there is nothing like 'things': everything is connected
gathering knowledge
what do we consider knowledge?
archiving
learning with objects
“Quantum mechanics extends this relativity in a radical way: all variable aspects of an object exist only in relation to other objects. It is only in interactions that nature draws the world.”
-Carlo Rovelli
objects carrying meaning
is there such thing as functionalist pedagogy?
how can we measure or document this?
the value of objects
school furniture
why do we document and share findings?
touch and tactility
teaching through material
meaning making
encyclopedia
tacit knowledge
belonging together
what is meaningful?
form follows function
to whom?
(students) making a zine
all things are impermanent
all things are imperfect
all things are incomplete
-wabi sabi values
things that fit
symbiosis?
who decides?
hands doing things
meaningful?
gathering knowledge
‘Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.’
-William Morris
the book as a space-time sequence
how to share? what is legible?
to whom should it be legible?
situated knowledge
in what speed should we gather?
who decides?
to care for
there is no 'other'
to care about
'show rather than tell'
caring by/for nature
what does it mean to care?
to see is to care?
'the objective world is, it does not happen. only to the gaze of my consciousness, crawling along the lifeline of my body, does a section of this world come to life as a fleeting image in space which continuously changes in time.'
-herman weyl
tracing
project: taskforce fashion
to try to understand is to care?
care = value
to learn is to care?
‘It is possible, then, that one crucial ingredient in the shift from space to place is writing - a process of recollection, distillation, and communication - which somehow, in retrospect, transforms space into place, or at least completes or solidifies that transformation. In other words it may be the stories we create that enable the transformation of space into place, rather than simply our experience. As Doreen Massey suggests, places are collections of stories (2005: 130), and one way of telling those stories is by writing them down.’
mending (the social fabric)
to care is to be open to learn?
care = value
awareness of environment
how can this collective activity work as a catalyst to think about our personal lives and relationships?
talking about our values using 'mending' as a vehicle of thought/talk
to value, despite differences,
is to care?
Memory is a physical construction. While memory is normally associated with the cognitive functions of the brain, I argue that memory’s connection to time imposes its existence onto physical space as much as it does onto cognitive space. I am always fascinated by the idea that the starlight we see today is in fact old light cast out from a time existing simultaneously in the past, present, and future. The star’s light began in its present, a past to us when we see it in our present, which is the star’s future.
-Jake Skeets
to care with
“Today, whenever I see sunlight shine through lenses or glass, I am reminded of that moment in that classroom when I learned that, because sunlight takes 8 minutes and 20 seconds to reach the earth, the things we see are in some way a part of the past. Pasts, presents, and futures exist simultaneously.”
-Jake Skeets
minimal use of language to communicate?
quilting - women and domestic art
the weight of words
fishermen knits - narrative patterns
showing connection to place
to care with
‘Barbara Adam draws attention to how time is socially organized so that the ‘when, how often, how long, in what order and at what ‘speed’ are governed by implicit, embedded ‘norms, habits and conventions’ about temporality (1955: 66). These cultural norms shape spatio-temporal conformity and consistency, soliciting the development of, often unreflective, everyday, weekly and annual routines, life-cycle and life stage conventions, as well as attitudes towards the past and future. At present, such doxic assumptions are being challenged, shaken up by the advent of accelerating climate and environmental change, inspiring a reconfiguring of the temporal perspectives through which humans imagine the past, present and future, and consider time from divergent angles and at different scales.’
past present future
‘Engaging with traditional craft and local materials engenders a deeper sense of place and heritage. Often our towns and cities are where and how they are because of craft based industries using local resources. Engaging directly with materials can help rebuild connections to the natural world and challenge our loss of affinity to nature, what writer Richard Louv calls nature deficit disorder.’
the order of things
embroidery (colonization?)
deep time
found within every'thing' we encounter?
to become aware of your place
time travel through memories
'The power of the word which makes the existence of the thing appear and disappear by the simple declaration of it's name'
Jaques Derrida, Mallarme 1974
hands doing things
to create a sense of place
'The rhythm of developing a physical skill can embody ritual; gestures between people can embody the informal social triangle; using minimum force can embody response to those who resist or differ.'
-Richard Sennett
how to become aware of relationships?
the networks and their scales?
‘It is such a foundational act, to give name to. And with names, often, they are — call them portals to love and care; we rarely care for what we cannot name.‘
'through making we make ourselves'
what senses do we use?
‘In a world dominated by mass production and consumption, craft engages us directly with material, form and function. Wide acquisition of haptic skills and an understanding and appreciation of materials helps challenge over-consumption as the experience of making a wooden box or a clay pot awakens the sense of an object’s value.’
the art of instruction
‘How learning a word sharpens the eye and changes the vision’
(poetic/ critical nature)
'in relation to'
fluxus inspiration
interactions
a sense of place: belonging
to live with
processes
to learn with
the personal is political
open air schools
project: rondje stadionpark
systems thinking?
collectively walking a not-yet-existing path to create meaning
alternative learning spaces?
every space offers a space to learn
'the world is made of stories, not of atoms'
gathering situated and embodied knowledge through walking and conversing
As teachers we try to participate in the process of empowering people to be the artists they are. […] As artists we work every day. We make our own lives every day; we care for our family every day. It is hard daily work, this creative process. But it is also greater than personal. We are asked to care for others as well – helping them to create their lives as we were helped.
– Corita Kent
‘Engaging with traditional craft and local materials engenders a deeper sense of place and heritage. Often our towns and cities are where and how they are because of craft based industries using local resources. Engaging directly with materials can help rebuild connections to the natural world and challenge our loss of affinity to nature, what writer Richard Louv calls nature deficit disorder.’
'The atoms of our body, as well, flow in and away from us. We, like waves and like all objects, are a flux of events; we are processes, for a brief time monotonous'
-Carlo Rovelli
the path is made by walking
countermapping
“We are made up of the same atoms and the same light signals as are exchanged between pine trees in the mountains and stars in the galaxies.”
-Carlo Rovelli
‘To participate is not to walk into but to walk with - where ‘with’ implies not a face-to-face confrontation, but heading the same way, sharing the same vistas, and perhaps retreating from the same treats behind. It is the physical attitude of bodies and their spatial arrangement that suggests something of their relational attitude. Walking alongside becomes a means to negotiate a flow - of conversation, of movement. Moreover, it becomes symbolic of an ideal type of relation, where moving together, shoulder-to-shoulder, conveys the potential for mutuality, parity or equality.’
‘Walking is a psychological way to connect one’s self or community to site, land, city and neighbourhood. And it’s a way to connect to one another.’
slow down
‘If we wish to notice more, it is a good idea to slow down; and noticing more will itself tend to make you slow down. This is true whatever you focus on.’
'people who do not observe, can not converse'
notice more
"How to see? Where to see from? What limits to vision? What to see for? Whom to see with? Who gets to have more than one point of view? Who gets blinded? Who wears blinders? Who interprets the visual field? What other sensory powers do we wish to cultivate besides vision?" (587)
Haraway, Donna. (1988). "Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective." Feminist Studies 14, 3: 575-599
‘Better perceiving is the necessary starting point to different ways, to creative changes in personal and collective decision making and lifestyles.’
how can this collective activity work as a catalyst to think about our personal lives and relationships?
talking about our sense of place using 'walking' as a vehicle of thought/talk
project: mending
collaboration with sanne vaassen
using yarn dyed with local plants
‘If we wish to notice more, it is a good idea to slow down; and noticing more will itself tend to make you slow down. This is true whatever you focus on.’
embodied knowledge
‘Attention without feeling, I began to learn,
is only a report. An openness — an empathy —
was necessary if the attention was to matter.’
to walk with
learning with/from the more-than-human
'restoring to presence'
systems thinking?
what do you want to research?
“We need to produce situations in which children learn by themselves, in which children can take advantage of their own knowledge and resources… We need to define the role of the adult, not as a transmitter, but as a creator of relationships—relationships not only between people but also between things, between thoughts, with the environment.”
-Loris Mallaguzzi (Reggio Emilia)
what tools do you need?
Progress means simplifying, not complicating
how do you share your findings?
project: dandelion
'If education is about caring for the world we live in, and for its multiple human and non-human inhabitants, then it is not so much about restoring them to presence, so that we can attend and respond to what they have to say'
-Tim Ingold
october, 2020
laying on my back in a forest, in silence, i stared up at the tree tops. holding my hand in the air, i noticed how the lines on my palm resemble the network of the branches above.
'My educational method offers to its pupils from from the beginning the opportunity to collect their own experiences from things themselves, to look with their own eyes and to learn to know by their own experiments, things and the relations of things to each other, and also the real life of the world of humanity.' -Froebel
to live with
gathering knowledge
to learn with
sharing your findings
can we do this collectively?
inspiration: bruno munari
researching
what is my role/position/aim?
and how do i carry that role?
'the laws of nature are also the laws of education' -froebel
how can this collective activity work as a catalyst to think about our personal lives and relationships?
talking about our sense of place using 'rooting' as a vehicle of thought/talk
making aware of relationships?
‘A connection with nature allows us to see the roots that sustain and explain everything around us.’
facilitating the process of becoming aware?
‘Understanding without imagination is doctrine without growth. And without growth, what chance is there to engage the complexity that bounds us?’
facilitating the possibility of becoming aware?
listening, caring, giving space to grow?
guiding by asking questions?
'relationship is the foundation of dialogue'
showing not telling?
'setting the scene'
the role of instruction
'telling the bees'
'Everything that is in the heavens, on earth, and under the earth is penetrated with connectedness, penetrated with relatedness' -Hildegard von Bingen
look into other myths and rituals
'We shall awaken from our dullness and rise vigorously toward justice. If we fall in love with creation deeper and deeper, we will respond to its endangerment with passion.' -Hildegard von Bingen
'you can't kill a weed'
-grandma, dealing with a covid-19 infection (aged 86)
hildegard von bingen
the teacher - the gardener:
why am i reading about american indigenous knowledge, researching and mapping neighbourhoods, meeting people, when i don't even know my own grandmother and heritage that well?
hildegard von bingen has been considered by many in europe to be the founder of scientific natural history in germany
tending to, facilitating the optimal conditions for growth
project: gardening
what is my 'indigenous knowledge'?
grandma's garden, herbal cures, hunting trips, the smelly kombucha in the closet, fermenting and perserving food that we couldn't eat or exchange
gardening workshops in collaboration with centre for nature and environment centre
in schiedam 2021
week 13: soil and worms
week 16: seeding
week 20: traveling seeds
week 23: (on)kruid / weeds?
week 26: bees
week 36: from the allotment
week 40: harvest festival
" The garden of [ Froebel's ] Kindergarten was not only a symbol, it was an essential means for the physical, intellectual, social, and emotional development of the child. Not only were there flowerbeds, heb-beds, vegetable patches, fruit trees and bushes which were planted and tended by all, but each child had his own little plot of land for which he/she was responsible. To learn from the environment around the school was important, yet it was equally important to teach children to care for this environment". A Child's Work By:Joachim Liebschner, pg. 39.
'Froebel's gardens included many lessons in them. The children observed the plants, the wild & domestic animals that were in the garden. They dug the earth, they sowed, watered, weeded, cared, and reaped their reward. The garden was tied to the kitchen, with the harvested goods included in the daily meal or in an Occupation. The lessons also included art, botany, farming, forestry, geography, geology, history, mathematics, science, stories and zoology.' -Froebel Today
strategies for conservation in a post-colonial era?
archiving
anna atkins
anna atkins is possibly the very first woman photographer and almost certainly the first person to publish a book with photographic illustrations
'reclaiming our food is reclaiming much more than our food. It’s reclaiming this huge set of relationships that ultimately connect us to the land and to the biological web that we are part of.'
-sandor katz
natuur-orde
'in the cultivation of microorganisms on our food—which is what we’re doing in fermentation—we use the same word, “culture,” to describe the community of bacteria that turn milk into yogurt that we use to describe language, belief systems and the totality of what we’re trying to pass down generation to generation.'
-sandor katz
'In our human societies, this idea of protecting the purity of our society against the contamination of outside ideas is, well, it’s been weaponized really. The way people project fear of the “other” has been such a theme throughout human history. With all these metaphors that we’re picking up from fermentation, we can look and see how they have been applied in our society and our culture and our politics.'
-sandor katz
learning with/from the more-than-human
herrad von landsberg
project: baking bread (online)
hortus deliciarum is the first encyclopedia that was evidently written by a woman
herman bread?
making a sourdough starter
learning about bacteria
how can this collective activity work as a catalyst to think about our personal lives and relationships?
talking about hygiene and the importance of bacteria, using 'sourdough' as a vehicle of thought/talk
a new ritual
how can this collective activity work as a catalyst to think about our personal lives and relationships?
talking about value, locality and the gift,
using 'weeds' as a vehicle of thought/talk
epistemology
the first crop
depot
project: (local) plant based design
rituals
collaboration with 'kore'
buying a flower at the shop and collecting local plants on the way there. creating a wearable object to celebrate the end of the school year with the neighbourhood
giving thanks to the land
light, warmth, crop and harvest
master's documentation
sonobox
why am i documenting?
who is my public?
what is legible?
gathering evidence?
to whom should it be?
for whom?
what does this mean for the form of my graduation documentation?