Touch workshop with melanie bonajo
Kumu Art Museum is hosting a touch workshop with the Dutch artist melanie bonajo as part of the opening programme of the new exhibition “When the Body Says Yes+”. During the queer-friendly event, the theme of consent will be explored through touching exercises. Participants are asked to bring a blanket or yoga mat. The workshop will be held in English.
Duration: 2‒2.5 hrs
Places are limited. Please register in advance here.
melanie bonajo introduces the workshop as follows:
May I not distance myself from you?
Consentship
A (re)connection workshop about consent and boundaries.
We arrive at agreement and consent together. Consent is an agreement that two or more parties come up with together. You don’t give your consent; we arrive at consent together. People often confuse consent with permission. “Betty Martin”.
When did we learn about consent?
Who taught you about consent?
What did you learn about your body boundaries and how they feel in your body system?
Have we been supported? Who supported you in having a healthy boundary practice?
Where and with whom did you need skills to practice supported, centred consent?
Feeling is a form of intelligence. Feeling our boundaries is an act of social justice, an act of self-care and care for others. The purpose of having boundaries is to protect and take care of ourselves. Through our boundaries we communicate our values and tell other people when they are acting in ways that are not acceptable to us. Do you know what a yes feels like in your body? Do you know the sensational dimensions of your No? Most people only feel their bodies when something is very off. The fundamental purpose of feeling our feelings is to initiate movement that will restore safety in our body systems, and to have agency in how we do it is a boundary practice.
Setting boundaries can be incredibly difficult depending on the way we grew up, what we have internalised as what was safe and what wasn’t, our socialisation, gender, class, skin colour, privileges, ability, age and mostly the many ways we were taught that being loved can look and feel.
Until you give yourself permission to have clear boundaries, everything in the world is going to come at you and enter your space. As long as that is going on, a part of you might feel victimised. Being a boundary boss is a practice.
Our boundaries are our responsibility. If you are not a Boundary Boss, stop and examine your beliefs. Are you betraying yourself, because you can’t say no or yes? Why do you think that betraying your boundaries will make another happy? What is it that you hope to gain by sacrificing yourself?
When we consciously choose for ourselves, without apology or blame, we can find real authenticity. Giving ourselves the power to choose what we want and don’t want in our lives is a very powerful and self-loving place to be. It is the place where intimacy thrives.
When you can see clearly what is and isn’t okay with you – and you honour that boundary – then you can invite pleasure in. And once trust is established in a relationship, dynamic boundaries can be renegotiated.
Let’s play!
The workshop is part of the public programme accompanying the exhibition When the Body Says Yes+, a solo exhibition of the works of the Dutch artist melanie bonajo. The exhibition seeks to answer the question of whether there is still a place for intimacy in today’s increasingly commercialised and technological world. The central theme of the exhibition is touch: literally, but also touch representing our relationship to each other and the world around us. Touch can be a powerful remedy for the modern epidemic of loneliness.
melanie bonajo is a Dutch artist, film-maker, somatic sex coach and educator, cuddle workshop facilitator and activist creating immersive queer spaces. The artist is interested in non-mainstream communities on the margins of society,