Workshop #1 with Lotte van den Berg

Time: Friday April 8, 14:00 – 17:00 hrs.
Location: Piet Zwart Institute, Karel Doormanhof 45 Rotterdam
Admission: As the maximum is 20 participants, the event is open to 6 additional participants. If you are interested please make a reservation at pzwart-info@hr.nl

“To strengthen our collective imagination and to sharpen our shared view of the future, we need to work on the fundaments of our togetherness; how do we speak with each other, how do we listen to each other, how do we think and dream together?” – Lotte van den Berg

Together with the first year students of the Master Education in Arts and additional participants Lotte van den Berg will explore a new format in her dialogic art series called Building Conversation. Building Conversation is inspired by wide variety of conversation techniques (philosophers like Bruno Latour and Chantal Mouffe, the practice of the Aboriginals, the Occupy movement, et cetera). She creates a program of conversations that focuses on the attempt to image ourselves in a future. Are we able to envision an alternative world together? And how is the way we speak connected to the world we create? The students invited Lotte van den Berg specifically because they feel her practice offers valuable insights into an urgent issue facing education today, namely the ability to talk – and listen – to each other. This seems under threat in the current situation. They are interested in Lotte van den Berg’s explorations of dialogue in that they suggest interesting ways to practice relevant and committed pedagogies.

Time Loop Talk is inspired by Indians from the Great Lake District in Canada and their custom of first consulting ancestors of 7 generations past and then future decedents 7 generations ahead, when making important decisions. Only in the third instance do they explore the potential impact of the decision might have on the present. In the Western world it seems as though short-term thinking predominates over looking ahead or looking back. Could a relationship with the distant past help us to form a relationship with the distant future? What happens if we zoom out in time: does this relativize the decisions we make, or do they rather become extra urgent. For more information on Building Conversation and Lotte van den Berg’s work please visit: www.lottevandenberg.nu/english/events/index/?page=werk&evt_id=38

How do you position yourself or act in what are always complex pedagogical situations? As part of this year’s Master Education in Arts programme, the students self-organized a series of lectures/events. They mapped out four areas most relevant to their current interests: #1 Embodiment/Interaction with theatre maker and artist Lotte van den Berg; #2 Institutional Public Programming with educator and curator Belinda Hak (May 14); #3 Education Innovation with media artist and educator Michiel Koelink (May 27) and #4 Artistic Research (tba).