RSVP below for this in person event.

Pleasures of the Mouth is a workshop led by Ashkan Sepahvand, with a somatic contribution by AD Kerton. In this playground, we want to not know and be vulnerable in the company of one another.👄 Expect an interaction of the mouth with the books, words, pages, containers of knowledge and the madness/relief of knowing that one does not know! – to play with the mouth that moves but does not come to speech. In words of Ashkan:

I want to know. There’s all these books on my desk I would like to read, sometimes read, should be reading, will probably never read. The more you know. There’s all of these things I want to say, but it can’t all ever be said. I know that I know. I feel something when I speak, even when I’m not speaking. Hunger, passion, desire, disgust. I light a cigarette, because it’s something to do with my mouth. I know. Sucking, sipping, blowing, breathing. Another form of speech. I stick out my tongue and think of my mother, my father. The languages I’ve learned, lost, remembered, and forgotten. I don’t know. I imagine myself as a pretty little mouth, a stupid child, a dumb creature. There’s pleasure here, somewhere in the body. I want to eat words and swallow silence. Am I consumed by knowledge, or do I consume it? I stutter, stammer, groan, and goon. It feels right, even if it’s wrong. I want to not know.

To take part, bring with you a book you’ve been wanting to read for awhile, but haven’t managed to read yet. Can we bite into it in two hours?🦷

This session is part of the year-long project common /play\ grounds led by yasamin and sass.  common /play\ groundssides with our new programme strand Mujaawarah (neighbouring) striving to nurture rootedness and community, shared wisdom and wellbeing.

Biographies

Ashkan Sepahvand is an artist, writer, and researcher. He was born in Tehran, Iran, grew up in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and lives and works between Oxford, England and Berlin, Germany. His practice takes time. He is interested in words and bodies. Projects take the form of performances, publications, and regular collaboration with friends. Together with Natascha Sadr Haghighian, they founded the institute for incongruous translation, a framework for their shared studies. He is one half of ssssSssssssss, a study-friendship with Virgil B/G Taylor. Currently, he is finishing a DPhil in Fine Art at the Ruskin School of Art, University of Oxford.

AD Kerton (he/they) is an artist and Somatic Movement Educator. He studied sculpture at Brighton University and dance at HZT, Berlin, and was a resident of de Ateliers, Amsterdam. He has performed at KW, Berlin and the ICA, London (both 2016), The Kitchen, New York (2012) and Tate Modern, London (2009). In 2021 he qualified as a Somatic Movement Educator within Body-Mind Centering® and works as a somatic workshop facilitator, educator and bodyworker. In 2024 he devised and facilitated ‘Somatic Tours’ of the exhibition ‘When Forms Come Alive’, Hayward Gallery, London.

Image credit: Still from “Seeking for Story” (2024), Ashkan Sepahvand