PRODUCTION SPRING 1-results: part 1-workshops
- day 1: difficult to fully take part in the workshop as I was half thinking of stuff to do and say but I was able to do the writing part and sit with the tree and I also sang.
-The debrief was good although a bit unexpected with the documenting where we didn’t do the talking stick and people just shared their experience.
- one of them spoke about how sitting by the tree made her realise how short term her thinking was and how thinking of the tree, how long it had been there for made her aware of time.
-Another said that she couldn’t write as the voice of the tree, because she barely knew the tree. her sitting there under the tree was just a second in the tree’s life so why would it think of her or want to interact with her.
- Another wrote a poem about tons of ladybirds surrounding the tree he was sitting by.
- day 2: very proud of these two days considering it’s my first time ever running workshops. The flow of my workshop (printing with natural dyes blindfolded) was probably unconsciously inspired from Helena Elias’ workshop where I gave some instructions but let people feel what they felt like doing, and if they didn’t want to follow my instructions that’s ok too. Eliana came up with the great idea of rotating the row of flags every 5 mins so that you only spent that much time painting on a flag before moving on to the nxt one, allowing for all the flags to be painted.
- the flow of the birthday party ‘workshop’ felt organic (and the food was great thanks to Greta) but not everyone wanted to participate (many said they felt a bit put on the spot having to improvise a speech, they would much prefer writing- which is in the original workshop from the long time project, which is worth thinking of the next time I’m exploring this workshop, for ex Diaspora Kollektiv).
- whittling discussion could have maybe been more moderated but then it might have felt more like a lecture so we thought it was best to let it flow. but interested in having a different version or getting the discussion part in a different way or something.
- got feedback from people saying we need to do more exercises like these we had over the weekend, it1’s important. a lot of people asked when next we were having workshops like these again. which I took as a good sign, showing people are interested.
Sound recording (select) and unedited transcription of the whittling discussion
whittling workshop discussion transcript : see link
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Feedback Form - USE YOUR SENSES! Printing/Painting blindfolded with natural dyes/inks
FEEDBACK FORM QUESTIONS
- Did you come up with a technique or strategy for being creative whilst being blindfolded?
- How did it feel painting/Printing blindfolded versus not blindfolded?
- What did you discover once you took the blindfold off?
- people used touch to feel where they were painting (for ex using their fingers to feel what parts of the fabric was wet and not, almost painting on their fingers more than the fabric).
- some enjoyed the letting go feeling of not having to have an end result, the experience was more important. especially when they took the blindfold off: colours were faint, what they thought they painted was not there on the fabric . There was a lot of laughter when the blindfold came off.
- painting without blindfold felt less restrictive, a sense of freedom (and by extension appreciation for that freedom, and ‘unlimited possibilities’). allowed one to see the patterns create a different ‘art’ than what they imagined: ‘art is a combination of imagination and what you see’.
- painting with the blindfold felt less like painting and doing a ‘ different activity’. it was more about the experience of painting blindfolded than the actual painting itself. liberating to not know how the ink would interact with the fabric, what colour it is.
- painting with the blindfold ‘forces’ one to be more present than when one uses their eyes. to ‘feel the touch and realize hard, soft, cold, warm, texture, tone.’ you have to ‘really use your intuition.’ using smell to differentiate the paint/ink, and to tell which one you were using.
- the short time given to paint on one flag before moving on kept the painting ‘fresh and intuitive’, even with the blindfold off, didn’t have enough time to think what to paint, you still painted intuitively, building up on other people’s painted flags.
Sound recording (select) of the speeches and transcription
speech 1 - link
speech 2 - link
Thank you all for coming. It's a pleasure to see you all. So, I wanted to start this
story. It's been, since I'm 90 years old, I've become quite forgetful sometimes. And I think I start with how the world has looked. And since Martin, my friend, my father's friend, kind of was alive on this planet. And I'm a son of his friend. The world has changed a lot and nothing is anymore like it was before. Like, when we hear the old stories, it was much greener and some of it is coming back.
And I think some of that green and the liveness that we have on the planet today is thanks to the work that was kind of put down by people like Martin who risked
everything and chose to not go insane in a crazy world and put themselves out on the line, soft as tissue, and again and again built threads from the wild and the nature into the heart of what had become the human civilization without kind of, by being aware and taking part and kind of bringing the dance of life back into the streets and the lives of ordinary people in those days. And it must have been tough for those people living there.
It must have been full of heartache and full of confusion. But somehow they managed to stay true and kind of follow their hearts openly and kind of stay true to the essence of what it means to be a living, breathing planet and not just a single, small individual. But a belonging being and they stayed true to that and by
telling and doing and being and sharing their way of living they made it possible for us to exist and still also find these places of remembrance that bring the green into our hearts in these days. So a big cheers to everyone.
Thank you for being here on this 90th of my years. I hope I get a hundred more. Cheers!
Thank you so much all for coming here to Løsæter for my 90th birthday.
So I was talking with this tree the other day and I thought to myself, I thought of my great-great grandmother and how in her time it was not usual to have a conversation with a tree and
how now I cannot imagine not walking up to a tree and just having a conversation and she spent so much of her time in trees and climbing trees and in fact sometimes my grandmother Suni would not know where she was so she'd just have to go out into the
garden and shout and hope that my grandmother Zoe would just materialize down from one of these trees most likely bringing a collection of sticks with her which she'd bring into the house and fight for possession over with the dog but that's another story.
But yes I was thinking how in those days they didn't talk with trees and it's just fascinating to me because now it's so normal but I like to think that maybe my great-great grandmother was one of the first re-learning to talk to trees when she was out climbing the trees of Oslo and working with them and caring for them and I just thought how different times were.
Thank you, thank you for being here. Cheers!