In the framework of Proto-Club4: Timing-Out

15.04.2023 & 22./23.04.2023

Screening

Army of Love by Alexa Karolinski & Ingo Niermann, 42 min, 2016, commissioned by the 9th Berlin Biennale

Situated in a Berlin Spa, a group of volunteers expresses and exercises its commitment to a need-oriented redristribution of sensual love. With backgrounds in disability activism, sex work, dance and art, the group presents utopian proposals on the basic premises of love and justice. This video marks the initial manifestation of the Army of Love.

The Army of Love is a solidarity in-the-making that offers training, recruitments, discussions, manuals, and testimonial videos to promote the redistribution of sensual love to all who need it. Since its founding in 2016, the Army of Love has recruited and trained people of diverse age, gender, ethnicity, and appearance all over Europe.

15.04.23 19h

Falling In Love With the World

Performance of the game with Michelangelo Miccolis, Ingo Niermann & Maria Sabato

How can we develop affections to someone or something that we dislike? The audience is invited to express personal aversions that hinder them in performing encompassing love. Collectively, we will develop and test playful exercises to overcome these aversions.

Falling in Love with the World challenges our limited concepts of attraction and beauty. It helps us learn to appreciate the plurality in the world, not just as an abstract philosophical principle, but in our daily lives and make love the world’s predominant feeling and action. Falling in Love with the World has been developed by Ingo Niermann for Engy Mohsen and Gabriel Hensche’s collection of games How to Love Many in Many Ways.

Falling in Love with the World is a game that aims to help its players develop a strong affection for someone or something they dislike or are indifferent to. The game is provided by the Army of Love, which offers solidarity trainings, discussions, manuals, and testimonial videos to promote the redistribution of sensual love to all those who need it. The game enables people who do not yet belong to the Army of Love to autonomously expand their techniques and experiences.

“Falling in Love with the World” and “Rehearsing Horizontalities” are two games out of ten that makeup How to Love Many in Many Ways, a project by Engy Mohsen and Gabriel Hensche. Texts were edited by Ismail Fayed, copy edited by Jenifer Evans, and the games were designed by Engy Aly and Engy Mohsen. How to Love Many in Many Ways is supported by Warehouse421’s Homebound Residency (2020), Pro Helvetia Cairo (2021), and the School of Commons (2022).