Hildegard

31 August – 21 December 2024

The world ‘as we know it’ is unravelling before our eyes and society finds itself in territory for which there is no map. This is a liminal zone between the no longer and the not yet. Six participatory events in the wild garden of the HILDEGARD project space in Berlin-Alt-Hohenschönhausen are offered as an invitation to collectively lean into and learn from the uncertainties, discomforts and shadows that haunt this place – with humility, curiosity and humour – so that the possibility of real transformation can emerge.
© Angel -altered

Sunday 06.10.24 2–5pm

Ukemi, or the art of falling, is a necessary component of martial arts such as aikido, jiu jitsu and judo. It teaches practitioners to deal with fear, uncertainty and failure more skillfully. Dance artist and somatic therapist Moss Beynon-Juckes offers a workshop exploring choreographies of falling. We will work collectively and alone, surrendering, collapsing, building trust, softening, catching one another, gaining intimacy with different surfaces of the earth.

Places are limited and can be reserved HERE, free of charge.

Saturday 21.12.24 6pm

Exploring the poetics of the dark side in a series of readings selected by Lucy Powell and poet N. Grindell, who will read from his recently published volume on recurring collective nightmares, You keep having the same dream. Around the campfire with glühwein and soup on the darkest day of the year.

Saturday 21.12.24 6pm

Exploring the poetics of the dark side in a series of readings selected by Lucy
Powell and poet N. Grindell, who will read from his recently published volume on recurring collective nightmares, You keep having the same dream. Around the campfire with glühwein and soup on the darkest day of the year.

© Bill Gracey

This event took place on 31.08.24

One day, Swedish sports teacher Leif Nilson decided that there must be more to life than teaching people to run ever faster, and instead decided to dedicate his skills to the art of moving as slowly as possible, organising slow races in his home town.
Inspired by this life-changing practice and the ancient Buddhist technology of walking meditation, the inaugural event of LIVING IN THE LIMINAL, let’s metabolise! is an invitation to young and old to collectively slow down so as to be more present to the urgencies of our time.

The last to finish gets the biggest piece of cake!

This event took place on 06.09.24

Siegmar Zacharias and Lucy Powell invite you to stay awake and bear witness together through this late summer night. Preparing food and shelter, taking a night walk in the woods and with plenty of time for stillness and quiet reflection around the fire, we will explore ways of expanding our capacity for dwelling in uncertainty, staying with the trouble and sitting with discomfort – using somatic meditation practices, plant wisdom, the superpowers of compassion, curiosity and solidarity – in communion with the other creatures of the night.

We will work with prompts for sensing and reflection throughout the night. We invite you to think about who or what you want to dedicate this vigil to. Collectively we can stay present to it.

As this event will be also an experience founded on trust, we kindly ask participants to drop us an email with a few lines about themselves and why they would like take part.

© CC0 Public Domain
© CC0 Public Domain

This event took place on 06.09.24 – 07.09.24

Siegmar Zacharias and Lucy Powell invite you to stay awake and bear witness together through this late summer night. Preparing food and shelter, taking a night walk in the woods and with plenty of time for stillness and quiet reflection around the fire, we will explore ways of expanding our capacity for dwelling in uncertainty, staying with the trouble and sitting with discomfort – using somatic meditation practices, plant wisdom, the superpowers of compassion, curiosity and solidarity – in communion with the other creatures of the night.

We will work with prompts for sensing and reflection throughout the night. We invite you to think about who or what you want to dedicate this vigil to. Collectively we can stay present to it.

As this event will be also an experience founded on trust, we kindly ask participants to drop us an email with a few lines about themselves and why they would like take part.

Places are limited and can be reserved HERE, free of charge.

SIEGMAR ZACHARIAS (RO/DE) is a performance artist and researcher, trained death doula and herbalist. She works with performances, immersive installations, discursive encounters and curations that deal with the generative dynamics of transformation. With technologies of artistic and social practice she engages questions around agency, abolition, and metabolic intimacies. Learning from uncontrollable material like smoke, slime, drool, nervous system, death and grieving, she collaborates with humans and non-humans. Her work has been shown nationally and internationally in theatres and festivals, in galleries and conferences, in greenhouses, in the forest and up in the sky.

https://siegmarzacharias.com/

LUCY POWELL (UK/DE) cofounded HILDEGARD end of 2022 as part of her artistic practice and wider commitment to inner and outer activism in the service of social-ecological transformation. She works outdoors, collaboratively and in participative formats, integrating meditation and mindfulness practices. From 2019–2021 she collaborated with Ally Bisshop on the more-than-human artistic research project HOLOBIOSONICS and from 2011–2017 with Sara Barnes on Satellite Salon for art-science conversations in Berlin and Edinburgh, as well with Ella Ziegler on Salon Universitas at Kassel University and Kunsthochschule.

https://lucy-powell.com/

© CCO 1.0 Dedication

This event took place on 21.09.24

A safe, respectful, open space for lively conversations about a difficult topic over tea and cake, with other people who will also die one day. The Café Mortel concept originated in Switzerland and developed into the Death Café movement in the UK and has since spread around the world. This picnic will take place within the connective tissue of the garden, where death and life are so exquisitely intertwined. Hosted by Aleksandra Mikić and Lucy Powell.

Places are limited and can be reserved HERE, free of charge.

This event took place on 28.09.24

A multi-sensory, carnivalesque celebration of monsters, decomposers and transformative processes – and topping-out ceremony for the compost toilet, which guests are warmly invited to help construct. Then it’s time to put your knowledge of nutrient cycles to the test in Ella Ziegler’s Holy Shit quiz, enjoy charismatic speeches by ‘invasive’ species and ‘pests’ courtesy of the Organism Democracy, pick at the bones of Lucy Powell’s edible sculpture, create and sample distilled plant odeurs for insect decomposers with Katrin Petroschkat & Susanne Schmitt at the Barfly Bar, before gathering round the fire for a hearty garden soup as darkness decends.

© CC0 Public Domain
© CC0 Public Domain

This event took place on 28.09.24

A multi-sensory, carnivalesque celebration of monsters, decomposers and transformative processes – and topping-out ceremony for the compost toilet, which guests are warmly invited to help construct. Then it’s time to put your knowledge of nutrient cycles to the test in Ella Ziegler’s Holy Shit quiz, enjoy charismatic speeches by ‘invasive’ species and ‘pests’ courtesy of the Organism Democracy, pick at the bones of Lucy Powell’s edible sculpture, create and sample distilled plant odeurs for insect decomposers with Katrin Petroschkat & Susanne Schmitt at the Barfly Bar, before gathering round the fire for a hearty garden soup as darkness decends.

LIVING IN THE LIMINAL is funded by Bezirksamt Lichtenberg Berlin from the Bezirkskulturfonds