Research

What are new social technologies that support us in facing world’s issues with resilience and presence, especially in times of transformation, uncertainty, fragmentation and division? What is it that brings us together again and makes us feel connected in our humanness?

Looking at the current world situation and allowing the infomation of war, destruction, climate catastrophy, social injustice and structural inequality touch our hearts can lead us to a state of despair, helplessness and being overwhelmed.

How do we deal with the complexity we are facing in the world and what are the effects on our sense of security and belonging? How do we engage with the emotions that come up when we let the outside information, that might be often too much to handle, into our systems? How do we find ways to stay present with what is happening, coming back to our own sense of agency and response-ability?

This ongoing work in progress comes out from a long friendship and work relation ship with Janna Rehbein, who is researching and working with the topic of grief since many years. It is continous conversation that keeps on going and leads to creational processes such as new workshop formats, communal grieving rituals, finding practices of resilience and belonging within a larger web of community.

Read more about Janna’s work here

Read about Workshop “Trauer und Freude”

Read more on Grief, Eros and Sexuality here

“Lets stay together and learn how to hold each other in this world we are walking.

In these times we chose to be in. Let’s learn how to hold our hearts together. With all the complexity we find. With all the pain, the seperation and division that is happening right now. With all that is dying, the destruction, the losses.

It is becoming essential that we learn how to respond and deal with the intensity that is happening around us. It is not just another self care practice that helps us to get through the day.
There is an urgency that is calling for more…This is about building up communal substance.It is about building resilience with and amongst each other, building culture, that holds both, ancient knowledge and futurist thinking,imagening strategies that keep us connected and give us a sense of belonging.
Building a network that grows and strengthens when things around us are falling apart,It is about building a new realtion ship to death in order to stand for life.

We grief because we need to.
Our grief is the gateway to what we love.
It shows us what is most important to us and why we are here.
We shed our tears, let them drop into the earth and let them flow with the salty waterfalls.
We lie on the earth, let ourselves be carried for that moment, knowing we are hold.
We grief for the sake of our lives, and all other life that is with us.
We grief in order to continue living, as best as we can.

We grief because we love.
We grief because we want to live.”

“A walk through old memories that try to make their way in the now, asking questions about the future. An understanding of one stream of consciousness that we are all taking part in, which can be so complex, so painful and so gentle and loving at the same time.“

Cinzia invited me to be part of her research „the surface of collective grief“ in the cemeteries of Berlin for the first time in autumn 2020. From then on a pathway opened in continuing to relate and work with Cinzia around questions that truly matter for me both on a personal but also on a collective level:

How is our western society dealing with the topic of death and grief? How do I as a person born and raised in western culture relate to the „Otherworld“ and cultivate my relation ships with my ancestors? How can we as artists find practices that support the process of enlivening our relation to death and our ancestors and what effects might these practices have on us as human beings and the path we are walking? The artistic approach from cinzia combining elements from embodiment practices, poetry and playing with objects inspired me in a way of understanding that everything in every moment can be perceived and used to find and create new and more meanings.

I walked on many cemeteries since, finding new ways of how to relate to what is seen and also what belongs to the unseen world. Can I engage with spirits and ghosts I don’t have a personal relationship with? What are narratives that come up when I look at the gravestones? The Stories, my mind immediately wants to make up. What are the sensations and feelings these stories create in my body? What if I don’t judge the fact, that I am all making it up but instead seeing everything that is seen and unseen as an opportunity to create more meaning and connection. To connect with our deaths ancestors is part of an answer to create more of a sense of belonging in this world. On which past sories and experiences are we walking, what are the gifts, the support and the burdens that are left for us to take. How can we continue to write and re-write all these stories in a way that makes sense to what time and space context we are in and moving towards in the future… 

Find out more about Cinzia’s work

Five dancers move in the interplay of perception and creation in public space and contribute through their physical presence to a “non-material city-beautification”. As an alive organism they immerse themselves in a sensual exchange with the external environment and thus enter into an ongoing negotiation of dynamic relationships with people, places, animals and other circumstances. In this context, dance is not only understood as a possibility of personal expression, but rather as a means of exploring, understanding and shaping the world. Performance is less a colonization of a place, but more a consequence of an intensified conscious way of being with what there is.

“Winds
Voices
Birds
City
Kids
Volume
Breath
Matter of time
reason/intention
Workout
Sports
How to move?
How to use?
Happening/Humor
Interweaving
Lines/Following
Earth – Sky
Bicycles – machines –
Trees
Sounds
Soundscaping
Meeting
Connect
Observe – Archive
Asking – Answering
Thinking Lines
Connecting Lines”

Nicole Wendel

Read Documentation with added Drawings

Who tells the branch on the tree when to stop growing and when it has reached its final shape? Who tells the caterpillar when to enter its cocoon to turn into a butterfly? Who tells the swarm of birds to change their direction?
Nature is constantly in motion and transformation. It expresses itself creatively in all possible forms and structures. It seems as if there is an immanent intelligence that permeates all areas of nature and determines the logic of all living things.
But what about us humans? Apparently we are the only species that has acquired the ability to separate from this intelligence. Have we actually managed to free ourselves from the forces and rhythms of nature and impose our own ideas, structures and constructs on the earth? Instead of listening to the creation of the earth, we have detached ourselves from it and created reality constructs that lead us to more isolation and disintegration instead of cooperation and togetherness.
How can we find practices in our mind and body that reconnect us with the forces that come from our inner nature and are directly connected to those of the earth? How can we perceive ourselves with our bodies as part of a relationship with the earth and rediscover this connection?

A deep exploration into the interrelated relationship of the human body and the body of the earth…

Find out more about Lotan’s work