Extended I Exercise (EIE), is a fictional movement technique, that brings people into contact with their bodies and true selves. The technique is practiced by videotaping one’s body with smartphones taped to various body parts in “selfie-mode,” while conducting a set of movements borrowing from ballet, contact improvisation and yoga. In its philosophy, relayed through the class’s opening speech, theories and concepts derived from Lacan’s mirror stage, oneness theory, and motivational speaking are fused, twisted and preached in an absurd yet sincere attempt to connect humans with each other.

The EIE class leader, a megalomaniac macho type embodying tropes of culty self-help gurus, offers the participants the (contradictory to his own nature) possibility of letting go of their inner critiques and egos by playing along in this obviously fictional system. The 60-minute audience participatory EIE class, is a hyper embodiment of “the selfie-culture”, which raises questions and mirrors our obsession with the individual in contemporary culture, while simultaneously providing a release from it through the device of humor and communal-body-activation.