AW: AW: Working with visual artists at an Open Space

Sat Aug 26 03:53:28 PDT 2006

Dear Pat, 

I try to make it short.

Mit freundlichen Grüßen
best regards

VISUELLE PROTOKOLLE
Kuchenmüller & Stifel

tel +39-0566-88 929
www.visuelle-protokolle.de

If i see, that i can be of help for someone, i always jump. i don't care then for selforganization, i simply go. or draw. For me it is fine, that you and me are different.

Is this not self organization?  Self organization is not self conscious it just does in my understanding.  YES. 

I like of course, what Birgitt is writing in her parallel mail. So i am glad, that we had this dialogue, and am open to continue it ore leave it like that, because the important things have been said. I would rather draw what i feel, but this listserve is textbased.

I am not sure whether this group is tex based or not, I am not text based.  In reading the posts I imagine people have many primary modality possibilies.  The listserve is text based for sure.  I do not know if there is any other way to participate on the list except through text.  I appreciate some attempts at using keystrokes to create visual images although that would not satisfy my visual expression.  I also appreciate Lisa's attempt to distill discussion threads into poetry.  So far on this list that has been the most staisfying visual expression.  Her last poem distilled out of the posts on one topic was for me beautiful and moved me emotionally to tears so the experience is the same for me as a picture.  My question is how would you use the listserve to be more visually expressive?  How can people become more comfortable operating in visual expression while here? 

I don't know much about listservs and security. maybe there might be a parallel list, where images are allowed. 

So we can sit inbeteen the people and hear, see, feel what is going on. We use the 'Visual Language', a combination of images and words. we work with feltpens on cards, which we hang in rows of 6 to form a picture wall, where everybody can see, what was said, and also ask for corrections and additions. At the end mostly we transform these images into a slideshow of some minutes to let the day flow by, because almost everybody has forgotten more than 50 % of what he heard, saw and did during a day.

Could a photographer participate in the same way?  Would a photagrapher sitting in the group as you describe documenting through photographs serve the same purpose?  If not what is different in what the visual photographers do? 

we draw the content, not the people. 

C. We prepare sessions, conferences etc. with metaphorical maps, after gathering the content in interviews we document in drawings. That can take 
some months.

So is what important here and perhaps absent on the list metaphors?  Do you think what we need to do as facilitators of any variety be more intentional about metaphor?  Should there be more intentional time spent on discovering the metaphors that show up to the event and that influence questions and their answers? 

I have experienced that metaphors come by themselves, if there is an inviting atmosphere. so you only have to listen carefully !!! and to catch them.  

For Open Space it would be beautiful to always have paper and colors available, flipchartsize or bigger. Colors might be broad (!!!) felt pens, chalk, crayons (careful with carpet floors), water colors. Yes, a person to introduce and help is helpful, but not necessary. But you must show the possibilities of using these materials as something normal.

And maybe you experiment with people documenting with drawings, on big or small paper!!!

The drawing should not be the theme, but a byproduct. That is one reason i don't call me an artist. 

I would agree with everything you said in the previous paragraph.  I would add that a person to demonstrate the possibilities of visual expression is needed also to show how to enter into the process and to discover the metaphors revealed by drawings no matter how primitive or unstaisfying to the drawer.  In my somewhat limitied open space experience, paper and colored markers have always been present.  So the tools are there but it seems the visual person may not always be identified.  I also agree that a great number of literate people have competency issues with art and music that stifle there willingness to do it and their understanding of the value of what can be expressed by someone who is not fluent in the language.  My fluency allows me to see where fluency can be nurtured in another, how to enter in.  I am wondering how you envision the best way for this to happen in an open space format?  What can you imagine in the open space format?
Thanks for the dialouge 
Pat Black

images are about 40.000 years old, written texts  5.000 years. Scientists say, that we think in images and then translate them into words. I am no scientist, but I am shure, that all of us have the world of images within us, and it gets alive once it is touched. Society has banned many creative expressions, so it needs some digging. 

Someone responsable for singing, dancing, drawing, playing is as important as someone for speaking and writing.

One easy way is to offer drawing - for example drawing a story - as theme of an open space session, so people get used to it. 

Our societiy is overflooded with images, prefabricated images, films, tv, ads etc. but people are hungry for the real stuff, alive, fitting in the moment, handdrawn, amateurlike. I have experienced that in about 400 sessions.

Good luck! 

 Reinhard 

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