About

Treffen Total is a  cooperation of the artist driven network  Sweet and Tender Collaborations and the  K3 – Zentrum für Choreographie/Tanzplan Hamburg. It is dedicated to the exploration of alternative working and communication models within the performing arts: 25 artists from Hamburg and the world will live and work for three weeks together in Hamburg and open their processes periodically to the public.

Treffen Total is a laboratory, an academy, a forum and an artistic project. It is based on the argument, that dialogue and exchange activate and stimulate the creative process. With Treffen Total we want to create a space where artists can make their daily labour on art transparent, where current methods of art intermediation can be challenged and where the artists themselves can decide on and experiment with the parameters of production.

Exchange and dialogue shall happen on various levels: As artistic practise and foundation for collective work and artistic cooperations in the studio as a challenge for the participants to articulate and verbalise their individual work approaches and as an invitation to the public to gain insights on the artwork itself. How can we talk about art? How can we collaborate? How can we integrate the audience into our process and discourse? In periodical public events, the audience can involve themselves in the emerging works.

Treffen Total focuses on the question of how artists can organise and educate themselves and will therefor not use mentors or artistic supervisors that direct and guide the process from the outside. We look for a format in which hierachies are suspended and individual roles questioned. Each participant should be responsible for his/her individual learning procedure, we learn from and with each other. We want to enable a collective learning process fed by the experiences, contexts and perspectives, that are being contributed by the individuals that form the event.

Treffen Total questions the current conventions of work and production by avoiding the tradional process of rehersal, presentation (in form of a show) and reception. It encourages people to experiment with a new and complex form of constant showing, working, discussion, giving and receiving. It challenges its participant to reflect with each other and the public, so new forms can emerge from this unknown path.