When was the last time you felt the heartbeat of someone?

When was your face last caressed?

Is there a way to bring back memories in a tangible way?

How can we recall memories through our senses?

Join our unique workshop that will take you on a sensorial journey across memories of past experiences, feelings and body sensations.

The artists Margherita Soldati and Alice Héron will guide you in a series of exercises that will reconnect you with your body, in a time when we all feel so far from each other. The workshop is designed to explore your memories through the sense of touch and give you a boost of the happiness hormone oxytocin.

Oxytocin is a hormone that plays a fundamental role in social bonding as well as in reproduction. It is released in the bloodstream in response to love and during labor, throughout and after childbirth.

The effects of oxytocin are often underestimated or even forgotten. Many of the positive effects that take place during processes of interaction, such as stress reduction, health promotion and a general feeling of wellbeing, are indeed linked to oxytocin release, in response to the activation of different types of sensory nerves.

Oxytocin is also released in response to low intensity stimulation of the skin, such as soft touch, stroking, and warm temperature, as well as in response to food intake.

While this hormone’s release is consequent of interactive behaviours, our workshop will investigate oxytocin production in solitary, through self-caring exercises, by using food as a connecting medium with our own bodies and feelings.

By diving into your memories while reconnecting with your body, we hope to help stimulate oxytocin production and induce a feeling of being present, centered and connected with ourselves.

- Guide donation of €5-10 -

About Margherita Soldati

Margherita is intrigued by how objects and materials can relate to our bodies and senses, and how these relations affect human behavior. In her practice, she focuses her research on the human being rather than the objects that surround us. In a society that relies mainly on sight, she wants to make it possible to ‘see’ with other senses by creating intimate, personal and interactive relations between her works and the visitors.

Margherita’s work generates awareness of how our body is a lively sensory system that interacts with the world to create a personal ecosystem. Her fascinating works explore the tactile perception that comes from the belief that the body is the house of our memory and identity and that all human senses, including vision, are the extension of the sense of touch.

About Alice Héron

The focus of Alice Héron’s work lies in elements of growth and how it relates to the body. She creates tactile, sensory experiences and large scale site specific environments, visceral sculptures. Through these different mediums she proves that our body is a sensual machine. Being immersed in the Netherlands where the land and the water are carefully controlled the artist finds herself looking at nature from a distance. She has the urge to create speculative scenarios based on imaginary flora and fauna and as a result she grows her own invasive species, it looks like soft post apocalyptic poetry where the place the human body is at the centre of natural concerns.

About Unbore Collective

Unbore is a non-profit organisation founded in 2019 and based in the Netherlands that fosters and advocates arts, life sciences and technology intersections. Unbore has hosted a variety of exhibitions to create an international platform that celebrates and facilitates divergent thinking, endless experimentation and creative reflection. It seeks to establish itself as a mediator between like-minded professionals, institutions and the public in order to build a curious ecosystem of thinkers and doers in bioart and biodesign. Fundamentally, Unbore strives to encourage social commitment to crucial issues of today through advocating interdisciplinary collaboration and creating an engaging bioart cultural programme.

Visit our website to discover more: www.unbore.org