SHORT PORTRAIT Wie ich lerne, meine grauen Haare zu umarmen –
PORTRAIT ME/Dambi Lab e.V.
A virtual reality art project about the experience of being old. Professional artists, XR specialists and participants aged 70+ work together artistically to capture (biographical) narratives and make them accessible in walk-in virtual spaces. The awareness of individual finiteness and the importance of shared experiences create the basis for intergenerational empathy, belonging and mutual understanding. Using VR worlds to create a modern and artistic form of testament has long been a vision and a matter close to the heart of the group of artists, for which ‘How I learn to embrace my grey hair’ lays an important foundation.
‘In our demographically ageing society, millions of older people remain invisible, do not feel needed and no longer see themselves and their issues as part of the future. Wie ich lerne, meine grauen Haare zu umarmen gives a face to the social milieu of older people, brings their stories to life with digital artistic means and initiates an appreciative generational dialogue that empowers participants to develop their self-efficacy’, says the jury.
3 Questions to… Anna Hepp, Initiator und Artistic Director of PORTRAIT ME, a joint project
Wie ich lerne, meine grauen Haare zu umarmen –
PORTRAIT ME/Dambi Lab e.V.
‘How I’m learning to embrace my grey hair’ is a virtual reality art project about the experience of being old. Professional artists, VR specialists from Dambi.lab e.V. and participants aged 70+ work together artistically to capture narratives and make them accessible in walk-in virtual spaces. Older adults are involved as experts on the realities of their lives, also as later avatars, and at the same time empowered to appropriate digital tools for their self-expression in virtual spaces. The awareness of individual finiteness and the importance of shared experiences create the basis for intergenerational empathy, belonging and mutual understanding. Using VR worlds to create a modern and artistic form of testament has long been a vision and a matter close to the heart of the artist group, for which ‘How I learn to embrace my grey hair’ lays an important foundation.
We want to do pioneering work. With our project, we want to learn to love our own ageing and make finiteness an artistic matter of course. To actively enable cultural and digital participation. In addition, we want to break taboos, explore new ways of saying goodbye with sensitivity and thus create a basis for an experiment in the field of ‘modern mourning’.
that older people benefit from digitalisation, even though they are often excluded from the latest technologies. Politically, old age is a challenge and is seen as a burden. At the same time, it is a concern for society as a whole to actively integrate senior citizens into society with their experience, knowledge and skills and to draw on them; not only to enable active participation, but also to bring them back into society on an equal footing.
