A Manifest for the Interspace
Prologue.
Our results-driven time is filled to the brim with tasks, requirements and objectives. No longer does time suffice to satisfyingly complete the pent-up amount of professional and private transactions. 'Luckily' gaps turn up unexpectedly, in the shape of short breaks, which in return are immediately filled again with anything available. Like an uncontrollable reflex, it's all about typing: in apps, e-mails, short messages, or to complete short mobile phone calls. Every second is squeezed from the interim in order to avoid further task-backlog. Then we continue caught in our completion-mindset, both professionally and privately. This mental task-mode is constantly seeping into all kinds of interim states, wipes out the emergence of any interspace, and doesn't even allow to consider that for a short period the possibility would have existed to take a deep breath, to step back, to calm down, and to re-position oneself in harmony with the present situation. Such relentless baiting makes us dissatisfied, unproductive and in its final consequence, sick. People in haste live in a state of emotional tailback - they act without control, hurt each other easily, and do not have access to constructive thoughts or creative solutions. Avoid the interspace: 'Mind the gap' it says - do not step into the dark gap between platform and tube.
1. Let's stop the relentless discrimination
and annihilation of interspace.
Interspace is the biotope of the human being. It is the prerequisite for people to feel, think, and act constructively. It is the result of the cultivation of mankind, and proof of everyone's personal cultural evolution. It deserves respect and regard. Interspace is as inviolable as the dignity of man.
2. Let's take a stand for the conservation
and emergence of interspace.
Interspace requires our protection. We speak up against its continuous downsizing and discrediting in professional as well as private environments. Interspace is the source of all creativity. It enables reflection, orientation and innovation. It is a space of conscious being, of realising belonging and cohesion.
3. Let's protect interspace in
every kind of communication.
Interspace serves to protect mutual respect and esteem in all social contexts. Interspace is an essential buffering space, preventing extreme opinions, strong emotions, as well as degrading and inhuman behaviours to clash undamped. It cannot be sacrificed under the dictatorship of time and costs; it is indispensable. Because only interspace can ensure that there is sufficient space for the foreign and different to stand next to the familiar and secure.
4. Freedom for the interspace!
Interspace is a space of freedom and of free emotional and cognitive movement: within interspace there is liberty of movement, liberty of assembly, free election of perspective, liberty of speech, and the guaranteed liberty to always take a new position towards oneself and the world. Interspace has to be liberated of the detrimental influence of rigid biographical patterns as well as any external interests.
5. Give interspace the chance
to show what's in it!
Interspace is full of momentum. Within it rests the power of self-organisation, self-development and evolution of potential. Being present in the interspace strengthens our ability to be present in the here and now, it opens new perspectives which enable practical steps into one's future. It slows down processual sequences, in order to recharge these with new energy. Paradoxes and oppositions are the elixir of interspace!
Epilogue.
Interspace might be the most precious space to mankind. It is critical to revive it as a place of primary power and essential meaning, as well as to search out the opportunities and perspectives that can only unfold within it. Now is the time to stop, to pull the emergency break, to get out and to change. That is true for every single one of us, for every couple, every family, every work team, every cultural institution and every form of civil society. We have to take life into our own hands, and infuse it with meaning through independent action, empowered by nothing but our own responsibility. Such revolution starts with the necessity to anchor the interspace, with all its creative potential, deeply within each one of us. It starts by developing the required interspace-competence.
Increasingly our time bears the risk of being content with primitive and polarising answers to the pressing questions of our time. Negating or fighting the interspace will result in an incontrollable descent into reactivity. Its renouncement leads to unresolved permanent stress, to hate and violence, or to complete withdrawal from everything that grants us permanent reason for being as humans. Let's take a stand for more interspace, as well as interspace of a higher quality! Let's demand more time for the interspace! Let's make it our trusted friend and daily companion!
THE INTERSPACE TEAM | DAS ZWISCHENRAUM TEAM
Zentnerstr.19 im Hof | 80798 München
www.ZwischenRaum.org | Tel.: +49 0179 1292321