Art & Co-Creation
special pans and artefacts with intentions
“Lightpan”
An artsy project rooting from an old vision of Birgit has been finally realized – out of a Pandrum. The idea was to surprise the player by transforming the soundimpuls into light, so the center lights up if you play the notes. This way something would get visible, that panplayers arround the world anyway know and feel: that the tiniest impuls is enough to bring the energy in motion. Most thankful to the dear PAN LAB neighbours Martin and Christian, who took their free time to transfer this vision into electronics.
The lightpans premiered at GRIASEICH 2019 – your astonished reactions have been really priceless 🙂
July 2019
“Men Healing Pan” (M.H.P.)
Nine selfresponsible, adult men have got the chance to rawtune one note for free on this collaborational project-shell at PAN LAB Vienna.
The idea occured out of many reasons: one of them beeing the suicid of a young man – and also friend of some of the participants. It seemed to Birgit that a lot of men suffering very bad depressions these days, even thinking of suicid, and some of them might need an outstanding impulse of creativity or maybe also challenge to interrupt or transform their depression. The call for the signup said basically that this project wants to help with transformational energy and encourage male healing power. The call alone was considered very inspiring and many positive and heartwarming responses came. A variety of men in very different personal ‘conditions’ participated, also some healers and musicians.
Still: The detailed stories behind each note and each man are only known by them alone. Anyway it seems the stories now resonate together in this instrument. The Pan can be seen as an artefact of male healing intentions.
In a timeframe of about 6 weeks participants came for individual sessions, got briefing and have been provided with all the tools. Each session took up to 4 hours, some visited also 2 times. The self-experience was clearly the main point. Everyone gave positive Feedback and of course also helped Birgit to learn how to become a better teacher. And also how to fix a note with trying to keep the work that has been done.
The shell was in the end overworked several times by Birgit and one time also by another wonderful female Handpan Maker (visiting from UK): Hannah Aiyana from “Atlas Handpans”. Hannah also thinks it is important to raise awareness of the topic of suicid. About M.H.P she says: “It is such a thoughtful an beautyful thing to do. It creates ritual and gives meaning to what we do and helps people to really transmute their pain into something more powerful.”
The pan got glued and finetuned by Birgit in summer – and maybe also will be finetuned more by other tuners in future. “M.H.P.” is a non-profit project and traveled to many seminars, “men healing circles” and workshops (f.e. in Sept 2019 to “Men in the woods”).
Feedback can be dropped/found here.
June/July 2019
Update: In November 2020 we donated this pan to Tschernobyl -Children project by Global 2000. The Pan will go to Ukraine.
“Griaspan”
This pioneer project was realized at Griaseich 2019 and maybe counts to be the first “Festival Handpan” ever made – collaboratively rawtuned on location and including Hammer-Rookies. Nine selfresponsible and adult people, who never touched a tuning hammer before, could take the chance to sign up for this tuning-challenge for free- directly at the gathering on day one, and then on the next day rawtune a note, in one hour each, as good as they can. Self experience clearly was the main idea, but anyway Birgit provided a short introduction (and also a poster with some basic tuning information was put on the wall of the improvised workshop). A new Tuningstation was extra made for this event.
Anyway- it was quite predictable that it is nearly impossible to produce harmonic sound for a rookie in such a short timeframe, but nevertheless some success was happening – and feedback was throughout very positive. In the evening some of the tuners met and together fixed what was fixable- many thanks to Nimo Handpans, Kristof Carniwal, Marek Lenart from Mishte, Karumi, Shellopan Matthieu und Hannah from Atlas Handpans to drop by and being part of the GRIASPAN! Final Rawtuning and several Finetuning-rounds have been accomplished by Birgit, who was challenging herself – with realizing this whole crazy project – to a complete new level. “Griaspan” is an Artefact of happyness and inspirational power of Co-Creation – and maybe also a playable instrument depending on how one looks at it- for Birgit anyway it feels like it is not finished yet…maybe it will always stay far away from perfect, but there is a state of completion on the horizon.
July 2019
Update (2020): Daniel Berger (Deepan) gave the Griaspan another round of finetuning. The pan was then gifted to “Griasdi” organizer Martin Zoepfl. With lots of gratitude for bringing so many people together at the past Griasdis. “Griasdi” is history now.