Fall 2018 Course Offerings

Trance-formation and Transformation in theory and practice have been essential in the development of our lives and art practices. We completed doctorate degrees in education with a primary interest in developing ourselves as researchers and teachers dedicated to creative change, growth, healing, transformation and liberation.

Our work as artists/researcher/teachers seeks to reform/ transform our shifting identities while reconciling the shadowed histories of our colonial ancestral heritage and the damages to ecosystems and Indigenous Peoples and their ways. The courses below are ways we invite others to engage a slow activism approach to the transformation of one’s self in relation to culture and nature through art.

Trance Based Learning & Inquiry: Introductory Course

A six-week course on Monday evenings from 7:00 to 9:00pm
October 15 – November 19, 2018

Facilitators: Barbara Bickel and R. Michael Fisher

This workshop will introduce participants to basic trance processes offering a deeper understanding of oneself, others and the more-than-human world. It is a generative practice of opening up to arational modes of knowing and being with roots in indigenous shamanism, surrealist art, and contemporary Reclaiming wiccan practices. Barbara has worked with trance in her art practice since 2000 and has been teaching the process to artists and arts educators since 2017 as a way to expand possibilities of the human imaginary.

Participants will work individually, in pairs and as a group to learn the process of creating an intentional space for trance-based inquiry and learning, reclaiming the human birthright of entering alternative states of consciousness for self and planetary recalibration, restoration and transformation.

Dress comfortably and bring a yoga mat or blanket.

Location: McHugh House Gallery (1515 Centre St. S)

Pre-registration required prior to October 12, 2018. Email studiomatrixial@gmail.com.

All courses are offered within the framework of a gift economy. See gifting page for details. Persons of all backgrounds and abilities 16 years of age or older are welcome.

Ma Pose Posture Practice

13 bi-weekly drop-ins on Wednesday evenings from 7:00 to 9:00pm in conjunction with the new and full moon
October 10, 24, 31, November 7, 21, December 5, 19, 2018 and dates TBA in 2019

Facilitator: Barbara Bickel, co-founding member of the Gestare Art Collective

Ma Pose are a practice developed by members of the Gestare Art Collective inspired by ancient Venus figurines categorized in the work of Annine van der Meer in her published book The Language of Ma the Primal Mother: The evolution of the female image in 40,000 years of global Venus Art, and the Ecstatic Trance Posture practice developed by anthropologist Felicitas Goodman.

Through their practice of Ma Pose postures the Gestare Art Collective has created a unique curriculum process to restore body wholeness and perceptions through embodied learning, generated new stories for the individual and collective, and re-claimed art histories that move us closer to de-colonization and healing processes possible in matrixial (Ettinger 2005) and Indigenous cosmologies (Four Arrows, 2016; Wilson, 2008). 

Dress comfortably and bring a yoga mat or blanket. 

Location: McHugh House Gallery (1515 Centre St. S)

Pre-registration with intent to attend all or some drop-in evenings recommended by October 8, 2018. Email studiomatrixial@gmail.com.

All courses are offered within the framework of a gift economy. See gifting page for details. Persons of all backgrounds and abilities 16 years of age or older are welcome.