ACTING THINGS VII Learning should be less about knowing or memorising what something is than understanding how it continuously changes in relation to something else. At the School of Fluid Measures objects, numbers and values that have become fixed by universal standards are dissolved through scored interactions that leave traces in coloured sand. The patterns that emerge are an exploratory measure of the fluidity of meanings, and the colours represent exemplary values as resources to debate, distribute, and fuse into new colours and values. It references to the bazaar as a situation in which value emerges out of a unique yet similar negotiation process.&nbsp;Through an embodied process that surfaces situative intentions and relations, 18 measuring sessions invite participants to negotiate new colours and values. Viewed as a series, the 18 sessions intend to explore ways of mediating, materializing and notating the making of meanings and results, in a manner that embraces the fluidity of the constant socio-material becoming.School of Fluid Measures is the seventh project in Judith Seng&rsquo;s ongoing ACTING THINGS series, that since 2011 has asked: What if we look at production processes as if they were a dance, a play, a ritual? More about the project&nbsp;<a href="https://user-ljspb4pp.vsble.me/works/aboutactingthings/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">here</a> Year: 2018 / Location: Pera Museum Istanbul, 4th Istanbul Design Biennale / Curator: Jan Boelen, Nadine Botha, Vera Sacchetti / Team: Elena Steffan, Phoebe Morris / Video/Images: Studio Judith Seng / Video editing: Elena Petrach

School of Fluid Measures

An intervention during the opening of the exhibition <a href="https://www.kasselerkunstverein.de/ausstellung/kkvexh/detail/kkv/3wetransform" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">&lt;3 wetransform</a> at Kasseler Kunstverein on March 15, 2019, 7 p.m What connections emerge between the history of art associations as the first civic initiatives for art reception and the changing strategies of production, communication, reception and effectiveness in the digital age? Against the backdrop of digital and analog forms of civil society engagement, the intervention #Alliances initiates socio-material dynamics of publishing, gathering, discussing and acting in a visual-spatial, tangible process. Strategies of global, networked hashtag activism overlap with the local, legal format of founding an association. This opens up a field between action and communication, engagement and observation, visibility and activism, as well as reach and effectiveness. In a joint action, forms of civil society engagement are tested, produced, explored and discussed: as a direct experience for the participants and as visual and spatial-material traces of an overarching socio-material choreography. Year: 2019 / Team: Elena Petrach, Irakli Sabekia, Merel Dassen, Alex Valder / Initiatoren: Andrea Schulze-Wilmert, York Kaut und Olaf Val / Location: Kassler Kunstverein

#Alliances

ACTING THINGS VIIISand, a granular material is the means of expression in the silent negotiation sessions of Acting Things VIII. Two people move together in silence, pushing, pulling, stroking, throwing, sweeping sand in order to negotiate one public matter. Judith Seng has compared this process with the one that happens at the bazaar, where the final price is not fixed and may include bargaining performances between the seller and buyer. Normally we aim towards established standards because these allow us to discuss matters in a clear, comparable and probably predictable way. Yet communicating with sand leaves us without fixed forms and terms. Sand gives us the chance to test our common ways of communicating without spoken words. &ldquo;I feel silent negotiation in sand actually allowed me to do something, which in language is restricted because of the limitation of the words we have,&rdquo; contemplates participant Jana Scholz. Before the actual negotiation, participants have the possibility to rehearse their new language at the Gesture Table. To explore and train how to express gestures like pushing, contrasting or blowing with sand.Colours and values. In this installation each colour and later their blends have one social value attached to them. Red represents collectivity, yellow individuality and blue standardisation. These are the first three colors and values that you will encounter in the beginning of the exhibition period on pristine white areas. In the end all colors will be merged into new shades and values, that are studied and tested in silent dialogues. At the Value Map Table, you can see arrows pointing which colors and values will be discussed and mixed throughout the installation.Public questions. In 2020/21 we are directed to safely inhabit our private sphere and the public encounters have become novel. This installation is a meeting place to explore our private public boundaries in a gallery room next to the public Freedom Square. This location may embody a space for workshops negotiating our status quo in the public sphere that may be first learned and subsequently debated. How do we contribute to matters being unchanged? Do we see the shared values that maintain our social status quo in the blended coloured piles? The participants of the negotiations have the opportunity to freely select any public issue that matters to them. Each participant enters an instructed process where the pile in front of them has a certain value and colour that they are asked to interact with in order to negotiate with the other participant and another coloured sand pile. The interactions are as spontaneous as the participant feels like, however, there is always an aspect of keeping your fellow participant in mind and relating to them. After a period of bodily engagement the participants come together at the workshop table to reflect on their performance and summarise their findings about the discussed issue.Acting Things VII first brought people together to study their interactions via movement in coloured sand at Pera Museum Istanbul, Luma Arles, Z33 Hasselt and Tripostal Lille. The iteration at Tallinn Art Hall Gallery is exploring the private and public boundaries in the city that we as inhabitants create, discuss and shift.Text by Sandra NuutSilent Negotiations is the eigth project in Judith Seng&rsquo;s ongoing ACTING THINGS series, that since 2011 has asked: What if we look at production processes as if they were a dance, a play, a ritual? More about the project&nbsp;<a href="https://user-ljspb4pp.vsble.me/works/aboutactingthings/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">here</a>Year: 2021 / Location: <a href="https://www.kunstihoone.ee/en/programme/judith-seng-acting-things-viii-silent-negotiations/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Tallinn Art Hall Gallery</a> / Curator: Sandra Nuut , Tamara Luuk / Production:&nbsp;<a href="http://www.valgekuup.com" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Valge Kuup</a>&nbsp;/ Video: Johan Huimerind / Funding: IFA, Cultural Endowment Estonia

Silent Negotiations

&ldquo;Colors of Becoming&rdquo; views work as a social ritual and the action itself as the actual result. In the installation, composed structures such as workflows and paintings are broken down and reassembled. A mural from the St. Catherine&#39;s Room in the Ghent Design Museum is broken down into its individual colors. During the course of the exhibition, the room will be painted for exactly one hour on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Instead of focusing on a desired result, painters simply focus on the act of painting itself, which leaves traces of paint in the room. A reference point for the work is the restoration process from Jan Van Eyck&#39;s altarpiece &ldquo;The Adoration of the Mystical Lamb&rdquo;, which took place over a period of seven years Museum of Fine Arts in Ghent. Thereby the knowledge and craft of analyzing and adding layers of color and thus time seems to become the actual &ldquo;work&rdquo;. And the painting is one actor amongst many other human to non-human actors. This shifts perspective on what is usually considered as the work: a material result and artifact or also the multiple processes that bring it about and emerge through it?Year: 2020 / Location: Design Museum Ghent / Exhibition: Kleureyck - Colors of van Eyck / Curator: Siegrid Demyttenare / Team: Mirjam Faber, Lukas &nbsp;Wheeler / Images: Design Museum Ghent, Patrick Henry

Colors of Becoming

ACTING THINGS VIThe sixth in a series of experiments that explore processes of production as socio-material choreography. During an artist residency at Villa Kamogawa in Kyoto in 2016, I was researching traditional Japanese tea ceremony as a practice that elevates activities of daily life into the ceremonic realm in order to open up new perspectives. I was interested in the carefully choreographed interplay between people, objects and spatial structures, that seem to merge into one social, material and performative matter. With the installation ACTING THINGS VI - Spatial Canvas I am exploring processes of space - making as continuous negotiations between human bodies, social interactions and material structures and how they are mutually influencing and shaping each other. Rather than a static or flexible spatial structure, the installation provides a material, spatial and temporal grid to navigate and at the same time display these continuous negotiations of space-making caused by different activities. Like flowing spatial sketches of moving bodies and social interactions, different shapes of spaces are constructed and deconstructed, explored and shaped, made and used or observed by the visitors. Materialized and acoustic traces of interactions become scores to initiate new interactions that again create material and acoustic traces that initiate...  In addition, especially curated activations of the installation took place: &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; - A kind of tea ceremony hosted Mai Ueda  &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;- A kind of collaborative sound ceremony initiated by Judith SengMore about the ongoing research project <a href="https://user-ljspb4pp.vsble.me/works/aboutactingthings/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">ACTING THINGS</a>Year: 2017 / Location: Kyoto Art Center Japan / Team: Mariejke Kruijssen, Elena Steffan, Petra Popangelova / Part of the exhibition: The point in front is not the point in front is not with Yusuke Taninaka / Curated by: Mizuki Endo/HAPS artist placement Kyoto / Funding: Goethe-Institut Villa Kamogawa, JaDe-Stiftung / Images: Kim Song Gi / Video: Yoshitaka Shimada, Studio Judith Seng / Video editing: Elena Steffan

Spatial Canvas

ACTING THINGS V&nbsp;The collection represents the actual heart of a museum; it is a store of knowledge that is carefully maintained by the depot directors, conserved and restored by the restorers and researched by the art historians. A key task of each and every museum is to make this treasure accessible and convey it to the public. For &ldquo;Trading places&rdquo;, we invited five designer studios to investigate our collection. They had the privilege of spending many hours in the depots, while we enjoyed the luxury of having a new look at our collection through their eyes. (&hellip;)In exploring the depot, the Judith Seng Studio concentrated on the lace collection and was confronted by an almost unmanageable variety of techniques and related terms: perforation, double-perforation, needlepoint, lattice lace, white embroidery, bobbin lace, Dresden lace, etc. Only a few people are aware of the care and patience required to manufacture lace by hand. This is particularly true of bobbin lace making, a complex artisan process, in which threads are rotated, crossed and knotted on the basis of a pricking, and which requires experience, dexterity and a lot of patience. For many women, lace making represented a possibility of earning some extra income &ndash; the wearing of lace being long the privilege of the nobility. Who thinks about the bobbin lace technique when they look at the tradition of the maypole and maypole dancing? And who knows that the industrial bobbin machine is called a &ldquo;maypole&rdquo;? And yet it becomes bequite clear in observation &ndash; rotating, crossing, knotting. Here as there. Judith Seng has recognised this and is broadening our horizons. On the one hand she scales the lace, thus illustrating the technique. On the other hand she transfers the activity of a single person into a collective process. The bobbins have been replaced by a group of 24 people. They dance together &ndash; i.e. making lace. In this manner, the group becomes part of the creation of the object, a temporary installation resembling bobbin lace &ndash; and then again not, the result not least being due to the group and not a high-ranking person. In Judith Seng&rsquo;s installation, the visitors experience the diversity of the various manufacturing techniques. Furthermore, it becomes clear that the laces are more than just old-fashioned, small cloth covers &ndash; namely that exceptionally skilled people produce these wonderfully fragile and yet stable textiles. This work thus offers both a new approach to the subject of lace and a further insight into the richness of the collection.Text by Tulga BeyerleMore about the long-term research project <a href="https://user-ljspb4pp.vsble.me/works/aboutactingthings/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">ACTING THINGS</a>Year: 2014
Place: Kunstgewerbemuseum Dresden Schloss Pillnitz
Curator: Tulga Beyerle
Studio team: Maren B&ouml;nsch, Milena Kuster
Images/Video: Rudi Schr&ouml;der
Video editing: Stephanie Dodes

Connexions

Objects covered in wax, freezing usage and time, merging matter and surface.Year: 2010 / Material: Wax, Larch / Team: Lena Pauker, Caroline Saier / Sponsoring: Sasol Wax&nbsp;

Ecdysis

Work as RitualOver 21 days, I created a ceramic bowl each day, placing each one in a growing circle on the ground. When the circle was complete, the process was finished. This project was not about producing objects but about engaging in a process of making where material, body, and environment interacted in a continuous exchange. As I shaped the clay, it resisted and yielded, requiring my full presence, adapting my movements and breath to its responsiveness. Each bowl carried the imprint of my hands, my shifting state of mind, and my evolving relationship with the material. At the same time, I observed how the bowls themselves became part of the changing spring landscape&mdash;exposed to shifting light, wind, rain, and the slow rhythms of decay. The weather shaped them as much as I had, creating an ongoing conversation between human intention and environmental transformation.. Throughout the process, I documented not just the physical changes in the bowls but also how my attitude toward making evolved&mdash;how repetition, presence, and impermanence shaped my perception and thought processes. In the final night, a heavy rain dissolved the bowls, returning them to the earth from where they had come, completing the cycle of emergence and dissolution.This project was rooted in a broader inquiry into how production has historically shaped both individual and collective structures&mdash;daily rhythms, forms of labor, and a sense of belonging. As AI, automation, and post-work scenarios redefine the role of human labor, I approach making not as a necessity but as a resonant practice&mdash;one that cultivates attunement and engagement with the world, unfolding through rituals, reflection, and relational encounter. Notes from a daily Journal:&nbsp;Shaping without force. Continous repetition brings about the shape, calibrates imbalance. Make the clay to reorganize itself, only by soft impulses instead of waring off and forming with force.That way a stable structure emerges, that shapes itself as a whole. Always ongoing.Reverse Archeology? If archaeology reconstructs rituals through found objects, I do the reverse&mdash;I create rituals through making objects.

21 Days

Each edition is made out of one tree, cut into 6 pieces, brushed and high-glossy painted. Year: 2009 - 2015 / Images: Steven James Scott

Trift

Skin &amp; Bones was commissioned for the exhibition my-canvas by Kvadrat. When we started experimenting with the material properties of the canvas textile by Kvadrat, I was most fascinated by its sculptural qualities when put into drapery and how it was covering up while at the same time revealing. Conceptually I was interested in the meaning of the canvas* as a platform or background in relation to the work that it is staging. The project Skin &amp; Bones explores the activity of space-making as a continuous negotiation between bodies, objects and spatial structures. Laid on the ground, a flat, apparently two-dimensional square of Canvas* &ndash; the &lsquo;skin&rsquo; &ndash; waits to be activated by the &lsquo;bones&rsquo;: an assortment of shaped tools employed by human bodies. Only together they can generate an endless variety of sculptural forms that at the same time are interior spaces. * Canvas (noun)?1. A heavy, coarse, closely woven textile of cotton, hemp or flax, mostly used for tents and sails. 2. A piece of such textile on which a painting, especially an oil painting, is executed. 3. The background against which events unfold, as in a historical narrative. 4. A tent or group of tents. A circus tent. 5. Sports. The floor of a ring in which boxing or wrestling takes place. Year: 2017 / Team: Mariejke Kruijssen, Elena Steffan, Petra Popangelova / Comissioned by: Kvadrat / Exhibition:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.kvadrat.dk/en/my-canvas/projects--my-canvas/skin--bones--judith-seng" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">My Canvas</a>&nbsp;/ Location: Somerset House London / Curation: Constance Rubini, Njusja de Gier, Jeffrey Bennett, Hans Maier-Aichen / Pictures: Casper Sejersen / Video: Rudi Schr&ouml;der / Video editing: Elena Steffan, Oli Weiss /

Skin & Bones

ACTING THINGS VI&nbsp;The fourth in a series of experiments investigates the making of objects through the performing arts in order to unveil the aesthetic, energetic and social dimensions of production processes. By looking at production as a dance, a play, a social ritual, ACTING THINGS explores means of making beyond efficiency and result orientation. Material Flow staged a poetic evolution of material, movement and objects over the course of the exhibition. Throughout seven days, eight hours a day, dancers engaged in a free-flowing dialogue with material to create objects that express a unique process of making and a continuous cycle of fabrication and dissolution triggered by a continuous flow of material. A series of objects were created each day to signify a complete cycle of production, only to be broken down the next day and translated into a different body of work, enabling new moments of creation again and again.The dance part within the overall choreography is developed through an evolving cooperation between dancer Barbara Berti and Judith Seng.More about the long-term research project <a href="https://user-ljspb4pp.vsble.me/works/aboutactingthings/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">ACTING THINGS</a>Year: 2013 Location: Design Miami/ Basel Dancer: Barbara Berti, Julian Weber Team: Ferdinand Pechmann, Veronika Gabler, Fran&ccedil;ois Duquesnoy Images/video: Rudi Schr&ouml;der Video editing: Oli Weiss

Material Flow

ACTING THINGS III&nbsp;The installation was focussing on the poetics that emerge between dissolution and fabrication of situations, interactions and objects and materials.The set up in the former print shop of the Amerika haus Berlin was transformed over the course of three days. Acting Things III began with a static installation that displayed eight wax objects alongside a videoscreening showing the dancer making the very same pieces in the previous experiment ACTING THINGS II. The next day, over the course of 12 hours, the installation was transformed into a work situation in which the processing of the material took place.The displayed objects slowly dissolved into material again thus initiating new encounters between the dancer and the newly colored material. The rhythm of actions was controlled by the time it took to process the material. After 12 hours the work situation was retransformed into an installation again. Six objects that had been overworked over the day alongside a video of the new interactions were displayed.More about the long-term research project <a href="https://user-ljspb4pp.vsble.me/works/aboutactingthings/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">ACTING THINGS</a>Year: 2012 / Dancer: Barbara Berti / Team: Sandrine Mazan, Fran&ccedil;ois Duquesnoy / Videographer: Rudi Schr&ouml;der / Video editing: Oli Weiss / Funding: Einstein foundation Berlin via Graduate School for the Arts and Sciences

Over Work

ACTING THINGS IIThe second production experiment creates several encounters between a dancer and a wax and investigates the interplay between forms of action and of material and how both develop like a dialogue, reacting and depending upon each other.&nbsp;More about the long-term research project <a href="https://user-ljspb4pp.vsble.me/works/aboutactingthings/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">ACTING THINGS</a>Year: 2012 / Dancer: Barbara Berti / Team: Carmen Buttjer, Lena Krogsgaard / Video editing: Harald Neumann / Funding: Einstein foundation Berlin via Graduate School for the Arts and Sciences

Dialogue

ACTING THINGS IActing Things I is the opening event in a series of experiments into the possibilities of production processes around objects. It rethinks them by turning a theater stage into a temporary factory in which guests produce tables themselves in order to dine on them together. Entrance is free - the only payment is the physical labor the audience contributes to the project.After the happening, the produced objects are preserved. Looked at in another context they seem like traces of the individual operations; their fragility and temporality pay tribute to the process of making itself being a key motivation for producing products nowadays.More about the long-term research project <a href="https://user-ljspb4pp.vsble.me/works/acting-things-/">ACTING THINGS&nbsp;</a>Year: 2011 / Location:&nbsp;HAU 3 (Hebbel Theater am Ufer) Berlin / Music: Frank Wiedemann / Food: Alex Valder, Anna Wolf / Studio Team: Maren B&ouml;nsch, Patricia Mafra / Support: Sebastian Christoffel, Joao Abraul / Video editing: Esther G&ouml;rocs, Dimitar Ruszev / Funding: Einstein foundation Berlin via Graduate School for the Arts and Sciences

Production Theatre

The ongoing project ACTING THINGS investigates in knowledge of process design beyond the tradition of management thinking. Based on the assumption that process design can learn from the skills of performative arts, different production experiments are set up in which material and processes become mutually dependent: the material that is to be worked on generates a process which then in turn will shape the material. The starting point for this project is based upon an observation of a traditional dance, that has been performed for generations every 1st of May in the South of Germany. During the so-called &bdquo;Bandltanz&ldquo; a woven structure is created by the choreography of the dancers. This lead to the research question of ACTING THINGS: What if an object would be created out of a dance? And what if we look at production processes as if they would be a dance?See the experiments:<a href="https://user-ljspb4pp.vsble.me/works/acting-things-i/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">ACTING THINGS I &ndash; Production Theatre</a><a href="https://user-ljspb4pp.vsble.me/works/actingthings2/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">ACTING THINGS II &ndash; Dialogue</a><a href="https://user-ljspb4pp.vsble.me/works/actingthings3/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">ACTING THINGS III &ndash; Over Work</a><a href="https://user-ljspb4pp.vsble.me/works/acting-things-iv-/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">ACTING THINGS IV &ndash; Material Flow</a><a href="https://user-ljspb4pp.vsble.me/works/actingthings5/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">ACTING THINGS V &ndash; Connexions</a><a href="https://user-ljspb4pp.vsble.me/works/actingthings6/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">ACTING THINGS VI &ndash; Spatial Canvas</a><a href="https://user-ljspb4pp.vsble.me/works/schooloffluidmeasures/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">ACTING THINGS VII &ndash; School of Fluid Measures</a><a href="https://user-ljspb4pp.vsble.me/works/actingthings8/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">ACTING THINGS VIII &ndash; Silent Negotiations</a>Year: 2012
/ Location: Bad Kohlgrub
in Bavaria / Dancers: Trachtenverein Franz Degele
/ Camera: Rudi Schr&ouml;der
/ Video editing: Oli Weiss
/ Assistance: Daniela Holzer, Alex Valder
/ Funding: Einstein foundation Berlin via Graduate School for the Arts and Sciences

About Acting Things

When producing high-quality glassware, almost 70% result in second-choice goods or even waste. Mistfits explores other quality standards that go beyond the usual criteria. High-quality second choice glasses from the traditional Viennese company Lobmeyr were reassembled in 12 objects. Year: 2011 / Collaboration: Alex Valder / Material: Exhibition: <a href="http://www.totemandtaboo.net" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Totem and Taboo</a> / Location: freiraum 21 at Museumsquartier Vienna / Curators: Elena Agudio, Tido von Oppeln, Bessaam El-Asmar, Alexandra Waldburg-Wolfegg

Misfits

A wooden stick and a thread. Out of center. In Balance Year: 2013 / &nbsp;material: pine, leather / dimensions: 2.9x2.9x240cm / commission: Gallery Helmrinderknecht, Zurich

Equilibrium

A family of tablesFour small tables &middot; Each one individual but belonging to the group &middot; Deconstructing the idea of a table as a table &middot; Can be combined in ever-changing constellations &middot; Creating informal living situations &middot; Diversity in unityYear: 2006
Material: Pear, Maple, Walnut, Olive, coated wood, textile
Dimensions: 55x75x40, 93x75x40 cm