Somatic Engagement: The Politics and Publics of Embodiment, with Petra Kuppers and guest readers

Somatic Engagement: The Politics and Publics of Embodiment is a collection of essays on the poetics and politics of embodiment, touching on topics that range from disability to immigration to homelessness. Pegasus Downtown welcomes the books editor Petra Kuppers and a host of guest contributors who will all be reading.

FEATURING: Juliana Spahr, Jena Osman, Amber DiPietra, Denise Leto, Christian Nagler, Georgina Kleege, Katherine Sherwood, Eleni Stecopoulos, and editor Petra Kuppers.

WHEN: Tuesday, February 28th, 7:30pm
WHERE: Pegasus Books Downtown, 2349 Shattuck Ave, Berkeley

Wheelchair accessible; refreshments served

This event is free.

Edited by community artist, scholar, and dancer Petra Kuppers (author of
Disability Culture and Community Performance), the book opens with
Arnieville, a Californian protest camp of disability, homelessness, and
poverty activists. From there, a series of enactments welcome trespass
and incursion in the name of survival. Amy Sara Carroll on the
Transborder Immigrant Tool, a GPS phone that uses poetry to lead the
disoriented and thirsty to water caches and safety sites in the
US-Mexican borderlands. Devora Neumark on washing Tali Goodfriend’s
hands in Lebanese olive oil outside the hotel where Colin Powell speaks
to the Jewish National Fund, hands gliding over one another in the
middle of an angry public protest. Christian Nagler on writing an
experimental novel while conducting an oral history of agricultural
labor practices and migration patterns at the site of the Panamerican
Highway in El Salvador. Georgina Kleege on touch and blindness as she
discusses Katherine Sherwood’s paintings of magic and the human brain,
paintings that Sherwood began after her stroke ten years ago. Eleni
Stecopoulos on the healing quest as research and the complexities of
cultural appropriation. Amber DiPietra and Denise Leto on the
collaborative connections of breath, body, pause, pain, and form.
Somatic Engagement is an exploration of how relation and support play
out in breaths, steps, and touch.