Sketch of Togetherness – related. Encounters as coping strategies
2019/2020: In the current world climate previous certainties have become fragile, democratic value systems are under threat, internet and digitalization bring a flood of information in our daily lives and ecological, social and societal catastrophes strike worldwide. The final edition of the Klimata series – a one-year performance project by Montag Modus that explores global changes – provided an artistic response to this current mental state. The motto was: Coping Strategies. How do we deal with fear? What are the coping strategies for the overload of information we experience in our daily lives and can shared presence or live art serve as an antidote to it?
In this context Alexandra Hennig, Mona De Weerdt and Lea Moro asked whether and how encounters can serve as artistic and personal coping strategies. The starting point of their lecture performance was the premise that the encounter with another person releases the potential to question familiar patterns of explanation, inscribed perspectives and one’s own lived reality. In the form of a video installation, live spoken text collages and a communal meal, the long-term project series Sketch of Togetherness was examined and negotiated in terms of its political, artistic, social dimensions and potential. Rather than seeking answers, they presented practices and questions, moments of encounter as temporary communities and complicities – places dedicated to longing and commitment.