The Sensing Salon is a studio practice, conceived by Valentina Desideri and Denise Ferreira da Silva, that expands the image of art beyond objects, events, and discourse to include the healing arts. Through formats that facilitate collaborative studying and experimenting with different practices and tools for reading (e.g. Tarot and Astrology) and healing (e.g. Reiki and Political Therapy), it fosters a form of sociality that attends to our deeply implicated existence.

For this occasion, the Sensing Salon will assume a two-parts format: a private study group (with guests) during four days (Tuesday 14 to Friday 17 January) which will culminate in an open-sharing of the process of Friday 17 January evening and a one-day public symposium, on Saturday 18 January.

The study group will gather guests who will take part in the symposium as well as Lisbon-based artists, activists and intellectuals. The study group will depart from the question that closes Arjuna Neuman and Denise Ferreira da Silva’s film Serpent Rain (2016): “what would become of the human if expressed through the elements?” A question inspired by the sense that the grip the metaphysics of linearity (and its attendant onto-epistemological descriptors, such as separability and fixity) has on our imagination accounts for the prevalence of violence in modern global existence. From experimenting with practices and tools that presume deep implicancy (such as Tarot, Reiki, Astrology, etc.), over five years now, we found that, among other things, they create a form of sociality that does not presume the fundamental separability that prevails in philosophical, social scientific, and commonsensical representations of existence. An important aspect of these practices is that the classic elements (air, fire, water, and earth) and correspondence (or similarity) constitute their lexicon and grammar. By framing the question(ing) of the human around the possibility of describing it using the elements, we hope to create a study space to explore the possibilities that open up when similarity replaces linearity as the metaphysical basis for thinking and existing.

The study group will gather for 4 days (from Tuesday 14th to Friday 17th January) and dedicate each day to the study of the human through one element. We have invited guests to frame the work on each element and open up some possibilities of rethinking the category of the Human through their practice and the way it relates to that element. The 4 guests are:

– Air (abstraction, formal cause, interpretation, shape, power as rule): Mark Harris is an academic and former land rights lawyer working on themes related to indigenous rights and water.– Fire (transubstantiation, final cause, creation, beginning, power as energy): Jota Mombaça is a writer and performer who has worked on the relation between humanity and monstrosity, the end of the world, anti-colonial justice and visionary fiction.– Earth (motion, generation, material cause, raw material, consolidation, power as oppression): Kobe Matthys/Agency is an activist and artist whose practices include permaculture and other sustainable methods.– Water (Distillation, relaton, efficient cause, nutrient, extraction, power as relation): Stacey Ho is a Vancouver-based artist whose work explores intimacy through building relations which may be expressed as infusion as well as writing.On Friday 17 January, at 7pm, we will host an open event where all that we were able to gather and experiment will be shared with a wider public, together with Arjuna Neuman and Denise Ferreira da Silva’s film Serpent Rain (2016).

On Saturday 18 January we will host the symposium Toward a Transformative Theory of Justice, which will elaborate on the questions that guide this iteration of the Sensing Salon. We will attempt to weave together the Elements, our guests’ practices and the ways of thinking about Justice that those open up. Raquel Lima will give the keynote lecture.

Co-produced and co-commissioned byKADIST, Paris, in the framework of KADIST’s three-year project Not Fully Human, Not Human at All, curated by Nataša Petrešin-Bachelez, together with Hangar, Lisbon and Kunsthalle Lissabon, Lisbon