During the pandemic, touch became critical, closeness and distance were renegotiated, and interaction lost its naturalness. Like seismographs for the finest touches, we now felt more clearly when someone came close to us. Taking this awareness as a starting point, we wanted to collect tender ways of interaction, and different perspectives on what tenderness defines.

In this first constellation, landscapes skins fabrics, we started with our own memories of tenderness and developed choreographic tasks, that connect tender memories to movements and question how a change of movements might in return change these memories.

Through texts we read, especially from Jean-Luc Nancy, we questioned how tenderness, as a quality of relation, might change how we connect ourselves to our surroundings, emphasizing the reciprocity that constitutes us as well as our worlds.

We wanted to expand this quality of tenderness to the processes of seeing and thinking itself. And thereby reclaim tenderness as an attitude towards the world - an attitude that positions itself against any notions of fixation or one-sidedness.

This constellation, so far, contains choreographies, videos, tools*, drawings, a publication, sound, photographs and more. Results of it were shown in public places, at Sommerwerft Festival Frankfurt, at gallery Stephanie Kelly in Dresden, Markt für Junge Kunst Leipzig and at various locations around the world as part of the Toolbox by ßpatz.

The following people were part of this constellation: Tom Luca Adams, Anno Bolender, Sarah Degenhardt, Momo Neko, Lukas Picard, Judith Wolff. The project was partly funded by Hessische Kulturstiftung. Thanks to everyone involved and to ßpatz for making our publication part of their Toolbox.