«recap + listen»

«recap + listen» initiated by Mari Lena Rapprich, is an ongoing artistic-scientific strategy rather than a one-time project. «recap + listen» functions as a space for negotiation, where different perspectives intersect, allowing for productive exchange and critical reflection. It explores how we listen, what we hear, and whose voices are being heard, especially within contexts shaped by power dynamics, colonization, class, and discrimination. «recap + listen» questions established structures of artistic and academic canons and aims to highlight marginalized or often overlooked narratives through dialogical and collaborative practice. The project engages with personal, institutional, and ideological boundaries, inviting participants to reflect on and expand these limits, and to be shaped by the experiences of others. In doing so, «recap + listen» seeks to create shared spaces for dialogue that embrace complexity and foster coexistence. «recap» means capturing the status quo and contextualizing it in order to make complex relationships and stories visible, while «listen» emphasizes empathetic and active listening as a foundation for understanding, community, and a reconsideration of the question of who is allowed to speak and be heard. Listening becomes a tool of solidarity, recognition, and transformation.

Mari Lena’s artistic approach is interdisciplinary and research-based. She uses methods such as lectures, reading sessions, conversations, workshops, and both artistic and research-based residencies to create spaces for encounter and reflection, and to connect theory with practice. Mari Lena works with textual, visual, and discursive media, aiming to involve participants in personal, environmental, and dialogical processes. In this context, both «recap + listen» and Mari Lena’s practice are grounded in collaborative knowledge production, fostering a growing corpus of materials that responds to context, participation, and critical exchange. «recap + listen» is understood as an open collection or evolving archive, where artistic practice, research, and dialogical engagement interact and enter into relation and reflection as individual artifacts or objects. Each artifact connects different perspectives, lived experiences, and narratives.