Notes from the introduction to ASSiST 2010

[Oleg Koefoed]

This morning, the first formal encounter took place at the summer school, in the conference room of the Hotel Balkan (pics and videos coming up). Formal, because of course, there have been informal encounters, people meeting in planned or accidental ways in places around Europe, Bulgaria, Sofia, and now Gabrovo. About 30 persons have made their way to this wonderful site in the heart of Bulgaria, 30 'learners' (or un-learners, to paraphrase Sacha Kagan's introduction) from a number of countries: Australia, France, Cambodja, Italy, India, Indonesia, Bulgaria, Greece, Denmark, Russia, UK, US, Canada, Brazil, Egypt, to mention some. Though in this context, the nationalities already matter much less, for as one of the participants remarked, all of us already have such a wide range of action and learning that we do not feel so much as having a national identity as being members of different communities, some local, some trans-local, some global, some even virtual. Many of these networks and communities are present in the room here, and one could probably travel between them by following links from this site to the rest of the web.

The first introduction was given by Nadezhda Savova, director of the I3C, one of the main partners of the summer school, and responsible also for two evening workshops, based in the local bread-house, turning into a community center. The focus of I3C is relevant very much so for the summer school, as it attempts to strengthen connections, forces, and collaborations between organisations, individuals, networks, and communities, that do not have a huge background in terms of power or financial resources.
NZ spoke briefly of the egg with a tap, is symbolic for the city of Gabrovo. It symbolises the reputation of the city's inhabitants for being stingy, or at least for being aware of the need, especially in times of need and lack, of being economic and pragmatic. This however also connects to the role of Gabrovo as the "capital of humour" not only of Bulgaria, but of the world..

Sacha Kagan gave some introduction to the ideas behind the summer school, personal, organisational as well as theoretical. Sacha will post a short version of this short introduction later today.

For the intros to the workshops by Laurent Malone, Insa Winkler, Barbara Founder, Carlos Jimenez, PK Radikha, Arka Mukhopadyah, Nadezhda Savova, David Haley, and Oleg Koefoed, follow the development in this site over the next days.

[Sacha Kagan]

Better late than never: please find below a few notes summing-up what I discussed in my introduction to the summer school, in Gabrovo. These are just bullet-points, not full sentences, sorry for that :-) ...

1) introduce the summer school's concept & goals
- Introduce, informally, how the idea of the sumer school came about (Cultura21, the ASEF climate change workshop in Beijing, the Dresden symposium, etc.).
- Talk about the overall background: one of the dimensions of an unsustainable development-course = a culture of unsustainability … rooted in unsustainable modes of knowing reality:
linear causality (vs. a systems/inter-related causality, spiraling) & simple logic (vs. dia-logic) ;
fragmentation of understanding (disciplines, social sectors/systems) ; simplification: (a) disjunctive thought & (b) holistic simplification …
- Morin denounces three basic modes of simplifying thought: “to idealize (to believe that reality can be reabsorbed in the idea, that the intelligible alone is real); to rationalize (to want to enclose reality in the order and the coherence of a system, to forbid it all overflow outside the system [...]); to normalize (that is to say to eliminate the strange, the irreducible, the mysterious)” (Morin 1992, p. 16).
- Purposive consciousness → a limited and harmful rationality... (cf. Bateson: shortcuts, a “bag of tricks”...)
- Goal = to expand rationality & reflexivity...
- Ecoliterate...
- Literate of complexity... (a complex relation = both complementary, competing, opposing and united … cf. “unitas multiplex”, “coincidentia oppositorum”, “dia-logic”)...
i.e. A sensibility to patterns that connect, but also to complex relations/distinctions
an embodied, ecologically contextual mode of knowing: autoecopoïesis
- Interdisciplinary exchange = a step, a bridging... but not the goal, which is rather:
transdisciplinarity, as the trans-..., i.e. not merely enriching artistic or scientific practices & methods, but working toward the transversal capability, for each of us, to work as 'artiscientist', 'artivists', and 'intellectactors' [point to Dieleman's speech...]
- Transdisciplinarity = recognizing different levels of reality, and experiencing them with different levels of perception (i.e. NO universalist leveling of all levels of reality unto one level of perception!...)
- Transdisciplinarity, as applied, action-research, with communities (understand: communities of both human and non-humans)...

Why walking (ASSiST 2010):
- embodied experiencing & learning, embodied action...
- contextual, locally (ecologically – embedded in a real geography & not conveniently virtual), and transversal (moving, exchanging, comparing), relatively slow and more attentive
- potentially transdisciplinary
- potentially social and political, about shared spaces and public space [cf. shared spaces: Klamer's “common good” rather than public goods...]
- exchange & introspection...
- ordinary: low-tech not high-tech, accessible to all, open to non elite-wisdoms from all human groups...

2) Introduce the summer school program
- In general: workshops = the interdisciplinary insights, & the open space sessions = bringing the insights together & working toward shared methodologies [open spaces sessions have some simple rules, which I will explain in due time... ACTUALLY only half-open spaces, because of thematic frames!]
- Outcome = workshop prototyping on the last day... & beyond...
- [mention that I will be filming, the youtube uploads, & later an edited video...]
- [go through the program, especially through the open space sessions explaining the process...]
- Remark: In the half-day of personal introspection [24th afternoon], which is a very important step in process of the summer school, you will be asked not to communicate with each other anymore, but to engage into individual self-reflection. You will be asked to reflect on your own practices, with the question: “How do I integrate other approaches, from different perspectives,into my own personal practice and (re)search?”
- [invite Oleg to say a few words about the last day... the prototyping...]