Maya Angelou said, “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” The group exhibition “Stories we imagine, stories that connect us” invites us to reflect together on how stories of care and community are created, re-told and passed on amidst the ongoing realities of political conflict, social violence and polarization. How does the history of marginalization and “otherness” affect the ways in which we perceive ourselves (or not) as part of the society in which we live? How can we uncover the layers of oral and visual narratives and texts to convey stories that would otherwise be 'lost' to future generations? How can we make visible the embodied knowledge that we can share and pass on to future generations? How can we make structures of oppression and discrimination visible, not to re-center them, but to hold them accountable and embark on a path of individual and collective healing? The four artists use various multimedia works to address these questions, opening up a space for discussion, reflection and exchange.

There is tension in the air, and this project, Situated Dissonance, aims to experience it through specific means in a specific place: Langenhagen.

Social dissonance refers to the discrepancies between liberal conceptions of freedom, our self-understanding, and a reality that is disintegrating those values.

This long-term project involves translating a book with the help of AI while conducting a reading group that comments on how the issues we discuss relate to what is happening in Langenhagen. This will be complemented by performative interpretations of an instruction score and interventions in the public sphere. The project will conclude with a Festival of Social Noise later on this year. The material generated during the project will later be used to create a publication.

You are invited to take part in this ambitious experimental project.

Dates:
We will meet on site in Langenhage 15 March, 3 May and 28 June 2025 from 3pm to 7pm.

Additionally we'll meet online once every month (25.3., 29.4., 27.5., 24.6., 29.7. and 26.8., each time from 6pm to 8pm)

Please register for texts, information on meeting places and more at mail@kunstverein-langenhagen.de

At the end of Situated Dissonance, we are organising the Festival of Social Noise from 19 to 21 September 2025.

This project is inspired by a work of the artist Karolin Meunier, an experimental translation of a book by the Italian feminist and author Carla Lonzi.

Social Dissonance was originally published in English by Urbanomic/MIT Press.