4+3=1
How do we recompose a common in a society marked by separations? The project 4 +3 =1 seeks to enact common denominators that tell (hi)stories in order to engage with the possibilities of repairing and restoring societal balance(s).
Since time immemorial, Western ideologies have generated and narrated commons: those points when circles intersect into commonplaces. Yet, these commonhoods have been produced by systems of limitations, dualities, and exclusion, lacking relationality and equilibrium between humans, as well as humans and nature. Alternative commons have long existed, African philosophies extend plural ecosystems of connection: As underlined by Marimba Ani, in Ancient Bantu philosophy “nature” was and still is understood as “ntu”, the “rhythm”, the “universal life force” that humans are a part of.
Fundamentally, the project asks, “How can we integrate the performative multiplicities that the feminine, masculine, fluid, or non-conforming hold into our shared realities? In the core, it is about understanding that they can mutually carry and influence one another – within the subjective embodiments of their experiences, and their manifold existences in societies. How can ancestral philosophies in their embraces of coalescing and varied forces teach us ways of recalibrating community nourishment?”
The staircase of SAVVY descends us into territories of the subconscious and transmutational. In the basement, Azin Feizabadi’s triptych film Uchronia extends a shape-shifting tale of the ancient Persian love story, Layla and the Madman. The characters serve as a non-static vessel of the ancient tale underpinned by the yearning for corporeal proximity, societal sense-making, and love; a trans boy, older lovers, and children are the protagonists each echoing the film’s mantra, "We carry the past together”.
When? Where?
22 July - 4 September 2022
SAVVY Contemporary
Reinickendorfer Straße 17
13347 Berlin