The Sensuous Society

We have know way of knowing what a Sensuous society is or would be, but we have the possibility to explore it through a series of performance experiments.

Sisters Academy (Sensuous learning): Is a school in a world and society where the sensuous and poetic mode of being is at the center of all action and interaction. It defines the primary mode of being and is the values on which all societal institutions are building – including the school. Thus Sisters Academy is the school in what we term a Sensuous society – A potential new world arising from the post-economical and ecological crisis. Between 2014-2020 Sisters Academy will manifest in a series of Nordic countries and potentially beyond as we create otherworldly boarding schools and take over the leadership of a series of actual upper secondary schools to explore new modes of being and being together. Sisters Academy is particularly the exploration of what learning would be in a Sensuous society – What we have termed – Sensuous learning.

Dome of Visions (Sensuous living): The Dome of Visions is a minimalist construction based on ideas conceived in the 1940s by the American futurist and architect Buckminster Fuller. The dome is intended to be a forum for discussing, brainstorming and inspiring sustainable solutions for the future. It is also a contemporary exhibition space that explores new curatorial approaches, activates new modes of engagement (Svabo and Shanks, 2014) and inspires new performative ways to evoke future visions and social and cultural change. The Dome of Visions is a temporary construction that moves from site to site between 2013-2018 and potentially beyond. As the artistic director and head curator my contribution to the Dome of Visions has been the development, implementation and activation of the curatorial strategy, which is defining the way we create content. Thus, it is this strategy that is rooted in the intention to democratize the aesthetic, which manifests as an open invitation to everyone to suggest content to the Dome. Once you have suggested your content by writing to us, we initiate a dialogue about how the suggested content resonates with our overall curatorial focus on respectively sustainability, city-development and sensuous experimentation. Our finest ambition is to allow all suggested content to unfold. Due to this curatorial approach we are hosting a wide variety of content ranging from punk-rock concerts to board meetings. Very different people meet on the threshold to the Dome. Thereby enabling everyone to be the participatory creators of the Dome and to meet other people – fellow-citizens – on new third ground that is not linked to one particular institution, organization, group or segment. The Dome of Visions is also the exploration of what living would be in a Sensuous society – Sensuous living.

The Performance Sense Laboratory: In The Performance Sense Laboratory unfolded at The Roskilde festival 2014 the objective is to understand the nature of the Sensuous. In a symphony of installed, intimate parallel-universal rooms, the performance artists Lilibeth Cuenca Rasmussen (DK), Savage Amusement (AUS/DE), Sisters Hope (DK) and Katalin Halasz (UK) explored how to evoke the sensuous and poetic mode of being and being together in the otherworldly space. Performers in the shape of Evokers initiated and facilitated the journey of the festival participants, who were greeted as Human Research Objects as they entered the Performance Sense Laboratory. The festival participants thus delivered data for us to get a more refined and deepened knowledge of what the sensuous actually is.

The Velvet State: Manifested in a collaborative dialogue between the two performance groups Fiction Pimps (DK) and Collective Unconscious (UK) and architects of SHJWorks (DK) at the Roskilde festival 2013. As the largest interactive performance-installatio to have ever been executed at the festival it explored what the inhabitants of a Sensuous society might be like. Greet: The Maintainers, The Bewinged, The Fetichist, Pink Narcissus, The Creature, The Critic, The Idealist, The Voyer, The Killer, The Dictator and The Alchemist…

Libra sensorium: Exploring what the library of a Sensuous society might look and be like with Hjortespring bibliotek and the Subkult program.