The basis for this manifesto emerged in the fall of 2020 through the collaboration between artists and children in various workshops at the Floating University. Artists came and suggested forms of work, materials or themes within the framework of the Floating Kids Uni, children transformed these or made counter-suggestions. Negotiations took place in action. Sometimes sentences fell, sometimes adults transferred the doing into sentences, and sometimes children planted sentences in the Floating. Ten sentences were compiled from all this and translated by Ute Lindenbeck, Sophia Tabatadze and Sabine Zahn. The three of us take the liberty of speaking a language for the children, because the WE we are talking about here are the children. The manifesto is supposed to be a bridge, a tunnel or a morse code. It tries to communicate something of what otherwise remains not only invisible, unnamed and misunderstood, but above all, unused. As Floating Kids Uni, we believe that the kids way of acting can move us all forward. Behind every sentence there is an experience and situation that has made us realize something about this. The manifesto is therefore a call for the Floating Association and its programming on a small scale and for the work between art, society and action on a large scale to make the effort to invent formats of action WITH children, not just for them. Maybe then, someday, there will be no need for Floating Kids Uni. Ahoi!
Flying Semaphore brought participants from Floating University and residents of the Tempelhof airfield refugee shelter together for a collective, experimental flying workshop. The eclectic flying forms became a rallying symbol of unity high above the fences.
ILLUSTRATION: Joël Roth
DESIGN: Roman Karrer
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