Pungent Pool P(art)y

Pungent Pool P(art)y: playing at the intersection of puppetry, plants, and absurdist performance workshop.

Presented by Pataphysical Pickle

What the Heck is this workshop?

This workshop explores the artistic, medicinal, and revolutionary potential of pungent flavors and scents, as well as exploring pungency, as a lens through which we can begin to see and manifest full life and vital creative force within and around us. Together we will explore embodied ways of learning about plant medicine and experiment with and discover pungency through puppetry and performance. We will work together to build language and awareness around sensing the more than human world, engage in free play, corporal, vocal, and conceptual improvisation, the creation of absurdist interventions that go beyond normative conceptions of the ‘sensible,’ and play with puppetry as a form of re-animation and revitalization of "objects." Together we will explore and incorporate the pungency within and around us as a form of resistance to oppression and cultivate more magical worlds around us. Attendees are encouraged to bring "objects" they would like to bring to life:  fabrics, antiques, trash, etc. for a materials potluck pile. Bringing one's own hot glue gun and glue is super bonus kudos ;)

What the Heck do you need to know?

• Outdoors. Rain-or-shine. If it's rainy that day, we will be under the pavilion and canopies.
• Only 20 spots for this workshop.
• Free. The suggested donation is $20. No one will be turned away; pay what you can. 80% will go to the pickles and 20% to Heck.house. You can make a donation online here: www.heck.house/donate or in-person.
• Parking is on one side of Milton Street, the cross street the driveway is located on.
• Attendees are encouraged to bring "objects" they would like to bring to life. Heck.house does have many donated jewelry, small toys, fabrics, art supplies, and so forth here.
• Super bonus kudos if you bring your own hot glue gun and glue.
• For ages 12 & up.

Who the Heck is Pataphysical Pickle?

Meet the Pickles facilitating:

• pomPom Pirate: Amanda Lyn is a weirdo performer, anarchist/anti-Zionist Jewish witch obsessed with plant magic, unlearning white supremacist/colonial extractive methods of "using" plants and relearning how to form deep, reciprocal relationships with plant kin. She hopes to use any knowledge she learns about the power of plants to help bring the "people's medicine" back to the people. She is studying to be a community herbalist but is not a medical professional or expert. She is currently earning a certification from Terra Sylva School of Botanical Medicine.  She also has completed an apprenticeship with Brooklyn Herbarium, a holistic skincare company in Brooklyn, NY. And has apprenticed at Remedies Herb Shop in Brooklyn, NY.
• Cornbread Jimmy Sweet: Jamie Emerson was born in 1991 to a family of artists. At age 19 he moved to New  York City and attended classes at the Art Students League of NY where he learned to employ elements of drawing, painting, sculpture, video, and performance. His work is drawn from life and has included the practices of public sculpture, mural painting, puppetry, street, and performance art. Through interactivity, Corn aims to provide platforms upon which others can find expression as well. This old chunk of sweet bread has shown work internationally in Mexico City, France, the UK, Belgium, and throughout NY, including Grace Exhibition Space and the Queens Museum. He lives and works in Brooklyn. cHECK out his website to see more sweetness: www.jamesmikhel.com
• Huge Sillytoe: Huge Sillytoe is a large and daft toe. They are also a multidisciplinary performance artist/ activist and (auto)ethnographic researcher who proposes their actions and other works as explorations of their artistic-political philosophy of pragmatic absurdo-anarchism. Transmogrifying into a full human body, amongst other forms, Huge Sillytoe creates performances using masks, puppets, musical instruments, and interactive sculptures often built from found and reclaimed materials. Sometimes they work alone or as part of numerous collectives. Harnessing their unique artistic position as a shape-shifting oversized and foolish toe, they seek to create work that challenges normative perceptions of ‘sense’ and undermines associated power/knowledge hierarchies. In this way they toe open the pathway to a stranger and fairer world, assisting others to trample this trail further via facilitating  (no)work(no)shops where new practices of transgressive, emancipatory performance are nurtured collectively by different groups in diverse locations. By creating otherworldly costumes and masks, embodying the characters they birth, and helping others to do the same, Huge Sillytoe instigates alternative modes of relationality and allows performance participants to connect in unforeseen ways. Born and raised in Durham, North East England, Huge Sillytoe is now itinerant, based during recent years between New York City, Buenos Aires, Mexico City, and London, with regular research, residency, and performance trips elsewhere. Their artistic, activist, and academic work is intertwined and mutually informing. They hold a BA in Social and Political Sciences from the University of Cambridge, a MA in Social Sciences from the University of Chicago,  and a practice-informed PhD in Theatre and Performance Studies from the University of  Glasgow following the production of a thesis entitled: ‘Alegría rebelde and performance (c)art: A comparative (auto)ethnography of absurdist performance practice amongst activists and socially committed artists in Buenos Aires and New York City’. They have been seen performing at the Centre for Contemporary Arts (Glasgow), Manuke (Tokyo), MKA: Theatre of  New Writing (Melbourne), Grace Exhibition Space (New York), Judson Memorial Church  (New York), Experiencia Hiedra (Buenos Aires), Teatro Popular La Otra Cosa (Buenos  Aires), Temporary Autonomous Arts (London), Casa Viva (Mexico City), Huerto Roma Verde  (Mexico City), Myymälá 2 (Helsinki), Latvian Academy of Arts (Riga), Taller del Artista (San  José, Costa Rica), CineNaveMetro (San Salvador), Casa Uvilla (Quito), and many unexpected crevices in-between. Huge Sillytoe speaks fluent English, Spanish, and  Toetapoelib, working Portuguese, not-quite-working French, and broken Russian. They make work in all these languages and more. cHECK their website here: hugesillytoe.com

If any questions or concerns, please email Paula at fatdeaf1@heck.house