EXERCISES FOR THE DIGITAL AGE
workshop by Gabriel Hensche
Thursday, September 26, 3 - 5 pm
Floating University, Berlin
“Dear You,
I hope you’re well.
Do you ever doodle while on the phone—those spontaneous, mindless sketches on the edge of your paper? For the project “Exercises for the Digital Age,” I’d love to share this activity with you while we discuss the relationship between your physical and digital selves. Plus, you’ll learn a fun co-creation methodology based on drawing during this workshop. I hope you’re up for it!
While walking in the streets, lying on the couch or sitting at the kitchen table, we can circulate among our virtual communities. As we are no longer confined to our physical bodies, we can slip in and out of our online lives. At the same time addiction algorithms of Las Vegas’ slot machines are transferred into digital technologies in order to create sticky screens and to collect eye–ball–hours. I’m interested in how you would describe how your digital self bleeds into your physical self (and vice versa), and learn more about what you personally do to not be at the mercy of digital media, but to proactively maneuver through it – virtually, physically or mentally?
The project proposes a collective effort to connect the tacit knowledge of artists, thinkers and practitioners that may lie at the backside of their practices. In this workshop, we’ll explore exercises co-developed with fellow artists and create new ones together. These exercises range from physical to mental, digital to analog, affirmative to critical, practical to utopic. They challenge the instrumentalization of affect, cure overstimulation or protect our desires from being hijacked. They could break habits we don’t need, implement new ones or just be a fragment of your practice that we believe is worth repeating.
I know you are busy but since I’m sure that taking your mind for a stroll would be interesting and fun, I would be happy to have you involved.
With warmth,
Gabriel”