TBA 21

The two series Shared Activities and A Cup of Stories are a continuation of the Social Design Studio’s work in a Viennese refugee camp throughout the winter semester 2015/16. Both programmes were realized in the framework of the “Green Light” project by Olafur Eliasson featured at Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary in spring 2016.

Shared Activities

Shared Activities open up spaces for encounters and exchange: the starting point for mutual understanding and dialogue. This series of events transgressed the location as a knowledge production space – the university institute – by searching for new ways of learning. The projects experiments with inclusive approaches of knowledge production. We want to re-evaluate, what is generally understood as valuable knowledge and why so. The series hosted events as diverse as an Afghan kite building workshop, an event dealing with the connections of flavours and notions of home, a dance empowerment workshop, a chess tournament and a workshop of digital storytelling.

Team: Brigitte Felderer, Herwig Turk Coordinator: Miriam Hübl

A Cup of Stories 

For the series A Cup of Stories we developed a series of storytelling sessions with artists, intellectuals and teachers from different cultural backgrounds. Storytelling is not a new concept for connecting people. It has been a practice that brought people together for centuries in many different cultures. In the Levant, Damascus and Cairo storytelling was practiced by the “Al Hakawati”, the storyteller. Storytelling created occasions where people get the chance to listen, learn, understand the past and socialize. By sharing our stories, we invite each other into our worlds.

Storytelling as an artistic practice.

This enhances our interconnectedness, awareness and possibilities for fruitful interaction. It is well said by Janet Litherland: “Stories have power. They delight, enchant, touch, teach, recall, inspire, motivate, challenge. They help us understand. They imprint a picture on our minds. Want to make a point or raise an issue? Tell a story.”

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Team: Jana Alaraj, Mu Bo, Andrea Rigo Rigo with guests Fariba Mosleh (Austria), Lutz Alexander Keferstein (Mexico) and Brigitte PRINZpod (Austria)

Time

Summer 2016

Location

Vienna

Team

Studio Social Design

TBA 21