To Walk Into the Song of Grief

Name: To walk into the song of grief - Mallika Taneja x Frascati x Laguna Collectiveorkshop Mallika Taneja x Frascati x Laguna Collective - Mallika Taneja
Start: 2023-10-27T20:00:00+02:00
Location: Frascati

Mallika Taneja x Frascati x Laguna Collective // Het Verbond

Fri 27 Oct ’23 20:00

Workshop centering on themes of grief, mourning, silence and song.

Fri 27 Oct ’23

20:00

Fri 27 Oct ’23

20:00

Workshop

Frascati

Frascati 4

Past event

Following Mallika performance, Do You Know This Song?, Frascati invites Taneja and Laguna Collective to host a workshop centering themes of grief, mourning, silence and song. Combining Taneja’s artistic practice and Laguna Collective’s psychosocial background, we welcome you to a theoretical, artistic and physical dialogue.

This evening is a part of Frascati's program line De (on)vertelde stad in which we seek collaboration with institutions outside of the theatre, to delve deeper into (un)told stories of the city.

Laguna Collective, while being aware how common loss is in humanitarian crisis, explores ways to recovery. How does one re-find their identity whilst dealing with grief? How may re-connecting to inner, social, and spiritual resources help survivors to find new definitions of their world and themselves?

For the past year, Mallika has been in a process of dealing with deep personal loss and its grief, culminating into the work - Do You Know This Song? Diving into her own experience, and using dolls and song, among other things, she tried to find artistic answers to some of her inquiries -  How does one voice grief? How does the process of grieving relate to a movement as simple as walking? And how can theatrical forms of walking, voicing, singing and talking aid these processes? 

Together with Chayan Adhikari who brings in song, Mallika extends the process of building Do You Know This Song? to other participants and invites them to walk, ever so gently, towards their own losses and voices.

Limited number of places

Admission to this workshop is free, but the number of places available is limited. We therefore ask you to book a free ticket online. This will give you access to the workshop in Frascati 4 (Nes 71).

Duration: 2,5 h
Location: Frascati 4, Nes 71
Language: English
Tickets are free

Part of

About Mallika Taneja

Mallika Taneja lives and works out of New Delhi, India. Through performances, installations and curatorial work, she explores questions of gender, solidarity, pleasure, rest and remembering. She is particularly interested in exploring political possibilities of  performative ensembles and the role songs have to play in leaving and gathering traces of people, places and things.

Some of her works and collaborative spaces include Be Careful, Allegedly, Rest of the Struggle, Zanana ka Zamana, Women Walk at Midnight and Sex Chat Room.

She won the ZKB Acknowledgment Prize for Be Careful in 2015 (Dutch premiere at Frascati in 2021) and the ZKB Patronage Prize for Allegedly in 2021. Currently, she is touring her new solo production Do You Know this Song? that traces the journey of searching for a lost voice.

About Laguna Collective

Laguna Collective is a platform organization where international experts meet to collaborate in generating and spreading knowledge and skills in the field of humanitarian psychosocial aid. Their interest is the mental health of forced migrants, survivors of humanitarian crises, and those living in low resource settings.

Laguna Collective’s vision is that people’s mental health is affected by social bonds, meaningful activities, and cultural and spiritual life as much as by psychological processes. Therefore, interventions should focus on strengthening existing and potential resources for psychological well-being across all these domains, and build bridges that transcend prevailing structures mostly based on one aspect of health promotion. Such psycho-social-ecological approach promotes both mental health and a community’s social fabric.

Accordingly, Laguna Collective comprises experts from a variety of professional backgrounds (e.g., medicine, psychology, international health, conflict studies, anthropology, social work, law, arts). This enables the use of different perspectives to inform and take collaborative action. Most actors in the humanitarian arena have their own particular focus, expertise, or target group. Laguna Collective harbors this diversity within one organisation, which enables greater alignment of activities. 

About Do you know this Song? (17th &18th oOct)

Do you Know This Song? (coproduction Frascati Producties) is the second part of a trilogy about grief and mourning. Mallika dives deep into the past, searching for a voice that was lost many years ago. 

With her harmonium, a microphone, and some toys and objects from her childhood, the performer returns, as an adult, to look for the person she lost, a singer and her songs. Who was she? Where did she go, and most importantly, why did she get lost? The performer ventures into the land of not- forgetting; as she moves between searching, singing, and telling a tale of grief, Mallika Taneja invites people to join in.

Tickets for the performance Do you know this song on Tue 17th of Wed 18th oct om 20:30 in Frascati 1 (Nes 63) can be purchased here.

De (on)vertelde stad

De (on)vertelde stad – The (un)told city – is Frascati's program line in which we focus on the development of theater that relates to pressing urban themes and is created in close collaboration with Amsterdam institutions and residents. It questions, reveals and imagines, and as such writes shared stories for a divided city. De (on)vertelde stad arises from the increasing need of Frascati and our artists to relate to the world in a concrete and explicit way. Not as one-way traffic but in an actual dialogue.

We work intensively with residents but also with the institutions that play a central role in shaping the city. For example, a housing corporation, an advocacy group or a youth psychiatric institution. Next to Laguna Collective, we have an ongoing collaboration with ARQ National Psychotrauma Centre, Levvel centre for child- and youth psychiatry and healthcare institution Cordaan.