How can we create an intimate experience for a large crowd of people?
Everybody knows the story of Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden. It is a very well known story but also a story that many times gets interpreted in a very linear way. It seems as if human kind made a mistake by biting the apple. But the story shows us much more.
Adam and Eve were innocent in the garden of Eden. Everything was perfect and beautiful. From our perspective this seems like a wonderful thing. But when you only know beauty and no ugliness, when you only know perfect and no imperfection you will not be able to see it. You will be blind for it because we can only feel joy if we also know sadness. We can only acknowledge and appreciate true beauty and kindness if we have also experienced the opposite. Adam and Eve were like children. Children take the world around them for granted. It needs experience to develop the virtue of appreciation.
The Apple is called the apple of knowledge. From the moment Adam and Eve took a bite from the apple they fell from Eden. They entered the actual world where sadness, ugliness and despair are just as present as beauty, kindness and perfection.
The mere existence of the two extremes in our world enables us to feel tension.
Too much tension can be intimidating and stressful. But the right amount of tension also makes us fall in love, tension makes us appreciate flavour and smell. Tension enables laughter and joy and stimulates the best music and art. Without darkness you would’t be able to perceive light. It is time to embrace the whole spectrum of life.
Marije VogelzangWhen the intervention was done, a man approached from the audience. He walked towards me with a strong pace and tears in his eyes. He closed his arms around me. Very tight. I heard him mumble in my ear: Thank you.
Trust.
The intervention is an experience where participants get blindfolded and listen to a story about contrast and beauty. About appreciation and trust of what is unknown. The story leads them from focusing on their own senses to focusing on the person in front of them. A stranger. They are invited to project their own fantasy person or perception onto the other.
Half of the participants receive a small bunch of grapes, the other half an apple. The grapes are fed to the other by feel. The apple gets shared. Held in the mouth of one, bitten by the other.
We need to search for the spot where we find tension. The place where we are slightly scared and need to trust. The uncertain space between two strangers that both want to surrender. That is beauty.
One Bite was created for
Absolut Creative Space
Sofia, Bulgaria
Images by
Georgi Panchev
and and Ivan Velevs
