"Acid Bodies: Disagreement Room" was a 2-month research lab that investigated psychopathologies of conflict, solidarity, and resistance, together with participants of diverse identities and backgrounds. By placing dissimilar worldviews, embodiments, and political formations in mutual encounter, the lab unpacked our ingrainment, perception, and participation in the world as a “stage” of binaries of conflict—centering the body as a critical site of worldmaking.

The research "Disagreement Room" is an evolution of Grace Euna Kim's long-term "Acid Bodies" choreopolitical research on political embodiment, ideology, and affect. The methods explored experimental body-, sense-, and perception-oriented participatory approaches. Drawing from Post-Lacanian psychoanalytic and critical theories, the lab placed participants in speculative conditions whereby somatic and sensory meaning forms were politically amplified, deconstructed, recontextualized, and reconsidered. Questioning their own body as a site of worldmaking, they explored the micro-politics within formations of community, thereby unpacking the role of ideology, desire, and power — particularly in terms of how consensus and "truth" are negotiated, embodied, normalized and weaponized.

In seeking to work through the cyclical dynamics of oppression and resistance and their relation to solidarity, the research was guided by the questions: What is at stake when we ourselves are embedded in the ideological paradigms that we are seeking to dismantle? How can we imagine a way out when we are dependent on, served by, and validated by the systems and economies of meaning that produce us at the same time that they are reproduced by us? Who and what colonizes whom, and why? 

"Disagreement Room" was financed by the NATIONAL PERFORMANCE NETWORK STEPPING OUT, funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and Media within the framework of the initiative NEUSTART KULTUR. Assistance Program for Dance. 

L, Benavidas. Community Organizer and Urban Planner
“The experience has been profoundly intense because I’ve sensed in first person the limits of our agency, the fragility of certain types of community and the paradoxes of liberty. Throughout the whole process Euna provided fantastic insights to ground our intense group experiences and invited us to explore discomfort, disunity and chaos as an affirmation of our shared existence. I was particularly touched by moments that broke our rational mindset and we then ventured beyond performative rituals to an actual creative renegotiation of our little social reality. In particular I found amazing the exercises that pushed us to decode the master/slave relationship, and to balance leadership, activeness and submission beyond the repetition of patterns and the absence of desire. This led to the big realization of how often my desires are socially constructed and how the search for stability and safety can lock us into negating patterns of stability and fear, where we just perform transformation without really meaning to transform anything. How easy it is to fall into anesthesia of comfort, and not have the energy that it actually requires to propose, to affirm life and to collectively fill it with meaning and purpose. Now I am more aware of the ways we constantly create norms and consensus, so I am more confident to keep exploring boundaries of collective agency and existence in more conflictive settings.
           The exercises that involved the use of blindfold were also extremely revelatory, especially for how intuitively they revealed the fundamental role that the external gaze plays in our decisions. In the darkness I felt confused by my emotions and my instincts. Everything should be possible but I still felt trapped in the reproduction of old patterns and ways of relating. It was a paradox to experience freedom in a negative way (not as something bad, but as „the deprivation of…“), but it was also liberating to start to switch this narrative and open new ways of sensing other bodies‘ presence and desires. The journey has been intense and I am eternally thankful and convinced of the transformatory potential of this research.”



A Riedl. Dancer
“Who am I without political ideologies that are living inside of me and are influencing my behaviour unconsciously? My behaviour in the lab made me wonder if I actually am the person I think I am. Through the silence, I realized how in everyday-life I like to use the power of words to create a character that I want others to think I am or that would be benefiting in certain situations. I assume that we all do that to be liked or achieve certain goals. But what kind of society are we are living in, if the foundation is based on fake versions of ourselves? If we free ourselves from the masks and revealed our real issues (if we are able to figure them out) what kind of community will it be? Could a community exist or would there be an anarchistic disorder? It is very shocking and scary not to know if my actions are of my free will or because of the will of someone/something that has shaped me since my early years. Do I want to be free? Wouldn’t it be easier and more comfortable to stay with the script than facing and fighting the structures we are stuck in? What does it actually mean to be free? Do we still have the ability to listen to ourselves and find out what we really want? This bold experiment raised issues, thoughts and questions into my head that wouldn’t arise if we just talked about the topic verbally and discussed them theoretically. I feel that a box has been opened that I want to further explore in order to find out who I really am and how I can contribute to a healthy and strong community.”



R. Mahdi. Activist, Community Organizer, and Researcher
“I am grateful for having participated in this process, even though for most of it I felt quite confused. Reflecting back, it feels like someone else, not me was there, and yet, everything that I experienced, I find relevant and revelational for my life and understanding of societal and power dynamics. This process showed me my ugliest sides in many unexpected ways. It was terrifying and saddening to realise I don’t currently embody much of what I’ve intellectualised in relation to hierarchies, authority, violence, resistance, critique on binaries, solidarity, connection, ways of seeing, sensing, gaze, negotiation, or care. I also realise that my academic background and acquired language serve as a mask (especially to my own self) for this lack of embodied understanding.”