Danish Umwelt

 

After the first and successful workshop in Karelia based on the work of Jakob von Uexküll, Vision Forum is organising a second workshop in Copenhagen. The process in Finland focused on dance and choreography in Denmark we focus on sound and music.

The work of Uexküll gives us the excellent tools to approach questions about how our senses shape our understanding of the world. He describes how living beings perceive their environment and according to him, every organism experiences life in ways that are species-specific and based on the body’s constitution. He called the unique make up of each species’ body “self-in-world” or “Umwelt.”  He describes how all living and sensing creatures, communicate with their surrounding world in different ways, based on how their bodies function and what they desire.

In the workshops artists from four Nordic countries work together. This means that although we all come from the same species and the same part of the world, each individual person’s Umwelt is different both because of their different backgrounds, because they have different fields of interests, but also because they speak different languages. In the workshops people with different backgrounds engage in discussions and exercises that reflect on differences and overlaps in the Nordic languages, cultures and how they inform each person’s Umwelt. The core of the project lies in the group moving between the personal experiences and Uexküll’s reflections.

The project is supported by Volt 19 at Nordic Culture Point.