“All that is solid melts into air,
Diffusing the labyrinth,
A continuum of existence in the end
As travellers. they do journey,
Searching for some sort of wonderland.
What is it that connects us?
A memory?
What if we stop remembering?”
- Samina Virani

From November 2024-June, 2025, several international artists travelled to Paris, France journeying down the rabbit hole. Working from principles established in “the art of remembering” Naples residency developed with Fondazione Morra, Samina created and directed a 6 months international residency program, poetic journey and process-based collective experience for her collective “the rabbit hole.”

The program was designed as a performative research, aimed to provoke and disorient, while, at the same time, providing a space for the artists to wander, to gaze, “to see through.” Designed as a metaphorical labyrinth, each artist is lead down the rabbit hole, embarking on their own poetical journey of self-introspection; deconstructing, and discovering their collective blank canvas.

In this work, the artists are voyagers, the path is unknown and certain games are designed to awaken their curiosities.

As the program developed into 2025, 3 artists - Paloma Demasi, Keri Rosenbraugh and Mayke Verhoeven - together with Samina Virani explored the theme “the art of remembering” through various workshops and experiences.

Immersing in The Rabbit Hole Method™ extracting from Ancient Eastern mystic rituals, to contemporary durational performance practices, first created in the Naples residency (2021) the artists participated in experiences designed to evoke and inspire their creative processes around “the art of remembering.”

Informing each’s individual projects around “the art of remembering” the group developed a common language, where depth meets playfulness, and an in-between space, where mysterious serendipities occurred.

Methodology:

Each artist interrogated the subject of "remembering" immersing in The Rabbit Hole Method™, a process of inquiry that extracts and distills from contemporary artistic practises, philosophy, mysticism, mathematics and dance. It includes the teaching of Hazrat Inayat Khan, Farid Ud-Din Attar, Jorge Luis Borges, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Lewis Carroll, among others.

As part of its founding ethos, the rabbit hole seeks to stimulate new ideas about the self and the other, and to challenge culturally constructed limits and borders.

Under careful advisory from Georgetown University, and the MIT Senselab, the program bases its principles on deconstruction, and the reinvention of rituals and forms. We also work with Teatro de los Sentidos, based in Barcelona, an immersive theatre company that creates experiences deconstructing what has become our pre-supposed sensory mapping, and instead discovering the magical silver thread that presents itself, if one is open to “remembering”.

Artists expectations:

Each artist was required to develop an answer to "the art of remembering”, becoming an archive of responses.

The first 6 months have been based entirely on process, with workshops, immersive experiences, and studio sessions that created TKTKTKTKTK. .

At the conclusion of the residency:

Each artist received a master class certificate of The Rabbit Hole Method™, as well as established a place in the rabbit hole collective.

Each artists’ work has also been communicated through the rabbit hole’s global channels.

Who can apply:

With only 10 spaces to offer for this residency, we selected candidates for both their artistic merit, passion in the subject, as well as how each could contribute to an overall group synergy.

The artist-in-residence candidates were selected via an open call application process, as well as by invitation.

Artists, curators, writers, composers, poets, researchers, musicians, performers, from all background applied.

The question answered by all applicants:

The open call poem alludes to the Persian fable “The Conference of the Birds” a tale of the poetics of oneness and the mirroring of the other that reveals itself through a mystical voyage.

“What is it that connects us?

A memory?

What if we stop remembering?”

Participating Artists:

Mayke Verhoeven: http://maykeverhoeven.nl
Paloma Demasi: https://palomademasi.myportfolio.com
Keri Rosebraugh: https://www.kerirosebraugh.com