Welcome to EcoLit! We are pleased to invite you to our second practical project Endless Stories.
Sunday, August 3, 3-8 p.m. in the Carlsgarten, Schauspielhaus. Free of charge. Family-friendly.
In five varied workshops, we will explore together how stories, music and creative methods can support us in dealing with the challenges of socio-ecological change. How do communities deal with the tension between urgent calls to action and the slower, sometimes conflictual rhythms of healing and change? What creative methods can we try out together to share our experiences, memories and ideas and learn new ways of storytelling?
Our multicultural and multigenerational storytelling workshop invites you to share experiences and perspectives, discover creative methods and develop new ways of ecocritical storytelling together. Join us and inspire hope and change! Choose one of the five workshops below and register using the form.
Click here to register!
About the workshops:
Workshop 1 - Ethnobotanical Voyage: Through time with all senses
With Diego Gardón and Mischa Bach (DE/EN/ES)
Our workshop aims to open up opportunities to experience and “write” nature and ourselves in it in a new way. In a joint exploration of the Carlsgarten, “herb owl” Diego Gardón invites us to question the complex relationship between humans and nature: Where are we alienated from each other? The food that nature provides us with is usually only found anonymously and ready-to-eat on supermarket shelves today. How can we re-enter into a lively exchange with the nature that surrounds us and of which we are a part?
In the workshop, experiences of nature become the creative basis for stories, poems and texts. You will be supported and guided in your writing by Mischa Bach with her experience as an author and writing tutor.
Workshop 2 - Imitating Water: A soundscape in the river
With Anna Schütten and Denny Seidel (DE/EN)
In this workshop, we will focus on field recordings – i.e. sounds that we record outside – and body percussion. We will listen to the soundscapes of the waters in Mülheim and go in search of sounds that interest us. We then try to make rhythms or noises with our bodies that match them. From our recordings and our interplay, we develop our own sound piece and ask: What do we hear in our neighborhood? How do we listen to ourselves and can we make music out of our environment and ourselves?
Anna Schütten and Denny Seidel will help you to listen carefully and transform your ideas into sound. Participants of all levels of experience are welcome!
Workshop 3 - Connecting to Peace through Voice and Sound
With Sarah Tsehaye and Senthuran Nageswaran (DE/EN)
Would you like to get to know your voice in a completely different way? In this workshop, we will try out together how sounds, free singing and mindful listening can help us discover new ways and remember old ones to promote peace within us and around us.
Can our voice perhaps even make a contribution to socio-ecological peace? And how can sound support this possibility? We invite you to consider sound not only as something new, but also as something that we carry within us and that we can remember. Together we will feel sounds that hold and nourish us. We will explore how we can create more harmony within ourselves and as part of the smaller and larger whole through voice and sound exercises.
Workshop 4 - Tender Frequencies Mixtape
With Savsannah and Gabriele Maurer (DE/EN)
A mixtape is like a message in a bottle made of music: a collection of sounds that tell stories, preserve feelings and carry moods across time and space. But what happens when you create a mixtape together with others? What sound collage, what emotions arise from it?
In this workshop we want to find out how we can connect the individual with the collective through a joint mixtape. How do you feel about the current socio-ecological reality? Do you sometimes feel alone? Do you have hope? Do you face these challenges together with others? Together we will create a mixtape full of music and organic sounds that captures our emotional reactions to the current socio-ecological changes. The result is a sounding document that makes our feelings, care and connection audible and perhaps also initiates a new togetherness.
Workshop 5 - Sounds of a Garden: Exploring Fluidity through Plants and Music
With Julia Wildwuchs and Fernando Lyra (DE/EN)
Have you ever wondered how plants communicate or express themselves? What new sounds or rhythms could you create if you were inspired by the stories of plants when making music?
In the urban garden project “Carlsgarten” – which challenges the boundaries between nature and the city – this workshop invites you to discover the connection between plants and music. Away from traditional workshop structures, we will explore intuitive, free forms of design that promote a sense of connection and curiosity. We will observe how diverse plants grow and reproduce, learn about principles of queer ecologies and experiment with instruments made from natural materials and everyday objects to explore what music is at its core.
Workshop facilitators:
