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Space, Creativity & Organizing Workshop
Alternative epistemologies: exploring the world through the senses
An interactive workshop with Anastasia Kostner
Convened by Boukje Cnossen and Nicolas Bencherki
July 4, 2019 at 7pm
Summerhall, Edinburgh (UK)
Why this Workshop
What about using different senses to experience the world and make sense of it? How about letting go of Descartes’s way of looking at the world, ‘cogito ergo sum,’ and maybe even change it around: ‘I am therefore I think.’
We are a product of the circumstances around us and function as a part of it. In medicine, we more and more see that addressing the ‘pain’ solely and ‘fixing’ it, does not always solve the problem. The centeredness around the human falls into the background and we move towards a bigger picture. We start to see the connection between our physical existence and the world, the universe, as well as being able to understand smaller and smaller particles of our being. Einstein’s theory has finally been proven and we start to use other practices to know and to understand our lives.
This two-hour hands-on workshop allows us to explore the world through our senses. We use simple exercises to verify reality and have time to share about our experiences. It might not give many answers but allows questions to arise.
Space, Creativity & Organizing Workshop
Workshop Outline
The human body has different potentials of experiencing the surroundings. In order for us to navigate through the world and acquire knowledge, nerve transmitters are perceiving and orienting through different senses: light through the eyes, sound through the ears, smell through our nose, and tactile input through our biggest sensory organ, the skin. Furthermore, we also orient and identify through inner map of our body, called proprioception. The workshop will give practical exercises on how to experience and study the environment with our senses.
Duration: About 2 hours including after talk
Activities Outline
The times mentioned are estimates
- Arrival & Short Introduction
15 minutes
- Body Scan: experiencing proprioception
10 minutes
- Guardian angel: experiencing all the senses except vision
5 minutes demonstration
20 minutes per pair (45 minutes in total)
- Neurotransmitter Detector: experiencing the skin
5 minutes demonstration
5 minutes per pair (15 minutes in total)
- Sock Exercise: experiencing vision in connection with proprioception
5 minutes demonstration
5 minutes per pair (15 minutes in total)
- Questions & Answers
15 minutes
More about Anastasia Kostner
Anastasia Kostner is an Italian dancer and movement researcher/practitioner. She has looked at the interrelation between the physical and rational realm by studying BMC (Body Mind Centering) and Dance in Community, writing about ‘Mental training in dance practice’ and the phenomenon of FLOW in connection with dance and learning practice (MA of Arts). Recently, she has become a Rolfer (Structural Integration) and uses this knowledge in workshop and seminars, especially helping professional musicians optimize their performance.
What is the SCO Workshop
Since 2015, the Space, Creativity and Organizing workshop brings together researchers interested in ways of developing an understanding of space more adequate to the challenge of contemporary organization. It proposes hands-on and experimental activities in the margins of the European Group for Organizational Studies’ annual colloquium to provoke and engage academics to consider alternative methods in which to think and practice space in organization. In 2015, we occupied the cooperative workspace of the Stone Soup organization in Athens to explore the of site-specific creative possibilities of spaces normally used by independent technology professionals. In 2016, we took over an art gallery, the ‘Voyage Pittoresque Factory’ in Naples, to investigate affect’s emergence in the interaction of bodies, technologies and space. In 2017, we took a literary turn and discussed Roberto Bolaño's 2666 at the Overgaden Institute for Contemporary Art in Copenhagen. In 2018, it is the Estonian museum of architecture in Tallinn that hosted the workshop, as we discovered together the role of smell and scent in organizational life.
Location
At Summerhall, a multi-arts complex and events venue.
It was a farm, a brewery, a veterinary school, and it is now dedicated to creativity. Summerhall materializes the spirit of hybridity and cross-fertilization that is at the heart of the Space, Creativity and Organizing Workshop.
1 Summerhall,
Edinburgh, United Kingdom
EH9 1PL
