Workshop (Festival)

In 2026 Raquel Meseguer Zafe In 2016, Raquel Meseguer Zafe triggered a security alert by lying down at theSouthbank Centre in London. Since then, she has been exploring horizontality as a challenge to the normative rules of public spaces, alongside exploring the poetic potential of horizontality and of public, collective acts of rest. In this workshop Raquel will guide participants through a collective rest, which will explore how we connect to the spaces we inhabit and how we connect with one another. The workshop will invite participants to lie down and inhabit the horizontal, but can also be accessed from sitting. The workshop may involve some creative writing.

Workshop Notes

Please bring a blanket or yoga mat for the event if you are able to: we will have some blankets and yoga mats on site, but we may not be able to provide for everyone. The workshop serves as a preparation for the public action „If we could rest a while“ that will take place outside the museum on the second day of the festival (September 13, 2026).

Raquel Meseguer Zafe is a UK-based artist working at the intersection of dance, theatre, performance, and disability practice. Her work explores chronic pain, rest, accessibility, and alternative ways of inhabiting public spaces. She is the founder of Unchartered Collective, creating participatory and socially engaged performances. Through her practice, she challenges normative ideas of bodies, productivity, and care. Her projects combine research, storytelling, movement, and collective experience.

The event is part of the festival "Horizontal – Practices and Politics of Lying Down", taking place on 12 and 13 September at the Berlin Museum of Medical History. The festival is supported by the Stiftung Charitéthrough a Science x Media Tandem and by the British Council. Information on accessibility can be found here.