The opening speech by Signe Vad for the workshop and performance

Corridors of Voices

Hello everyone (gentleladies, humans and critters)

This is the workshop    Corridors of Voices – Time to Speak Up and Listen to the Birds

I am Signe Vad and I have been invited to make this workshop for you, with you

As you all may very well know according to the scientists and the IPCC panel, we are in a code red situation: climate emergency, loss of biodiversity, the 6^th mass extinction and the unforeseen feedback processes

For a long time, it has felt like there were a few Cassandra’s, standing in Troy telling everyone that the disaster is near but nobody really believing them.

Now we know

Meanwhile global north and our part of the human world is still destructively capitalistic and boringly self-obsessed, as it has been for a long time, if not to say tormentingly off course, greedy and totally oblivious, leading to a devastating repression and eradication of fellow humans, critters, and growths around the planet.

So

This is not a drill

We are in a code red situation

Some name it ecocide, a term that embrace it all. A big bunch of shit being done to the ecosystems
Screwing the oceans and land, the atmosphere, the environment, the wildlife, the growths and human beings all around the planet. Making Fellow lives vulnerable due to climate change, contemporary and previous colonial exploitations and additional risks of war over the remaining resources.

These are dire visions, but not unthinkable

It is a calculation of probabilities

The house is clearly burning. Fortunately, many clever minds realize it and react. But it is a crazy situation, and it is a serious situation. 

It is a code red situation

-

We can only do so little each of us, but we can mobilize, come together and act, right now every bit counts.
I believe that, to have hope, we must imagine new ways, develop rethinking and radical re-imagination. I believe this path works best in collaboration with other minds. Together we can try to generate new perspectives and other structures, we can use poetic and creative agency to undress and enhance our deadlocked destructive growth-systems, we can wriggle, push and shout, we can debate, experience and change our own ways, maybe we can inspire each other to dare or bother...

Because it seems that many world leaders and people in power are fearful cowards, greedy or wrapped in layers of denial that filter out anything they can’t cope with

At this point in time, I believe that among the most important groups to lead the way, to push for fundamental change are scientist, theorists, activists and artists -

Artists are important because aesthetic agency is a powerful tool to address severe situations and bring alternative visions

With our aesthetic agency we can expose and call out the danger

With aesthetic agency we can rethink, use radical reimagination, and poetic absurdity, we can combine unthinkable ideas and say meaningless sentences just to come up with alternative realizations, and we can create hope in strange and unthinkable ways

Today I have been invited to make a workshop for you about aesthetic agency

So today you are invited to be the agents
working with text as a poetic aesthetic tool

Today I will invite you to generously share your words and opinions on the topics of the ecosystem crisis, climate justice and all the surrounding problems or new solutions, because it is of immense and particular urgency.

Because visions and words can move us,

Because you can become the birds and bring other songs for other ears.

Because today we all are part of a battle for a beautiful planetary future (whether we want it or not)
And because any action, conversation and statement are part of moving this ahead; changing our mindsets away from the deeply implanted auto-cannibalistic, growth-structure we grew up with.

Today in collaboration you are the creators of aesthetic statements, you are the ones that must think and formulate messages for other to hear.

In cohesion, all of you will create the Corridors of Voices.

But first you must do the work.
you must gather and dare to share your thoughts and ideas with the group at your table

Dare to join in conversation
Dare to care
it can be a thick boundary to overcome sitting with strangers, voicing your thoughts on this topic.
But courage, conversation and collaboration are important tools to practice, if we are to collaborate about another way of co-existing in the future.
So, I encourage you to dare and enjoy sharing thoughts and sentences with each other, this is also a way of caring.

It will happen like this:

In the sculpture street there are 10 tables each with one facilitator. Those of you who would like to participate in the workshop go and place yourself at a table.

Sitting together with other people around the table you have 45 minutes to, preferably in collaboration, create some kind of text-piece. It can be single sentences, words, a statement, a manifest, a poetic text or something in between. Since it is going to be performed, any kind will work.

The facilitator is there to help, in case you need help with opening the conversation or providing ideas as to how the text can be gathered from all the different minds, opinions and people around the table.

I sincerely hope you will engage each other to find words and meanings that matter.

In the end the facilitator writes down the words and sentences, gather the text you formulate.

Then at the table you can debate how the text shall be performed, should it be whispered so the audience have to go close to hear the message, should it be shouted or should it be treated as spoken word for example. Remember you only have 45 minutes, before you have to go back to the seminar.

When finished your session at table please write your name on the board in the Sculpture Street, so we can list all the co-creators of the performance Corridors of Voices

The facilitators are also performers, and we will then after the last seminar at twenty past six perform your statements as a public performance, a symphony of voices, performing your texts, your words and your visions, here in the corridor of the Sculpture Street.

I hope you will enjoy the workshop and the end result – thank you -now it’s time to go to the tables