Biography

Meryl Zaytoun Murman creates movement and moving pictures that explore and disrupt popular notions of spectacle, the body, virtuosity and gender. Her work has been supported by the McKnight Foundation International Choreography Fellowship, the Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography, the National Performance Network Creation Fund, the Arab American National Museum, Tulane Philanthropy Fund, Platforms Fund,  IZOLYATSIA Platform for Cultural Initiative, the Contemporary Art Center New Orleans, the US Embassy Kyiv and the US Embassy Athens. Her work has been presented at various festivals in the US and abroad, and she’s guest taught at ImpulsTanz Austria, the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland Glasgow, Companhia Instavel Porto, Zelyonka Dance Fest Kyiv, and various universities in the US. Her contributions to Arab American dance were featured in the Khayrallah Center’s national exhibition Turath.

Sebastian Tsifis is a performance artist, filmmaker and linguist. He was part of The International Research Laboratory of Performing Arts AlmaKalma for 14 years touring in France, Greece, Italy, and Germany. He is the editor of Performance Art: Unconscious Body and Performative Action by Yiannis Mitrou, the first theoretical text about contemporary performance in Greece. He dances and performs for various independent artists for stage, gallery and cinema.

Artistic project

Bathing Studies is a body of art examining the history of bathing. It is also a project proposing ways to study ourselves through how we bathe, guiding communities to attune to every day actions to reveal deeply held emotions, guarded beliefs, and primeval instincts.

Bathing Studies sources from a three-year community process in hammams (public bath houses) of Eastern Greece with women, femme-identifying, and refugees from the MENA (Middle East, North Africa). It examines bathing rituals from the Mediterranean and MENA; from archaic gender-fluid erotic gatherings held for ecological repair, to contemporary gender-segregated body-shaming beliefs that persist across cultures. In performance and media it explores how these practices intersect with gender and sexuality, addressing contemporary concerns of migration, bodily autonomy, and climate.

Study 1. a community process to collaborate with water creating ritual inside active hammams. This has been enacted in other geographies and bath cultures.

Study 2. an audio video installation.

Study 3. a triptych of intimate performances inside hammams, or intimate, quiet public spaces. 

Study 4.  a one-on-one ritual accessed through a phone. Without leaving the privacy of a bathroom, participants are guided through ritual actions re-imagining their bathing routine.

Format : Bathing Study 3 is an intimate performance - the audience sits around the performance in close proximity and will get wet. Bathing Study 2 is a video/sound installation people are invited to come and go from as they please. Bathing Study 1 is a 3 hour community process, it is free but participants must sign up and commit to being present for the duration, Bathing Study 4 is a one-on-one performance ritual that happens via cell phone in one's home bathroom

Size of audience :10 to 60 people for Bathing Studies 1, 2 and 3 - One to one for Bathing Study 4

Specific location : Bathing Study 3 -the performance is staged in a hammam - one that is active, or one that has been repurposed/ a historic site, it can also happen in an enclosed, quiet, intimate space. Bathing Study 2 - the audio video installation, is suited for an inactive hammam or quiet, enclosed public space. Bathing Study 1 - the community process is guided in an active hammam or bathhouse, tho can be realized in an inactive hammam as well.

Timing / duration : Bathing Study 3 is approximately 1 hour performance, Bathing Study 2 is an audio-video installation that loops every 40min, Bathing Study 1 is a 3 hour community process, Bathing Study 4 can last between 20-60min