In this conversation, we follow loops and cycles: menstrual cycles, breath cycles, artistic processes, patterns we inherit, and the things that begin to unravel when we stay with discomfort rather than rushing to resolve it.
I’m joined by scholar, artist, musician and dancer Franziska Böhm, whose practice moves between sound, movement, somatics and embodied knowledge. To record this episode with Franzi felt like a dance – between inner relating and outer responding – instantly and continuously diving deeper into what it means to linger with what cannot yet be explained, and how the body can become a site of listening, knowing and creating.
Together we explored:
- Franzi’s story from studying classical music and music pedagogy in Germany, the latter which opened a world of new possibilities, and eventually led her to the UK to study an MA in Creative Practice, where she encountered movement practices that have continued to reshape how she understands making, knowing, and being.
- We spend time diving into Franzi`s recent doctoral research all about loops and looping: not simply as repetition, but as a phenomenon and a way of generating knowledge.
- Franzi speaks about her relationship to the menstrual cycle and cycles more broadly within her artistic practice, and about Skinner Releasing Technique – “a rigorous yet playful practice” that taught her to let processes unfold in their own way and to practice being with that wordless territory where something can be sensed before it can be named.
- We continue exploring (my favourite) question - what does it mean to know through the body? And what might embodied knowledge-making ask of us when we recognise the fact that our bodies are always already racialised and politicised?
- And then there is the breath: its constant filling and emptying, its cycles, its relationship to voice. We explore why breath and voice cannot be separated, how the voice can become a way of accessing movement, and how Franzi approaches “the voice as connective tissue”.
- We invite you to lean back, sense of your weight, notice your own breath and enjoy this conversation about cycles, stigma, discomfort and what we internalise - and about what can begin to move when we give ourselves permission to stay with what we don't yet have words for.
More about Franziska:
Franziska (she/her) is a German-born, London-based artist and researcher working across dance, music, academia and hospitality. Continuously saying no to prescribed capitalist pathways of life has made her realise her values around slowing down, sensing, trusting and collaboration. This has led her to study and investigate modalities such as Skinner Releasing Technique and other movement practices for their capacity to help us sense into ourselves, each other, the environment and beyond. She is particularly interested in politicised somatics, exploring how we can apply these modalities to intentionally cultivate power in ourselves, in our communities and how doing the repair work can allow us to choose living our lives soulfully and experience collective transformation.
Her methodology is collaborative, intuition based and about giving space to each other and to how the work unfolds. Her work often takes the form of interconnected pieces – albums, performances, and installations. Themes of lament run through her work, exploring vulnerability, connection, and the experience of breath and voice. More recently her research extends into the shared ground between pre-semantic bodily knowledge and machine learning, currently developing through a workshop series and new work with technologist Fiona Thendean as part of her fellowship at machinaloci space, London UK.
Webpage: https://boehmfranziska.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/franziskaboehm__/
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