Stille Umarmungen

As part of the week of silence in Freiburg , we will do a very simple durational performance on Thursday, November 6, 2025, at 18:00 in the city center. You’re warmly invited to join as a performer, we need more performers and you do not need to have any special skills to take part!

We will embrace each other in couples - or maybe also trios - and stay like this for half an hour, with the couples separated by ~20m.

In this way we flirt with the idea of recognizable performance. Probably a lot of people might not even see that something is going one, but a lot of them will and that’s part of the magic. This is a small gesture of vulnerability and connection, which we want to bring into the public space, a space which is otherwise dominated by commercial activity or very loud and explicit political actions.

We are also driven by a curiosity of experiencing what this process feels from the inside, what changes within us during this longer time of hugging. If it inspires you, you can take inspirations from other practices like meditation while embracing or take the perspective of doing Steve Paxtons Small Dance or Heike Pourians Standing with the Earth, but with another person instead of alone. Make it your own practice and journey.

We will meet at 18:00 at Platz der alten Synagoge, at the platform with the trees for a short introduction with more details and the opportunity to ask questions and then from there distribute along Bertoldstroße and Kaiser-Joseph-Straße for the 30 minute of embracing.

We have done this before, with just one or two couples and almost two hours of embracing and made really good experiences with this. Now I am especially interested in the effect it creates on passersby to have a lot of couples, I would be grateful, if you can support this experiment by joining as a performer. You can come either alone and find a performance partner there or come with a partner.

If you have any questions or comments, do not hesitate to ask me.