Meet the Cologne Team
Production & Hosts
We are crafting the experience.
More info about the full team of artists, teachers and facilitators coming soon.
Inge
(any pronoun you feel fitting)
Hey! I’m happy that you are reading this and hope to see you in May, because I’m excited to be organising Touch & Play Cologne again!!!
I see the world as a place full of wonder, and human beings – as well as nature – never fail to fascinate me. I am obsessed with observing and playing with relational dynamics. Both internally – between different parts, body, emotion, mind, spirit, and externally – between me and my friends, partners, family, society, humanity, nature.
Recently I’ve been really curious about the subtle difference between the tendencies/characteristics that we are conceived with and those that grow on us.
I have a degree in Cultural Anthropology and Conflict Studies, and spent the last 16 years in India, South America Europe and Australia studying humanity, somatic practices and holistic bodywork modalities – Rolfing, Trager Approach, Yoga, Ayurveda, CI, Butoh, IFS.
I keep circling back to the question of what our essence actually is.
To be honest, I don’t think it can be put into words, taught or touched. I guess it arises, sometimes.
Funny enough I feel closer to it when I behave with a certain amount of innocence. Which brings me to the following question:
“What is a healthy meeting point between being ‘cultured’ (whatever that means; understanding, polite, cooperative, …???) and raw / authentic / …???”
At my first Touch & Play in Nature Community 2022, I instantly felt at home in this container that invites people to play with new paradigms and explore edges.
I have been an active collaborator in T&P Cologne, Germany, Barcelona, Argentina and Brasil since.
I’m super excited to invite a bunch of you to see what happens when we try to give enough space to our impulses to get to the essence of them - what is it that our soul / inner child / ? seeks with this thought / emotion / behaviour?
Ramona
(she/any)
Hi! I’m Ramona and I’m ranging between being excited and being terrified to be part of Touch&Play orga team for the first time.
This volatility between seemingly polar states within me has been a point of inquiry, pain, and also a lot of joy for a long time, and Touch&Play has been a place where I could find new dimensions of playing with it.
The joy I feel being part of creating this space and sharing it with you makes being terrified feel somewhat… great.
When an impulse to share these states arises, I find myself in such close contact to what feels like the essence of my being human.
And choosing to share (or sometimes not to share) that essence has given me a taste of just how innocent our experience is at its core, when we have the space to be with it, express it, be seen in it.
It’s given me permission to be more present with the path towards… wherever?
That “towards” has been ongoing and doesn’t seem to stop.
It’s something which makes me feel like there is nowhere to actually go, and what’s left is to fully be with what’s happening, and find ways to play with it, transform it, let it be, be gentle with it, be hurt by it, change it, or not change it, be annoyed by it, or bored, or enlivened, or saddened…
I’m very much inspired by spaces where we can explore different paradigms of being, expressing, and relating, all while being mindful of the wider ecosystems we live in, the relational bodies we interact with, and the histories we come from.
Touch&Play is such a space and I’m happy to invite you to be part of it with us.
Jukka
(they/them)
Hi, I’m Jukka and I am happy to be a part of the Touch&Play Cologne orga team again!
This year, my curiosity is moving towards ease, easiness, simplicity.
How can I make it easier for myself and others?
How can I find ease in complexity?
Is complexity always necessary, or is there a space for less?
How to have an easy festival organisation experience?
How to keep the essence of T&P while making the festival more spacious?
Let’s research together and see what this year brings!
From year to year, building, co-creating and joining body-movement-research-positive spaces, first in Saint Petersburg, and, for the last five years, in Germany, I notice how my feeling & presence change. While in the beginning of my journey I was more searching for ways to enter & stay, now the direction of my focus (with lots of fluctuations, of course) is shifting from “how do I fit in?” to “how am I manifesting in spaces?”, “which parts of me are more visible here and which parts are hiding?”
This is very closely related to how I see this year’s topic.
For me, T&P feels like an amazing place for research – both when I organise or participate – and I am looking forward to seeing how this personal exploration unfolds here.
Together with my inner grandma, goblin, little princess, gay boi, shy kid, crazy scientist, tired mom, plumber, darkness and i-don’t-know-who-else, I am embarking on this journey, and warmly invite you to join the trip, too – with your own research questions!