An open studio of creative humans challenges the resonance of political and psychological limitations on intimacy.

* "WHY HEROINES'WAVE"

In Ancient Greek, Hērōḯnē and the suffix ḯnē is gender-neutral term for a person who acts with courage.

This platform is joined by humans who strive to produce cultural events in countries where freedom of expression is in danger. Whether in air, water or in the space-time continuum, our community keeps moving from one place to another, creating wavelike connections & vibrations.

Our name is a tribute to

Claude Cahun essay Heroines, 1930.

"Under this mask, another mask.

Shuffle the cards.

Masculine? Feminine?

It depends on the situation.

Neuter is the only gender that suits me.

I know where I go, I want to guide you,

My awkward design, will not injure you.

The non gendered is the heroine among heroines."

WHAT?

HW is a creative and foresight studio that imagines new formats of art projects to increase the sensitivity of all the senses of the participants (artists and audience), such as sight, sound, touch and smell. Founded in 2019 in the multicultural Berlin, HW* is an independent research and experimentation platform that produces fieldwork, podcasts, digital projects, festival of performances, exhibitions, residency programs.

WHY?

> We Investigate : About women artists' struggles in places where they can't create.

> We Connect: People that can't travel, to deconstruct ethnocentrism.

> We Empower : Talented Artists who create secretly and who never got grants.

> We Produce: LIVE & ONLINE projects about real intimacy.

> We Learn: Through art residencies, exchanging skills, and knowledge.

> We Create: Artworks with a specific curatorial method to get people closer.

> We Heal: Our projects are devoted to emotional processing & collective healing.

WHO?

The concepts, scenography and web design, have been conceived from 2019 by the Celia Stroom (Germany), who considers a curator as someone who writes stories, gathers humans to research and create collectively on these stories and later gets inspiration from them to design the exhibition scenography or when it's online the digital exhibition design. Therefore she has been trained in researching, writing, management, and building spaces (physical or digital) technically. Around her, art producers, cultural practitioners, artists, researchers, and social mediators, shape the core of HW team.

She was first joined by the film director and producer Salome Jashi (Georgia), in 2020 by the artists & social mediator Bussaraporn Thongchai (Thailand), sound designer Diane Barbé (Germany). In 2022, HW is co-managed together with the sound researcher and social mediator Kim Wichera (Germany), the researcher in environmental issues Anja Salzer (Germany), the sound artist and care specialist Aurelie Brousse (France), the activist and social mediator Micayla Smith (US), and Nina Pixel the team building coach (SLO).

The cultural managers who join the project are motivated to work on a voluntary basis and focus on fundraising in order to pay the artists who participate in every project.

They collaborated within the last 3 years with 46 artists from 34 countries. They mostly select artists who feel invisible and silenced by the society where they live in.

BACKGROUND

2019 THE ENCLOSED GARDEN (TEG) (live festival)

The inaugural event has been designed by the art director of performances and museologist Celia Stroom. After 15 years working for museums, dance companies and music ensembles, she has researched to conceive a new format of exhibition in contrast to the traditional collections-centred museum models.

Far from the clinical white cube model, the body of the visitor is immersed in a labyrinth of spontaneous artistic proposals that grow 3 weeks before during an intensive art residency based on body and nature. This brand new kind of exhibition is called an EXPLOSITION. It's an exhibition of visual & sound artists who perform their freshly created artworks in front of the audience. Every year, the project select 10 women from all over the world and takes place in countries where artists are struggling to get paid, and create freely. multisensory & multidisciplinary exhibition, .

2020 THE ENCLOSED GARDEN (TEG) (online immersive exhibition)

Celia Stroom is also web artists & designer and she created an alternative project, online, accessible from everywhere, conceived as a mesmerizing and still multisensory experience.

2021 THE EDDIES (TE) is a series of articles and field recordings about our investigations in Georgia, Thailand and Uzbekistan. The first post is about women artists struggles in Uzbekistan.

2022 THE W(E)AVE (TW) is an experimental visual & sound app harboring music compositions & intimate testimonials from queer voices from all over the world. It has been imagined by Diane Barbé and Celia Stroom.

SPONSORS

> IFA Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen = TEG4 Uzbekistan TEG3 Thailand

> Music Board Berlin > The Weave1 Berlin

> GOETHE INSTITUT The International Coproduction Fund > TEG3 Thailand

> UN WOMEN > TEG3 Thailand

> Goethe Institut > TEG1 Georgia TEG3 Thailand

> French Institut Thailand > TEG1 Georgia TEG3 Thailand

> Womens fund of Georgia > TEG1 Georgia

> STEP - European Cultural Foundation > TEG1 Georgia

> Ministry of Culture of Georgia / Program Creative Georgia > TEG1 Georgia

You are a researcher, artist, cultural manager?

You feel driven by the same values > Join the wave +

We always have more chance to get grants when we unite forces and ideas.

How an exhibition project can re-create links among humans ?

"The enclosed garden" (TEG) is composed of a residency of research and creation isolated in a safe space in the countryside. It's followed by a hidden exhibition installed in a former building. The audience informed by networking and by word of mouth rings the bell and open the door of a space designed by 10 women (5 from the host country and 5 from abroad). Room after room, they discover a free space where womxn work towards opening up about psychological, political, societal perceptions.

How locked away from our intimate realities are we?

The project challenges our personal perception of Nature (outside) and our own nature (inside). The enclosed garden is a place where we contemplate, dialogue with each element to cut ourselves off from our society where we learn to deny the Nature and Our unique individual nature. The enclosed garden project is an island, bringing everyone far from daily routine and offering a space for equality, learning, healing. The short duration of a month triggers a searing shock which feeds the creative energy. Every day we investigate links between our past and present, our vision of reality and our surrealist imaginations, between utopia and dystopia. This exhibition project works around this tension, generating an inner explosion, that artists share later on with the audience, who are offered the possibility to experience an intimate moment, far from the clinical and aseptic atmosphere of the white cubes. We call this exhibition format an EXPLOSITION.

What are the conditions ?

TEG happens every year in a new country. Producing such an ambitious project represents significant costs. Therefore, HW raises funds to prepare the project, to finance the residency space and to cover the budget for the production of the exhibition. t also provides artists with accommodation on site and daily stipends. If artists cannot apply for a travel grant, HW support travel fees as well. Moreover, all artists receive equal fees for the exhibition, no matter the country where they come from.

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Poster - Expo 2021 - HW - 42 x 59,4

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THE ENCLOSED GARDEN
Notes by the initiator of this new format of festival.

2019 2020 2021

georgia
22 countries THAILAND

> We question the fear of intimacy in places where emotional expression, self-reflection are not valued.
> We advocate transnational collaborations between countries where sharing intimate topics is taboo.
> We imagine scenographies to get people closer.

This platform for digital and sound projects weaves intimate testimonials of queer humans. Radio and Websites can be heard and seen from mobiles, everywhere. No matter where we are, listening to testimonials from all around the world, we suddenly enter the private sphere of humans who release often for the first time hidden thoughts.

Through brand new online digital interfaces, the voices of spontaneous contributors, in line with the ethics of sociological research, are protected through anonymity, but help shed light on larger issues of oppression, isolation and silencing.

Our LAB strives to uplift and empower these marginalized voices: all of the sudden, they are the voices of the many.

ENTER OUR VISUAL & SOUND PODCAST

created by Diane Barbé & Celia Stroom, funded by Music Board Berlin.

THE W(E)AVE (NEW)
Towards digital intimacy.

00:00 / 02:11

?? INTIMACY ??

Artists who join our projects are focusing their research on 'what intimacy is' from a psychological, political, sociological and anthropological perspective.

Intimacy implies reciprocity, transparency, unreserved exchange. Members of the Heroines'Wave aim to follow these principles in their process of collaboration since Intimacy is based on a very close familiar and effective connection with others.

Heroines'Wave strive to dismantle explicit and implicit forms of censorship in order to better apprehend together the social and ontological resonances of intimacy in our capitalist & individualist society.