Searching for spaces and strategies for rest, amidst the struggle.

Rest of the Struggle tries to search for spaces of rest and strategies
for rest by re-examining our existing artistic practices and creating new
ones which are closer to the practices and materials of our everyday life.
The struggle continues, increasingly feeling like a breathless chase
after ever evasive ‘freedoms’. States and the systems that uphold those
states, keep us gasping as we reach here, trying to find moments of deeper
breath through the arts, wondering how we can take this restfulness back
into our everyday lives. To pause, to take time for a deep inhale and a
restful exhale seems, now more than ever, a profound act of resistance.
Rest is much needed to sustain the struggle.

The first chapter of Rest of the Struggle, titled ‘Recover’, unfolded at SPielart Festival 2021, was a digital engagement involving multiple practices at the interface of the arts and our daily lives - such as yoga, doll making, cooking, poetry and digital
spaces to just hang out in. It unfold entirely online.

Our attempt was to offer moments of recovery. We looked at it as a chance
to build communities of recovery, online and across borders, in times
where our bodies had experienced a multitude of upheavals across the
world. Uncertainty, loneliness and breathlessness had marked our lives
for months on end. Through engaging practices and processes in movement,
voice, stories and imagination, we invited people to rest with us, as we
all tried to recover together through touching, feeling, tasting, listening
and making, daily.

Animation for Chapter 1 'Recover' by Meghna Singh