WORKSHOPS
Workshop circle and somatic practices using breath + movement + touch:
golden arcline: bottom-up approach to care – Despina Rango
Friday 13/9, 15:00 – 16:30,
Saturday 14/9, 17:30 – 19:00,
Sunday 15/9, 18:00 – 19:30
*The SPA of the Century
Point 5
📍Pentadaktylou street, 16, Nicosia
Through her wellness project, golden arcline, Despina Rangou (CY) shares about somatic tools as bottom-up modalities of care. Her practices cultivate an organic flow between body and breath to calm and focus the mind while offering space, permission and choice for adaptation. She writes and makes videos about timeless concepts of spirituality and wellness linked with ancient Cypriot artefacts and myths.
golden arcline is a sanctuary inspired by timeless concepts of wellness using breath + movement + sound + touch that guide you towards embodying a sense of balance, connection, confidence and authenticity within yourself.
Workshop x gathering: The Healing Garden – Xinyi Zhang
Saturday 14/9, 11:00 – 12:00
*The SPA of the Century
Point 5
📍Pentadaktylou street, 16, Nicosia
Xinyi Zhang (US) is a multidisciplinary artist who works with painting, new media and digital technologies. She creates visual and sensory works that channel nature’s energies to inspire personal and collective healing.
Her project, The Healing Garden, explores the potential for community-activated sacred spaces to foster positive change through creative imagination, aided by technology.
Participatory workshop: Xarkis, liminal and the Municipality of Nicosia
Saturday 14/9, 15:00 – 17:00
This workshop is a two hour gathering to come together with the Municipality of Nicosia, to discuss, celebrate what has happened so far and envision the future of Nicosia with inclusion in mind, through interactive exercises, brainstorming and public, participatory consultation.
Rationale
In Nicosia, the festival seeks to embed values of care tied to a feminist lens, to share and acquire knowledge on collaborative and participatory practices, explore and debunk aspects of the locale and “cypriotness”, intangible cultural heritage and craft practices, as well as rituals and vernacular practices, through contemporary art forms.
Moving from the individual to the collective, and at the junction of practices, we suggest a proposal rooted in care as an antidote to carelessness in the cypriot context. The curatorial concept proposes an exploration of the relationship between care, collaboration and the locale, and asks what the possibilities are. What do we tend to care about or not? Who do we tend to extend care to? Who decides what is and isn’t part of the locale?
Open to everyone!
Facilitators:
liminal
An organization advancing equal participation in culture; a platform for dialogue and creative exchange between a dynamic and diverse community; a catalyst for revitalizing artistic practices and enriching the societal significance of art.
Christos Papamichael
A dramatist and actor, graduate of the Department of Theatre Studies at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (NKUA) and the Drama School “Praxi 7”. He has participated in numerous artistic, educational and collective projects as an artist, coordinator, assistant director, producer and trainer.
Xarkis
Xarkis is a nomadic NGO engaged in site-specific artistic practices and co-creation.
Xarkis started off as a social experiment to test ideas of self-sufficiency, DIY practices and resilience, exploring communal identities in the midst of the global economic crisis which climaxed in Cyprus in 2013.
Christina Skarpari
A multi-disciplinary practitioner, curator-researcher and educator working with socially engaged art and design practices, photographic, anthropological approaches in public and participatory settings, with emphasis on community engagement.
Workshop: Create your own koilaniotiko handkerchief
Sunday 15/9, 11:00-14:00
📍Laiki Gitonia, kafenio, Aristokyprou street, Nicosia
This is a hands-on workshop, led by local artisan Mrs Eleni Kyriacou, whereby participants will be able to create and leave with a small koilaniotiko handkerchief.
Until about 1960, the peculiar koilaniotika handkerchiefs were made with the tie-dye method. Archimandrite Kyprianos testifies to their antiquity in 1788: “beautiful silk shawls…are made in Nicosia and in Politian Koilanion, an ancient art of that place” (Kyprianos, p. 546).
The workshop involves an activity concerning the koilaniotiko scarf (otherwise known as the “eftaloitiko”) that we would like to revive and develop in 2024, based on our first encounter with the community of Koilani during Xarkis Festival 2017. Little information has survived since the 60s, when it was practised. The craft focused on the tie-dye method based on an isolation dye base, to create colourful patterns.