Embodied Philosophy

The Psychological Thriller series 'Severance' portrays a disturbing world. One where workers can 'severe' their brain in order to get better job opportunities. The process includes inserting a chip in your brain that splits you into two separate entities. One is your 'innie', your working self, the one that is alive within the office hours. The second is your 'outie' your normal personality who lives in the outside world and maintains social contacts. The catch? The two has no way of interacting with each other or remember the slightest details from each other's lives. This leads to complex moral, physical and epistemological problems as your innie might do things totally contradictory or outrageous to the point of view of your outie and vice versa. And who is the only agency that has the contact with both? The employee, a big and mysterious corporation that its work is 'important and mysterious'.

While the premise of this show is based on questions that were explored throughout human history extensively (Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde for example) the modern aesthetics gotta make you feel a bit uncomfortable inside. Are our daily routines don't have a shockingly similar reality to that of severance?

The series focuses on the difference in the physical behaviour and appearance between work and outside. Highlight the 'Foucault Style' soft (yet violent) repression which dominates the work world. 

I am not a particularly revolutionary type of thinker. I believe that flipping the system on its head is a dangerous thing that could often leave more damage than before. Some people are better suited for this type of thinking. I do believe in skills and their gentle but deep impact to change even a harsh reality. When modern life demands our severance, we can peacefully fight off the madness by having the right set of skills and not by igniting a direct war. In that case, the set of skill I believe in is Embodied Philosophy – the ability to draw the line between my behaviour, my actions and my physicality.

In Movement Archery we've created a framework based on 3 main patterns of value: Movement, Presence and Dialogue.

Movement in our context relates to skills of perseverance and learning. The split between our ancestral potential to the physical demands from our daily lives is immense. We believe that 'relearning' basic human capacities such as squatting, gait, crawling, catching, throwing and extending is essential to being able to CHOOSE our actions rather than reacting due to a limited set of options.

In addition to these, learning is using technique and intelligence to ignite a learning process that can take us out of our natural movement and into the creative side of things. Spiralling, rolling, jumping, flowing, locomoting and inverting are the skills that we develop in this aspect.

Presence relates to the continuity between the internal and external world. Everyone who attempted meditation knows how much inner noise is running inside of us without us noticing. During a consistent process, one can learn how to 'make sense' of this noise and discriminate between the relevant and the distracting. The spectrum between retained and emotional is huge, and the sweet spot of presence is probably somewhere in the skilful middle. Sensitive and attune without being deluded by every emotion. Presence is the practice of searching for the individual sweet spot, through meditation, creative expression and training one's focus and ability to direct attention.

Dialogue is where the abstract becomes real. One's internal world can become a source of collaboration or conflict when it is shared with another human being. How do we practice all the colours of varieties of communication without 'losing face' (or losing our friends😉) The body has a great potential for expressing interactions that might have dire consequences when words are taking place. Martial arts allow best friends to harass their aggression to play, and dance allows intimacy and close contact without romantic implications. Using the two of them alongside a healthy process of reflection in conversation and in writing can lead us to seeing much further than where we could see alone.

In conclusion, I believe that the separation between body and mind is a problematic premise that echoes to many aspects of modern lifestyle. My mission is to pursue and inspire for the idea of embodied philosophy as a way of resisting and preserving human nature and beauty. Movement Archery is the legacy and vehicle for this mission.