A treat on confusion

Dear Operators,

We heard many comments from your parts over the last weeks about this project!

A lot of positive feedback and of course also some more sceptical words such as "unclear, dispersive, technical anxiety, overwhelming, …"

Let us at first tell you something: WE FEEL YOU!

We therefore decided that the coming treats will be around these topics.

vorstellen.network is an experiment, and as any experiment, it has its right to fail. We like to remind that the difference between an idea and an experiment lies in the attempt of realisation.

Ettore Sottsass talks about the importance of corridors in Indian temples: they are narrow and dark, when you go from the outside, to the inside, you realise that you are in a place where you can think, away from the messy daily life. The architect sometimes applied this method when designing a house, and gave importance to the entrance, the door, the corridor. For him, the entrance is where you go from the chaos outside, into your comfortable home.

Inspired by this beautiful metaphor, Elisa made it her own to describe the artistic process. Having ideas is beautiful, they are inside of you and make you feel happy. Sometimes they are so concrete, you can imagine them realised. But that is when you find yourself in the corridor of concretisation: making your concept understandable to others, asking for grants, communicating, building. The corridor, between the idea and the realisation is the experiment. It is a chaotic moment full of struggle, discussions, difficulties and insecurities. But we all know the feeling when we make it through: it’s extremely satisfactory.

As you probably know by yourself, the experiment is already hard when you are working solo, when you work with others it gets even more messed up and unclear. Everybody has its own corridor of difficulties, they all become a Labyrinth and there is only a way to find the way out: collaboration, dialogue and patience.

There are many processes that are in progress on vorstellen.network.

We are designing a tool from scratch, based on a few open source softwares out there that are also in process.

We are trying to build a small community of operators that we admire, and which we believe can benefit from this collaboration.

At the same time, we are also trying to find a way to convey the dispersion in a more precise concept to be used for exhibitions or events.

… and we ourselves try not to forget too often to operate and add some fragment to this slow motion performance.

We decided to use the corridor as a playground, instead of finishing one thing and then going to the next, we are working fragmented and on everything in parallel. Because as you already have probably understood, we don’t believe in a unique timeline. Things don’t happen one after the other, reality is relational.

In the case of vorstellen.network the design of the tool influences the kind of community operating it, the community influences the content, the content influences the tool, that again influences the possibility to show it in a way or another.

This is just to say: because the corridor is messed up, we are super thankful that you are helping us to move in and get out of this labyrinth with flowers and sun salutations.

check out how Anna-Livia started to grow a fractal spring, are you maybe having a similar experience to share?

We wish you a wonderful week!

Elisa, Axelle and Philipp