OUR BACKGROUND_______________

Café Witch (2023-24) was a week-long small scale pop up event happening across several venues and locations in Graz, Austria, around the time of Walpurgis / Beltane and All Saints / Samhain with a total of three editions. A grass roots, group initiative, in close collaboration with the music venue Café Wolf (hence the name), to explore, discuss and question the concept of magic, in terms of art, history, ecology and community.


WITCHES ON THE RUN_______________

Following the spirit of the Café Witch project - we have now grown into WITCHES ON THE RUN - a nomadic arts and research project that pops up wherever it is called to go. We collaborate with (ethnographic / folkloric) museums and independent artists / makers / thinkers in the designated region. We organise and facilitate workshops, collaborative art projects and open discussions.

We aim to create new forms of research, discussion and exchange across generations, borders, languages, cultures and faiths, integrating and enabling new ways of seeing, speaking and thinking together.

Our work is focused on (but not exclusive to) rural areas across Europe.




HOW WE WORK_______________


We work to connect museums and researchers, artists and local inhabitants in various cities, towns and rural areas across Europe.

We first make a field visit to the designated point of focus, in which we connect to the locale through conversations and meetings, exploring what topics, people and formats the place calls for.

We collaborate with local artists, makers and doers. Not only are they crucial contributors to the discourse with their artistic practices and perspectives, they are also the key to connect with the local ecosystem through artistic and cultural expression. Our collaborators are museums, festivals, artists, activists, herbalists, scholars, community centres and any other groups or individuals who are interested in our way of working and can help us to create space for exchange and growth.

The final outcome depends on the common goals defined at the beginning of the process with all collaborators and on what resonates in the place we work in. It can take the shape of a (participatory) performance, workshop, text, song, sculpture, card game or any other format that gives back to the communities and places involved. We aim to make all our collaborations inclusive, reciprocal and sustainable, which for us means recurring, evolving and long-term.



WHAT WE DO_______________






LANGUAGE & TRANSLATION_______________


Among the three of us, we are fluid in English, German, Swedish, Slovak, Czech and Polish. We also possess basic skills in Italian, French and Icelandic. Our internal spoken language as a team is English.

We strive to deliver all of our work in the local language, as well as in English, in order to bridge and communicate locality to an international reach and vice versa. We are comfortable with / interested in (live) translation as integral to the work that we do - considering translation as an enriching subject to be explored in and of itself. We thus welcome language differences as an inspiring format to play with.

Many of our activities also transcend spoken language - involving audiences on a more somatic and intuitive level.





CONCEPT__________________


Our approach aims to activate the body, soul and soil. It is based on meetings with locals and materials we find in the places we work. We collect stories and explore the places we visit in order to craft participatory, activating experiences that (re)connect people to each other and to the land. Through sharing stories, knowledge and art, we aim to encourage curiosity, intuition, learning and creativity. To see that history is not one finished thing of the past, but something living, something we all create together constantly. We offer invitations. We invite perspectives. We ask, we open doors and make space.

We believe there is a need to break the isolation that occurs throughout society, fueled by the growing presence of digital realms and algorithms, creating echo chambers and limiting our perspectives. In our collaborations with museums and other academic institutions, we want to offer a space where people from artistic and scientific fields can meet. We are looking to open conversations about current trends, topics, challenges and (hopefully) solutions. We believe that by encouraging the interaction and collaboration between Arts and Science, between theories, ideas, inspiration and practical application, we can create added value by reaching new audiences, diversifying narratives, embracing friction and inspire more holistic practices in all participating fields, eventually leading to a strengthened democracy.




WHO WE ARE_________________


we are Hanna, Vida & Nina + many friends and collaborators!


Hanna Magdalena Gödl is a musician, writer and producer living in Vienna.

Vida Vojić is a music artist and educator living in London and Gothenburg.

Nina Pixel is a sound artist and music producer living in Berlin.

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