Body IQ Festival 2021

BODY IQ is a festival that celebrates ourselves as living, pulsating and communicating bodies.
Without embodiment there is no experience – without experience there is no foundation for intelligence or cultural evolution.
BODY IQ offers a platform to generate impulses to access the knowledge, wisdom and potential of the conscious human form in communication and action.
BODY IQ Festival has been initiated by Kai Ehrhardt and hosted by Somatische Akademie Berlin in dialogue with international partners since 2015 as a forum for critical engagement with practices of embodiment in socio-political contexts

The title of BODY IQ 2021 has been inspired by the term Bodies of cultures, coined by Resmaa Menekem, Healer, Trauma Specialist and Author of the book ‘My Grandmother’s Hands’ (2017). His ground breaking work raises our awareness of the somatic sources of racial trauma. It suggests that the power for change is to be found in our bodies, and how our brains have been wired through centuries. It refers to white-body supremacy which through colonialist European oppression still impacts our daily life today, and how black, brown, POC bodies are being perceived. Menekem also coined the inspiring term Somatic Abolitionism as an emergent ‘living, embodied anti-racist practice and cultural building —a way of being in the world’. 

Curator team:

// Angela Guerreiro
// Kai Ehrhardt
// Thomas Kampe
// Mäks Roßmöller

Topics include:

// Critical Somatics 
// Somatic Activisms 
// Social Somatics & Applied Somatics 
// Somatics and the creative processes in dance 
// Cultural Somatics and Critical Whiteness 
// Somatic Performance Cultures 
// The Power of Touch in a post-pandemic world 
// Moving Masculinities & Gender 
// De-Colonising the Field 
// De-Centering Whiteness 
// Somatic Education for different Age-Groups 
// Somatics and diverse abilities 
// Re-moving Trauma; Somatics in the Digital Age 
// Intercultural Somatic Networks 
// Eco-Somatics, Post-Humanism & Eco-Crisis 
// Re-Embodiment and/as Re-Empowerment 
// Somatics as micro-activisms in city-environments 
// Theorising Critical Somatic Practices

** Please visit our dedicated Body IQ Festival 2021 website to follow the latest updates about the team and the program. The detailed program will be published at the beginning of June.