LAC. Laboratori Arts Contemplatives

· 04/18 - 04/21

Friendship and eros: texts and practices towards communal living

Transcending the fear of criticism, pain, loss and oblivion

What would it mean to take friendship as a way of life? What do we imagine when we think of a community of affine-friends? What practices of friendship generate community and refuge?

Anxiety and the desire for control are modes of affect that often appear linked to amorous desire, but what affects would be characteristic of friendship? We are interested in developing a conversation around an erotics, an ethics and a poetics of friendship, as a relational mode that offers unlimited possibilities.

In this retreat, writer and thinker Sara Torres and Buddhist teacher and LAC director Lama Norbu will continue the conversation they began following Sara’s first residency at LAC in 2023, and this time they will explore friendship and the practices and texts that make life together possible with friendship as the foundation and path.