BREAKING THROUGH THE SUGAR GLASS

2021- 2022

Change occurs because we wish it so, yet it also occurs against our wishes.  When it comes to changing ourselves - what role do we actually play during the process? Are we the actors or mere reactors? These eternal questions seem to have re-gained urgency lately.

Breaking Through the Sugar Glass team wants to experiment with personal change. We will play with imagination, asking if we can radically re-imagine ourselves and follow a straight road towards the set goal or if the reality of personal change is rather messy. The framework is the global urgency around the topics, which the UNTITLED Festival and Agenda 2030 wants to address. Therefore, we will reflect on the personal change in relation to society at large.

Concept: Ceyda Berk-Söderblom, Tellervo Kalleinen & Oliver Kochta-Kalleinen

We consider this experiment both as a toolkit and an exercise menu. The metaphor of Breaking Through the Sugar Glass is obviously borrowed from movies. The play between reality, imagination and projection; the adrenaline rush from excitement and joy; and feelings of courage or fear against challenges will be present in the project. We hope to create a non-judgemental and thought-provoking space for individual growth and experimentation; and a generous atmosphere of sharing.

The ability to change is essential for our creativity, for our humanity, and our survival; with Breaking Through the Sugar Glass, we are looking forward to diving into the question “how”.

The first intervention, Dr Untitled – An Confessional Online Performance will take place on the 24th of September with talented improvisers Max Bremer and Åsa Nybo as part of the UNTITLED 2021 festival. Dr Untitled is the first part of a series of events consisting of online performances, one-on-one sessions with members of the Untitled Alliance and a grand offline finale at Untitled Festival 2022.

UNTITLED 2021-2022

📷 Reishabh Kailey

Dr Untitled – An Confessional Online Performance

In our experiment, we want to understand how individuals – who are part of the Untitled Alliance – manage to translate the goals and ideals of their daily work into their private life. Do you advocate a basic universal income but don’t know how to deal with your kids’ pocket money? Do you implement national citizens assemblies but cannot decide on the family vacation?  Are you a vegan eating meat in your dreams? Do you have occasionally brief moments of feeling like a hypocrite? Then this is the right session for you. In full anonymity, we share cases about such dissonances. 

The presented cases – your cases – will be discussed by our peer-to-peer support network. At the same time, each case will be fed into an immature human-AI system called “Åsa and Max” that is particularly responsive to so-called intention-behaviour discrepancies. Our system – while still in its infancy – will unapologetically try to produce recommendations for each case. It nevertheless needs to be trained by providing feedback on the presented recommendations. 

This session is intended for professional “re-imagineers” who work day in and out on the transformation of society. 

Join us in trying to apply big picture ideas on a very small scale.

Disclaimer: This session requires no imagination.