On Smallness

Let's talk about the small! Let's come together performatively to find small solutions to big problems: to create a way of organizing, of solidarity, of learning, of encountering differences and yet pursuing cooperative futures. The project "On smallness" uses a poetics of the small as a starting point to understand how the local is intertwined with the global and how small collective actions in the present can profoundly shape collective models of hope.
The project addresses current problems in Stuttgart through different research formats. It does not claim to be able to solve all these problems. On the contrary, the failure of these small actions is a dramaturgical intention that presents the concept of a final solution as unattainable. The aim of the project is to use the small to address larger structural problems that characterize everyday contact with the local.

To this end, the team of the 10-tage-freischwimmen-residence creates a performative framework in which an office of small solutions is established that deals with the problems of Stuttgart.

The "Office for Small Solutions" is open at the following times:

27.04. 6 - 8 p.m.
28.04.: 3 - 6 p.m.
03.05.: 17:30 - 19 h

Everyone is invited to communicate their problems to the group at these times. In addition, a letterbox will be attached to the door of the corner shop for the entire duration of the festival, into which everyone can throw their problems regardless of the time.

The final performance will take place on 4 May at 1 pm (in English).

Team

Maryna Mikhalchuk works as a director and dramaturg in the free theater scene in Stuttgart. Her noteworthy productions are “The Boar Festival" in Theater Rampe and “18 letters and one fable from Belarus” at Schauspiel Stuttgart.

Emilia Dorr is a choreographer and performance artist. Her latest research has been focused on "relating" in contexts in order to inhabit otherness and work on new ways of being together.

Tyler Cunningham is a Stuttgart-based performer, writer, and maker of performance and staged music-theater. He was a recipient of a 2023 Fulbright Research Grant to Germany in Performance Art.

Teppei Higuchi is a composer, performer, and speaker whose work has been focused on the musicality of language and textuality of music. He holds a Doctorate of Musical Arts from Kunitachi College of Music (Japan).

They met on the 26th of June, 2023, at the cafe Silberknie. This encounter of the four of them ended up sparking collaborative beginnings; in talking about the notion of the future, they discovered the future was now.