short presentation: your research at the moment chloe: out of touch in the last 3 weeks experiencing environment through the sense while before it was thorough the history and land property. HWD environment and memory: the feedback : exclusive practice if you are not part of the community so I decided to work on experience. Test in Monastery: slow walking + intuitive guiding. I walk ad go where my attention is caught: sense, smell, touch, ear not taste ;-) sit there and slow walk towards the next point that caught my attention. Like that I discovered the area for 6 days. Can I do that in my own environment? Tomorrow I present something in relation to that. Elke: Memory community and the senses: what's the inner logic? Chloe: I am searching for a way to connect communities to their environment and through each other. For me it was the first block and I see how there is a hierarchy. Elke yes but I was not there for 5 years so it's yes and no. Chloe: it's nice for you that though the memory you can access. I like both. Amy: the thing that you are making is an artwork or a tool, an experience? It's for someone I think. If you give it to me what do you say it was. Chloe: for tomorrow I am making an oracle that I build but it is not me and can inform everyone. You can come with a question. Sara: existing communities or building new? Chloe: existing communities, I am part of 5 communities and it's difficult. How can all these communities inform each other. How do you do it? How does it not become the work of the woman. I am looking for ways to do the community on a collective way. Befre I had the imression the women were building, supporting the community.
Amy: in my work usually I have a difference between workshop and artwork as in artwork is something more resolved and visula while workshop has more pedagogical intentions. I wanted to make more artworks in apass but here there is a stress in bringing someone into your research so it's ore the place to make workshop. The work I would like to make invoved traveling (cyprus, networks) and its not really possible now. Thinking about how to do workshop in a bad way. I became excited with the idea of sneaky pedagogy, deviant with the feeling of uncosncious and distress and not comprehension. But I am a bit conflicted. to go more mean is against my character but cold be good. For now more focused on communication tehcnology. I want to make apparent imerialism of technology, network. Elke: what is the deviant strategy? Amy: mimic the methods of corporates and government against you. I don't think it's working yet but I want to move towards that elke: awareness campaign sara: over-identification elke: use the strategy tat you oppose as the main support of the work. 90S strategy. Gothic band using nationalistic visuals and public extreme right and left. The yes man. Schligensief. Amy: i would hate to have my name there and get money... elke: “enjoy poverties” renzo martens. Controversy. All the time after he became activist and nobody ask him about anything else. He becomes the servant of the work and the cause... Amy: I like to add more humour. Sara: there are no men in these examples! Would have they been different? Why? More criticism? Elke: what they almost all do is serving on the figure of the white male dominant. Archetype fo the colonial, right wing, big shot. Maybe archetype of lady macbeth or iron lady (she spoke more and more like a man and wore a uniform). Chloe: are you interested in that? Amy usually i like to disappear and confuse my position. My mode of research it could contribute to some kind of detective character. Maybe a corporate bitch archetype? For ages I wanted to do this artwork on phones: phone calls manipulation, call fraud. It would be very cool to learn how to do that. I am more interested int he sneaky way. But I would need a character and a good facade. Elke: In “years after years” english trump, she hides behind common sense. Everybody likes her and this is a very good strategy. She makes the worst things sound plausible.
the two alone: overlap speak together amy: facilitation and how to arrange groups chloe: and yes about this persona because I have been doing this in a good way but by researching you can see that there are little things you can do thta become close to manipulation and I don't always know how to do that. Especially in this research environment is interesting to see xwhat it works. But maybe this person can be a barrier. About schligensief, I don't want my name on this. If you have a persona can be far away from yourself you can protect yourself... amy: the persona does certain things. Elke: it's interesting when your persona still links to a part of you. Chloe: thinking about nathaniel, the dying ritual: Nat and chloe dying, after you dead you are not the same person again. Since then I ask myself: Is this the real nat speaking? With the next block coming we could switch names. Elke/sara: you could talk with the I for the other person. chloe: it will be nice to experience my own facilitation if amy is me... what would you do with that.
one talks about the other (through the lens of facilitation)
amy as chloe: XXX (reading) why I am drown to that (facilitation). Caring for my family and land, locality. It's a social obligation. Sense of my connection to other and the environmanet experience of group of people collaboration for job ignite feeling of connection between people. It has tobe a collective effort. It is this space my space of research. Without my voice of body being there. Is my role integral and I bring the urgency? Where the content comes from? Craft skills (letter sew). Sensual response.
Chloe as Amy
I am Chloe. Focusing my thoughts on my connection to facilitation, I was thinking more about why I am drawn to it. I come from a long lineage of care givers, caring for the land in my family and caring for different parts of my locality as social obligation, so I think I have always had this sense of my connection to others and my environment. I intuitively know what nurture is needed in order to sustain and develop an area, or a group of people. I was drawn to climate activism partly because of this, recognising a mass of people who work together. In different aspects of my work money life I am also used to cooperating with others, and do so with joy. All of these experiences that currently led me to a.pass, now give me a wealth of tools, methods, considerations and attentions that I use with skill when presenting. Sometimes I wonder what I would do if I didn’t have the toolbelt of facilitation to wear – because I expend a lot of energy being considerate to, and thinking about, others - but then I think that facilitation is in fact the thing that got me to my research. My work exists in between people, and is about what could exist in between us. Through facilitation I noticed what Is missing between people that prevents a sense of community, or prevents a community from acting on urgencies, needs and desires. My own urgency is to ignite feelings of connection between people, because the world is fucked, and I think the only way to change our current situation is to do it together. We can do nothing alone. Sometimes I think that I may hide behind modes of facilitation because I really want to make space for others, but then once that space is set I find it hard to enter myself. It takes a lot of energy to maintain that space, so now I’m thinking about different modes that would allow me to be a part of a collective moment after I have initiated it. I am also thinking about modes of facilitation that could occur without my physical body, or my voice. How can an instruction, an object, a choreography, make such collective situations? Is my role in this integral or not? Contrarily, I am also thinking about how to enhance my position – as I have a dream to be an actor – what collective situation, with myself playing a role, could also be a forming experience for a community? Are these ideas opposite or can there be something in that friction? Other modes of facilitation I am working through have very different time frames. Letter correspondence is something I do with many different people. It forms this intimate entanglements between 2 people. Can this sense be evoked with a larger group, or is there something special in the duo? My letters are sensual objects, different paper types that I sew together (sometimes by hand) so I am thinking about how my interest and skill in craft could create objects for facilitation that ignite a sensual response.
Amy as Chloe I find it important to facilitate in and besides my work. In my workshops I want to explore the position of the facilitator and its relation to manipulation. I like to use facilitation as a way of showing (making aware/let people experience) the absurdity of colonial systems. I find bodily experiences, and for sure the unexpected bodily experiences intersting and believe in them as a way to learn. I feel like to get there (where bodily experience becomes 'learning') with the audience the facilitator has to be unkind. I triend this in my pubquiez. I think I manage to piss people off with my questions and with the thing in the end where the scores were re-interpreted. I thought it was funny. I think humor is important in my work. I'm wondering if the pubquiz was also funny for the audience. I think humor is also a method to bring this awareness about colonial systems and communications of a colonial system towards the audience. I also use facilitation to have a more equal way of sharing. I'm interested in how group dynamics change when the facilitation changes. I like to see this transformation. Therefor I think preparation is very important. I like to really prepare a presentation or workshop and think about every bit of the workshop. Dramaturgie is very important. In my language I still use a very clear language with clear instructions. The confusion that I bring in happens more on the level of the task itself, being it too difficult or for example asking the audience to mix two tasks at the same time (like in my end presentation of the first block). I orchestrate moments of surprise into my work. I also find scenography important.
something in facilitation that you agree and disagree chloe: for me it's happening in the space in between the other. I need to establish this relation.if communities work better something can change. There is no sense in making this more difficult, in confusing people. It works better if I make it more clear and evident. Amy because your facilitation is to do something collective. Mine is to do it otgether buto have an individual reflection upon it. I am more a corporate bitch that I know. Chloe: for you individual should have the awareness inside. Sara: more sensual experience is individual. Chloe: but I would never do an audio guide. For me the sharing of the experience, dedicated to someone else, is essential. Elke: you want to bring out communcal bond throuhg subjective experincE. In Ay it's the educator wanting to realize something you already know. Amy: you are using personal sensorial experience but confusing that by making it together. I am using objective facts that we share but turning it back to individual. For both works you need both experience from one direction toj the other. Elke: individual collective and objective (facts) and subjective. Sara: you can make a semiotic square: collective subjective, individual collective... objective-collective (website, space), subjective individual elke: your starting point of collectivity is different. Chloe: what is it with collectivity with your work? Why is it important to do the pop quiz together? And not like digital quiz to do individually. Amy it wouldn't be the same. Rivalry, competition is also in the group, amy: you wouldn't have anything to compare too. You wouldn't feel so stupid. You wouldn't do it. Rivalry, paranoia... until apass I was doing workshop in other contexts and wanting to be a good facilitator. Now responding to this space I have other issues. All things that before were importnat: non verbal exercise to start, pronouns, check in... elke: yes because you are not trying to build trust here. Choe: 63 laws of attraction and power. In both to be unpredictable it's the best way to keep people attracted. It makes people depend on you. Elke: as theatrical tool it certainly works. Amy: Comedy show elke: starting from people on the last raw. Unsafety as a trigger! If I am in a beautiful sharing moment it's not working on my critical skills as it is on the realization of being in a particular situation, softening. Bu chloe: where is your criticality? Chloe: in my activist work and I need to get it here! Elke: I have been struggling with that: create a different physicality: it's two different kinds of togetherness. Chloe: displace in a violetn area. Ex block a road and that do that. It's a qustion: i want the relationship to bring this criticality. It's not an awareness campaign but if people can see and epxerience community they can see how coloniality is actively trying to separate you. Elke: it's a queston of temporality: hox do you project yourself i the future? Dreamsisters work: people speaking about their desires and afetr a week use deisre as a weapon to dream into the future, in an individual level. Chloe: i am not convinced that if we have this collective things some individual criticality is going to burst. Amy: why is it for? If they leave together for a year it works I think. Chloe: to speak about collective = community but collective is bigger. If I do that in right community it will sustain it. Elke: sense works is not moral. But the name is coloring the experience. The manipulative things comes back. Mapping a territoriality is very different, where do you come in there? Amy can you see something you can give to her. Amy: Specificity of who this workshop is for. I did the same workshop for teenagers and they say “it”s not relevant”. Idea of time. All working against the end of the world: acceleration but we need time and repetition. I am always thinking I am going to grow my own food etc... chloe: preoccupied with where my food is grown. Many conversation with my mum: she knows: until my parents died I never had to grow vegetables. And then you buy stuff from sueprmarket, full of pesticides. Oracle to my family as my grandparents. Would it be waken up? But they know. Sara: you have to find the spot that is relevant for the not for you. Intergenerational skipping a generation or using fiction. Elke: fictional landscape. Imagine boekrijk. People pay to live in the middle age for a week! Chloe: a friend of mine works as a photographer dressed up. Elements from the past and the future... weird conglomerate.
Amy: is manipulation necessary or not? Elke: do you fight manipulation or giving people a bad feeling? Chloe: I don't fight. Facilitation is some kind of manipulation. Amy I agree. How hidden is the manipulation? Or you make it even more evident. Elke: or chloe is playing the evil and Amy is part of the game. Amy: it's good for both if us to set small specific intentions. I don't expect to have everyone leaving Apple computer. We could have more manageable dream to go. Chloe: my mum is growing vegetables now! But I don't have goals! Elke: but what is your drive? Chloe: because I like it. amy: when you speak I hear you have specific goals. chloe: yes for myself but don't want to enforce it. Sara: and as an activist. Elke: but 5 communities is a lot fo work. Chloe: maybe I am afraid of saying it. Amy: you inspire me to leave differently... like not buying any plastic anymore. Elke: exemplary lifes is an irritating word but somehow it can reflecting what you believe in. Chloe: no. It's restricting... i change all the time. I don't say that I am vegan. I don't consider myself not to drink alcohol... sometimes I do a little because I am not a saint. The idea of exeplary lifestyle is absurd. We need someone to do it to believe it's possible I don't agree. Elke:everybody is working on something and if I see someone doing it I can also do it maybe... it's not bad to be inspired by others. Chloe: I was really inspired by trees.
Elke: what is your urgency? Amy: I don't come from activism but from education and imbalances between studetns from colonized and colonizing countries. Me wanting to challenge my rpivileges and understanding. The dream before was to learn for British students to learn a differen hstory. Now the content is about communication technology now I could focus on racist biasis in technolgy: we are damaging other epople lifes without knowing... elke: if you urgency is high you can be more manipulative? How much do you think this is something that needs to change now? Amy: in tech activism the urgency is we should do this now. And then people asking how do you talk to my friends without instagram or whassapp... elke: these are symptoms... about how this global network functions. Amy: my urgency is maybe raise a question: how little do we know about digital technology imperialism...? elke: maybe that's what it is for now! I hear in both: i do want to question things but don't want to be responsible in my future actions? Is this right? Where is accountability in this? How do you think about this as an artist and researcher?
Amy: I feel accountable. I was writing a text about police abolition. I am learning if you abolish the police you have to be accountable to one another. I would like to make situation where accountability is rehearsed. Elke: without prescription and where manipulation is there? Chloe: I thought about that too. In relation to my research. Because I want to work with this community. We can decide, not the system... (you go to work and then buy veggy). Horizontality. Citizens are needed by th esystem to do this work that they don't want to do. Injustices come from this violence too. Elke: violence comes out of division of work? Chloe: police violence. Amy: police starts with beginning fo capitalism. Chloe: When they close the land and people could not survive from common areas. People went to cities. Beggars was then a lifestyle. Women were persecuted... what my community would look like if they didn't have to work? The bullshit jobs... amy: speculative away: universal basci income. Then division would be different. Elke: marxism, not bein gconected to your work. It 's also open us possibility for people to do something else. Chloe: beginning of some sort of feminism. My mum: No cooking anymore bu then she goes to a company to work.