Artist
Adelheid Mers




For several years now, part of my practice has been to co-create and conduct conversation games. If you were at the 2018 HPAC gala, you might have participated in one that involved facilitated micro-performances. A New Gentleness is the motto under which the most recent games evolve. The phrase is borrowed from diagram artist and philosopher Félix Guattari’s book “The Three Ecologies”, where he asks to “organize new micropolitical and microsocial practices, new solidarities, a new gentleness, together with new aesthetic and new analytic practices.”
Drawing on our ways of knowing and of making sense, new or under-appreciated existing micro-practices are what I look for in making games, together with the individuals who care to participate. Games may lead to discovering personal gestures, promote open verbal exchanges, or short choreographies. Each instance may be documented differently. For NJAPF, I offer to co-design and play such a game, ideally with a group of people, friends or family. Yes, this can happen remotely, on platforms we are now likely familiar with. I envision one preparatory meeting of maybe 30 minutes, and one game meeting for about an hour. Depending on how the conversation evolves and the means we can pull together as a group during the prep meeting, you will afterwards receive custom edited digital images, video and/or a sound recording that document the event, created from files that may be recorded on your end and on mine.