Parel
Document 1.0
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I want to build an infrastructure for lifelong artistic practice.
To build a context for the content.
To create an infrastructure for the content.
My body is a vehicle that uses this infrastructure.
I have always worked on the concepts and stories of my work.
But I have never stood still by ‘how’ to bring this across.
That is what I am going to do now.
A conversation
or a
dialogue?
After the evaluation, I wanted to use walking as a tool to care for myself.
I continued from the Hunger Walk that I developed together with Naomi for the Nightwalk of Expodium. Here you can read everything about the score and how that developed. I did three active walks and had one reflective conversation about the walk.
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A friend of mine introduced me to the book: Adrienne Maree Brown's 'Holding Change'. This book started to give me a tool for how to look at my work. While thinking on how to continue my practice in the format of the Hunger walks, I developed an eagle-eye perspective to my artistic practice. It made me realize I did not think about 'how' to bring across what I wish to say. How I bring along my audience/ participants into my stories?
In Christina's class, we spoke about 'dialogue'. This class conversation made me long to have a dialogue, it made me wonder how often I thought I was conversing in the hopes of a dialogue, but it was merely a monologue.
This made me realize that sometimes there needs to be time to respond, for reacting, time. I decided to not enforce a continuation of my work, I am now waiting for a response from my work, so that we can have a dialogue. In the meantime I want to use my newly acquired knowledge from Adrienne as a tool of observation.
In Christina's class, we had to write a letter to our work, and the work had to write a letter back.
This writing has made me realize I always placed my thoughts and answers on my work.
I am waiting for my work to come and talk to me.
How are you doing work?
I have never asked how you were.
I have realized I have taken you for granted.
But things are not too late, I can feel you are patient.
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So now I have to wait for you to come to me,
So in the meantime, I analyze and observe.
Are you in there work?
In a class conversation,
everyone shared where their work was.
For me it turned out that it was in my belly.
Dung's written feedback of my evaluation
Hi Parel, sorry for keeping it this long. Hope you enjoy it :)
I'm a slow typer but I hope those lines that I could capture might help :)
Parel presentation:
Hi everyone. Checking there’s no 2nd year
Conversation of myself and with others
Business card
Switch : food to people
Conversation, talking, sharing
Change making moment: graduation : start taking of myself
Resulting in not eating, sick
Sometimes you see a book in there
What is more important and what isn’t
We can learn from each other from HOW YOU R TAKING CARE OF YOURSELF
Last week I join this walk (in Rotterdam), mi=y mind was completely somewhere else
Walking is the most efficient thing you can do
I hope you can walk with me to the outside
My friend, mushroom
I eat my surroundings
Food still really related to me
Productivity is sometimes very …
Apple pie walk
My heart always goes to the food
This is the moment to reflecting
Thank you for walking with me
Sean
Esther: oxygen mask
Pan: ruin mental health because not eat well
Looking forward to recipe walk
Fatemeh: there’s a purpose about that, not just conversations
What you do when it from journal
Annette: intense conversations, there were no spaces in between. It was so beautiful, the document is rich
Dialog with your own work
Truck pass by
Nâomi, how spaces , relationships within the walk.
Tiong, truck, tree, provide different data, alot to explore.
Radio (possibility)
Ester: You ask very good questions all the time. Very intelligent,
Natsumi walk 7 hours,
P:I cannot live without others, it doesn't make sense to do something I do not enjoy?
Hohn;
P I have a number. learn how to integrating into itt
Nuning, frame everything , sustenance: energy, concrete and abstract
It’s no longer something you can do alone or with others.
Manju: All these things have a rhythm. We also have a natural rhythm.
Best,
D
Cornalijn's
feedback on my document
1 / 10 words to describe my 0.5 document
Investigative, care, worry, fear, liefdevol, connection, history, hidden, body, honest, apology, ontkenning (ook in je eigen werk), environmentally aware
2 / Describe the text in words
Dit document gaat over de zoektocht of de reden van jouw ha ndelen, je duikt je eigen geschiedenis in. Je helpt anderen, je gaat op ontdekking waarom je vergeet om voor jezelf te zorgen en zoekt een weg om dit voor jezelf aan te passen. Het gaat over jou, hoe liefdevol jij naar mensen kijkt en hen wil begrijpen. Ik vraag me nu af hoe ik jou hier beter mee kan helpen. Jij probeert mij te doorgronden, laat ik hetzelfde doen bij jouw.
3 / Questions for me
Can you ever find a balance between taking of another person and taking care of yourself?
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How do you know if someone who offers you your care also needs your care, can the love you want to give to the other sometimes be too much?
Naomi's drawing reflections during evaluations 0.5
My feedback on Nadoe's document
1 / 10 words to describe my 0.5 document
experience, sound, ownership ,borders, silence, colonialism, neo liberalism, care, meditation, frequence
earth - soil, body - mind, (connection)
2 / Describe the text in words
The text is very caring and observant and gentle, it feels fragile but strong at the same time. It reminds me of the tide of winds, it can change in a lot of directions but it has a “reason” or it is part of something bigger
3 / Questions for Nadoe
If i close my ears, can you still touch me?
Does sound also need to land? or need to rest?
What does sound want to tell you?
'Holding Change' talks about the position of the facilitator. You can not be objective, you take your lived experience with you in your facilitating.
Brown, Adrienne Maree. Holding Change, The way of emergent Strategy facilitation and meditation. p. 39
My "eyes" determine my perspective and influence the kind of questions I asked.
I noticed that also in the questions that I asked Nadoe, this also happened with a lot of other classmates and the questions they asked
each other.
In a reaction to Cornalijn's feedback session Christina shared the following:
Christina did a dance class:
"We had to invent some movements, without speaking. These movements were about giving and receiving
With the gestures of the body with the postures of the body.
To give and to receive.
You can experiment with your body and explore. Christina found gestures for giving.
But for the receiving, she was stuck.
She tried to look at the people around her dancing, to steal some ideas/ get inspiration.
The teacher was next to her.
The teacher responded that it is one movement, giving and receiving.
You can't only give or receive."
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After this story I kept visualizing a wave.
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Can I be(come) a fountain?
Water flows all the time into the cup, I need to switch cups and spread.
And I have to make sure that this water is arriving...
Then we pass the cups on to each other.
That is how it can be one movement.
So perhaps when I give, it will pass on. Instead of a transaction.
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By doing this you become a very important hub, as a mediator of this.
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This is where the social and the self come together, and can converse with each other. It is not either the social or the self.
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I have realized that in relations it is not you give 30 and I give 70.
But we both give 100, whatever this is for us at the moment.
It might only be 30 that we can give, but it will be our 100.
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It is not something that can be measured like millilitres or centilitres.
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If you see people who can give the love they are like a fountain,
they don't dry out. They have access to a source that fuels them.
or should I even want to be a fountain?
During Lab days Annette explained to me how to breath.
This has been a life changing experience. Breathing is the motor of our body
Adrienne Maree Brown writes about how breathing can help in creating a sense of togetherness in spaces.
"breathing is a shared resource."
Brown, Adrienne Maree. Holding Change, The way of emergent Strategy facilitation and meditation. p. 39
In Okyu's presentation, she took us in a form of guided meditation, to create a collective flow of energy. The book talks about how shared breathing can be a really good way to activate the space and come together. Oyku's invitation felt like a good example of this collective breathing. I would like to try collective breathing as well in my faciltiation.
For the first time in my life
I hear silence
when I look at the trees.
Reflection
Falke lesson
The day consisted of several organized events. Organizing events is a form of my practice. So I focused on this reflection on facilitation. To be able to participate and be on the receiving end is always a very informative experience. Learning from others is a very generous moment for me.
During the day I was reading Adrienne Maree Brown Holding Change. Having the newly found knowledge from this book was very eye-opening. I get to relook at both my moments and others in their sharing.
In the observation of today, I kept this knowledge in the back of my mind.
In the morning there was an interactive performance about silence.
Here, Hohn, Sean and Athina performed active roles of leadership. Holding Change introduces the role of the facilitator as someone who is not above the group. The facilitator can not be an objective outsider, it should be kept in mind that a facilitator also is a person with lived experience. But they can help guide the events with their experience as facilitators.
Holding Change shares how you should never cut the time short. Instead, use time as an element on your side. Use it as a moment to create space for reflection. What do we still need? Do we need to continue this session another day? Which elements should we work out?
One element in the book Is about always asking for consent, this also returned to Cornalijn's invitation. Where she recorded the screen before checking with everyone how they were feeling about this. Although very quickly, a collective agreement came.
In a facilitation moment, it is good to decide collectively, and not desperately hold on to a script, if the moment asks for something different. After Savvas had his guided sleep moment, he wanted to turn on the lights. Instead of holding to his script, he asked the group what they wanted. The collective decision was to keep the lights off. By keeping it dark, Savvas created a safe atmosphere to share thoughts.
Brown shared in the book how by observing ‘how’ the goals or experiences have been achieved. Instead of very much focusing on what has happened or how far it has gotten. By focusing on the ‘how’, this can also be reproduced another time.
There are more moments like these for me to analyze. But even more, I can not wait to keep facilitating while applying and sharing this newfound knowledge.
Tiong
Is the desire to connect with and care for others clouded by a harmful sense of ego?
Me
What kind of facilitator do I want to be?
Friso
How do you know the work wants to come to you?
'Making a salad'
For the Lab days, I organized 'Making a salad'.
Making a salad is a collective workshop. I gave this workshop as part of the Lab days. Based on Alison Knowles's work 'Make a salad' (1962).
It was such a fun and energizing experience, it raised for good conversations and an overload of salad. In the moment Lab days, it felt natural and without too much obligation. I wonder how the cancelling of the other events influenced the experience. Being a first-time experience for almost everyone made it very exciting and created a fresh energy.
'Making a fruit salad'
For the Open day, I organized 'Making a fruit salad'.
As an informal moment of coming together and for the visitors to have a healthy snack, but also to have a moment of asking questions.
In the end, three guests joined, and all three were very enthusiastic. But this experience has taught me that it should not be placed as an extra event. Although it raised interesting questions to start a conversation about what MAFA is about, such as 'Is this art or what is this? What are you doing here?'
It felt like the activity was a distraction and a bit of an overkill on a day when so much was happening. So next time I would make the salad as a main activity or a preparation for lunch. The visitors of the open day had a clear focused idea of what they wanted to get out of the day.
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Falke
personal meeting notes
Wat betekent het om te faciliteren en observeren?
Hoe kan ik daar body aan geven?
Weergave van het leren?
Hoe kan ik dit leren weergeven en een stem ontwikkelen?
Waar breng je de aandacht naar toe?
Hoe faciliteer je een situatie waarin je hebt geleerd?
Het aandacht geven aan het leer processen.
Educatie processen. Waarom schoonmaken een performance is en performatief. Labour.
Productief/ reproductief/ performance.
Wat bedoel ik echt?
Andere vorm van waarden.
`Collectieve kunstprocessen. Waarmee is werk binnen de kunst.. en kan het als werk gezien worden?
Waarom gebeurd het? Context en frame?
Buiten instituut. Bepaalde waardes, het is een institutionele kunst.
Kunst abolition.
"Ik moet resultaat"
verbaal worden en een positie innemen.
self-directed. Conversatie, werk.
Weet waar je aandacht aan wil geven.
Collectie van responses.
- begin een gesprek met Annette (interview?), ze weet het meest over dit onderwerp.
ontleren- gefaciliteerd worden.
gatekeepers.
Er is niet 1 vorm van goed faciliteren.
Wat werkt voor mij?
Hoe kan je verschillende lagen inbrengen?
(Hoe ga je om met neur-diversiteit?)
Je maakt je eigen regels.
Hoe faciliteer ik naar wat een groep wilt?
De positie van facilitator in groep.
Transparantie, waarom is de groep daar?
maker versus faciliteren. Hoe blijf ik beide.
Faciliteren = een baan
Kan ik iemand anders doel faciliteren?
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I will use my observations of my surroundings as a new format of work. While waiting for my work to come to me.
The invader is not only the human colonizer but also all of its traces in surroundings such as the exterior of this colonial force, such as exotic plants.
- Nuning's class, after reading 'Women of the forest'
Maria shared this quote from Jean-Luc Godard:
"Don't make political art, but make art politically"
Substicence: levensonderhoud
the world is our household.
Subsistence is the sum total of everything that humans need to survive: food and drink, protection from cold and heat, caring and company. Everyone taking care of the world.
Creating infrastructure for the context, also means a physical context.
A Pattern Language talks about the surrounding, with both the building and it's user: the human.
How to create a space that maintains attention, feels comfortable, space for conversation.
Adrienne Maree Brown taught me that I should not try to make a safe space, you can not let everyone feel safe. We can make a space where we learn how to deal with our dis-comfort.
Brown, Adrienne Maree. Holding Change, The way of emergent Strategy facilitation and meditation. p. 80
Fred Morton and Stefano Harney write in the 'we' as a form of invitation.
The image on the left shows options that we thought of during a collective brainstorm in Nuning's class to come up with a new solution against 'debt' and 'credit' in our 'study'. Study being another form resistance or revolution.
Strike and taking a rest was a possible format we thought of to create a halt to the system.
Stefano Harney & Fred Moten, "Undercommons", chapter 5 "Debt and Study
I am now on a little break, a pause, a strike, a fast, a hiatus of creating (experiences).
So that once my work wants to return, we can start a dialogue.
In the meantime, I wish to keep observing.
I am very grateful for the invitations and generosity of others so that I can participate in events.
I can embody these experiences and pass on newly gained knowledge.
This fasting gives me the space and time to chew, reflect and digest.
