INTRODUCTION

EMOTIONAL SEASONS – cross-cultural experimentations with performance and new media art: discovering our surroundings

a project that fosters cultural & art networking and promotes the idea of “art as collaborative work” as one of the highlights of contemporary art production 

CONCEPT: The project series was produced in collaboration with other, invited international artists. Collaborating performances have taken place in Australia, Austria, Dubai, Ghana, India, South Korea and the US.

The series of works investigates how integration or exclusion is felt around particular cities and urban places. The project generally addresses issues about identity and belonging arising from globalisation and living in cultural diverse societies: focusing on how the human being reacts to its immediate environment and nature at large. It talks about elimination of existing distances, borders and barriers between countries, cultures and people in general; further discusses problematic issues inherent in multiculturalism, globalisation and mass consumption.

How strong are we influenced by the materialistic world we live in? How does it feel to live in a foreign (cultural) living environment and how does this affect us personally? Which layers of reality do we create and inhabit?

The work addresses notions about how we fit into certain places; further what impact we have on our surroundings and what impact these surroundings have on us through different perspectives. The project developed through a process of experimenting with performance and new media art in public and private environments.

The Process: In Emotional Seasons we question borderlines in society, in real and cyber space. The project includes artistic interventions in public and private. Based on our own work methods of combining static and temporal forms of expression in a hybrid art process/making, we take them further into the public sphere. This results in various video & sound installations based on collaborations with other international artists. We explore multiple (global) realities (interdisciplinary and intercultural) in individually placed surroundings – building layers of reality, created through filmed performances (public and private). Question: What are today’s realities of human existence in a global but still cultural diverse society? The project develops from our special perspective and perception of the core theme into various video & sound installations. In our projects at large we question how the general public’s perception, how global culture per se influences artistic expression in the present context.