.com