Social Muscle Club

Social Muscle Club is a group of international artists who have been working together in different forms since 2012 to change our usual habits of thinking and doing and ‘train the social muscle’. The club was founded for everyone in the global village seeking to support each other in a society in which one often feels alone. The club began in a Berlin living room and was inspired by a documentary about a workers club in Sheffield, English which promised ‘entertainment and mutual support’. (‘Menschen von Sheffield’, von Peter Nestler). As a contrast to stress and pressure to a capitalistic, competitive working world, the club offers a self-organised social net. The Berlin founders of Social Muscle Club experienced personally the psychological effects of pressure to succeed, earn money, and fit in society. So they began practicing giving and receiving with friends and colleagues in their living room, in order to support each other. Since 2012 the club has grown exponentially and has reached people internationally in cities such as Chicago, Vienna, Johannesburg, Gold Coast Australia, and Marseille. The club integrates people from different social backgrounds as well as people who normally don’t visit or participate in the theatre scene, out of which a growing international network of solidarity has been established.

SMC was founded by Till Rothmund and Jill Emerson in their living room in 2012. Joined by Luca Bentley, Santiago Blaum, Rodrigo Zorzanelli, Nir de Volff, Tatiana Heumann, Stefan Oppenländer, Margrét Sara Guðjónsdóttir, Johanna Kolberg, Grayson Millwood, Rain Rose, Tatiana Saphir, Christine Schmocker, Shlomi Moto Wagner, The Farm, Laia Fabre, Thomas Kasebacher, Michael Kubitscheck, Juli Reinartz, Jeremy Wade, Steve Heather, Knut Berger, Diane Busittil, Benedikt Wyss, Jen Bell, Agathe Chion, Ronald Berger, Anna deCarlo, Claudia Basrawi, Tayfun Schulzke, Eva Sophie Philipps, Rainer von Dziegielewski, Judith Strössenreuter, Rahel Savoldelli, Andreas Blassmann, Anke Licht, Sascia Bailer, Carola Lehmann, Simon Kanzler, Liz Rosenfeld, Claus Erbskorn, Tim Habeger, Ruth Nelson, Micah Bezold, Marwan Kamel, Shelby Hofer, Tiana Hemlock, För Künkel, Maria Gamsjager, Pictoplasma, Emma Newborn, Cheers for Fears, Aimee McCoy, City of Djinn, Celia Peters, Medhat Aldaabal, Mouafak Aloabal, Cat Heinen, and many more lovely people.

‘Social Muscle Club (SMC) is hard to describe. The international performance art project is all abouHet giving and taking. Wishes and gifts are formulated on paper slips and negotiated throughout the evening – unconditionally, SMC is not a barter shop. If a wish or a gift is not fulfilled, there is at least a discussion to win. And sure enough, a singular amusement. A mixture of happening, celebration and social sculpture, Social Muscle Club is the place where art and anti-art conspire with immersive theatre while it‘s all about two simple questions: What can you give? What do you want? SMC trains your interpersonal strength through a simple game based on the fact that every human being wants something and has something to give.Regardless of the city in which a Social Muscle Club is located, the curators, organised in an international core group, stick to a basic structure, a sequence of elements around an ever same wish and gift-game. While this structure always remains unchanged, the contents – a site-specific performance program with a lot of improvisation and most importantly, an open stage – differ widely. An evening at the SMC is a collective adventure that is – in its intimate setting – to be experienced and interpreted individually by each participant. Therefore, the text at hand is bound to the author and cannot reflect any collective opinion.The beguiling thing about SMC is its effortlessness. Every cramped person who feels socially incompatible somehow manages to get involved in the game and gain something from it. Due to this low-threshold networking potential, SMC has all it takes to become a hit of the scene. To prevent this, the club continuously moves out of ancestral territories and integrates into the city. Because the gathering lives from its heterogeneity, the most unexpected encounters are possible. SMC left theatres and art spaces and entered new spheres. Thus, the club always has to take new forms in order to reach new audiences. SMC doesn‘t make itself comfortable just anywhere but ventures out into new social contexts – into fitness centres, old people‘s homes, luxury hotels, churches or refugee homes. SMC is not a party – as pictures of one evening might suggest. It is an intensive and sometimes strenuous artistic-social project with an elaborately designed framework….
The well-known Swiss political publicist Daniel Binswanger described the relevance of SMC as follows: „The Social Muscle Club has met with an enormous response. The concept is far away from the classical ideas of mediation. The purpose is to intensify the interaction itself. The Social Muscle Club is consistently oriented towards the goal of participation, which is becoming a new urgency everywhere, also in the classical institutions. The playful removal of inhibition thresholds has the effect that any participants, without knowing each other, begin to give each other presents.”
‘The People’s Smart Sculpture’ Best Practice Study https://www.mn.uio.no/ifi/personer/vit/almira/ps2_bestpracticestudy.pdf