The act and art of kindness
The Act and Art of Kindness
Relational performance by Marie Hauge Jensen
Artist in recidency Godsbanen Århus/RAPP experiment
Artist in recidency Guacho Malmö/Sweden
In The Act and Art of Kindness, performance artist Marie Hauge Jensen engages in an intimate and large-scale social experiment: she calls 1,000 randomly selected people from the phonebook and invites them into a conversation about loneliness.
The act is simple. One person calls another. No agenda. Just the fragile opening:
"Hi… I’m calling as part of a performance project about loneliness. Would you be willing to speak with me for a few minutes?"
These conversations, unfold in real time - unexpected and vulnerable—some lasting seconds, others stretching into deep exchanges. Through each call, Marie enacts kindness as an artistic gesture: slow, listening, open-hearted, and courageous.
The Act and Art of Kindness is a performance that exists not on a stage, but in the private, ephemeral space of voice and attention. It is rooted in traditions of social practice art and relational aesthetics, where the artwork is not an object, but a moment of shared presence.
The work explores the radical potential of kindness in a time of disconnection. It invites reflection on how we speak with strangers, how we hold silence, and how a simple call can become an offering of recognition and care.
Some calls go unanswered. Some are hung up on. Some lead to laughter. Some to tears. But all are part of the same act: reaching out.
As a counterweight to isolation, The Act and Art of Kindness transforms the telephone—a symbol of distance—into an instrument of soft revolution.