We kick off Ruth Buchanan's work A garden with bridges (spine, stomach, throat, ear) for the New Patrons of Moenchengladbach with a three-part workshop series starting in June 2021. In collaborative formats, Ruth Buchanan will introduce the content of the commission and the center points of the patrons group. Topics such as work and working life, health and movement, experience of self and other come up in the workshops and enable a temporary coming together of different groups and people on the Abteiberg in Moenchengladbach.
The events take place as a cooperation of the Kunststiftung im Museum Abteiberg with the Arbeitslosenzentrum Moenchengladbach e.V. and the Stiftisches Humanistisches Gymnasium.
WORKSHOPS
No such things as weeds: Care, growth, regeneration.
SATURDAY, 26.6.2021, 10 am–12 pm and 1–3pm
10 am–12 pm: Online lecture with Kobe Matthys (Zenne Garden) followed by a conversation.
1–3pm: Visit to the local EWILPA wild plant park.
Free of charge, in German and English, registration at schaum@neueauftraggeber.de
FRIDAY 3.9.2021, 2–5 pm
Wild plant workshop with Caroline Pekle in the garden of the Arbeitslosenzentrum Moenchengladbach e.V.
Lüpertzender Str. 69, 41061 Moenchengladbach
Free of charge, in German, registration at schaum@neueauftraggeber.de
These sessions are an opportunity to reconsider the arc of developing a (community) garden, the process that this entails and the relationships this process engenders—relationships toward a community but also toward ourselves. In a location requiring regeneration on many levels, the site as historically loaded with authoritarianism, and as a reflection of a city that has faced radical transition due to changes in industrial processes, late capitalism, and shifts in the way we use our cities.
The workshop welcomes two garden practitioners to share their experiences and knowledge with the unemployment center garden users and their community and connects with local permaculture practitioner Meike Koppmann who leads EWILPA.
Kobe Matthys is an artist from Brussels and a member of the collective Zenne Garden, a regenerative community garden project in a former industrial zone of Brussels. He will offer insight into this process, as well as introduce the concept of a garden charter and user library all of which is grounded in the concept “the knowledge is already here, we just have to engage”. This online session will be complimented by tours through EWILPA, a local project already engaging with this work.
Caroline Pekle is a holistic practitioner living in Northern Bavaria. She will lead a hands-on session where she introduces us to several plants growing on the site and the many benefits they can offer us. We’ll learn how to make nourishing infusions with the plant for ourselves as well as for the garden, how to harvest and dry, and finally how to embed these plants into our diet for access to their diverse benefits.
Where does my body belong? Research in motion: from and into the sensory body
SATURDAY, 4.9.2021, 10AM–1PM AND 3–6PM
A Gaga/people and Somatic Sequencing workshop with Tanja Saban
Suitable for people from the age of 14 and over. No previous experience required.
Sports hall of the Stiftisches Humanistisches Gymnasium
Abteistraße 17, 41061 Moenchengladbach
Free of charge, in German, registration with indication of the desired time period at schaum@neueauftraggeber.de. This is the same workshop offered at two times.
Expanding on the concepts of regeneration and care, this workshop explores physical awareness and the powerful relationships that can emerge as you tune into your sensory self, networking our physical self with our more abstract psyche and subsequently setting into motion our relationship with our surroundings: physical, cultural, social, and economical. Each iteration of this half day workshop will be structured in two parts Gaga/people and Somatic Sequencing.
Gaga/people is a movement language that offers a framework in which the participants connect with the body and their imagination, experience physical sensations, practice an expanded understanding of agility, encounter explosive power and the joy of movement in an inviting atmosphere that can accommodate all mobility levels. The participants are guided through a series of evocative instructions that sensitize and reinforce the awareness of body sensations. Not dissimilar to developing a garden, this workshop overlays and condenses, creating a multi-sensory experience. The improvisational nature of the research enables each participant to have a very personal connection with Gaga.
The Somatic Sequencing session will expand on this and focus on the way the quality of our perception influences the quality of our movement. We awaken the sensory body and immerse ourselves in our inner landscapes, our anatomy. By visualizing anatomical structures, touching and moving, we explore different body layers and their function. A differentiated perception refines the body awareness and creates space for reorganization and expansion of our movement patterns. We explore where and how movement is initiated, how it continues in the body, how it orchestrates rhythm and textures. Fine listening into our microcosm expands our perception and articulation skills on a variety of scales as we relate to ourselves and the wider contexts in which we function.
Midnight / Worker: History, temporality and context
Film program hosted at Museum Abteiberg
SUNDAY, 19.9.2021, 3 PM
Berwick Street Collective: Nightcleaners, 1975
16mm film, shown as HD video, 90 minutes, OV (English).
Free of charge, registration at schaum@neueauftraggeber.de
Museum Abteiberg, Abteistraße 27, 41061 Moenchengladbach
SUNDAY, 26.9.2021, 3 PM
Andrea Büttner: What is so terrible about craft? / Die Produkte der menschlichen Hand, 2019
Two-channel video, sound, 34 minutes, OV (German with German subtitles for the hearing impaired)
Donated by Outset Germany_Switzerland, Museum Abteiberg Collection
Rosalind Nashashibi: Vivian ́s Garden, 2017
16mm film, shown as HD video, color/sound, 29:50 minutes, OV (English, German)
Maya Schweizer: Voices and Shells, 2020.
Video, color, 18 minutes, OV (French with English and German subtitles)
Free of charge, registration at schaum@neueauftraggeber.de
Museum Abteiberg, Abteistraße 27, 41061 Moenchengladbach
This film program brings the concepts of care and physicality as explored in the workshops together by looking at them through the relationships that unfold between our working bodies and our physical environments, or broadly between spatial and temporal parameters of participation in the socio-economic sphere. Presenting a landmark work of British labor politics from the 1970s with recent work by three women filmmakers we begin to access the contingency at stake for our place within our own communities and society at large. These works span the documentary to the intimate, and offer a textured insight into the concept of the working (and thus living and acting) human being. Viewed in a group these works underscore the various historical precedents from which we speak, work, and relate today, and ultimately reveal the tenuousness of impact we have on our contexts and the context on us.
Supported by Kunststiftung NRW and Heidehof Stiftung
Image: Caroline Pekle in her garden. Photo: Caroline Pekle
