This paper introduces a project of developping methods for Nomadic Academy of Experimental Arts in Helsinki, situated in Harakka island. It will work molecularly with artists, researchers, groups and with molar-structured institutions (academies of fine arts, theatre etc). It will be a place for part-time teacher-artists, activist-theorists, students and other citizens to learn, meet and develop their thoughts and practice. The academy will share the ethos of experimental arts, contemporary critical theory and radical social thinking. In it´s program it will include areas like experimental sound art, experimental moving image, performance art, site-specific arts, critical/radical theory and collective projects with different communities.
We will develop a platform or ”plateau” for the part-time teachers of experimental arts and other lecturers to introduce their teaching and other their activities. The academy has a fluent, small program of its own but our "staff" will do their teaching also elsewhere. In its simplest form "the plateau" for introducing the activities will be a website presenting the people and their courses. The ethos and inspiration for the new university is inspired by thinkers like Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, Gregory Bateson and Paulo Freire. It is inspired also by the finnish groups mollecular.org and aktivistiyliopisto (http://aktivistiyliopisto.wordpress.com/), expressed in their pamphlet “Tuleva yliopisto” (“Future University”) and many discussions with part-time –teachers dedicated to experimental arts.
The project of forming a Nomadic academy of experimental arts to Finland is tied to the current situation where the reformation of the university system is taking place. The reform is bringing forth concepts like entrepreneur-like pedagogy where the teachers are supposed to encourage the students to behave like entrepreneurs, as it is said in the home page of Helsinki School of Economics. In the situation like this it seems to be important to develop practices that are not only tied to neolibertarian ideas - to establish alternative plateaus for critical and experimental practice of discussions and teaching. Being an off-project of the more official academic system, nomadic academy of experimental arts will develop a system of its own with it´s own experimental "departments" (currently called as ”areas”).
When working with other institutions and groups, the role of nomadic academy of experimental arts will be parasite-like, or viral, hopefully infecting the institutions with the virus of non-hierarchicality. Paradoxically working with very little or no funding at all can give that kind of freedom to nomadic academy of experimental arts that the more institutionalised schools, academies and universities can only dream of. We don´t have to rely on the ties of the governmental or commercial funding. Félix Guattari´s three-fold concept of Ecosophy of social ecology, mental ecology, and environmental ecology is inspiring in that sense.
According to Guattari "there is an urgent need for us to free ourselves of scientistic references and metaphors: to forge new paradigms which are instead ethico-aesthetic in inspiration" (Félix Guattari: The Three Ecologies, New Formations no 8 /summer 1989, 132). Guattari writes that it is important to abandon pseudo-scientific paradigms not just because of the complexity of the systems, but also because "the three ecologies are governed by a different logic from that of ordinary communication between speakers and listeners" (Guattari 1989, 135).
The motto of Guattari´s book Three ecologies is taken from Gregory Bateson´s Steps to an Ecology of Mind: ”There is an ecology of bad ideas, just as there is an ecology of weeds”. According to Bateson there are three root causes for the current ecological crisis: 1) the technological progress, 2) population increase and 3) wrong thinking, wrong values of the Occident (Gregory Bateson: Steps to an Ecology of Mind: Collected Essays in Anthropology, Psychiatry, Evolution, and Epistemology 1972, 498). A healthy ecology of human civilisation is defined as "a single system of environment combined with high human civilization in which the flexibility of the civilization shall match that of the environment to create an ongoing complex system, open-ended for slow change of even basic (hard-programmed) characteristics" (Bateson 1972, 502).
According to Bateson man-environment system became progressively unstable since the invention of metal, wheel and script. Civilizations fall, when they reach the limits of exploitation, and the flexibility offered by new inventions can lead to death when the flexible ideas become hard-programmed and too determined. This could be equal to the critique of doxa by Deleuze and Guattari, doxa meaning the unquestionable common beliefs and habits. Either man 1) is too clever, in which case we are doomed, or 2) he was not clever enough to limit his greed to courses which would not destroy the ongoing total system (Bateson 1972, 503).
A "high" civilization means ”that we can´t go back to the lifestyle of Eskimos, aboriginals or the Bushmen”, writes Bateson. The process would just start over. We need gadgets to promote and maintain wisdom. The organisms are not only results of genetic or environmental conditions but there is also the flexibility and preadaptation for unpredictable change at stake. According to Bateson, flexibility can be denifed as uncommited potentiality of change (Bateson 1972, 505). An organism learns two ways, by experience and by flexibility and adaptation (Bateson 1972, 505, 509).
There are ideas of immediate use but the more flexible parts can be saved for use on newer matters and given ideas or actions are subject to multiple determination by many interwoven strands, writes Bateson. When we turn off the light, we have multiple reasons for doing it. We do it partly by privacy, partly by reducing sensory input etc. There are always flexibility and hard-programmed ideas. In the ecology of ideas there is an evolutionary process about what which ideas will be hard-programmed. It can be that the ideas that work in the current situation may not be useful after longer time.
For Guattari the logic of the three ecologies is ”a logic of intensities, the logic of self-referential existential assemblages, engaging non-reversible duration” (Guattari 1989, 136). It is not the logic of ”the totalized bodies of human subjects, but of part objects in the psychoanalytical sense - Winnicott's transitional objects, institutional objects ('subject groups'), faces, landscapes” (Guattari 1989, 136). In order to set the social and political practices back on their feet, there is urge to need to work for humanity instead of the semiotic universe of capitalism.
Guattari writes how in the developped countries there is tendency to use social tension and despair in order to ”stimulate” a principle which is related to the building of the areas of the precarious conditions, chronic unemployment which reachers both the young, the aged, part-time and undermined employees, making their condition even more marginalised. At the same time there prevails rapid development of the technological-scientific realm which could help to resolve the most difficult ecological problems and to balance the most useful functions in the society.
In his book Pedagogy of the Oppressed (orig. in Portuguese 1968, translated in english 1970) Paulo Freire admits that freedom is something that can be also frightening. Freedom is something which is achieved through the learning in a learning system which is not relying on the hierarchy of the oppressor and the oppressed. We can also imagine a system where both the oppressor and the oppressed are oppressed by an unquestionable ideology, which gives no alternative to think or work differently. This demands an alternative pedagogy, which could be defined also as practical pedagogy.
Following Gilles Deleuze´s thoughts, Charles J. Stivale has wrote about the importance of the practical pedagogy in his teaching and how it intersects with ”the vital matter of becomings in teaching and learning, and more precisely, how we can grasp this pedagogy in relation to making the Body without Organs, which I see as fundamental for a pedagogy of friendship, for a pedagogy with friendship and certainly for a practical pedagogy” (Charles J. Stivale: Gilles Deleuze´s ABCs, 38). The concept of BwO is closely linked to the concept of haecceity, which means individuality which is ”different from that of a thing or a subject,... consist(ing) entirely of relations of movement and rest between molecules and particles, capacities to affect and be affected” (Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari: A Thousand Plateaus, 261, sit. by Stivale in his book).
These ”relations” and ”capacities” as necessary part in terms of the learning exchange between the teacher and the student, sometimes opening a dangerous landscape between the excess of chaos and the variable degrees of control. The molecular structure of Nomadic Academy of Experimental Arts enables it to invent its own disciplines or areas, tight-roping in the field of invention, individuation and sharing. The methods include trust, flexibility, exploration and expression. This is visible in the currently invented areas of Academy, which are ”the area for the technologies of time and space and ecology”, ”the area of cybernetics and insect-research”, ”the area of poetical-political aphorisms” and ”the area of post-humanistic ethos”.
added on Saturday 22.8. 2009
I would like to work a bit on the themes and concepts which we met in Ecologies of resistance -workshop with the group mollecular.org and their invited lecturers and guests Bracha Ettinger, Brian Massumi, Franco Berardi and Erin Manning. The workshop started with seminars in Kuva by talk about radical / alternative ways when forming a group. It´s always risky, as Manning told us about one experience in Sense Lab in Canada and it seemed to be so true that sometimes one disastrous event can seemingly destroy a created proto-territory for future things. But it perhaps just seems to be so, because out of the catastrophe new events or proto-territories will emerge. We heard also that in the history of mollecular.org there has been collapses and rearrangements.
Bracha Ettinger mentioned psychoanalyst Wilfred Ruprecht Bion (1897-1979) as one of the best theorists when talking about groups (the bookExperiences in groups was published in 1961). Bion finds two groups in every group, "the work group" and "the basic assumption group", the latter being the subconscious fantasy of the group, that brings the primitive forces in. Ettinger mentioned that it is always the basic assumption that builds up the possibilities for the crisis within the group, which can lead to scapegoating or even violent behaviour. It can be a way of understanding that group develops its own field of "as if" -behaviour. Bion´s three types of basic assumption are 1) the dependency, 2) the fight-flight and 3) thepairing. In Dependency Group the members are protected by the leader, thus making everybody else in it weak and ignorant. Fight-Flight Group preserves itself at all costs and if there is no enemy, the leader will create one (scapegoat). Pairing assumes that the group has met for the purposes of reproduction, to bring forth a Savior who will lead it to Utopia.
Later on in the afternoon there were seminars and opening of Ettinger´s exhibition in Kuvataideakatemia. The next day the journey continued to Turku and during the couple of days left an unforgettable experience.
Later on in the afternoon there were seminars and opening of Ettinger´s exhibition in Kuvataideakatemia. The next day the journey continued to Turku and during the couple of days left an unforgettable experience.
Because of the wonderful work by the group mollecular.org finnish translation of Ettinger´s book Co-poiesis (Yhdessätekeminen) is now out and is giving food to the thoughts also in our academy. The book introduces quite many new concepts which all refer to a psychic sphere as trans-subjective realm. Here is a chapter from her article in "Ephemera" where this realm is defined, in relation to some of her other concepts.
I have named matrixial borderspace the psychic sphere which is trans-subjective on a sub-subjective partial level. A mental matrixial encounter-event transgresses individual psychic boundaries even if and when its awareness arises in the field of the separate individual subject, and it evades communication even if and when it operates inside intersubjective relational field. Subjectivity here is a transgressive encounter between ‘I’ (as partial-subject) and uncognized yet intimate ‘non-I’ (as partial-subject or partial-object). Co-poietic transformational potentiality evolves along aesthetic and ethical unconscious paths: strings and threads, and produces a particular kind of knowledge. Unconscious transmission and reattunement as well as resonant copoietic knowledge don’t depend on verbal communication, intentional organization or inter-subjective relationships. Aesthetical and ethical processes are impregnated by matrixial copoiesis. In aesthetical working-through the artist transforms time and space of an encounter-event into matrixial screen and gaze, and offers the other via com-passionate hospitality an occasion for fascinance.
The rhizomatic web of concepts, which are relationally functioning with each other, is something which we find from the thoughts of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. With this kind of co-poietic structure we could perhaps develop working methods for nomadic academy, not to think our activities as "pro-jects", as projected by a fixed-kind of subject, or produced by multiplicity of persons, or by multiplicities which build up a person - or multi-personal, multi-cultural etc. activities. Now it has become a time "to think differently", and especially to think and act differently, could we say "experimentally" to work within this new realm, which we could maybe call "proto-territory", following a concept used by Brian Massumi. (K.Y.)
APPENDIX: 8 1/2 QUESTIONS ABOUT NOMADIC ACADEMY
Q: What is a nomadic academy of experimental arts?
A: It can be your kitchen, a memo of some kind written by shaky hands holding a
ball-point pen or a pirate garden. Helsinki Nomadic Academy of
Experimental Arts which was established in 20.7.2009 in Harakka island is just
one place for it.
Q: What does Helsinki Nomadic Academy of Experimental Arts do?
A: It invites learning and thinking bodies of different genders and generations
to talk, dance, sing, to stop in their thoughts, to slow down and maybe to say
no to the communication if they feel like it.
Q: Who are the idols of Nomadic Academy of Experimental Arts?
A: The unusual suspects. We are fans of dada, Collège de ’Pataphysique, Fluxus,
Situationists International, and, when looking at this moment, many other radical experimental arts´ organisations,
including several alternative groups working at the moment.
Research is close to our heart as is the critical alliance between arts, science and philosophy from the early artist communions following the Bauhaus/Black Mountain College link to art/ecology/public art debate and the contemporary experimental art recidencies.
Q: Why Nomadic Academy was established?
A: Because it was there, already. Grinning cats, Pussies in the Boots with their
shiny teeth and the eels in their buckets on the office desks only prevented to
see it.
Q: What is the structure in Academy?
A: We have two circles, the inner circle is dedicated to the elitistic art and
the outer circle to anti-art / nomadic art. There is constant change going on
between and within these circles.
Q: Who can join in?
A: Artists, the part-time teacher-artists and students, other individuals
interested in learning, groups, assemblages and organisations - all who think
that experimental and nomadic expression is good for the thoughts,
the hearts, social relations and criticality. In some cases it is also possible
for the animals and boats to join us.
Q: What are the sources of inspiration in Nomadic Academy?
A: Arts & experimentation groups, movements and schools, antihierarchical theory of Paulo Freire, Gilles
Deleuze and Félix Guattari. We also appreciate Aleksanteri Ahola-Valo, who was
an artist, designer of buildings, writer and developped his own pedagogical
system. We dislike all kinds of sexism, racism and fascism and "pavlovian
reflex" -like -relation to money.
1/2 Q: What is your budget?
1/2 A: We have no funding.
Q: What happens now?
A: Film performances, experimental lectures, conversations, meetings with
teacher-artists, art exhibitions?, music events, film festivals, aphorism videos and else. We will follow our four methods of rite, rail, route and rib (in finnish: riitti,
rata, reitti and ruode).
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