Naked Lobsters: Undisciplined Muses

Surrealists explored the themes of identity, desire and spirituality, searching in occultism and the alchemical sciences for an alternative to the rational world dominated by the male gaze. Call Monica leads the participants of this workshop on a journey of self-analysis and a study of the “gaze” as a cultural construct that is a vehicle for power. By employing feminist methodologies, Call Monica creates a space that encourages sharing and listening, as well experimentation with the transformative potential of our bodies beyond the binary principles that attempt to discipline them. The workshop ends with a collective event that takes place at the museum.

• The workshop lasts two days, May 26 and 27, 9.30am–6pm.
• Participation if free but limited to 15 participants. Registration is required.

Call Monica is a collective, created in 2019 out of the Masters Course in Theater and Performance Art at IUAV University, Venice, by Barbara Bordoni, Est Coulon, Gaia Ginevra Giorgi, Alessandra Grieco, and Theresa Maria Schlichtherle. Its first formative project, titled Call Monica, debuted in July 2021. It aimed to reflect on the multiplicity of the gaze as a receptacle and projector of information, and especially on the personal responsibility that this entails, on a subjective and a collective level. Based on a study of the performative arts, seen through a feminist posthuman perspective informed by the reading of feminist and queer literature, Call Monica wants to challenge and disrupt a aspect of everyday life that is taken for granted. Call Monica is a paradigm shifts, a constant renegotiation, interference, listening, resistance, heterogeneity, anti-nature, contamination, and a rejection of what is planned or preordained.