Today i started working on the new summercampaign for the institute- oh my god, it was so exiting standing in front of the camera and the new slogan is awesome!!! awesome, just awesome!!!
watch the first pictures straight from the set:

MONDAY:

i continued following the principle of sharing: i want to share food with the "participanti- productiva". i invaded them with baking a german apfelstrudel.

Guigo, one of the visitors shared the strudelproduction- very nice experience of community.

But what happened- its again a striking example for the constant flow and change of communities: In the end people robbed the oven and started to eat the strudel- i planned to do some vanilla sauce with it, and sit together in harmony sharing the meal-well you have to accept the flow, one can't control a situation forever....

By the way- the "hymn -virus" is working. Daniela is deeply infiltrated with singing my song. Sometimes you have to repeat thing over and over, but in the end people take it....

DAY 4:
organize the institute- what a mess in the head of organisation... i will have to talk with the staff!
pedro wrote me back a whole thesis about my blog- i love it!!
I am still thinking about.

The Curator is calling for „The Application form”


1. WHAT
My project developed to an institute named:

Satisfaktor – Institut für beglückende Erfahrungen

It`s an institute working on providing people experiences to pimp up their life.
It’s meant as a non-profit enterprise offering people support and on the same time working on research and strategy development for a more exiting life.
The importance of community and the issue of interaction is the basis of the organization. Our business is experiences of exitment and experiences of satisfaction.

The name- satisfaktor is the factor of exitment in your live, that empowers you to be a more happy and beloved person.
Satisfaction is also meant as sexy, desired and a fulfilment of existential needs,

- the stolen- name-story, actually when we came up with the institute name we had problems with a pornfilm company claiming the name as theirs. we still conduct a lawsuit with them.

-the hymn: refers to the fact that it doesn’t matter if there is an altruistic way of thinking and acting existing , to create community always supply people with exitment.

2. WHO
Katja Fillmann is founder, real- live researcher , head of the development department and president of the institute. It’s a rags to riches story. Within a short time of starting the institute the community of members developed over 100%, still expanding. This summer we started to cross the borders and opened a filiale of the research department near Lisbon for interaction within language - borders. A very fresh and exiting project!

The structure of this enterprise is community based, and self evolving. As we recognised that communities are supporting and always are in a flow of change, we adopted that knowledge in the construction of the institute, being able to be flexible and open to change structures if needed. Best to compare it with a bubble (than a pyramid). We are still in development. This attitude has been proved to be a very successful strategy in building up the institute.

Although to get better focus there is
the department of emergency: people drop in and get help very fast
the department of research in real life interactions
the department of education
the department of inner affairs call it the SATISFAKTOR_FAMILY- community of members

at the moment as I mentioned we are building up the department for international- community-stuff ( I excuse this stupid name, but it was accepted by basis democratic election, so I had to accept)

we are always interested in members clients and supporters

mainly to state- everything is always in a flow, constantly shifting things. Its bind to the philosophy of flow of the institute.


3. When

The history of the institute started with a project I started on getting to know my neighbours. The initial moment was actually a handsome foreign guy with 6 volvicbottles, that helped me entering my house. I felt very moved and surprised by this little warm gesture of help. I felt a lack of community and emptiness. That was the moment where I realised: me, that little innocent girl from the country turned into a modern urban individualistic egofighter. I just had to change something and i started doing a project on that change. I developed a list of strategies in how to get my neighbours that finally led to the fundament of the institute.

Chronology of events follows


4. Where

Cause of flexibility reason the use of internet was very important from the beginning on. So you can find the institute on the internet- at the moment we restructure the platform so unfortunately its under construction. On the platform you can find first aid help- instructions and strategies .cause our philosophy is deeply connected to the principle of sharing, we ask people to report about their experiences guided by us. Also to evaluate the effectiveness and quality standard of our work, but also to show other people, that it works.
The headquarter is sited in the beautiful heart of Berlin Kreuzberg, Germany.
But as many people who need our help are living a kind of urban nomadism, we are moving from time to time and give courses lead by the department of education.
We did also squat public places in order to create a situation of surprise and coincidence where people looked up from the routine of their everydaylife.


5. Why
I recognisesd by “getting to know my neighbours”
The importance of experience.
The importance of community,
The personal development of an individuum
The learning of new competences to cope with a more exiting every daylife.
Creating a community around you provides a homie-feeling.
The work of the institute and following the strategies of the institute can help you to source out possibilities of communities around you, break down the stupity of routine and help recognising the potential of knowledge, skills and possibibilities to have fun around around you.
Its mainly about to experience and to realise the power of that special form of learning. Because we work with the effects of exitment you will have fully emotional experiences that stays with you as an intense longlasting memory of new and profound knowledge.


6. How

We are operating on different levels of strategies:
-As we recognised the basis of every community is the principle of sharing- we try to implant the filter of sharing into peoples mind.
In courses we train people to recognise options of sharing and initiating the practice of sharing.

-Exitment is dealing with the unexpected, and the feeling that things happens- not planned, but coincidentally.
Therefore we are working on creating coincidences especially in meeting people- actually there is a whole department carrying for “the art of meeting people”.
- Create situations like inbetween places where people can meet . The importance of the epherme isn’t to be overlooked. We are doing research about that- like for instanace squatting ephermal places like a waitingroom in public spaces, to build up possibilities of meeting people.- it’s a overseen potential of community creating.

Concrete example to provide good experiences
Example:
Use the universal meaning of music- the power of synchronicity. Music is an ideal topic where people can come together, like singing a song.
A task:
Work out a House-Music-Sampler, by asking your neighbours for their favourite songs- that can gives you the feeling of being surrounded by them although you are sitting alone at home, but finally you had to meet your neighbours before and talk about their music in order to get their favourite songs, ideally they invite you to share to listen to their favourite song. You already gained exiting expierence and you can do something for the community of the house :in providing everybody with that house-music- collection, that represent the community of the house and engraving an awareness of the community.

another example: In our educationprogram "satisfaktor1" we invite people to a one weekendcourse postulating to accept that they don't know exactly whats gonna happen. But we create before of that expectations, e.g. we gonna do sik-painting, but then we will do 1 day spending on e.g. how to produce icecram, or a course in geometry.
We work with the break of expectations. People are drawn to deal with the unexpected and transform it into the known. and that in a very creative way. because they all desperately try to understand why they do have to learn geometry or making icecream in order to do silk-painting, they will start to make creative bridging creating new meaning and strategies. We are using this tendency. they will discover new perspective on the topic of silk-painting - for example that they could do much more interesting things then silk-painting. At least they are observing how they others start to deal with this stiuation. They cant help it - it`s a law of mimic habitude. and by doing it they experience going togehter but on the same time beeing very creative on their own solutions.

in "satisfaktor 2" we take the partizipants a step further. every partizipant gets a "Betting-partner". This step is mainly working on to overcome the anxiety with the unknown and welcoming exitment. Partizipants have to push their borders within reallife research, the betting partner is the observer and controller of this reallife research. Its a giving and taking: For example P1 gives himself the task: go to foreign people on the streets that you would like to approach and ask them to take a photo- they try to catch attention on them by doing a small videotake with the camera and saying something like I really would like to get to know you. and do sthg expressive.
So p1 might be scared Now he tells his bettingpartner p2 I am betting with you that i will do this, otherwise Ill have to fullfill your task.
Now p2 observes and takes care for p1 supporting him in nice thrilling sportive way.
p2 at the same time gives himself again a task, e.g. : "I dare to dance at night in my flat in front of the window after putting a letter into my neighbours postbox saying: surprise for you tonight8pm watch out of the window, otherwise i will have to fullfill your task." Now they support each other, pushing each other and sharing the project of the other beeing the witness of the other project. This principle provides exitment, shared experience and profound knowledge.

DAY THREE
I got up and took a walk in lisbon. It seems to be important to perceive where I am to arrive.
Desire- sharing the process with the others.
Claiming for it.
At that time I knew suddenly, what is my task in that virtual-rogerios -laboratory-situation:
Decision: I am having a good time !
Decision: my research about community experience is happening right now !
Decision: Tomorrow I start the SHARING DAYS with the others !
Decision: Sing songs together with the others !
DECISION: My project deals with those terms:

COMMUNITY
AGENGY
EXPERIENCE
TO SHARE
TO BE LOVED

God, am I a Hippie?!!!!

Decision: I try to take the role of the hippie person in the group > live the principle of sharing

try to offer time to everybody to share time with them sharing something.
Decisions: baking cakes with the others day to day

By the way its strange to be watched but nobody takes the possibility to talk back to us. Nobody comments on my blog….So it seems to be more thrilling to watch people than to interact with them????

here i tried to make contact, I was holding up an appell as long as my arms could hold it up. I tried to work seriously!!!

Ok I started singing songs. i found that canon on the internet:

It saiys:

Die Menschen sind schlecht/ Sie denken an sich/ nur ich denk an mich.

Maybe this will be my agency song:

You know music is such an universal thing , an universal language bringing people together...learn it! so when we meet one day, you will sing it to me and i will know that you know me already- get to be one of my "Homies"my secret community supporting my agency.

Explaining my project in one single sentence:

My project is to build up a service institution in order to provide people with
Creating-Community-Experience and - Help on the base of the principle of SHARING and EXITMENT

Day Two

Yesterday.....seems so far away....
I woke up in a bad mood. I tried to structure my thoughts of day one and continue to think of the benefit of community.
I hung out in the internet for long time and made research on how to meet people, in the concepts of community. – by the way a bunch of sectarian stuff besides some interesting alternative concepts.
Specially I tried to find a link to the idea of a mobile community, I found some stuff about urban nomads. But then it seems that the internet is the solution for the community but I am not so much interested in this virtual stuff. How to provide with community experience in real life like first hand experience but living a mobile lifestyle?

I guess the term of neighbourhood is to be transformed to the actual situation you are in – So look at it and make the best of the present moment/ period etc.
I learned the word backlash yesterday- so this is actually what could be the benefit of taking attention to the present surrounding. If you act/ offer/ invite/ notice people, they can react on it.
Be generous and lavish! It supplies you with relaxation, happiness and less effort of control in your life.

Very important point of the day was to talk with Leonore here a brief assumption:
The talk got me out of isolation, already I used the concept of sharing with her that supported me and caused community, alexandre and rogerio joined in- it got dynamic= finally exiting

Kind of a protocol:

She pointed out that I mentioned in my blog that people like to talk about other people, but actually she thinks that by doing that they want to talk about themselves - people are mirroring themselves in others.
We listen with filters that are lead by the motor of interest. So actually listen to the other is listen to myself—I take care for me in taking care of others? ---I think when we have to share our whole life with ourselves, it might be a bit boring only to mirror ourselves in ourselves, so the motivation to interact with others is actually to be more thrilled by our own- well only another reason for communities> make your life a more interesting place, it doesn’t matter if you are masturbating about yourself in listening and understanding others- or if you listen to others in order to help them in a more altruistic way- in any case its more exiting and inspiring, so go for your neighbours!
By the way treat the neighbour as the person next to you-physically, bind to situations or thoughts, not only to the house you are living- look at the present situations you are in

We look at people in what they are doing and not in the being-
Perhaps that always causes stress, cause we feel we have to effort in everything, get a doing person- but the trick is to look at “being” as a process, sthg you can do and not as a state. So people relax- you are always doing sthg.

We were talking about the initialising moments of relations and communities, my thesis is that you need this initialising moment, sthg that triggers the wish to stay with each other, producing a constant interest in the partizipants of the community.
I think there’s a special quality in the surprise of that moment- its not seen or planned it happens to you- better said: it appears with that easiness without effort>> EASINESS

If sthg isn’t pushed it happens more coincident, or better to say it appears as if it were coincidental
> the magic of synchronicity > Sthg happens at the same time> an utopia> is this the meeting point, the initial moment?
e.g. Singing in a choir gives people such a good feeling, and spirit of community because they do things at the same time, synchronised?

Talking about the manipulation of coincidence , producing coincidence
Ø An Idea is born: I am gonna create an agency to create coincidences, exiting moments in your life.
- importance of the first meeting experiences. The first meeting is an invitation. You’ll might get a backlash, you may be surprised.
- surprises are exiting! a backlash means already a surprise.

The difficulty in meeting people: first you have to overcome the unknown and transform it into sthg known> overcome anxiety, create knowledge. Perceive experience.
Second, you have to overcome moral borders.

To create an experience there are three elements :

Me
You/the other
Situation/place and time

>> first contact creation is an exiting work and an exiting moment, you`ll get to be a hero by overcoming the difficulties in meeting others- you feel success, bravery, thrilled, pushed your borders

I SHOULD COLLECT EXPERIENCES OF OTHERS ABOUT THESE INITIALISING MOMENTS

Prepare a congress? Build up an institute for research in first contact-experience

Coincidence producing:
- construct it – get conspiratorial! Search for strange intersections> if there are none construct them. E.g. things you have in common with sb. Make one story out of many!!!!

“ I like your shirt”
“ why?”
“ cause of the blue color”
“really , such a coincidence- I love blue too, it reminds me of the sea…..”
“ No, I meant more that it gives you that fresh look”
“ oh this is exiting, I always have these assoziations of the sea is so fresh, that’s exactly what I meant to say, when I get dressed with that it feels so fresh. What do you prefer, when you need to refresh? Shouldn’t we have a drink?”
A: “Well I am not sure…”
“ I’ll show you something.., close your eyes!”
................

>Well, one has to exercise these talkings. Some experiences ?

Very important> try to appear not planned!

Manly intersections with others are caused by
- interests
- problems
- pleasures

>> and there we come again to the very important concept of sharing. Then you are able to discover intersections
-----------------------------

At night I did some research in getting to know people in the streets of Lisbon, I exercised small talk with strangers on the streets of Baixo Alto – I chose for the second level of difficulty: small talk with language barriers, sharing beers with others supported by a contact person- what a nice realtime experience at the end of the day
good girl fillmann!

Dear reader of this blog,

one of my strategies of getting to know my neighbours is : produce coincidences-
thats why: to build up a community it needs an initialising moment for it. A moment that triggers the wish to get to know the other, or a binding happening by an event. This event mostly is characterised by beeing surprising, not planed coincidence is tricksing out your preception on sthg or someone. You experience something for the first time in a way. and the paradox thing is you ask yourself- can this happen by accident? YOu transform this moment into fate and gives a binding moment producing committment .
These moments are mostly exiting.

Milan Kundera wrote: "The bigger the coincidance, the bigger the love"

What are your special coincidences in live?

Think of situations that would make your live more exiting? what are the things you wish to do?
whom to meet to have a more exiting life?
write to me or skype with me....

Exerpts from Notes done on Day One:

From doing the presentation:

Reflection and restructure-trial on how to do get to know my neighbours:

1.I build up a list of strategies that more or less analyses:
the status of who is living next to me,
the place where I live itself
what information of the people I do have so far
how to get in contact with them

2.Creation of first contact experiences
to get in contact strategies are :
- ask others how they did- the classical research thing
- actively saying hello to them
- passive actively draw attention on me, in order to give them the chance to meet me
>>> at least all the same which way you choose, I have to create the wish in them to get to know me in order to get to know them better

By the way,- what means to get to know, or to know somebody??????????

3. Next steps after first contact experience:
How to stay in contact with them
how to build up a relation?
How to crate a community
Or to decide to leave the contact

-Leave the contact: don’t react anymore, don’t be present or available for them, be boring
-Build up relation: do sthg for them, let them do sthg for you, ask for help
-Build up community: do sthg together, share sthg, create a situation where to get to know -better, use a space

By the way how to create bindingness/ commitment?
By the way why do people have so often discomfort in meeting people?

My personal situation is this: I am not constantly in the house. I am very often moving around cause I work in different places out of berlin quite often. This situation is a non-konstant situation permanently changing surrounding. And my house is somehow a garden where nobody cares very good for it. Everything is mushroom around.


Notes on the dogma of the day: performative laziness: less effort more fun and result
Define the limits of the context> switch on the right filters in your reception , the rest will come.
Get rid of the concept of suffering
Concentrate
Think of the first things a situation asks you to do.
Does lazy mean also being lavish?

Reflections after the presentationthing:

The benefits of my project:

The utopia of creating communities with thinking of neighbourhood as a concept that inspires that utopia

Ø the concept of sharing is the concept of the community.
Ø What might be a mobile community suiting to my needs of a kind of nomadic living situations how do nomads actually do? Schwärme?
Ø My ideal community, my homies



I have to state this. I realised that I thought a community of something stable, constant. I guess I didn’t make a difference between the desire to gain more continuity in life through a community and something that is static. But I want to think of a community as something without strict rules. Not something sectarian. An open community.
An open community is something in flow. People come and go, bring in themselfes and change within the experience of the others. So even if people stay the same, they will change themselves within the process of being in the community. So the community is something continously changing. The only continuity is the commitment of the participants and the change.

LISBON:

Day one:

I arrive at Rogerio’s place, the camera-thing seems to me quite funny, surreal. I feel drawn to make fun about the situation, I guess to cope with it. How long would people stay online to hit an interesting moment- these lucky ones who does…
After explanations about the rules of the coming days, we start to prepare a 10 minute presentation about our projects.
I took the decision to invite people to watch me online. I hope people are not only observe voyeuristic but trying to communicate with us. That seems to be the chance- to meet people by opening a process of working, to gain the unexpected experience, nice surprise, by sharing thoughts and working people , if they decide to share their thoughts about my work and take part. – nice idea. Talk to me!
Sitting and discussing, trying to understand to find an entrance to the work and chances of the coming week.
Lunchbreak at a private pool, where am not allowed to go inside- there it lays in front of me innocent empty surrounded by some people. What a promise, what a temptation. I’ ll have to change that at one point of my stay here.
When I am doing my presentation everybody is tired already- who really cares about my thoughts? – the doorbell rings, the lady from the radio enters and I have to stop my presentation. I try to end it after the lady was introduced in the whole thing. I feel confused and that I couldn’t communicate the main things that kept me busy with the project. I have the feeling I have to find the link to continue working on my project here and now in Lisbon, a different context, I have to transfer the idea of getting to now my neighbours to a broader but still concrete level. I feel the need doing something not sitting the whole day discussing the whole project. I cant concentrate.
After I finished my presentation the interview with the radio follows…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………finally we go back to my presentation the lady is gone. I have the feeling everybody is tired and cant think anymore and I am not sure if people remember what I tried to present. Give me feedback. I feel lost. Frustrated .
The curator tells me to think about the benefits of my project. I thought I did already, but obviously not enough or précised enough. I am asked by Daniela why linking to persons is so important to me. I feel like a crazy depressed lonely person.
I am talking about the benefits: to get to now my neighbours provides me a warmer social atmosphere around me. A homie-feeling. I can source out possibilities of communities around me, build up possible communities, I can recognise the potential of knowledge, skills possibibilities to have fun around me. To get to know new experiences.
The curator tells me I should stick on the idea of creating communities as a utopian vision. And gives me the challenge to create a community with the audience on the 18th.
Alright……
What can I do here? I have to find my focus, I have to do transfer with the term of neighbourhood.
We take a pause before eating tuna salad again at the beach. Sitting on the beach… wonderfull- does it change your life attitude to see the sea everyday?
I wanted to find the on/ off button in my head and turn it out for an hour, but somehow there was a reset going on while I was sitting on the beach- I wrote some notes . its strange to be always pregnant with thoughts – You never now whats coming out but its always growing inside you.
I feel I am unpatient and I am to pushy to myself.
Katinka is doing yoga exercises with me in the bed before sleeping. Thank you katinka!