CLASS SERIES

Entering the F/old – Workshopping the F/old as Somatic\Artistic Practice 

With Susan Sentler

Four bi-weekly Saturdays, June ??? • 11am-2pm ET or ???
Find your local time here.

The registration deadline is ???.

PLEASE NOTE: You will receive a DISCOUNT COUPON CODE for a $50 off the cost of the Full Course by registering for the Free Introduction (INSERT LINK)!

Live participation is strongly encouraged. However, if you are unable to attend a session,  recordings will be available to all who have registered for the course. 

DESCRIPTION:

This class series offers experiential explorations of the book, Artmaking as Embodied Inquiry: Entering the F/old, edited by Susan Sentler and Glenna Batson. 

What can a fold be? A vessel, womb, pocket, pleat, crease, cavern … an/other way to enter corporeality through the discovery of the vibrancy of thinginess. These workshoppings will embrace the f/old – a practice of somatic\artistic making – of letting things appear.*  A collaboration, developed since 2013, with the extraordinary practitioner Glenna Batson, has provided a unique means of approaching and challenging default modes of artmaking. The f/old becomes alchemical, an immersion into the multi-materialities of bodily fold/folding as an impulse for freeing fresh states of embodiment. The work is immersed in and with improvised languaging, experiential dives of movement and gesture as well as partnering with the environment, expanded materials and curational play. Participants will also engage in anarchiving** with mixed media – paper, fabric, photography, text, marking, drawing and filming. The collaging/collisions of materials with moving matter helps to propagate a multiplicity of possibilities. With each session, diverse entry themes/plots will be explored in alignment with the f/old. The workshops nurture a divine entanglement, an openness to enter and re-enter with embodied curiosity.  

 The event/events aim to support professional development within the field of somatic movement, but moreover the potential of how somatic knowledge can expand and enhance enquiry beyond the field. The workshops embrace posthuman, ecosomatic, queer and feminist theories/lenses to support and enrich the creative process. The practice will challenge and enhance personal somatically rich language to better articulate each individual’s process, ignite imagination through working with tangible and intangible technologies, and identifyand transform default habits that may block creative process. The utility in morphing artistic praxis is to evolve new personal methodologies for art research and to hone ways of archive/anarchiving of current and future work.   

* from Tufnell & Crickmay 1988 A Widening Field: journeys in body and imagination. 

**anarchive, https://3ecologies.org/immediations/anarchiving/anarchive-concise-definition/ 

 Learning goals: 

-experientially learn potential of the concept of the f/old
-engage posthuman, ecosomatic, queer and feminist theories/lenses to transform default habits that may block creative process
-evolve new personal methodologies for art research 

Susan Sentler, BA, MACP (she, her)

Susan Sentler is an artist rooted in the fields of dance, performance, visual arts working as educator/lecturer, maker/choreographer, researcher, director, curator, dramaturg, performer and advocate. She has practiced globally for over 40 years and began teaching in higher education in 1992, meriting Senior Lecturer from Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance in early 2000s. As performer, she danced with the original second company ‘The Ensemble’ of the Martha Graham Dance Company in the 1980s and returned to performing since 2010 with artists such as Tino Sehgal, Xavier le Roy, Dora Garcia, Josiah McElheny, Duto Hardono and Jerome Bel. Susan’s practice is trans/post-disciplinary, anchored by a honed, expanded somatic relationship to image, interested in ‘dissolving the indexical’, yielding greater potential of sensorial material association. Since 2013, she developed a praxis rooted in concept of ‘the fold’ with colleague Glenna Batson, the f/old as somatic\artistic practice, underpinning all of Susan’s practice (pedagogic and creative). It has been presented at various conferences/symposiums, showcased in artistic installations, taught in educational contexts (online/hybrid/live), and disseminated in scholarly journals, chapters, blogs and podcasts. artmaking as embodied enquiry - entering the f/old, is the title of their book publication with Intellectbooks, released in March 2025. Susan focuses on creating durational installations orchestrating moving/still image, objects/sculptures, sound, text, and absence/presence of the performative body, exploring ideas and materials through a post humanistic lens. Susan has collaborated with renown institutions such as the White Cube Gallery/UK, Whitechapel Gallery/UK, Hayward Gallery/UK, 30 The Tetley/UK, Museo del Tessuto/IT, National Gallery Singapore/SG, ArtScience Museum/ SG, ICAS (Institute of Contemporary Arts Singapore)/SG, NTU/CCA (Centre of Contemporary Art Singapore)/SG and DECK/SG. Her work and practice have been workshopped, exhibited, screened, and performed in the United Kingdom, United States, Europe, Israel, Indonesia, Chile, Hong Kong and Singapore.

Course Information

PLEASE NOTE: You will receive a DISCOUNT COUPON CODE for a $50 off the cost of the Full Course by registering for the Free Introduction (INSERT LINK)! 

ISMETA MEMBERS $295

NON MEMBERS $395

Cancellation Policy:
If a participant cancels their registration to any paid offering in the Professional Development Center, they will receive the following refund:
Full refund minus the PayPal fees, more than 4 weeks before the event begins
75% refund from 1 - 4 weeks before the event begins
50% refund from 1 - 6 days before the event begins
No refund on the day that the event begins or while it is in progress ISMETA reserves the right to cancel any offering in the Professional Development Center before the course begins due to unforeseen circumstances. In this case, a full refund will be given.