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The Open Call for Fruiting Bodies queer mycology gathering is CLOSED!
We are looking forward to co-create with the participants in Massia, Estonia | 15-21 September!
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Can we acknowledge mushrooms free from binaries and listen to them in their queer complexities?
How to move through queer mycorientations?
What are mycelial erotics?
What kind of underground bonds do we need to become queer fruiting bodies?
How do fungal sensitivities shape the way we play, work and love?
If these questions resonate, we are looking forward to hearing more about your practice and research, let that be daily / collective / embodied / academic / experimental / cryptic / unarticulated / somatic / oneiric / seasonal / culinary / transversal / queer / scientific / erotic / other-than-human.
Intentions
Fruiting Bodies create a collectively held and nurtured space that weaves together the diverse threads of mycelial thinking and being. For the gathering we, co-organizers of Massia, will hold space for intimate encounters and sharing with sensitivity to each other’s needs and divergences, as well as to unfolding synergies in-between.
The assembly will be structured with openness for emerging offers by the participants. Planned activities include foraging mushrooms guided by local practitioners, mushroom-based food and medicine making, mycelium massage, drag action role play, gender bending pole dance sessions, nomadic mushroom laboratory, nocturnal lingerings with fluorescent spores, napping with mycelial drones, daily dream work sessions, more-than-human folk singing and working towards a communal ritual at full moon.
Modes of collaboration
Fruiting Bodies is held at and by Massia, the collectively organized arts residency and learning site based on mutual aid, decolonial, anti-racist, queer-feminist and multispecies solidarities situated in a former school in rural Estonia. To deepen the exchange and weave longer term networks of auto-ethno-mycological research for novel artistic, scientific, and healing practices, the request is that you stay for the entire duration of the week from 15-22 September 2024.
Fruiting Bodies is organized alongside the Socialist Herbalism gathering happening from 9th to 13th of September 2024, for which you are welcome to join as well.
Fruiting bodies is self-funded. This means you need to cover the costs of your travel and stay. Food will be shared collectively (7€/day). Massia uses a sliding scale pricing system which has funded and solidarity levels. Joining our week for solidarity stays costs 7 x (€14 + €7) = €147 and with funded places costs 7 x (€35 + €7) = €294.
For enquiries on booking and transport on site, see:
CONTACT, PRICES AND RESERVATIONS
Host and Initiators
The assembly will be facilitated by Bambí van Balen, miha brebenel, Csilla Hódi, lutz boglárka, Vaim Sarv, nat skoczylas, Christiana Sammal.
Bambí van Balen is a non binary Dutch-Hungarian visual artist, a raver, an inflatable fetishist, cook, activist, researcher and founder of the group Tools for Action. For three years they are invested in dream work as a collective healing practice.
lutz(z) bog. is a dependent transdisciplinary artist, collaborating with fungi, exploring the corporeality of sound, collectivity, connectivity, alternative working and learning methods in collaborative situations, rootings for rest and playful system changes.
miha brebenel is a white disabled trans masc researcher, writer and herbal concoction maker with love for collaborative processes, body work, healing and social justice in practice.
Csilla Hódi is an artist, amateur mycologist and organizer, currently dragging a nomadic mushroom lab with herself while researching queer applied mycological practices.
Christiana Sammal is a researcher, whose (research, activist, life) interests include challenging national normativity, (trans)languaging, and alternative forms of kinship. She practices aerial acrobatics and zine-making.
Vaim Sarv is an experimental vocalist, organizer, and poet. Her musical practice draws from free improvisation, noise, and pagan oral tradition. His ritualistic performances and community projects amplify the disruptive, celebratory power of shared physical experiences. Vaim’s work is tangled up with the decolonization of Finno-ugric folk practices such as ‘regilaul’.
nat skoczylas is a queer slavic witch; organiser, weaver, writer, brewster fiercely dedicated to the work of decolonialisation, anti-imperialism and trans/queer/feminist anarchist liberation.
Bibliography
The Science Underground Mycology as a Queer Discipline. by Patricia Kaishian, Hasmik Djoulakian
Molecular feminisms, Biology, Becomings, and Life in the Lab. by Deboleena Roy
Othering Mushrooms: Migratism and its racist entanglements in the Brexit campaign by Lenka Vráblíková
Let’s become fungal! Mycelial Teachings and the Arts, Yasmine Ostendorf-Rodriguez, 2023
Psychedelic Justice, Toward a Diverse and Equitable Psychedelic Culture, Edit Beatriz C. Labate, Clancy Cavnar, 2021