Satellites

WHO CARES? - MOHA

(c) MOHA, 2022

Exploring the notion of boundaries in order to understand better where some things end and others begin.

I am wondering how care was present in my life. How it surrounded me and when was it missing? Was I cared for or wasn’t I from the very beginning? From there how do I care further? Do I care or I don’t care? And who else is out there to care? Who has to actually care?

Do you take the medication independently or do you need help? 

I can take my medication independently.

Do you live alone or with a spouse/partner?

I live alone.

Could you stand up?

Yes, I can stand up.

Could you walk?

Yes, I can walk.

Could you hold yourself independently?

Yes, I can hold myself independently.

Are you incontinent?

Sometimes I am incontinent. 

Can you see and hear well?

I can hear and see well.

Do you drink enough on your own?

I don’t drink enough on my own.

Can you make decisions in everyday life?

Yes, I can make decisions in everyday life.

Do you understand facts and information?

I don’t always understand facts and information.

Are you afraid?

Yes, I am afraid.

/Questions and answers to determine one's degree of need for institutional care set by the Health Insurance Medical Service in Germany/

Who Cares? is a quest to understand what care is in our contemporary society. But rather than try to address this question from a theoretical level, MOHA goes down to the details of people’s real lives, real works and practices and builds up from there. In order to do that, MOHA dives into various professions and situations that deal with care: they work with street cleaners, housekeeping staff of a care home, social workers, nurses and residents of an apartment complex on the edge of a city. For a longer period of time, MOHA resides in one location and immerse themselves into its specific contexts: they become interns, colleagues, volunteers, bystanders, supporters, friends. 

MOHA started their project in Berlin on the 25th July by joining a group of district nurses based in Moabit, from the local organisation 4beimir/Futur Uno led by Uta Kirchner. They attended their team meetings, accompanied the workers for a walk from their homes to the houses of their clients and discussed their motivation and choices to become care workers. During the repetition of these walks and talks some rules, tricks, tips, cracks, boundaries, stories and care routines were revealed. 

In March 2023, the private care company 4beimir/Futur Uno will be hosted by MOHA in the ZK/U OPENHAUS event. They will hold a public team meeting, where, besides managing the regular topics of their weekly organisation and schedule, they will also start a discussion and a rehearsal for an upcoming performance, looking into “caring for” as an intimate, personal and political act, hidden in simple tasks, difficult to measure, sometimes invisible. The care experts will be invited to share their perspectives, bringing questions on the table such as: How do you enter someone's private sphere? How do you wash the back of someone? How to write the perfect shopping list if you can't go out by yourself? What is this extra step you take/or not? These and more will be talked through and practised in action.

More info about the whole research here: http://whocares.mohaproject.com

(c) MOHA, 2022
(c) MOHA, 2022
(c) MOHA, 2022

MOHA is an Amsterdam-based artist collective that creates performances, presents workshops, devises publications, and proposes alternative curatorial models. Operating outside conventional art institutions, MOHA works in public spaces and with specific communities, aiming to shatter our personal bubbles and connect with the day-to-day realities of people we might otherwise never encounter. The city, its different social dynamics and the way people make and use their living environment in specific localities, are the starting points for MOHA’s initiatives. Through their projects, MOHA creates connections between the art field and other disciplines. 

MOHA’s name comes from Hungarian, it means moss. MOHA chose this name to reflect the desire to embody a moss-like quality which grows and expands even in the most unexpected conditions. MOHA sees their work as a resilient living ecosystem. MOHA /moss is not one entity, and therefore can’t have only one fixed definition. MOHA’s work grew into the merge of many fields: urbanism, anthropology, social choreography, magic realism, performance art, guerrilla art and activism among others. 

For this project MOHA is collaborating closely together with Zsófia Paczolay, who is an art worker in the intertwined territories of filmmaking, performance and social work. She graduated as an architect engineer, which field she left behind for more human centered practices but the “mapping mindset” stayed. She inserts herself into diverse communities of people for longer periods of time and observes their inner processes and structures and responses on them in the form of documentary film or performance. She is not scared to let herself be changed by these encounters.

The project is supported by Fonds voor Cultuurparticipatie and BKF, cofounded by Bezirkskulturfonds Berlin Mitte in collaboration with ZK/U Berlin.