2021/03/18: Scholarship for Doing Nothing awarded
Hilistina Banze, Mia Hofner and Kimberley Vehoff will receive the Scholarships for Doing Nothing, each endowed with 1,600 euros, which the Hamburg University of Fine Arts (HFBK) and Friedrich von Borries (Professor of Design Theory) announced in August 2020. Their projects and all other submissions will be on display until July 18, 2021 at the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg (MK&G) in the exhibition School of No Consequences. Exercises for a New Life
The Scholarship for Doing Nothing questions the common mechanisms of achievement thinking and invites to think about the connection of one's own life reality with climate change and social and political structures. From a total of 2864 applicants from 70 countries, the jury initially selected 14 finalists and chose the winners in a second step.
HILISTINA BANZE
"I will not wear my headscarf for a week," is the Muslim feminist's plan. The social pedagogue and integration counselor from Hamburg wants to show her hair shaved short to 3 mm and thus counteract several role clichés at once. In doing so, Hilistina Banze (31) - like many other applicants - confronts the expectations and role models that are placed on women in particular. The jury was impressed by the radicality and complexity of the experiment and is looking forward to Hilistina Banze's experiences as a woman, a Muslim and a feminist.
MIA HOFNER
"I don't want to generate any usable, personal data about myself for two weeks." This means extensive restrictions for the 26-year-old conceptual designer and student from Cologne: no smartphone use, no checking e-mails, no online shopping - all activities that many other applicants* would also like to do without because they consume too much energy, strain social relationships, entice consumption and leave uncontrollable data traces of themselves and others. The jury found Mia Hofner's clarity, with which she reflects on the consequences of her daily actions and at the same time is aware that she cannot escape digital data transfer forever, remarkable.
KIMBERLEY VEHOFF
"I don't want to do my job" writes the 22-year-old food technology specialist from Bad Fallingbostel. Representative of a great many applications, Kimberley Vehoff expresses a fundamental dissatisfaction with the economic constraints and the pressure to perform in contemporary society. The jury found it particularly convincing that Kimberley Vehoff's social relationships suffer due to alternating early, late and night shifts as well as a 6-day week, and that she wants to use the scholarship to strengthen these emotional ties again.
THE NOMINEES
There were 14 nominees*, including, in addition to the winners, among others:
- A 9-year-old student who no longer wants to be driven to school by his mother out of a sense of ecological responsibility.
- A Brazilian activist who collects plastic waste in her village
- A doctor who no longer wants to prescribe addictive painkillers when there are other ways to treat the disease.
- A television reporter who wants to stop spreading negative news for four weeks.
- A man who does not want to speak for ten days, but wants to listen to others more attentively.
- A woman who wants to stay the way she is, thus pointing out the pressure for self-optimization in society (and in the call for entries).
The jury members - MK&G director Tulga Beyerle, philosopher and HFBK guest professor Armen Avanessian, and lawyer Eva-Dorothee Leinemann - decided to reflect the range of content of the submissions and to leave room for the subjectivity of the applicants. The Scholarship for Doing Nothing was financed by the Leinemann Kunststiftung Nikolassee.