What do deaf people from Chernihiv, elderly women from a seniors complex in Ivano-Frankivsk, a Polish expat in Stuttgart, a Syrian refugee in Sofia and a sailor from Minsk have in common?
In the very beginning of our collaboration (within the Tandem Ukraine programme) we wanted to explore the topic of loneliness caused by social isolation and exclusion. We thought that some groups of people we had access to may feel more lonely than the others due to some objective reasons: literal inability to pronounce words, shortage of social connections due to low social activity, loss of stable social connections due to emigration, enforced stay abroad connected to a difficult socio-political situation in one’s home country, isolation due to working conditions.
We started to contact different people all over the world, from China to Great Britain, to get to know about their everyday routine in what we called “other” or “special” living situations. Quite soon we understood that our presumption about “loneliness situations” was wrong and people we met had something different to say.
Anyway, now you have an opportunity to get closer to the unique and special experience of people we were lucky to meet.Visit the installation online http://ninemeetings.com/installation_en
The project is implemented in the framework of Tandem Ukraine.