This performance research and exchange project "empathic appraoch Delhi - Cologne" aims to reveal the perceived and actual strength of women in India and Germany, both in rural and urban environment. The result of organized workshops by artists from Delhi and Cologne will be presented to the local population in the form of a performance. Further, the aim is to transfer its context to a contemporary art exhibition in Cologne, Germany. With the exhibition a fundamental debate about misogynistic practices will be initiated that highlights the discrepancy between what the social, political and cultural structures allow vs. the actual, inherent power and freedom of women.
The basis of the project is a common idea-finding and creating process with artists from Delhi and from Cologne. The choreographer and dancer Swati Mohan and three dancers from India are invited to create the exhibition and workshops in Cologne mirror-inverted to the creating process in Delhi.
The aim of the project is to create a counter-draft to colonial practices through anti-hierarchical, equal, intercultural cooperation between women artists from Cologne & Delhi. The project will be based on an elaborated thesis paper on "critical whiteness studies", the internalization of postcolonial thought structures and the realization of the subconsciously carrying along of these colonialist structures.