Monika Popiel is a theatre director, somatic & sensory artist, and electronic designer and programmer from Poland. Monika graduated from the Directing Department of Aleksander Zelwerowicz at the National Academy of Dramatic Art in Warsaw, and holds a Master of […]
Monika Popiel is a theatre director, somatic & sensory artist, and electronic designer and programmer from Poland. Monika graduated from the Directing Department of Aleksander Zelwerowicz at the National Academy of Dramatic Art in Warsaw, and holds a Master of Science of the Mathematic Faculty of Applied Physics and Mathematics of the Technical University of Gdańsk, Poland. The artist creates interdisciplinary multisensory works that intertwine documentary fieldwork, performative arts (focused on somatic work and choreography), textile art, mixed new media, and creative coding.
Throughout the creative process, the focus is on
*see Erin Manning “Politics of Touch”
Paweł Świerczek (any pronouns) is a dramaturg, performer, producer, and (neuro)queer activist from Poland. The artist graduated from culture studies at the University of Silesia in Katowice and the Laboratory of New Theatrical Practices at SWPS University in Warsaw.
Their main field of interest is the intersection of local and queer identities. Since 2018 they run the interdisciplinary project and collective Śląsk Przegięty (Queer Silesia), which aims at narrating and performing queer archives from Upper Silesia and growing and supporting the queer community in the city of Katowice. Paweł (co)created three performance pieces based on Silesian queer archives: the solo performance “Of Coal and Rainbow”, as well as “From Ahead Our Time”, and ”The Q Files”. For a few years now, Paweł has also been developing his own practice around vulnerability as a tool for peace through performances (“I Am”; “Citrus Paradisi”; “I Want the World to Be Full of Fluffy Duckies”), giving workshops and facilitating open labs. This practice led to an ongoing research around social immune systems. Since 2023, Paweł practices and teaches the method of Authentic Relating and shifting their artistic practice even more towards community building and creating relational spaces through performing arts.
About the project
Artists’ statement: “Stimpathy is a post-artistic emancipatory community-building project in which, together with an open group of neuroqueer people from Berlin, we want to liberate our stims and celebrate them through joint choral strengthening.
We want to make hyper visible what is usually hidden to empower neuroqueer people and normalize stimming behaviours in public spaces. We will do it by: magnifying, enlarging, multiplying, amplifying, intensifying, boosting, augmenting, expanding stims and sensory objects used for stimming. With stimming consciously, bravely and collectively we step into the post-normal. The practice of stimming questions not only neurocognitive norms, but also gender norms, very vividly exposing their artificiality. The intersection of gender and neurodivergence affects the ways we navigate the city and use its facilities for work, leisure, socializing, shopping, learning, commuting, etc. To explore how neuroqueerness is embodied in Berlin, we will do research and create an archive of stims and a neurofriendly map of the city.”
Terms used
Stimming (stimulatory behaviour) are repetitive movements and sounds that we, as neurodivergent people, generate to regulate our emotions and sensory processes. Stimming is often performed with objects you can hold in your hands. It is a functional neurobiological mechanism that allows us to function healthily. However, from the perspective of social norms, stimming is perceived as strange, disturbing, undesirable, and sometimes even threatening behaviour. As neurodivergent people, from the first years of school we are taught to mask our stims (e.g. by being told to sit still at a school desk) – this requires a huge effort from us and often is so overwhelming that it generates trauma.
Neuroqueer is a term coined by Dr. Nick Walker, who defines it primarily as the practice of consciously queering, questioning and subverting neurocognitive norms. Secondly, neuroqueer is a theory that applies the tools of queer theory to the phenomenon of neurodiversity. Thirdly, neuroqueer is an identity at the intersection of neurodivergence and queerness. It is a very fresh concept that expands the views on gender and its intersections with neurocognitive patterns. The neuroqueer practitioner Pasha Marlowe says that neurodivergence will soon become an umbrella term for all embodied non-normativity.
Photos: Galya Feierman
