Are we in this together?

Premiere: 19 Februar 2025 | Kampnagel Hamburg

ATTEMPTS OF TOGETHERNESS is a polyphonic gathering and an invitation to audiences to practice community in current times, creating a space to re-imagine how to relate, listen and discover one selves in a movement of negotiation. Through four unique evenings of performative installations, the artists will translate their experiences into a collective narrative, questioning the intersections of their lives and their art. Visitors are invited to participate in this practice of being together – sharing space, time and vulnerability. ATTEMPTS OF TOGETHERNESS is an initiative of Sweet & Tender Collaborations, a collective of international artists founded in 2006 and now, after more than a decade, reuniting in Hamburg at the invitation of Hamburg-based choreographer Jenny Beyer to explore new forms of collaboration.

Sweet&Tender Collaborations was founded in 2006 by danceWEB scholarship holders with the aim of implementing self-organisation, collaboration and solidarity in artistic processes. By 2012, the S&T artists had organised numerous collaborative projects in France, Portugal, Germany, Belgium, Mexico and Switzerland, among others.

Jenny Beyer and her team have decided to formulate their next project as an invitation to Sweet&Tender Collaborations to meet again after more than ten years. In doing so, the artists are facing up to the challenges posed by the circumstances of their coming together and making them the content of their joint work: they are a large group from all parts of the world. They meet again after a long period of separation, during which their lives have taken different professional and personal paths. They have limited time and resources to physically spend time together. What questions and expectations come together on four evenings of performance and what performative and choreographic forms are needed to initiate a dialogue about them?

Jenny Beyer and Sweet&Tender Collaborations have been negotiating these questions in the digital space for several months. A first concept meeting took place in July 2024 in MASSIA, approx. 180 km south of Tallinn, Estonia. In February 2025, they will translate their collaboration into a performative installation and share the results of several months of group and communication work with the public at Kampnagel.