UN/CHRONO/LOGICAL TIMELINE MEETING
Skype, 24.10.2017
Nora Landkammer, microsillons, Fatima Moumouni, Christian Nyampeta, Mary Sarycheva, Nastia Tarasova, Maja Renn
Nora summarizes the idea: Outcomes of the project will be very heterogeneous. We emphasize, that Learning Units can not have a general structure which would work in different context.
Layers of „learning units“ and results:
- Learning units by local working groups: designed by the local group for the users who they want to address. For example: Johannesburg working group makes a learning unit on the story of the Medu Art Ensemble, with the research they did with students and possible methods to activate it.
- Transversal learning units: co-designed by the people participating in the transversal workshop. Can consist of several parts: one introductory part co-authored by the groups, that is translated in the languages needed for all; and several in-depth parts prepared for the local contexts out of the research. For example: arts education and coloniality
- Timeline: in the beginning I thought the timeline would be a kind of graphic element that would unite our researches. Would provide “overview” or “access point”. What I learned from joburg and Vienna: the fact of making the timeline, assembling elements, activating it is the un/chrono/logical and how it helps people to get insights into the project. Thinking timeline as summarizing overview doesn’t work, needs to be “activated”, even joburg timeline looked opaque to me until I could engage with it/parts of it.
Proposal: I want to propose that we do not work on a timeline where elements are fixed, but one that consists of single elements that are activated by using them. The game Nastia and Masha developed is a way to think this. Maybe it is not this specific game, but another form. The basic idea I want to discuss with you is: the Timeline as a set of information which starts to work when it’s activated by a group constructing it.
Marianne: in general the idea of elements that can be re-arranged, and re-composed is good. Trying to understand what is the un/chronologicality: recomposing constantly. Also a form that could be quite “practical” to produce.
Olivier: likes the idea on a practical level, it will be possible to get the necessary contributions because it is quite clear and limited. Also think of the B-side of the cards and use the other side to add something more playful. For example: you can form a drawing with back of the cards. When you turn them back you get the information and this is a way to begin to play. It would add a “random” element.
Nora: Why do you want to have something “random”?
Olivier: Random will create surprising confrontation of two elements.
Maria: some people want to stay on the surface in the game; and others want to go deeper. (critique in jekaterinburg). They meanwhile added an additional card that do not refer to events, but questions “to be discussed”.
Olivier: How many cards do you usually have?
Maria/Nastia: For Vienna they had around 50 cards.
Fatima: there could also be the option to “add questions”, with stronger involvement from the background of the players
Olivier: also include further cards by people who played the game. How closed is the game? Do we want to keep the possibility that each user adds their own questions? Or is it something fixed?
Nora: We are already a big research group. To think about possibilities how it could be further extended is interesting, but should not be the main aim of the game now – it is to make accessible what we have done in our research.
Olivier: Except that it would change the main structure of the game.
Marianne: Different levels of difficulty is something interesting to think about, there could be questions for “beginners” and others for people with a lot of background knowledge.
Christian: I still have difficulties with the metaphor of the game. Game as problematic for intervening into the field of art education. Likes the idea of adding local suggestions to the card set.
Nora: maybe we have to rethink the “game” name; find a more precise name for what we want to do. But stick to the idea of loose elements that are assembled anew when they are discussed and worked with in a group.
maja: It should be a game with no competition, two structural changes: Round game setting and no fixed figures for player, in that sense position and perspective changes everytime.
Olivier: was there competition in the game in Vienna?
Maria: No competition, players can walk in the direction they want.
Nastia: Idea to exchange knowledge and discuss questions that are important in certain context.
Nora: On the level of contents: what would you imagine on the cards?
I thought about information about persons who play a role in the research, quotations that one can discuss, summarized information about a certain event. We have a lot of archival material on these issues. The cards can be combined with the digital material (info on the card where you find the corresponding texts, etc.).
[in the following the order of the statements has been re-arranged in the minutes to make the connection better comprehensible]
Olivier: How would the contents be structured? We imagine the same categories which were decided in São Paulo.
Nora: I thought we would use as “categories” of cards the themes from transversal workshops (coloniality and arts education; or travels of critical pedagogy). An additional structure would be the locations of the working groups (Cards from Geneva, cards from Lubumbashi).
Marianne: There is blurring in the group between what the Learning Units and the Timeline are supposed to do.
Nora: Ideally, what is on cards should also be in the Learning Units. For me, the timeline cards would be an initial “access structure” to the contents. Then you have learning units that go deeper into a particular topic, in a way defined by each group.
Marianne: How can we do a selection for the card? It will be necessary to narrow down the research. We have to identify moments that are pivotal. Geneva: a card wih Freire Illich exchange in Geneva. Would be difficult to select! We need a kind of rule how we get to the selection.
Nora: What would each research group would like the most to be discussed? Do we really need a rule?
Marianne: What you just said would be what I meant by a rule! if we had to design 10 cards, what would we want to have on it? Would help to get start.
Maria and Nastia: On how to select the contents for the cards: Each group can make 50, play with it and then select the most important ones.
Olivier: Maybe too ambitious, we have to collect the cards at some point, on side of coordination it would be nice to start with something not too big and not too late..Very practical approach, but process will show if some groups need more cards, then they can just make more.
Marianne: send around grid to fill in.
maria: after test play in Maseru: possible to change cards.
Christian: Benefits of such a form is a certain format that would allow each group to contribute. Sets of insights may become filtered and then formalized into an appearance that can be understood and maybe useful somewhere else. But why does it have to be a game? A game is a certain convivial mode of encounter and maybe in this case with an aim of sharing knowledge. It sets all kinds of boundaries that are not always easy to overcome. Why enforce some kind of happiness or joy on others that might not be shared? I see this as problematic if we want to intervene in the discourse of arts education in the setting of postcoloniality and inequality.
Essentially what I mean by this is, that we are very heavily mediating knowledge because we formulate it into a format that can only be entered if it’s played. I’m not sure if it manages to overcome the limit of the game itself. We can not say that it’s not mediated. (…)
Olivier: Opened it the way you can use a card. You have a lot of freedom as the user how you want to use it. The level to which we are inventing rules or not may be a way to answer the problem of mediation.
Nora: I want to emphasize that any form we choose is a mediation. Also if we just make our huge archive of documents accessible without any kind of structure or instructions it is a specific form of mediation. Just it is one that might be attractive for people in an art context who like chaotic archives, but excluding for others. But I agree to your critique of the game metaphor. Let’s search for other metaphors that describe what we want to do. Constructing, assembling, creating versions are things I associate with what I would like to do with these cards. Playing is only one aspect of it.
Olivier: for me the metaphor of the game is not necessarily problematic. But these excercises can have different names, don’t have to call it a game. It’s similar to when you are in a class and create a cloud with post-its.
Marianne: We can see it as a book which is not bound, a book with mobile pages. A book is a mediation, a card is a mediation, what we produce is a form of mediation and we have to assume that. Different possibilities to interact with the cards, and you can choose between them.
Olivier: We could do set of cards without calling it a game, see what we get. The cards trafo k developed for the “flic*flac” kit could be an example. Cards have more openness on how to interpret them and the question whether it is a game or not.
Why not making an assignment for all the groups to send 10 cards with contents and we make a prototype and play it in Maseru.
Christian: Might be a good. Maybe the form will reveal itself during the collection process. one way to move ahead is to make a model of a card and everyone would adopt it if necessary. Something that is a sheet, and can be manipulated.
Nora: What should be on the cards/sheets?
[Maja starts creating a prototype card sharing her screen]
working group
transversal topic (if any)
text/image
question
[…]
Nora [summarizing]: Way to proceed: Maja sends a first template. We all (who were in this conversation; plus Sofia and Andrea) make a prototype of one card from our own research. (timeframe: within 2 weeks)
Then we send these prototypes to everyone. Ask them produce cards from their research, adapting the form where necessary. And describe what they would do with them.
***
Nora: Additional question to Christian: how does the planned “exhibition kit” relate to what we have been discussing now?
Christian: Some elements could relate. Exhibition: like a map you use in a classroom. That can be used or stored. Graphic elements, or objects. Take the freedom of zooming in and out. I like to think about elements that can be printed on a Xerox machine. Formats of printing at home. If we spent so much time of designing it it should be minimizing the effort of the ones who are using it. Making it accessible, considerate of the available means (Xerox for that reason). I start to think anew about the “card” format, “Postcards” could be further thought about.
Christian will catch up with Patrick and invite to a skype discussion (with everyone in the Cluster who wants to join) where they share their thoughts for the exhibition and discuss them.
