Through verbal and non-verbal exchange we cultivate a state of deep listening among the project participants and the visitors of the Humboldt Forum. Connection and encounter become the base for collective actions that disrupt the behavioral code of the Schloss and undermine its architecture of power.
Concept
As a participatory, inclusive and decolonial dance project, “Listening* Activism” by Viviana Defazio, Diana Sirianni, Jolika Sudermann – van den Berg explores the transformative potential of listening in terms of mindful awareness. The group consists of 9 non- professional dancers from three generations and with different hearing status. Two communication assistants support the comprehension in German spoken and sign language.
The listening practice allows for the singularity of each person to become visible. It gives space to each person’s intellectual, emotional and physical responses to structural questions like: How does the architectural symbolism of the building influence your visit to the Humboldt Forum? These multiple individual processes gather in the shaping of a mindful, focused collective body that generates rebellious actions in order to disrupt the behavioral code of the Schloss and undermine its architecture of power.
Our dream is that the visitors engaging in our performance suddenly realize that they are part of a revolution!
“A world is always as many worlds as it takes to make a world.” Jean-Luc Nancy
Research Questions
How can we create radical change through connection (taking into account structures of oppression)?
What is the physicality of empathy?
How to construct a “we” on a bodily level?
How can this “we” include museum visitors?
Participants:
Daniele Facchino, Francesco De Rosa, Anders Malmgren, Monika Zimmering, Renate Heubach, Judith Mackenroth, Aymara von Borries, Cristina de la Vega, Maria Wollny
Viviana Defazio
Degree at the Folkwang University in Essen in 2005 and since then she has worked with Johannes Wieland, Neuer Tanz Company, Anna Konjetzky, Romeo Castellucci, Davide Camplani, Cindy van Acker, Jo Fabian, Angie Hiesl, Michael Purucker, Akemi Nagao, Jo Parkes and Rubato.
Several tours through Germany, Poland, Pakistan, Panama, Vietnam, Libanon and Mexico.
She has created works with her sister Alessandra Defazio such as “Il Piano del Tempo” and “I´ve got under my skin” and “Ehina” , with the collective Pink Tank such us Ver.Inner.Raum and lately with Kaveh Ghaemi with the work “Mit dir nicht/ Netzwerke”.
Since 2016 she is shiatsu practitioner (Diploma in 2020, Berlin).
Currently working at Humboldt Forum in the project “Moving the Forum” as choreographer, together with 30 other artists.
Diana Sirianni (she/her)
studied philosophy in Rome and fine arts at the UdK Berlin. She has exhibited her artistic work internationally and worked with interventions in non-conventional art spaces including public space. A focus of her interest is the intersection between aesthetic experience and healing in a holistic sense and the political potential of this connection. Since 2016, she has offered empowerment and community-building workshops for artists in collaboration with other artists such as Jolika Sudermann – van den Berg. She is currently starting a PhD at Bauhaus University on the topic “Artists Liberation Workshop: Radical Care as an Aesthetic Form?”. Diana is a body-based coach and co-founded the collective Heart*istic for artists’liberation and the feminist urban collective Womxn Making Art in Public Space.
Jolika Sudermann - van den Berg
is a choreographer, teacher and workshop facilitator in the field of contemporary physical theatre. After concluding her studies at the Amsterdam college of Arts 2010, she toured her pieces in Europe and the US. “A Talk” and “INFANTEN” both won the “Stuttgarter Tanz- und Theaterpreis”. Her recent work focus has been listening in its broadest sense, as a musical and rhythmical awareness, as the basic of physical group work, but also as a form of social activism. With her colleague Diana Sirianni, she facilitates artist empowerment workshops at German Art colleges since 2019. Recently, Jolika studied German Sign Language and works together with Deaf artists ever since.