Words of Wisdom

Lesson: LOVER LETTER from us - Tutor: Olafur Eliasson

AKADEMIE X LESSONS IN ART + LIFE, lesson 8 - PHAIDON

…We don’t pronounce ahead of time what we think we need to know. After we do something we don’t say others should do that thing. We try to learn how to learn, so we learn where we have to go by going. We evaluate and critique ourselves along the way, and together, and always, and all ways. We invite other artists and practitioners to think and do with us. We believe in risking vulnerability and practicing in the robust discomfort of uncertainty. A shared vulnerability is important. We believe in getting out of our comfort one. We believe in an economy of effort. Of making an effort. In rejections that offer alternatives. We believe in thinking and doing, in the active imagination as an agent in the world, in shaping and being shaped by the world, in causing the world to wobble differently depending where we stand. We like the world wobbling differently.

School is not a place for a safe enclosure of lessons. School is an amplifier for the world. Lessons are not fixed ahead of time or they become rules. Dogmatic. Concrete. Belaboured. The syllabus is written after the course ends. The course is endless. The curriculum emerges out of the energy and relationships in the space and the world. It emerges out of the encounters in the world. It emerges out of the social contracts for how we negotiate and engage with each other in the world. It emerges out of questions and feelings, empathy, the politics of experimentation, perceptual awareness, the responsibility of taking risks and compassion.

A philosophy of care. It emerges out of the ecology of thoughts and ideas, being conscious that we are conscious and the felt feeling of being present. It emerges out of the question: how can art change the world?

Our school emerges out of questions of why: why make a specific artwork? Why do something one way and not the other? Why put a work in an institution? What relationships does a work empower? How does a work allow us to understand and feel the conditions and constraints through which systems squeeze the world into different forms, so that what works can touch the world? Finding our ‘whys’ helps us to prioritize content, helps us sharpen a precision with tools. Sharpening our tools helps us to collaborate with others and builds openness. Simply breathing can provide the material for a workshop. Simply breathing can be a lesson plan. Breath now. Take a deep breath. Simply breathing can help us feel an awareness of where we are and what we are doing. A pause. Break. Caesura. Everyone participating shapes the lesson, makes the lesson more, makes the lesson on.

Examples of thinking doing:

1) Go outside with the group. Walk backwards for fifteen minutes through the city. Note the change in speeds. Note what changes in who approaches.

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4) With a group stand in a circle in public space. Laugh out loud for five minutes. If you have to, fake the laughter until you make it happen on its own.

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11) As a group, walk very, very, very, very slowly for fifteen minutes in public. Very slowly. Like you are in slow motion. Like you are conscious of every bend and muscle. Like the air is a thick viscous plasma of breath. Feel your weight on the ground. Feel the ground pushing up against you. Feel your balance shift to imbalance. Cultivate that cusp of balance and control. Cultivate the carp out of it. Feel each part of the slow motion as it is distributed through your entire body. Don’t forget to breathe.