2023-2024 / Concept & Direction as Ludic Collective
07/2023, Food sharing as part of symposium ‘Dreams and Guilt. Exhibiting Counter-Memories’, Beaconsfield Galery, London
09/2024, Workshop series as part of Horizontal Practices, London Performance Studios (LPS), London
In September 2024, Ludic members Iulia, Judith and Hennie brought a series of four workshops to London Performance Studios under the title <Love and Cats>, and developed the project into guided performances, exploring the theme of grief and home through creative acts of care.
Each workshop focused on different activities:
#1. Arriving home in our body
#2. Crocheting as a gentle passing of time
#3. Performative reading
#4. Shared meal as a collective performance
<Love and Cats> is what LUDIC started adding at the end of our emails from 2015, to express care towards people in a Ludic way. In 2020, Hennie and Iulia experienced loss of family members, while we were living in two different countries. We began to have conversations on grieving, and how we wish to be there for people who are important in our lives who live afar, and how we could do that with limitations of physical distance. How can one care for people from afar? In what ways do the processes of grieving relate to the restless search for one’s sense of home? What could it mean to develop performances as gestures of care for someone? These initiatives slowly formed into a new project, something around loss and caring for our loved ones. Wanting to send, “Love and Cats” through sharing, documenting, sensing and moving through our bodies.
In 2023 summer, Hennie and Iulia had an opportunity to take part in symposium 'Dreams and Guilt. Exhibiting Counter-memories' in Beaconsfield Gallery, London. We decided to present "Food Sharing by Ludic", as a small initiative that reflects our new long-term project idea of <Love and Cats>, by cooking for the symposium participants a comfort meal, sharing written scores alongside the food, and inviting them to share their memories of 'arriving home'.
In the autumn of 2023, Iulia shared her first collaboration with her mother, Doina. It started by engaging in long indirect conversations around grief, and gently inviting Doina to the ideas of building something to be shared with the public. They spent a lot of time together where Doina taught Iulia how to crochet - the processes that were documented were also weaved into their installation, alongside a big piece of knitted drape. Their project, "sunet alb (white sounds)", was shared as an installation with video projection, and crocheting sessions with the audience in a gallery in Bucharest in September.
"Iulia tells me about white noise in relation to time and the two of them. The sound of the needle in the sewing machine, the sound of knitting needles. The sound of threads and fabrics. Diva Universal. Sound resistant to answers, to bodies. Sound that cancels time. Sound that, repeated now, becomes a score." - Daniela Custrin
In the meanwhile, Judith has continuously been sharing her Feldenkrais practice with a group of friends online over three years, calling it 'Feldenlove', exploring her own perspectives reflecting on her training and experience as a Feldenkrais practitioner, around the theme of 'landing on one's body', while attending to different needs of their friends' bodies.
In September 2024, Iulia, Judith and Hennie met in London, and developed the project into four guided performances.
This project was co-funded with the support of the Administration of the National Cultural Fund and Stroom Den Haag.
