Curatorial Text:
“Mäandern:::meander”
Curator: Harm Lux & Team
a process-orientated project; 23.07 - 06.08.2024
“growing fabric” (Continuation) 08.08 - 25.08.2024
A project that revitalises a well-known method and offers possibilities that contribute to rethinking our way of life and especially our sensorium; to anticipate empathy and growth in virtual time. Our artistic ambition; we want to support the subject and the community to take responsibility for the future from the present. A project that should enable worldwide fermentations. Goethe (Waldgedichte, forest poems), Thoreau (Walden) and Lax (short poems) sought the silence of nature to sensitise the senses. Joyce’s protagonist Leopold Bloom meanders through Dublin for 18 hours; observations, sensations and thoughts intermingle, mind and soul leave much open, in limbo and the personal “having a lot of time” flows through Cees Nooteboom’s “Berlin Notes”, Donna Haraway analyses and reflects on more recent positions in her “The Reinvention of Nature”. If we combine the sensations of the first three with the urban (biological-binary) meanderings of the last three - and relate this to ourselves and the present, what can emerge? We are initiating an artistic project in which we ask ourselves: How do the subjects react to the processes of our time by strolling in aimless, sensitising time-outs; what can come out of this?
25 artists perform a 12-hour meander in the places where they live, some of them more than once! This aimless and purposeless method of traversing spaces without naming things, allowing oneself to be guided by sensations, is entirely dedicated to sensitising the senses. Perhaps the deeply rational urban enclave, which reduces chance and organic life to a minimum, is irritating (!), but come on, we are strolling in the best sense of Benjamin, discovering new life, in habitats, in tree holes!
The artists bring their fermentation (not art) to Berlin, bring it in, we exchange ideas, fermentation grows into form, supports an organic tissue, slowly this takes on significance. These time-outs become fermentations for the artistic project, and the artists (from all over) exchange ideas at the Berlin round tables, not only are sensations and experiences shared, but also the foundation is laid for “growing on”, sharing this idea with friends and one’s own community, read: .... In retrospect, the individual artists, including those who organise the artist spaces, will bring this back. The first artistic realisation - this process- and the global further development afterwards (the cultural “fermentation added value”) is an action-related level.
A further processual stream of consciousness accompanying the project in 2024 should include the following question: What defines freedom in 2024? The term to which we constantly return is committed to a classic ontological categorization “being” and that means drawing boundaries! This concept of “being” does not really contribute to mastering the future (the youngest generation understands and feels this, wants to dissolve it; “being in flux”, more sensitively formulated “flux is being”, very many still do not really know how to realize this), which is why open artistic approaches are essential. The project is looking for ways to re-sensitize being through dissolution, in other words: to always perceive the other as part of one’s own in order to write open cartographies together.
Project motivation: We enrich the constant individual and socio-economic acceleration (which drives global society) with an artistic “think-disconnect” offer. The methodology we promote encourages, among other things, concentration, is open to chance and allows the appropriation of particular resonances. Individual meanders (which will influence urban life in the future) should grow up, i.e. individuals should change and open up to other common ways of life. But also in the awareness that the orientation towards and use of the virtual offer changes the physical and sensual in us and raises the question of what this means for empathy (for love, care and solidarity). This is of course part of the project offerings, which are shown and reflected on in discussions.
A project to be understood as a prelude to the 275th anniversary of Goethe's birthday, and in reference to Fluxus and Beuys' social sculpture, it will be recognisable in 2024.
The timeline & working method:
︎︎︎
Berlin, 23 July to 6 August
Bringing the meandering experiences to Berlin
as a fermentation(not as a final work of art), to present them to the public,
during 11 evenings, outside in the public spaces or collaborative art spaces.
a collaborative process on site in Berlin. During the day, the participants will work alone as well in groups.
One group will reflect on the inputs from the previous evening, consider what these mean for the visualisation, how the thoughts (accompanied by sketches, images, sounds, smells etc.) can best animate the artistic fabric and what preliminary meaning can be assigned to an individual contribution. They then go in search of materials and work on the artistic realisation.
Other participants (all alone) meander for a few hours through a part of the Berlin neighbourhood. In the afternoon, after the parallel individual meander, the artists exchange ideas, contribute what they have experienced and perceived, and work on a cartography. We can be curious to see how the ideas of the participants differ from the existing neighbourhood cartography; ....
Bring in sensitivities that correspond to our time!
︎︎︎
Berlin, 8 to 25 August, “continuation”The artists will determine how the resulting artistic fabric can be best developed (for Ex. exhibition in one place or together with daily Berlin Meander cartography programmes). This will be accompanied by a smaller group of artists.
Worldwide, 25 project participants* (all alone)
will carry out a 12-hour meander in 19 locations
Strolling in mostly different places, not knowing where the path will lead. Many stroll through urban enclaves and sense the technologically and architecturally normalising principle of this structure, in which openness, contingency and organic growth no longer play a major role. But meandering, this "swinging feeling" also needs prerequisites! Every person, every meanderer, brings their consciousness into this spatially oscillating movement, keeping their distance from everything around them for a while. The wandering, the stepping out of time, this nonsearch implies to pay attention to special signs and places in order to discover organisms and habitats by chance.
Publication: is not part of the Summer project.
Planned release with Publisher: End 24/Winter 25
will carry out a 12-hour meander in 19 locations
Strolling in mostly different places, not knowing where the path will lead. Many stroll through urban enclaves and sense the technologically and architecturally normalising principle of this structure, in which openness, contingency and organic growth no longer play a major role. But meandering, this "swinging feeling" also needs prerequisites! Every person, every meanderer, brings their consciousness into this spatially oscillating movement, keeping their distance from everything around them for a while. The wandering, the stepping out of time, this nonsearch implies to pay attention to special signs and places in order to discover organisms and habitats by chance.
︎︎︎
Reading Meetings, July 25 till of August 25.
We present 6 thought-oriented meetings. Exploring the evolution of art and performance in a virtual evolving society, combining this with the essence of philosophical, poetic, literary and cinematic statements. This is a collaboration between Flux I bell sTRUcTURs, Farbod Hanorpisheh and Debbie Ding. They will choose different topics, prepare and invite 2 guest speakers for each meeting, who will draw their not so obvious light on the topic (the talks will be part of an anthology, including the voices of the visitors).Publication: is not part of the Summer project.
Planned release with Publisher: End 24/Winter 25
︎︎︎
Project Team:
Harm Lux
Kasia Habas
Carlos Leon-Xjimenez
Maral Müdok