Building Conversation and Matchbox in Rhein Neckar (DE)

On 28 and 29 May we join Matchbox in “1832. Das Fest der Demokratie” in Neustadt an der Weinstraße and return to Hambach Castle. During the festival we will conduct the Agonistic conversation, Appreciative inquiry and Het Vlak.

Our collaboration with Matchbox started three years ago during the Democracy Festival HAMBACH! Matchbox is a cultural organization that focuses on the rural surroundings and involves its inhabitants in art projects from their own region and the rest of Europe.

Last year our collaboration consisted of two parts and ran until September. In January we started with the first part; a program in which we had a different online conversation every month. We alternated between Impossible Conversation and Distant Thoughts and tried to reach even more people from the region to connect young and old people from different villages.
In August and September we had a longer residence in Neustadt (an der Weinstrasse) and Weinheim and we worked on new forms of conversation. We investigated Social Dreaming, and under the name The past, the pandemic and the future we experimented with a form of conversation that looks back on one and a half year pandemic. What significant events mark the end? Is that the moment when we forget to keep the one and a half meters distance? Or when we tell it as a story to our grandchildren?

An important part of young people is still actively involved in Building Conversation as a facilitator of the different performances. It is exciting to see how involved these young people are and that they feel the urge to seek out connection through conversations with each other and also to stay connected.


c: Sarah Hähnle

No English spoken performances planned at this moment

Matchbox is an extraordinary programme of artistic discourse, spanning theatre, dance, performance, visual art, music and literature that travels through the region and manifests itself in diverse ways. It appears, disappears, re-appears, continuing on its way while leaving traces. Matchbox is a format that relies on the spirit of discovery and love of participation by the audiences in the Rhine-Neckar region for its specific projects that are individually bound to places and local people and created by artists of international renown, thus radiating beyond provincial and national borders.