Breathing Psoas

The film breathing psoas created a speculative-utopian body and a kinship of man and nature. The body, as an archive of traumatic memories, practices the transformation of related body phenomena such as pain, tension, heat, fear, disgust or anger with the help of somatic body practices such as the Trauma Release Technique (TRE) and breath work. The Trauma Release Technique connects visually with the myths of the Baubo/Iambe. This figure from Greek mythology displays her vulva to offer comfort to traumatized women. How can the body relate to nature? How can they transform together? Breath opens a micro-choreographic play of transformation: stone to skin, breath to wind, voice to vulva, smoke to blood, water to wind. The magical-poetic transformation of the actors allows nature to appear as a somatic body and psychogram. The film wants to create visibility for a taboo subject and is an ode to all traumatized bodies.

Anja Plonka (DE)
Anja Plonka explores the fields of performance, choreography and video in transdisciplinary artistic works. Her artistic practice is a search movement. Somatic practices opened up the field of performative research for her and move the body as an archive of traumatic inscriptions into her artistic works. In doing so, she disembodies these inscriptions in a somatic way. In this sense, the naked body as a site of violence is politicized and moved into the social discourse as a self-empowering feminist practice. In search of magical-poetic transformation processes, she enters into resonance with chairs, stones, wind, water, fire, wood, sheeps, bones, muscles, nerves, and investigates their webs of relationships. Anja Plonka studied photography and video at the Fachhochschule Dortmund and the École Nationale Supérieure de la Photographie, Arles in France. She completed her master’s degree at the Institut der Szenischen Forschung, Ruhr-Universität Bochum.