Moles are burrowing creatures, they are also blind. We want to use the image of the mole to provoke a discontinuous set of furtive workshops (“molehills”) running throughout the event. These will attempt to stimulate discussions and engender practices around sexyness, eroticism, ethics and desire, indirectly by thinking through our skins and senses, by moving bodies away from habitual modes of perception to… who knows? Molehills are the “only signs indicating the presence of an animal”, they tend to reveal an interface between the underground and the surface. A molehill disturbs the lawn and it allows moles to sense the world outside. Our un-workshop will develop in such a way as to burrow its way through other events and create spaces and moments of exchange with other Artivistic projects.

Framing the un-workshop
The first part of the un-workshop (1 hour), taking place at the beginning of the event, will consist of an introduction in which Furtive Furry Creatures explain the concept, provide some theoretical basis for the generation of molehills throughout the event, as well as introduce the emergent installation, “the shrub” and its role in the un-workshop. Finally, this is when participants can start being active in the conceptualization and development of the molehills (moments of interfacing of our un-workshop with its outside, before disappearing back into the borrow or under the shrub – alone or in company).

Other burrowing animals that meet the mole underground “develop close physical similarities with moles forming good examples of convergent evolution (the acquisition of the same biological trait in unrelated lineages)”. Halfway through Artivistic, participants will reassemble for a discussion (2 hours), to bring together the concepts and ideas elaborated by the different groups and create a final art intervention that can take place in a public space, or at the final party. This intervention is not pre-determined and can take any form, ranging from single to multiple performances to other furtive practices that will only subtly and discreetly affect their environment.

The Shrub*
“Where moles burrow beneath the roots of trees or shrubs, the roots support the tunnel and mole hills are less common and so even a dense population of the animals may be inconspicuous in these places.” The Shrub is an incipient installation that functions as the space where mole activity is at its busiest (moles turn into a labor – a labor is a group of moles), yet, unnoticed. We will provide some starting tools for experimentation, exploration and play (e.g. cameras, notepads, announcement board, snuggling space, hi/low–tech production tools, etc). As more moles and similar creatures visit the shrub, the space is transformed by the addition of more tools, as well as by storing whatever they find on their forays, contributing to a site where imagination and fantasy have blind, free play.

*this is a permanent installation, taking up one corner of the event space .

Thanks to wikipedia for teaching us about sexy animal ways. They know how to have fun more than humans (and they are more generous than them).