Game for Play

The idea is novel, as is the approach. Working as artists engaged in social practice and public spaces for the last 10 years, Zoe Kreye from Canada and Catherine Grau from Germany have recently started a process of finding new meaning in their work. The young women are working in experimental ways to locate learning processes in the body and from that extend these connections into ritual and ceremony. "This connection of spiritual and political is quite disregarded in our environment and we are compelled to create space for this," state the two artists who are in Chandigarh to work with the Centre for Education and Voluntary Action (CEVA).

The duo is working with community building, alternative learning processes and reclaiming of the commons. "Our current project is 'Unlearning Weekenders' in which we want to create rituals and ceremonies with the public around the idea of unlearning," they explain. For this project, they have received funding from Goethe Institute to travel to India and exchange research, experiences and questions with others. Through their research and travel in Chandigarh, Kreye and Grau have developed a workshop with CEVA, and the first act was in the main square of Sector 17. During the four hours of the workshop, the artists along with participants and actors, explored the impact of architecture on the physical body and consciousness, and the potential for social creativity beyond status quo. "The process is designed to start with exercises that challenge us to unlearn our individual and collective routines," say the duo. This progressed into collective improvised actions that invited the ever growing-audience to join hands with the artists and create a circle that tried to encompass the square. Considering the square as the nexus of Chandigarh, they located its centre and metaphorically dug into the depths of history, energy and possibility.

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