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LU’UM OPEN COLLECTIVE
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DIGITAL TEMPLE


         


LOCATION:
Hamburg, Innenstadt, Germany

TEAM:
Ali Haji
Alberto Kanin
Javier Acevedo Pardo
Lucas Bartholl
Maud van den Beuken
Collaborators

DATE:
2020

COLLABORATION:
Andrea Romani Lopez
Andreas Mallouris
Karina Golubenko
Mariana Martinez Balvanera
Moriz Oberberger
panósmico
Seyi Adelekun

INITIATOR:
Self-initiated
CATEGORIES:
knowledge exchange, convivial, podcast

RELATED:
Einmal im Monat



As the 2019-20 coronavirus pandemic brought public life around the world to a halt, LU’UM had to rethink its practice that relies on physical encounters in public space. At this particular moment the collective wanted to turn to its friends and accomplices around the world to learn together how to cope with the socio-political changes taking place at an accelerated pace. Everybody was confined to their apartments under the stay at home paradigm to slow down the spread of the virus. At this moment the only possibility to share your thoughts as a group were online platforms.

The pandemic hit at a moment shortly before a new season of projects for the collective started and as a result some of the members felt the need to start an exchange about the effects of the crisis on our practice in public space. Now where we could not meet in physical space, we felt like we wanted to use the opportunity to start a discourse under the framework of this new urgency. For a short time in the beginning of the crisis it didn't matter anymore if the people you talk to are in Hamburg, Amsterdam or Mexico City, as physical distance gave way to digital closeness. Inspired by LU’UM’s work with the artist Michael Dudeck, the collective chose the name Digital Temple for the weekly gatherings in cyberspace. To use a seemingly so preoccupied term but at the same time vague notion shakes up the meaning of the belief systems (religious, ideological, idealistic) which were coming to the surface of public debates like a magnifying glass during the pandemic.

According to anthropologist Mary Douglas It is in human nature to yearn for rigidity, hard lines and clear concepts, but we have to face the fact that some realities elude them (Mary Douglas). The reality we faced with the pandemic is one of these moments where humankind's drive for clarity is blurred and the absence of a clear vision is driving people mad. Conspiracy theorists try to find the one truth in explanation patterns that are denying the complexity of reacting to a virus, we were only in the early stages of getting to know. People driven by angst are happily following a potentially authoritarian style of politics. Dissenting opinions of epidemiologists are not seen as what they are: A scientific discourse that is bringing different results in a dialogue. Accepting uncertainty, not in a passive sense but in a sense of critically reflecting on our actions and words and understanding the multiplexity of truth, was one of the biggest challenges we as a society were facing.

Architect and theorist Pier Vittorio Aureli describes how the temple originally was not a building but simply a space separated from everything else. Temenos, from the Greek temno, “to cut”, enclosed a space whose emptiness signified a zone of respect where everyday activities were suspended (Aureli 2016). In these chaotic days of the pandemic, one loses oneself scrolling through the social media feeds, becoming numb over the sheer amount of information. Everybody seems to be scared of missing out and at the same time producing content like never before, desperately trying to keep up to speed with the accelerating change around us. The Digital Temple has to be seen as part of this phenomena, but the illusion of separating its space from the chaos of information and the everyday and accepting uncertainty together comforted us.


Episodes:

I. Digital Temple


II. Digital Temple


III. Digital Temple


IV. Digital Temple


V. Digital Temple: Workshop day


VI. Digital Temple


VII. Digital Temple
we create spaces

LU’UM OPEN COLLECTIVE        HAMBURG, DE
Running on Cargo