The Urge of
Being
The Urge of Being
– expedition Berlin
An urban-ecological artistic expedition in the city of Berlin that explores
the relation between people and the urban territories they inhabit,
and the urges of this relation.
8 – 11 October 2026
With Daniela Marcozzi
Founder and artistic director of Marcozzi Contemporary Theater (Berlin)
Co-founder of the cultural association and project M.A.R.E. (Ecological Research Artistic Movement, Italy)
Artistic Content
The project is based on the performative methodology On Urgency developed by Daniela Marcozzi and the performers of Marcozzi Contemporary Theater.
On urgency is a creative methodology consisting in distributing written surveys to ask people – and/or a specific target group – about their own urgencies and the urgencies of the place they live and subsequently ‘translate’ the replies into performative mediums, such as, physical-theater narratives, music compositions, durational performances, movement sequences, poetry.
On Urgency*Abruzzo (2021) has been the first expedition that the Marcozzi Contemporary Theater Company has carried out to export the On Urgency methodology out of Berlin, where it has been created in 2020. The second expedition has been carried out along the River Po, in Ferrara (IT), and the third expedition will return to the home creative base: expedition Berlin!
This expedition will collect and give artistic expression to the urges that people feel in relation to a specific place, in this case Berlin and to investigate dynamics of urban ecologies: how we feel connected emotionally, poetically and practically with the place we live in, or how we feel disconnected. Which poetic images connect us or let us be isolated from the physical place we inhabit?
In a very-fast changing city like Berlin, which still catalyses many artistic, cultural, economical and political forces, this project also intends to explore how people relate themselves to the city, and how we face and respond to environmental, political and cultural changes.
The first 3 days of the project will happen in the studio, the last one will be site-specific in two different locations of the city, which will be defined together. In case of bad weather, we’ll find outdoor sites suitable for the unpredictable Berlin weather!
Info & Registrazione:
To take part to the project
Please send a short motivation letter to daniela.marcozzi@gmail.com e mare.movement@gmail.com. to highlight the reasons why you want to participate in the project and, shortly, your experience in the arts.
The project is open to people with different artistic backgrounds. A ground of self-consciousness, motivation and artistic autonomy is required.
The project is structured around four main areas of practice:
A central aspect of the project is the collection of anonymous surveys addressed to the people living in Berlin. Through a questionnaire (survey) focused on the theme of urge and on the relation between individuals and the environment they live in, participants will gather testimonies, images, desires, fears, and reflections from residents.
In fact, in the period prior to the workshop, the participants will receive a google form with the questions of the survey. Each participant is asked to send this survey to people living in Berlin, friends, colleagues, with the aim to collect the responses, in an anonymous form. The estimated number of surveys that we’ll work with is approximately 50.
The responses will be collected on a google sheet form, that will be shared among the participants on the first day of the workshop. The responses will be read together during the workshop and will be the basis of the artistic exploration.
How do we approach the surveys?
The artistic work has its foundation on the practice The Urge of Being and the training programs Beyond the narrative of the five senses and PULSE developed by Daniela Marcozzi along many years of artistic career.
In The Urge of Being, urge is understood as the force that places the artist in a state of off-balance, a creative condition that opens access to the impulsive sphere of our energy. In this state, the performer does not represent emotions but generates them as energetic processes, working from the inside out and from the outside in.
Expression is understood as EX-press = press-out, the act of manifesting one’s impulses; Embodiment as EM-bodiment = press-in, the act of imprinting external reality within the body. This continuous give-and-take process establishes a living dialogue between body, voice, and space. The Urge of Being draws inspiration from the work of J. Grotowski as well as from the artistic research and practices developed by Daniela Marcozzi over many years of creative investigation.
Beyond the narrative of the five senses and PULSE are training programs inspired by natural forces, the senses of other animals, the more-than-human forces, and human perception.
How can we perceive beyond the five traditional senses?
Participants are invited to explore human perception as fluid, poetic, and ecological, a as living network that connects body, environment, and imagination. The five senses are often described as windows through which information enters from the outside world and is processed by the body. While this model is not incorrect, it may be limiting. We don’t just receive the world, we exist within it, through it.
Considering that we, humans, are maintained alive by the connections that we have constantly with the environment, why don’t we have a sense for this interconnection and interdependence? Or why don’t why perceive, on a conscious, level, that our existence is dependent on the other living and not living creatures in the ecosystem?
We are not separate from our environment but are part of an energetic web we rarely perceive in its richness.
What if these sensations could be embodied, named, and given a performative shape?
In this work, perception is not limited to a system of reception, it is a process of co-existence.
The human body is not separate from its surroundings but part of a continuous, vibrating field of energy and information. We’ll explore subtle modes of sensing, non-verbal perception, and energetic states of the body; the body is approached as a sensitive entity, capable of perceiving, relating, and creating beyond the habitual sensory understanding of the five senses.
The third phase of the project is dedicated to embodying the replies of the surveys. These responses will be first clustered, for example according to: recurrence of urges, part of the body involved in the perception of the urge, textual/poetical component of the surveys, images and metaphor used in the survey to describe the urge, etc, and subsequently embodied and performed.
Different exercises and improvisation patterns will be proposed to work with these aspects of the surveys. These practices are part of the methodology On Urgency.
On Sunday we’ll step out of the studio to meet in a location in Berlin. We’ll choose at least two locations, one more urban and one more naturalistic to carry out our site-specific explorations. This phase is not a public performance, even if it might look like it from an outsider point of view! We’ll instead keep doing our practices in dialogue with the Berlin locations to embody how it feels to relate our artistic processes to the actual city locations.
What happens when we export our creative processes out of the studio?
When we embody the words of people living in Berlin, in the locations of Berlin itself!?
The outdoor session on Sunday will finish with a feedback session.
Where
Theaterhaus Berlin Mitte (on Thursday, Friday and Saturday) & site-specific research and practice in different urban and more naturalistic sites of Berlin (on Sunday).
Schedule
8-11.10.2026
Thursday, October 8, 17:00–20:00
Friday, October 9, 17:00–20:00
Saturday, October 10, 11:00–20:00 (with lunch break)
Sunday, October 11, 11:00–16:00 –> out in the city! Site-specific expedition in two locations in and around Berlin.
Price
Early Bird: 180 € (payment by August 20th)
Standard: 250 €
Supporter / Solidarity: 280 €
1 soli-spot: 140 €
Number of participants
Between 8 and 16