How to facilitate connection between people through art

Kane Hofmann is all about fostering community. „That‘s something that‘s been pretty lacking in my time on Earth. It‘s a shame, because community seems to be at the core of life. And its absence has left society apathetic and confused“, he says. He sees collaborative art creation as a force for change that can transcend language and cultural barriers and create a shared, universally understood space in which to connect. In his view, museums and galleries should therefore be places of productive, creative collaboration. For his „better together“ project, he began by asking the question, „How can I foster connection between people here through art this week?“ As the sensitive young artist began his work, he followed his intuition and responded to the relational behavior in the group. At the beginning of the gathering, Kane observed, the art students from the U.S. and Germany were strangers not knowing how similar they could be and whether friendship would develop. In the first step of his art project, he wanted to connect with the others through conversation. To do this, he used painting. Kane Hoffman taped large themed sheets to the walls to initiate a form of contact from which the project could start. On these he drew, as loosely and as poorly as possible, examples of each theme. He wanted to make clear that he was concerned with fun, free expression and the experience itself, not with the result of the drawing. Little by little, his teammates - he explicitly included the non-artists - added their drawings. Conversations and funny moments arose almost automatically. To further encourage the artistic and personal approach, he hung up more sheets, one for each team member with his or her name. Each person was supposed to draw a portrait of each other. His plan worked. They exchanged ideas more intensively, were confronted with new perspectives, got to know each other better, and the depth of their bond grew. The team felt safe in dealing with each other. They also dared to show themselves vulnerable. Strangers became friends. In a third step, he developed a lively, colorful, joie de vivre radiating being from the theme sheets with the most diverse contributions of the individuals, the emblematic embodiment of the community that had emerged through creative processes. This unique, human-sized, humanoid corpus is characterized by the fact that each part of the corpus is visibly unique from all the others, both in type and size, as well as adaptability, but which makes an equally important contribution to the value and cohesion of the whole - just like in real life. Kane‘s processual art project proves how much power people of different backgrounds can develop when they come together, expose themselves to each other, learn from each other, and grow together. Connectedness - the key to a safer and better world. Kane Hoffman‘s collaborative art project - an excellent way to get there.