BERLIN.- We live in a world in which our perception is constantly challenged by an extreme frequency of highly complex information. The task of finding our way in the world often becomes overwhelming. With everything seemingly in a state of flux, it’s necessary to constantly adapt in order to remain in dialogue with the world.

The typical symptoms of modern existence: lack of sleep, overstimulation, depression & apathy, are leading more and more people to engage with their sensitive side. In addition to the physical and sensuous aspects of the world- and self-perception, the emotionality of individuals is highlighted. At the center lies the question: How do I feel? Emphasis is placed on training the perception of inner sensitivities and stress limits.

The sensitive exchange with our surroundings, which are permanently present both physically and virtually, brings a novel competence into focus: Orchestration. This describes the ability to integrate and coordinate an ensemble of external expressive qualities into our own systems of being. This competence requires, as it were, an empathic receptivity to the environment, insofar as this provides the impulses that can ultimately make the orchestra resound. Orchestration is therefore the competence of successful resonance: it facilitates perceiving the thundering diversity of the world without turning deaf or swinging too much out of beat.

In "Orchestrating Empathy", the artists Annette Cords, Vemo Hang, and Moritz Jekat dedicate themselves to experiencing, coping with and creatively translating the ambiguity resulting from an abundance of information. At the same time, the works themselves represent composites of stimuli that invite the aforementioned orchestration.

In her Jacquard tapestries, Annette Cords examines marking, notation and writing systems and how perception is characterized by context and relationships. Referencing conurbation, where new visual traces and patterns are continually emerging due to an enduring state of fluctuation, the resulting tapestries evoke the aesthetic language of these layered and disconnected cityscapes. The complexity and visual volatility of the big city can be seen as an analogy to the modern living environment in which individuals move. The city as a reservoir of overstimulation, however, creates a perceptual field of tension in which individuals see themselves exposed to multiple stressors and perceive these as stimuli. This results in a high sensory and emotional responsiveness in which tension, stress, and exhaustion have to be balanced with excitement, motivation and relaxation. This becomes particularly clear in Cord's work "InBetween 4”, which, in an obscured font, quotes Jane Jacobs’ “The Death and Life of American Cities”, specifically the paragraph on the sidewalk ballet. Just as in Jacobs’ text, where a rhythmic, natural order exists under the shroud of the seemingly chaotic sidewalk, Cord’s tapestries unveil connections between seemingly disjointed images, and, in orchestral motions, lift them into resonance.

In her painterly sculptures, Vemo Hang interrogates the creative capacity for action concerning our socially and culturally conditioned perceptions. The results are sculptural atmospheres that embody mental landscapes: The creation of two- and three-dimensional bodies is an attempt to understand our relationship to increasingly complex and rapidly changing surroundings. Hang's work reflects the paradox that while the advancing technologies of the internet world, media, and physical infrastructures significantly increase the points of contact between drastically different cultures, ideas, and societies, they also enable a network of co-existing, mutually exclusive realities and environments.

Hang examines the physicality of bodies in space, not necessarily as figures, but rather as pillars around which spatiality is formulated. The juxtaposition of her works “Phantom Image” and “XXX Sequence” with their more abstracted digital counterparts – her ambient performative video sculptures – showcases the trajectory of the ideational cerebral image from a seemingly unending virtual space into the confines of a sensuous reality. This not only serves to question the contemporary image culture, which habituates us to digitally acquire information through flat visual representations, it also interrogates the perceptions of our own physicalities and eventually the space we find ourselves in. Thus, she invites orchestration, to find one’s point of orientation without following the paths laid out by premeditated principles.

At the center of Moritz Jekat's work is an examination of contemporary developments in "Western" society, focusing on the role of identity, emotionality, and the relationship to digital culture. Starting from the context of his immediate reality, he explores the themes of coexistence, cohabitation and the diversity of ideas that come together in shared spaces. Drawing on the fields of relational aesthetics and collective art practice, Jekat explores the intersections between human experience and technological advancement, with computer-generated imagery and the use of AI serving as powerful tools in his artistic repertoire. In his sculpture from the series "Theory of constructed emotions" from 2023-2024, he refers to the affective science theory of constructed emotions proposed by Lisa Feldman Barrett to explain the experience and perception of emotions. Starting from the psychosocial construction and reconstruction of emotions, Jekat examines the inherent tension between emotional model and emotional fluidity in his technoid sculptures made of epoxy resin and metal; while steadfast emotional models direct emotionality, they retain a tendency to swing out in their own vibrational dynamics, as it were.