Trying to grasp a cloud : to share a research process

This text is an attempt to explain my process about the project “Hybrid Tools for Transdisciplinarity” that I formulated in the framework of my application for Soc 2023-2024.

This is also a text that people can read when I try to explain what I'm interested in, what I do in life, what I'm working on, which are such difficult questions to answer.

This might become the beginning of a research, someday.

This is already a research happening and living in me, anyway.

This is like taking a picture of a movement.

It’s blurry, it’s moving. It will not be the same picture at the next second.

This is a non-academic text, where words might be misused, this is a work in progress.

This is an attempt to express what feels blurry and clear in me.

To make it possible for me to write something,

I had to call that space a “vomit space”, or a “compost space”- which sounds more trendy.

Somewhere I could put everything out of my head without fear, knowing that this can look foggy and undetermined but that it is a precious matter for the future (de)composition.

This is a try out to express even when it’s not perfect, even when it’s a mess - even when I feel lost,

even when everything is falling apart in the world, in my personal grounds,

even when I'm afraid to fail.

A try out to express some of the things in me,

a try out to see what happens when I put that out there, out of myself.

An experiment, a healing gesture, a magic trick.

First I want to explain from where that project idea “hybrid tools for transdisciplinarity” came from. It appeared in a few days when I tried to write an answer for the open call of Soc. All the ingredients were there, floating in my head, I had to put that into words. It appeared as a need after a few years of exploration.

After studying engineering and agronomy, working with systemic approach, collective intelligence and cooperation tools in France, I moved to Brussels in 2020.

That moment corresponds to the first time I allowed myself to merge different parts of my being, to mix disciplines, intuitions, desires, worlds. I started to enter more into the art world, I met people, I got in touch with more experimental places. That led me to have the chance to work in frameworks that were open enough so I could experiment how I want to do things, without labeling, without naming what I was doing or my exact role in the project.

I worked in 3 different collective projects that took different formats and expressions depending on the ecosystem I dived in and the people involved including me. The people I have worked with - their skills, desires , the territory - the geographical, political, sociological context, the human and more-than-humans inhabiting the space- and me -my skills, my curiosity.

All these projects are/were about dealing with needs, challenges emerging from the territory (the place of women in the public space (les Glaneuses,2020), the duality of culture/nature in a gardening field (Blossom 2021-ongoing), the need for connection with our communities, ourselves and the space in times of crisis (M.O.S.S.S.-Moving Observations on Surviving Soft Skills, 2022- ongoing)), and using artistic tools to question, inhabit, activate spaces and their topics, through different mediums (writing, print techniques, card games, ballade, somatic practices, visualizations…).

During these projects, we had a lot of questions appearing, about the process, our challenges, in terms of practicalities, materialities, politics, relationship, methodology, finance, collective,…

I always had this “meta” voice, mind - talking, questioning, noticing the process. Sometimes, it was not the time to do so, not the priority. We needed to create, produce, and not reflect too much about how we do things, or not let those “meta” reflections take up all the space and not allow us to create and act.

This is quite a challenge to find this equilibrium between process and action, also in an economical context and pressure of productivity, where we must have a result. But even without that societal pressure, action is as necessary as reflection.

How can we learn to put these “meta” reflections, lessons, on the process, as something that can be useful for the projects and the people and everyone involved ?

How do we frame those reflexivity moments ?

How do we manage this action-process dialogue to navigate into this complex world ?

>>> So with this year in Soc, I wanted to test out this : what if I make the space for all these reflections ?

I have the conviction that what we are facing in our projects, and even lives, are also faced by other people in other places.

I have the conviction that I want to make space for those reflections, and create, propose more spaces like this in institutions, groups, projects.

Space for reflexivity

Space to reflect on how we do things, why we do them ?

What are our patterns, our challenges, our habits ?

Do we agree with how we do things ?

How can we do it better ?

Better for ourselves, individually, better for the group, better for the world, for the humans and the more-than-humans, for everyone involved in the action.

How can we facilitate those spaces of reflexivity so there become tools for action ?

How can we learn from each other and ourselves ?

How can we grow together ?

These questions for me make even more sense in this world in crisis. We need to come together, to learn, to organize ourselves to create new ways of doing things, to develop our abilities and capacities to learn, to improvise, to feel, to encounter, to organize, to think and act through complexity, to fail, to grief, to be in collective, to take time, to take a break, to listen, to be in tune with ourselves, with our desires, needs and limits, and the ones from the others.

These are, for me, essential skills to navigate this new paradigm. There is so much to do and to learn, there is space for everyone that wants to come on this boat.

This is exciting and terrifying, and I'm ready.

Hybrid Tools for Transdisciplinarity : How to equip, politicize and learn from artistic laboratories ?

at this phase of the project

my ideas feel like intuitions

they are not palpable, sometimes scattered like powder everywhere

sometimes more like clouds

they make a shape and then disappear again

they are like bubbles or touches of colors

they are permeable

they are moving

but as time is moving, they gain density, texture and begin to form landscapes

Here is my color palette : some definitions as sensitive landscapes

They are non-academic definitions,

these are more like colors to me

I see different landscapes,

a concept-landscape-world-idea

a bit like an oracle card

where you have a whole story contained in one card

My colors-landscapes-cards are created in reaction to the world I perceive

They are all there because I feel they are missing into the big picture

They represents where we need to put more value, more attention to

Some of these cards have a reversed side, which is what would be the possible downside of the card.

- What would be a limit of this card?

I see those cards not as a solution but as tools to activate in a specific context.

It is necessary to invoke these cards with a critical approach and use them when it is needed and relevant for the situation.

Hybrid

Hybrid is a way to allow ourselves to think outside the normative ways

combined ways

alternative ways

This is not because it sounds trendy to be hybrid,

it is because we need to always question the paths we are into

to ask ourselves : is it the more relevant, appropriate way of doing things right now ?

it then becomes a permanent search, listening, adjustment.

Ways of doing have to be created in dialogue to each situation and contexts.

For me hybrid brings the colors of queer, in a sense that it is transcending binary views and proposing an “oblique” way, as it is explained in the book Queer Phenomenology by Sarah Ahmed . She proposes queer as a mode of existence that is diagonal.

“Queer use: when we aim to shatter what has provided a container.”

(...)

“When we recover a potential from materials, when we refuse to use things properly, we are often understood not only as causing damage but as intending what we cause. Queer use could thus also be interpreted as vandalism: “the willful destruction of the venerable and beautiful.””

(Queer Vandalism, Sarah Ahmed [1])

Hybrid allows me personally to hack, to deviate.

It allows me to bring art, personal stuff, freedom, attention to the format and aesthetics of the sharing and the methods, to take risks and make propositions that (I think) are not expected.

//The reversed side of this card : It could allow to not name things or concepts correctly or to be manipulated with words misused. Or having the impression to reinvent things or new ways when they actually already exist and have been explored.

Tool

tool is the structure

what stays there when you question everything

what can be temporary stable

Because there is something to lean onto somewhere, something that is there

there is a direction to explore

not as an eternal truth but as a temporary tool

as something that has been constructed, built by someone, a human situated in a network of entanglements of emotions, stories

//The reversed side of this card : Tool is a term that brings questions about productivity. Do we have to plan, predict, rationalize everything ? Does an utilitarian vision kill spontaneity and possibilities of explorations ? Does it allow experimenting without knowing in advance ?

For me, this represents the dilemma, to find the balance between

think and action

process and actual making

both are important

and it’s a dynamic equilibrium that we have to play with all the time

Transdisciplinarity

I believe we need space to reconnect what has been fragmented

we need space of dialogue, encounters in order to respond to the complex issues we have nowadays

we need to deal with complex projects, ideas

we need to allow, enforce and help connections that are necessary to make relevant projects

//The reversed side of this card : Too many connections can make everything overwhelming. How to think and act through complexity is a learning process. It is helpful to try to delimit a perimeter, try to find the limits of an action, a project in order to be able to think and function. Also, to do certain tasks, we don’t need to think in complexity. We can ask ourselves : Is it necessary to question everything to do this task well ? Or is it ok to focus and separate and divide things for this task?

Artistic laboratories

For me, these are projects, structures, people, places that are at the intersection of art, activism, theory, practice, pedagogy.

They question how knowledge is made, transmitted.

They reflect inclusivity, participation, collective thinking, process, relation.

Their aim is generally to be a space of experimentation, of transformation, where new ways of doing, thinking can emerge. Then often try to deconstruct and question dualities, nature/culture, body/mind, reality/fiction, theory/practice. They are part of making a new world, places for learning new values, new rules that are not yet mainstream, which means not yet valued and financed.

This concerns a lot of projects, a wide spectrum

but it is still specific, with a very big variety of projects.

//The reversed side of this card : This is for now a very personal definition based on my experience. I wish to study more the characteristics of these projects, cartography them and see if it’s really possible to make a group out of it. I realized “artistic laboratories'' can also be words that make people critical or skeptical because these can be used as trendywords-washing (like wokewashing) when it’s more about building an image than an interesting project, or when it is taken by the big companies. This denomination or even the existence of this kind of projects also depends on the countries and their history of the relation between art and sciences.

Why learn from them ?

Because these are special places for experimentation

a juicy space where everything can be created

these places are like the ecotone, the margin

the spaces at the intersection of lots of different milieus

this becomes very rich in learning, by hybridization, deviations, new paths

like ecotone, margin, where things are mixing

we could learn, categorize them

this could make it more visible

we could talk more about it

navigate more easily

give power and money to those spaces

Why equip ?

we need to identify our skills there and grow

we need to practice

we need to share knowledges and tools

to organize

Organization as a love gesture

I believe we have to organize ourselves in order to build

There is a paradox in me regarding those different facets of mine, this utilitarian side, and more process oriented. I believe each part has something to learn from the other,

and both can be helpful to navigate this world in crisis full of opportunities of (de)construction.

Poetic permit

When I say I make an artistic proposition, it allows me to create weird things, weird propositions.

It allows blurriness, incomprehension, opacity.

It allow the “receptor, spectator” to become critical and active in the creation of the event, of the knowledge

it's not a “scientific” fact anymore

it’s from an artist, so it makes it obvious that it is not objective, it’s an angle, perception, a proposition

And this is always the case, that things are presented from a perception of someone. So pulling this artistic card gives me a kind of poetic license to be more free in the format of my proposition and be reassured that the person will not take me too seriously, that she/he know that what I propose is my point of view. It’s like I give them back some power, in order to make the sharing more interesting for everyone.

To be a systemic sensor

What is intimate is political.

What you feel is an expression of the system you are part of.

The canary in a coal mine

It’s an expression that comes from the fact that miners would carry down canaries in the coal mine with them. As these birds are more sensitive to dangerous gases such as carbon monoxide collected in the mine, the gases would kill the canary before killing the miner. They were like a precious warning to something in the system that was toxic for them.

This expression emphasizes the systemic approach, and says that if someone is more sensitive to something due to their conditions and oppressions (feminism, validism, racism…) this would inform the whole system, group, that there is something problematic happening. Even if some people don’t feel the problem at the same moment, they will and are already impacted by this problem.

Brave space

An alternative formulation of “safe space”, a “facilitation practice to emphasize the need for courage rather than the illusion of safety”. “Boostrom’s (1998) critique of the idea of safe space, and in particular his assertion that bravery is needed because “learning necessarily involves not merely risk, but the pain of giving up a former condition in favor of a new way of seeing things (p.399)”. (From safe space to brave space, text by Brian Arao & Kristi Clemens, 2013 [4])

How can we create enough trust and security in the space and the group in order to allow us to take small risks and grow together ?

Sensitive-embodied approach

We learn through experience.

We can learn through creating a situation, a game, a performance that brings all the same entanglements that life is. To go from a fragmented vision to a fractal vision [3].

To create a space of transformation, like a simulation, like experiencing in micro of what is happening in macro.

Embodied experimentation allows to share knowledge and touches different kinds of intelligences and ways of functioning, ,

We need to perform knowledge, find hybrid sensitive formats, to not use only words, or mental, but also through the body.

And even if you transmit a tool, it doesn’t mean the person will be able to use it. We need more than manuals, we need to practice.

To document processes and share more widely

The experimentations we live collectively and individually can be documented. How do we do that and not break the moment lived, the fragile atmosphere of sharing ?

We can take traces from these moments in order to transmit the experiences to other people that were not there. This is a generous act of sharing lessons experienced with others so we can build on further.

Organization as a love gesture

To identify tools and try to share our learnings demands work and organization. To meet, to find allies, to organize ourselves in order to build more together, I like to see it as a love gesture as it is said by the Comité invisible : “Se trouver, s’organiser… s’aimer”. [4]

To put rules, limits, conditions, a frame in order to take care of our relationships and go further together in the political fights and the building of a new system more coherent with our values.

Related to that idea, I came across the term Radmin[5] in the Feral festival in Brussel. Radmin, radical administration. As well as the production side of projects, administration is not very valued as an exciting place. When it is actually a place that determines a lot on how we do things. We have to put more value and attention there. These are places where a lot of things happen, it holds a structure.

These are also places of creation and politics.

My proposition of research-creation project : Artistic Consulting Lab

With all these colors, came out the shape of an Artistic Consulting Lab.

It would be a consulting agency, a hybrid support service, in movement and adaptation and in permanent research. Between fiction and reality, performance and guiding service.

My first service of this agency is a reflexive workshop about our “meta-challenges” - our challenges emerging from our process of research, collective, creative projects.

.

I gave my first one in October 2023 in Zurich in the framework of Soc intensive weekend.

With 20 people, I held a space and gave tools to share challenges about our projects.

I shared my colors and the frame of the workshop.

Then each person identified a challenge they faced in their process.

Then people talked in small groups of 3-5 people.

To facilitate this sharing I proposed a tool :

I put a cross on the floor, so people could position themselves in the space regarding their relation with the challenge addressed for the discussion by one of the people in the group.

So for example : X would say her/his challenge : “How do we handle violence that happens in collective contexts ?”

Then the other people of the group can move physically on one of the 4 positions regarding on how they resonate with this issue and start the discussion from there - To help that they can answer some additional questions, if needed, that corresponds on their choice of position:

• “I resonate but don’t know how to proceed” : Why ? What would you need to be able to move to the next step ?
• “I’m working on it” : What is your tool, way of working, trick ?
• “I don’t know”: And is it comfortable? If not, what would you need to move from that position ?
• “I don’t relate” : Why ?

First outcomes

Some of the challenge(s) that were discussed :

• Different paces of working
• Relational accountability (outside of hierarchical structures)
• How to focus on securing enough money to live > always working on several projects at a time
• How do we handle violence that happens in collective contexts ? Eg: how does a collective react to someone making a comment that some view as racist but others don’t ?
• How do we deal with linear processes of expectations in a circular work habit ?
• How do you manage individual expectations in a collective project ?
• Ability to (dis)agree
• Level of commitment
• How to find time to meet as friends when it’s hard even to meet for « work »?
• Identity politics *tokenizing*
• Translation

The things I would like to change about this workshop :

• My posture: I was not part of the small groups and couldn’t follow the discussions which was frustrating, but I didn’t want to break that space that was created. I am wondering if I can participate or not while I’m facilitating.
• How can I keep traces of the exchanges and share more of our learnings? Is it necessary?

What I think worked well from the feedbacks I had:

• People from some collectives took the time to talk about things they hadn’t before.
• To map on the ground and position the bodies in the space, was good for some people to visualize and focus on the discussion and the comprehension.

Biblio :

[1] Queer vandalism

https://feministkilljoys.com/2019/10/09/queer-vandalism/

[2] From safe space to brave space text by Brian Arao & Kristi Clemens, 2013

https://www.anselm.edu/sites/default/files/Documents/Center%20for%20Teaching%20Excellence/From%20Safe%20Spaces%20to%20Brave%20Spaces.pdf

[3] Idea coming from the And_Lab project

https://www.and-lab.org/en

[4] Comité invisible

Se trouver, s’organiser… s’aimer

https://www.nonfiction.fr/article-9017-se-trouver-sorganiser-saimer.htm

[5] Radmin (Radical Administration) admin as a site for meaningful work.

By Feral Business Research Network, Kate Rich, Angela Piccini, 2020

https://fo.am/publications/radmin-reader-2020/