Connecting local and global questions

REGISTER to receive ZOOM LINK for participating in Phase 4 / Making Social Honey and for 7000 HUMANS Newsletter.

REGISTER to receive ZOOM LINK for participating in Phase 4 / Making Social Honey and for 7000 HUMANS Newsletter.

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GLOBAL ONLINE ASSEMBLIES for 'working with questions' are free and open to all. They take place every Saturday, for 14 weeks, until 24 September. They're scheduled at alternating times to enable participation from all time zones. Dates and times are available here. REGISTER Zooms links for the online Global Assemblies will be on your LOGIN DASHBOARD.

14 Assemblies took place in the ZUKUNFTSDORF22 in German throughout documenta 15 from 26 June to 25 September, parallel to the 14 weeks of online global assemblies. These assemblies were hosted by members the Gemeinwohl Ökonomie [Economy of the Common Good] and the Social Sculpture Lab [Kassel chapter].

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Culture in most cases aims to bring people together and to facilitate exchange between its creators and its recipients. The initiative ‘7000 HUMANS’ utilizes this approach to incorporate arts, politics, ecology, economy and social practices to initiate a new, world-spanning dialogue about the future of mankind and our planet alike. 

Developed by renowned social sculpture practitioner Shelly Sacks and Ulrike Oemisch, permaculture trainer, citizens’ assemblies and co-creation enabler, in the context of like-minded events such as the Earth Forum, University of Trees and the Kassel21 Social Sculpture Lab, the project ultimately wants to establish both a new individual and collective consciousness.

To achieve this goal, it is essential to establish a more empathy-based relationship between humans and their environment as well. What is compelling about 7000 HUMANS is that it does this by using an approach and methods directly related to Joseph Beuys’ 7000 OAKS, which the artist created for the documenta 7 in Kassel in 1982. This ground-breaking social sculpture highlights the importance of invisible materials such as imagination, love and will for creating a new and sustainable inter-human and human-nature relationship.

Judging by the enormous tasks we face right now as a global community, exemplified by the war in Ukraine and the rapid climate change, we urgently need this new kind of inclusive dialogue. This is why I have supported this project from day one as a board member of the global Social Sculpture Lab e.V. and continue to do so: to contribute to an effort which aims at promoting awareness, empathy, tolerance and new forms of dialogue. In Kassel, as the host city of the documenta exhibition every five years, we know about the positive power of culture-driven processes and thus want to encourage as many people to take part in 7000 HUMANS as possible. 

As an initiative of the Social Sculpture Lab e.V. the project is a trusted partner of local cultural agents such as the documenta Archiv and the Neue Galerie and local initiatives such as Essbare Stadt or the ZukunftsDorf22 and Sandershaus. At the same time, it is globally connected with participants and groups in Japan, India, China, New Zealand, across Europe and the Spanish speaking world, for example, who are all contributing to the project. It is also due to this multi-faceted network that we trust this dialogue-based process will develop fertile results we can build on in the future. Even more so, since it is taking take place in the framework of documenta fifteen. This offers vast opportunities for interacting with people from all around the world and consequently renders the outlook for 7000 HUMANS even more positive. This is why it is also such a fitting project to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the 7000 OAKS in Kassel and I am very much looking forward to taking part personally in the 7000 HUMANS initiative.

Kassel is one of the places where public 7000 HUMANS local assemblies for working with questions take place: on the ground in Kassel from mid-June to late September 2022. They are hosted by ZUKUNFTSDORF22 within the framework of the documenta 15.

They take place in German every Sunday for 14 weeks from 11.00 -14.00 hours [CET] from mid June to late September.

The online global assemblies take place every Saturday from mid June to late September 2022. [See times and dates]. All 7000 HUMANS participants and partners are welcome to participate.  To facilitate sharing across many language cultures they are taking place in English. Most of the time will be in small breakout groups. People can speak in their first language and translate themselves into English.

Today 7000 HUMANS went live on the Nanjing Peace Forum network. We look forward to working together with the Forum and inspired members like Qing Zhu, who is also part of the 7000 HUMANS Chinese language group and who has enabled this partnership.

Zoom right in on slightly brighter suns. There are sometimes two, or even more, individual human suns near each other.

On the 40th Anniversary of Beuys' inspirational tree planting initiative, we join the City of Kassel in honouring this social sculpture project that has inspired so many projects around the world. READ MORE here about the connection between 7000 HUMANS and 7000 OAKS. Here is the 'birth-chart' of 7000 HUMANS from the 21 December solstice, 2021. 7000 HUMANS is one of the City's anniversary projects. READ MORE [German] [English] about the recent planting on the 7000th Oak by the Head of Culture, Dr. Susanne Völker, in Kassel.

READ MORE about the form created by the sun's path through the sky, and about the solargraphy method and the astronomers that make this visible.

who is committed to creating an interconnected, humane, anti-racist, non-exploitative and ecologically healthy future.

7000 HUMANS also builds on one of Joseph Beuys' key social sculpture ideas that 'Every Human Being Is An Artist' working with the 'invisible materials' of 'speech, discussion and thought' to create new social forms, and called upon to re-shape the conditions that shape our lives!

7000 HUMANS has a lots to do with perspectives on 'what is needed to survive?' This was a key question that the VIEWS OF SURVIVAL series of seminar-conversations in the Kassel21-Social Sculpture Lab raised.

7000 HUMANS was born when Ulrike Oemisch invited Shelley Sacks to consider what comes after and works with the energy field created by Joseph Beuys' 7000 Oaks - the social sculpture project that has energised Kassel and inspired many projects around the world. The 7000 HUMANS - and WARMTH-BODY image was then shared publicly in the PROPOSAL WEEK in the Kassel21-Social Sculpture Lab, and has been developing since this first presentation on the 24 September 2021 Equinox.

It is wonderful that you want to contribute to co-creating this ‘Field of Commitment’; to working with questions in local and global assemblies, and to the initiatives that can grow from them.