THE ENQUIRY LABS /

EXCHANGES

Exchanges are opportunities for people in Kassel and across the world to share their explorations, questions, discoveries and proposals, and to consider the ‘sender’ and ‘receiver’ process involved in all exchanges.

Real exchanges have to do with ‘sending’ and ‘receiving’: an oscillating process that requires deep and active listening in the ‘receiving’ and empathy and consideration in the ‘sending’.

Beuys highlighted the ‘sender’ and the ‘receiver’ in works like Manresa an the Free International University exchanges, this careful attention to how we send and receive was often eclipsed by older forms of debate.

In the field of Social Sculpture and Connective Practice exchanges play an important role.

They are opportunities to go beyond simply taking in and consuming what is given or ‘sent’.

And to go beyond telling and talking about.

To really receive I have to open myself to what I receive. To let it work in me.

To really send or communicate, I need to shape my thoughts and intentions in a form that might reach you.

And so exchanges offer opportunities to not only share and communicate contents, but to consider how we share them.

They are opportunities to develop the methods and capacities for active listening and for empathy.

Capacities for ‘making social honey’
These capacities are part of the ‘capital’ for shaping a humane and living future. They are the basis for conversations instead of debates: for all genuine thinking-together. For making ‘social honey’.  Exchanges – instead of debate and argumentation – are central to the Kassel-21 / Social Sculpture Lab.

Hybrid exchange processes
Limited by the Covid restrictions, we have over the past year explored and developed hybrid forms of connective practice that include experiential practice.  Several events and processes – like New Eyes for the World, Landing Strip for Souls, and the online 3 Pots action – include methods to support this kind of exchange.

Exchanges and Seminar-Conversations?
The Exchanges differ from the Seminar-Conversations, because they are not led by a few individual inputs.  The Exchanges are more horizontal processes from the start, depending on multiple inputs.