TRAINING: The Mental Over-stretch — Living Crisis from a Distance #3

In this last training, called Receptors and Blockers, we position ourselves as rootless satellites hovering by distance in foreign landscapes. In the midst of political tensions, we play the active roles of receivers and transmitters of the news happening elsewhere, which often leads to burn-outs and/or overwhelming feelings. As such, this session explores the strategies and tools that we can used to soothe and protect us from the mental over-stretch.

The Mental Over-stretch: Living Crisis from a Distance

Throughout this three-fold training series, Diana Al-Halabi and Hilda Moucharrafieh invite you to come together to share the effects of disrupting news from the homelands, revolutions that expand beyond territories, and political struggles that pierce through space and time. We aim to recognize the present survivor’s guilt of migrant bodies by highlighting the diasporic mental stretch in an alienating surrounding - a place away from home. What role do we play in a revolution that is ours yet which we aren’t geographically present in? Can we exchange the faulty feeling of survivor’s guilt with an affective rage? Which basic needs are compromised in these moments of high distress? And could we possibly prepare a guidebook for our allies to care for us in the anticipated struggles of the future?

This training series is specifically for migrant bodies and allies and is best explored as a sequence. The English language is used, along with Arabic and Dutch translations if needed.

We are aware that people are keen to join the TRAINING but who are, due to financial instability and worry, unable to purchase a ticket. Let us know by emailing trainings [​at​] kunstinstituutmelly.nl and we will provide a ticket free of charge and up to €20 in travel costs to be able to travel to Kunstinstituut Melly in Rotterdam.