How to practice languaging from sensory encounters rather than from pre-given meanings? How to make sense aside pre-given categories? How to unfold sense(s) from sensing?

The practice we propose to share is situated in this field of questions which constitutes the core of our joint research. It intends to focus on a specific encounter in-between, taking the French “écart” as a starting point. Unlike “différence”, “écart” does not pre-suppose individual entities as given before they are put in relation to each other. It rather names a dynamic space, the in-betweenness from which entities emerge as nodes of relations. “Gap” or “distance”, “Abstand” or “Spannungsfeld” revolve around “écart” without quite matching it. A particular field of forces thus unfolds in the dynamic spaces inside and between language(s).

We invite the participants to join us in the exploration of this particulat field of forces and experiment the senses emerging from it. We devised an iterative process which alternates specific situations of sensing, of writing, of sharing, and of reflecting. It starts with a somatic exercise designed to activate the skin as a field for sensing in-between, then merges into writing, continues with voicing, writing, and voicing again, in different constellations each time. The practice is completed by a collective exchange to reflect on the process experienced. Unforeseen relationalities might be activated along the way, a density of sense(s) might arise and expand throughout the different stages of the process.