HOW TO RECONNECT?
How can bodies, trees & and architecture interrelate?
Performative research for temporary encounters for the body and its environment between Schillerpromenade & Tempelhofer Feld, organized by Pio_near Kollectiv, Berlin, 2022
EINE REIHE
VON ANFÄNGEN
how to reconnect?
[Movement Research Workshop: the CITY lives in ME]
A Practice of Mental Mapping inspired by the work of the American Urbanist Kevin Lynch, combined with movement field exploration, sensorial awareness, and architectural choreographies in the neighborhood of Tempelhofer Feld, in Berlin.
"Supported by the NATIONAL PERFORMANCE NETWORK - STEPPING OUT, funded by the Minister of State for Culture and Media within the framework of the initiative NEUSTART KULTUR. Assistance Program for Dance.”]
Embodied Democracies Research & Somatic-Spatial Practice
Democracy is not only a system we design; it is an atmosphere we co-regulate.
The How to Re-Connect workshops are rooted in my artistic research project Embodied Democracies, developed during the Picturing Democracy artistic research residency by Urban Nation in Berlin. This research began from a simple but urgent question: What if democracy is not only something we discuss intellectually, but something we experience through the body, through space, and through the way we relate to one another?
For me, democracy begins with the felt sense of safety: feeling safe in our bodies, in the presence of others, and within the environments we share. It is expressed not only through words, agreements, or political structures, but through gestures, tone of voice, spatial distance, movement, listening, attention, and the subtle somatic cues that shape trust or discomfort.
Gallery
The How to Re-Connect workshops invite participants to explore places of commons—community spaces, gardens, neighborhoods, institutions, cultural spaces, or workplaces—through movement, sensory awareness, sound, mapping, and collective reflection. Participants are guided to observe how spaces affect their bodies, how bodies affect shared environments, and how groups can create more respectful, inclusive, and responsive forms of coexistence.
Through this process, democracy becomes a lived practice of attunement, care, and relational responsibility. The workshop supports participants in moving beyond abstract discussion into embodied understanding: sensing where connection is possible, where boundaries are needed, where voices are missing, and how collective spaces can become more alive, inclusive, and participatory.
These workshops can support:
Cultural organizations, festivals, and art institutions that want to create participatory experiences around commons, belonging, democracy, ecology, and collective imagination.
Community groups, municipalities, and urban initiatives that wish to explore public space, neighborhood identity, inclusion, and civic participation through embodied and creative methods.
Educational institutions and universities interested in alternative pedagogies, somatic learning, spatial research, artistic research, and embodied approaches to democracy and social engagement.
Teams, organizations, and leadership groups that want to strengthen trust, communication, collaboration, and psychological safety through body-based and spatial awareness practices.
Artists, architects, designers, facilitators, and researchers who are exploring the relationship between bodies, environments, participation, and more-than-human forms of coexistence.
The workshops can be adapted as a short introductory session, a half-day or full-day workshop, a research-based residency format, or a longer participatory process connected to a specific place, community, or institutional question.
At the heart of this work is the belief that reconnecting is not only emotional or intellectual. It is spatial, sensory, ecological, and embodied. To reconnect with each other, we also need to reconnect with the places, materials, atmospheres, and more-than-human worlds that hold us.