Listening to Hope Labourers
In our dialogical artistic research collaboration (ODE), active listening and resonance, embodying techniques and phenomenological approaches play a pivotal role. In our project “Hope Labour: Constellations,” which was initiated during a residency at Lothringer 13 Halle in Munich in November 2023 and which we aim to present at the symposium, we invited participants into a three-way conversation about hope and hope labour (unpaid/underpaid work done in anticipation of future rewards). This topic, though it concerns us and many other cultural workers and academics directly, has mainly been discussed from a sociological angle so far. Our aim has been to listen to internal perspectives through recurring performances with guests, who were asked to bring objects and questions related to our research topic. Our notations supported the understanding of the resulting emotionally charged conversations. Post-discussion, we engaged in direct artistic processes, transforming thoughts into monotypes. The chosen printing process was characterized by an explicitly intuitive approach. Subsequently, selected prints were placed in constellations, contextualized and discussed with the participants, carefully tracing sensual physical-bodily experience processes using the micro-phenomenological method extended by tactile-kinesthetic components. We believe that sharing and listening to each other creates a basis in which hope labourers are no longer situated solely within the exploitative ideas of liberal scripts, but can come to an amplified, shared voice and power. And the listening continues when we sense into our material and the artefacts created: What knowledge resides in these artefacts, and who can hear/listen to it? Who has the agency to engage with this knowledge? And further: How can this knowledge, respectively the course of a conversation be transformed into aesthetic constellations and physical objects? Our performance lecture aims to explore these questions, extending our ongoing dialogue on hope labour by opening it to the audience: We will give insights into our research on hope and hope labour, on diverse phenomenological approaches (micro-, post-, etc.) on the basis of our research processes, material artefacts, live drawings and notations. During our presentation we invite the audience into body and breath exercises to create a space within us and between us to enable us to listen to ourselves and to each other.