In this episode, Deirdre Morris (she/they)—artist, body worker, and curator of the LACE Symposium—talks to Stéphanie Janaina (she/her) about working in the heat, about sighing, the rhythms and melodies of everyday sounds, like the sound of a keyboard and the click of a mouse.

Deirdre and Stéphanie talk about experimenting with words, taking care of words, and the power of words, particularly about the ability words have to evoke emotions and experiences. They discuss the impact of words on individuals, emphasizing the importance of understanding and redefining personal definitions of words like “violence” and “fragility.”

Listening to their conversation, I—pavleheidler (they/them), host of the podcast and curator of the LACE Symposium—get a sense of intimate personhood emerging in the aura surrounding words, something like a sense of “wordial” agency. Words, as I’m imagining them right now, are messengers, helping us communicate with each other across temporal and spatial boundaries .

Stéphanie works with the body, memory, and language as territories where identity is both affirmed and unsettled. Through performance, she explores ways of inhabiting other languages and making visible what has been silenced by history or violence. In her work, the body becomes archive and bridge, holding memory and imagining more sensitive modes of existing together. She studies the Mixtec language, variant Tnu’u Dau, as a choreographic and affective device: a way of keeping alive the dialogue with her grandmother and with a collective history.

Having contributed to LACE #2: Mediating Touch, this is Stéphanie’s second contribution to the LACE Symposium.

Stéphanie’s contribution to LACE #4: Fractalising Touch, entitled Composted Identities, will take place on the 28th of July, a Tuesday, at 2.30PM.

The LACE Symposium is curated by Deirdre Morris (she/they), Sylvia Scheidl (she/her), and pavleheidler (they/them). LACE #4 is made in partnership with PART International Residency Austria, and ImPulsTanz — Vienna International Dance Festival!

Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or OeAD-GmbH. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.

www.lacesymposium.com

#ImPulsTanz2026 #impulstanzfestival #artisticresearch #lacesymposium

In this episode, the host pavleheidler (they/them) (adhd/autism)—dance artist, educator, and curator of the LACE Symposium—talks to Ella Hillström (she/her).

Ella is a PhD candidate in Social Anthropology at Stockholm University. Her research examines the repair of cleft lip and palate—the most common congenital facial anomaly—to explore broader questions about the social construction of faces. She is interested in creative practices in her research and works with somatic and speculative methodologies. She is also a member of the research collective For the Love of Inquiry (F.L.I.-labs), and has a movement-research practice with Yari Stilo.

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Ella and pav talk about the face, about the ways in which we come to know a face, our face, about the completeness and the incompleteness of what makes a face. They talk about degrees of fiction, about the way we relate to lived experience in the context of academic research, and some of the ways somatics and Body-Mind Centering® in particular help ella develop her practice and her work.

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Ella’s contribution to LACE #4: Fractalising Touch, entitled Knowing the Face Otherwise, will take place on the 27th of July, a Thursday, at 2.30PM.

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The LACE Symposium is curated by Deirdre Morris (she/they), Sylvia Scheidl (she/her), and pavleheidler (they/them). LACE #4 is made in partnership with PART International Residency Austria, and ImPulsTanz — Vienna International Dance Festival!

Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or OeAD-GmbH. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.

LACE #4: Fractalising Touchhospitality, integration, & the interstitialJULY 27-31, 2026at PART International Art Residency Austria as part of ImPulsTanz — Vienna International Dance Festival

www.lacesymposium.com

#ImPulsTanz2026 #impulstanzfestival #artisticresearch #lacesymposium

BMC® and Body-Mind Centering® are registered service marks of Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, used with permission.