A Daily Practice – One is always a plural

A Daily Practice - One is always a plural is a public talk by Yael Davids. During the talk, Davids will give a short Feldenkrais class and demonstrate a sitting position as a response to the physical position of the attendees (online and offline) and to the Covid-19 limitations in spatial movement. The Feldenkrais method is a method of somatic learning that invites a change of bodily habits from within. Yael is building on her three-year research in the context of the Creator Doctus (CrD) program, which was supported by the Gerrit Rietveld Academie and the Van Abbemuseum and which she successfully concluded with a public defense on 28 September this year.

YAEL DAVIDS (Jerusalem, 1968) studied visual arts at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam, sculpture at the Pratt Institute in New York and choreography and dance education at the Remscheid Akademie in Remscheid. In her work she examines the capacities in which the body operates as a documentary vessel. She studies how collective heritage and socially charged narratives become intertwined with the individual’s biography and sensibilities, surmounting to an experiencing of the concrete world that is defined by a unique finitude. Over the past five years, Davids has formally trained in the Feldenkrais Method. She uses the Method as a research device for comprehending the inner-workings of structures and prevailing tendencies — bodily, institutionally, artistically. Her three-year-long research trajectory focuses on learning conditions and duties of care, and addresses a range of questions such as: How can we reform the prevailing trope of learning being a competitive, mentally demanding experience? How can we integrate other learning processes, beyond the common optic experience? How can the relation between student and teacher be more democratic? How can we support the practice of self-reflection and individual interpretation. How can we think differently about limitation?