visions: Acupuncture Clinic

Turning the attention towards interior space and our bodies’ permeabilities, the clinic is an offering that interprets the internal activities of our individual bodies as a kind of live performance. The clinic invited several healers with community-based work in Berlin to bring their practices into the heart of the Gropius Bau.

visions is a programme of live performance that seeks to encourage an embodied approach to engaging with live work and choreography where all bodies present are implicated and senses beyond visual sight are activated. It is an invitation to be with what is conjured, stirred up and rising to the surface of each of our particular bodies, in relation and response to the environment. As such, each offering is somehow immersive. All events are free to attend and happen during regular opening hours of the Gropius Bau.

Community acupuncture in the West has taken many forms over the years. Despite its standardisation and legitimisation, acupuncture is kept in the margins of Western societies. By bringing acupuncture into the centre of the Gropius Bau, SERAFINE1369 reflects on what care work is and whose hands care, repair and healing is in.

The scenography, designed by Soft Tissue Studio, subtly morphs with each intervention.

Booking an appointment:
Bookings open at 10:00 on 5 October 2022. The appointments will take place between 11:00–17:00. Bookings can be made in person at the acupuncture clinic reception in the Gropius Bau atrium or by phone on 0049 (0) 16098063312 between 5–10 October from 10:00–17:00. NADA treatments are also available for booking at the clinic. They involve the gentle placement of up to five small needles into specific points on the outer part of each ear.

What to wear:
Please wear loose fitting clothing to your appointment so that your limbs may be easily accessible and lying down can be comfortable. You will not have to fully undress.

Arriving for your appointment:
Please arrive at the acupuncture clinic reception in the Gropius Bau atrium at least 15 minutes before your appointment. You will be given a corresponding treatment contract to complete and shown to the waiting area.

During the appointment:
Your practitioner will greet you in the waiting area and take you to the consultation space. Here you can briefly discuss your needs and the practitioner will carry out a diagnosis in line with Traditional Chinese Medicine. This involves listening to your pulse by making contact with your wrist and asking you to stick out your tongue to have a look at it. They may also ask you questions about your body, emotions, medical history and lifestyle. Any information you share will be treated confidentially. Then you will be taken to a massage bed in the Gropius Bau atrium where you will be invited to lie down. You will have to roll up your sleeves or trousers and remove your shoes and socks. The acupuncturist will then insert thin, sterile, single use needles through the skin at specific points on the body in accordance with the meridians (lines or pathways of energy that traverse our bodies). The practitioner chooses these points based on what will offer the most effective treatment for you. Acupuncture needles can be inserted at different points on the body depending on the condition and the formula for treatment. You can expect to receive needles in your feet, hands and limbs. Any needles on other parts of the body will be given only after asking for your explicit consent by the practitioner.

Important information about the clinic:
The atrium is open to the public during clinic hours and there will be people moving through the space who have not come for acupuncture. The appointments themselves will be behind a curtain, but the waiting area is in the open. All areas of the clinic will be partly visible, including from the balconies of the Gropius Bau. For this reason, we request wearing clothes that are loose-fitting so that undressing is not needed.

This is a new and unconventional setting for a community acupuncture clinic. The Gropius Bau is open to the public and there are exhibitions on simultaneously. For this reason the clinic would like to share a few points of attention as a way to nurture this space for healing in this week:

• Please be mindful that some people are receiving or have just received treatment.
• Please refrain from having long phone conversations in the atrium.
• Please be aware of personal space. This includes how long you look at someone for.
• Please be respectful to our acupuncturists. Any discriminatory treatment will result in a refusal to follow through with treatment.
• Please refrain from taking photographs of the clinic and allow the practitioners and people receiving treatment the privacy they deserve.
• Please take time to reflect on your own healing and if and how collective spaces can support you in it.