creative crucible

 

Scroll through for a sampling of workshops, experiential storytelling events, ritual performances and visual art

 
 
 
 

Bio and general artist statement:

Larissa Kaul (they/them) is a multi-disciplinary artist, facilitator, trained therapist, and spirit worker dedicated to liberating artmaking as an ancestral technological birthright that belongs to all people. They mix genres, styles, and structures to curate experiences that help people shape culture and entrain with the vast support and inspiration available in the natural, subtle, and spiritual-relational realms. They are a mixed race (Southasian and European), genderqueer person living with chronic pain and health issues, and this blend of life experiences informs how they design.

One of Larissa’s main areas of focus is a practice called “Embodied Dreaming.” Embodied dreaming is an investigation into our ancestral precedent for responding collaboratively and creatively with the world around us. Embodied dreaming is an open playground for expanding our sense of self and studying the roots of culture making. How did our ancestors develop the dance systems, the energy systems, the meditation systems, cosmologies and the ritual protocols related to plants, animals, spirits, and each other? Non ordinary trance play states evoked through meaningful action (ritual), rhythm, song, movement and prayer allowed them to be in communion with a richly layered reality. And through these partnerships we developed systems of practice and philosophy, some of which have become highly distorted from their origins. 

Larissa draws our attention to the conditions that allowed for these systems to emerge in the first place, and asks us to live and play there. There is incredible freedom in embodied dreaming, and huge implications for humans. The containers that Larissa creates resemble a re-learning of what the “vessel” of being an embodied human is for and how it works; the state of embodied dreaming shows us how flexible and potent our attention and perception is, how to shift patterns at a fundamental level, and what more grounded, inspired, and aligned behavior could look like. 

Currently Larissa offers workshops, ritual-performances with communal participation, experiential storytelling events, creative community experiences, and work with 1-1 clients and groups. Larissa has also been exploring land based embodied dreaming by dropping in with a particular place and filming improvised dance, sound and singing, characters, and vignettes.

 
 
 

image description: background of dark yellow and orangey-yellow soft paint strokes and detailed lines of ambiguous shapes and patterns. In white, the main title is “Animist Arts.” Sub heading is “patreon.com/animistarts”

 
 

Animist Arts: An umbrella project for the individual and collective work of Larissa Kaul and Dare Carrasquillo. Support us on patreon! Click on the image below to be brought to our patreon page.

 
 
 
 
 
 

NONDUAL PLAY IN THE QUEER UNIVERSE (For Sad, Scared, Hoomans) An experiential storytelling event about the power of narrative, perception, play, and pattern breaking. Join us on a trip where we use pain science, nondual animism, and the somatic roots of creative expression to explore thresholds of immediate perception shifting and how to play with the unfathomable, the unlikable, and the catastrophic.

 

LAND BASED EMBODIED DREAMING: Listening and collaborating with an ecosystem and filming improvised dance, sound and singing, characters, and vignettes based on the living conversation taking place. Photography by Yaara Valley, @tenderheartphoto

 
 

BAD FEELING GO AWAY: AN EXPERIENTIAL STORYTELLING EVENT. What lies in wait for us among the discarded, resented, and disturbing flora and fauna of our inner landscapes? As any good weirdo, artist, or nondual (holistic) teacher can tell you, much of our suffering and dubious behavior stems from attempting to create a decorative lawn out of a wild and uncontrollable jungle. Our dominant cultural belief systems have us ever lawn-scrambling, training us to become fragile and dull around the culturally exiled, unfamiliar, or taboo. Can art bridge the gap? This is a section from a works in progress, experiential storytelling event exploring the archives of BAD FEELINGS, where the “audience” is implicated in the vibrant intimacy of art-making as culture-shaping. This event included opening meditation and prayer, warm up, exquisite corpse poetry, creative prompts, storytelling, visual art, and dance.

 

THE DREAMING CAULDRON at Primal Tones. An experimental piece investigating the challenge of how quickly can we get a group of people into a state of creative agency. Using simple storytelling frames and ritual structure.

 
 

A durational and improvisational movement piece as a window display in the reclaimed Lloyd Center Mall. Amplifying and enjoying the surreal atmosphere of a half empty yet creatively thriving vestige of modern consumerism. Inspired by Butoh, death clown, and feral embodiment in inconvenient settings. Dancers: Larissa Kaul and Paula Helen. Videography by Michael Perry

 
 

DEATH CLOWNS AT ATOMIC MEMORIES. Embodying mutating 1950s housewives as degrading planetary bodies drifting through time, we played inside the bliss and terror of decay and forgetting.

 
 
 
 
 

DEATH CLOWNS AT ATOMIC MEMORIES: A 30 minute opener by the Death Clowns for a show called Atomic Memories. Embodying mutating 1950s housewives as degrading planetary bodies drifting through time, we played inside the bliss and terror of decay and forgetting. 

 

THE PLAY TO FIND OUT SALON at Bridgespace Commons. A summer series where a group of facilitator artists join forces to create never-before-seen stage-lab-playgrounds where people of all creative backgrounds (or none at all) converged in purposeful play. Eclectic characters hosted different practices, games, and scores that spanned improvisational theater, dance, music, meditation, poetry, visual art, and crafts. We had a costume station, secret assignments, and surprise visitors. Before each salon in the evening we had a fully facilitated workshop space during the day. There was also space during the Salon for attendees to share WIP or lead games/practices they want to facilitate. Part of Participatory Art Coop’s residency at Bridgespace Commons.

 

THE PLAY TO FIND OUT SALON at Bridgespace Commons. A summer series where a group of facilitator artists join forces to create never-before-seen stage-lab-playgrounds where people of all creative backgrounds (or none at all) converged in purposeful play. Eclectic characters hosted different practices, games, and scores that spanned improvisational theater, dance, music, meditation, poetry, visual art, and crafts.  We had a costume station, secret assignments, and surprise visitors. Before each salon in the evening we had a fully facilitated workshop space during the day. There was also space during the Salon for attendees to share WIP or lead games/practices they want to facilitate. Part of Participatory Art Coop’s residency at Bridgespace Commons. 

 
 
 

DREAMING BODY at Steep and Thorny Way to Heaven. A contemplative movement piece inspired by the animist roots of Little Red Riding Hood, where elements from the story take their archetypal and primordial shape and interact as parts of an in-tact whole that transforms itself. Performers: Katherine Rose, Larissa Kaul, Meghann Rose, Michael Perry, and Paula Helen.

 

click the icons to go to Larissa’s youtube and instagram page

Ready for more? check out www.animistarts.art for a comprehensive calendar, mish mash of writings, offerings, videos and whatnots