How do we recompose a common in a society marked by separations?

The project 4 +3 =1 seeks to enact common denominators that tell (hi)stories in order to engage with the possibilities of repairing and restoring societal balance(s).

Since time immemorial, Western ideologies have generated and narrated commons: those points when circles intersect into commonplaces. Yet, these commonhoods have been produced by systems of limitations, dualities, and exclusion, lacking relationality and equilibrium between humans, as well as humans and nature. Alternative commons have long existed,  African philosophies extend plural ecosystems of connection: As underlined by Marimba Ani, in Ancient Bantu philosophy “nature” was and still is understood as “ntu”, the “rhythm”, the “universal life force” that humans are a part of. 

Considering their inclusive ground, within this research and exhibition project, we seek knowledge from ancient non-Western philosophies and narratives, to better understand and enact the common denominators that can regulate our societies today. One of these trajectories we look into are the ancient Egyptian traditions of composing “beings” based on nature’s forces: in it, feminine forces are symbolised by the number 4. It carries the masculine, and the society in general. Masculine forces are symbolised by the lower number 3. The equation hence becomes: Four + Three = Community. FOURPLUSTHREEEQUALSONE.

Fundamentally, the project asks, “How can we integrate the performative multiplicities that the feminine, masculine, fluid, or non-conforming hold into our shared realities? In the core, it is about understanding that they can mutually carry and influence one another – within the subjective embodiments of their experiences, and their manifold existences in societies. How can ancestral philosophies in their embraces of coalescing and varied forces teach us ways of recalibrating community nourishment?”

From the windows and onto the carpet, moving through the space with green and purple light sourcing relations to ultraviolet zones, Viron Erol Vert emanates ruptures of many fragments, filling a carpet with family portraits of his parents, their images refusing to fit into the given frames. We are forced to question the sacred and the presumably profane as we meet perspectives cracking from conventions of group identity and self to enable our most potent and resonant expressions of integrity.

SUPPORT: This project is funded by the Senatsverwaltung für Kultur und Europa des Landes Berlin.

Image: Savvy Contemporary resuming.