Holding the Dilemma, Sitting with the Question
2025 – ongoing

With the support of: Hosting Lands, Sumac Space, Culture Moves Europe fund

Holding the Dilemma, Sitting with the Question is a participatory installation that creates a collective space for reflecting on the complexities of political agency. While agency is often described in terms of clarity, empowerment, or decisive action, our lived experiences suggest otherwise. In reality, agency frequently emerges in less visible forms: hesitation, compromise, restraint, or even the recognition of limits. This work foregrounds those quieter, more ambivalent dimensions of choice, inviting participants to pause within dilemmas rather than resolve them, and to dwell in the uncertainty of not having a clear path forward.

Through facilitated activity, performative reading, and shared reflection, participants are invited to examine how agency manifests amid conflicting roles, responsibilities, and systemic pressures. The project does not seek to produce solutions but instead cultivates a space for critical, embodied thinking about how we act—or refrain from acting—under constraint. Holding the Dilemma, Sitting with the Question is part of the ongoing artistic research An Experiment on Agency (2021–).

— Sumac Space, Galerie AC. Art & Dialogue, Berlin, DE, 2025

— Astrid Noacks Atelier, Copenhagen, DK, 2025