Abuela Grillo from Denis Chapon on Vimeo.
A friend just sent me the link to Jugar y Jugarse: 2da edición: Las técnicas y la dimensión lúdica de la educación popular by Mariano Algava (thanks, Josh) and i am wowed. Algava appears to be an Argentinian professor and popular educator. He's one helluva writer, for sure. I read spanish slowly but it was quickly obvious to me that here was a discourse of popular education that is rare in the english-speaking world. He articulates a radical vision of popular education that is very much in keeping with how i have always imagined popular education could become - despite the limitations and resistance of a liberal, hegemonic culture such as Canada. (You can download the whole book on this page or from this link to the 6MB PDF.)We would like to say something about this delayed re-release of "Play and playfulness." Delayed in the face of the four years of demand for this book during which we have been asked at marches, meetings and assemblies, “don’t you have a copy of ‘Play and playfulness’?” When we’ve discussed this in popular education groups, it gets out of hand quickly: word spreads widely from person to person and we end up exhausted with the "conference presentations" we’re asked to do.
One tendency of paternalist politics regarding "popular education" has been the movement of a watered-down form into teacher training institutes, government programs, courses for volunteers, etc. However it is the “nice” version that moves this way – where popular education is seen as a “nice” way to intervene, a way to "look good" in group work, a “fun” alternative to transfer content, and, what is worse, includes the fatalism of naturalizing poverty and oppression. This is popular education acting within the framework of "the possible", where anything that dares dream beyond the horizon of "the possible" is repressed, jailed, frowned upon. The intent here is to drain Popular Education of its rebellious nature, of its origins in pedagogy of the oppressed, in order to integrate a dumbed-down form that can safely supplement the paternalism of "risk control."
Given this, we affirm once again from our practice, that popular education is not a set of techniques and workshops for use by marginalized groups as remedial education for those who “dropped out”. Popular Education does not replace the "organization" needed to transform reality, nor is it a place for militancy without class consciousness. Popular Education aims to support diverse forms of resistance to capitalism, patriarchy, colonialism, racism, imperialism; and for socialism and challenging the commodification of all aspects of life. The construction of popular power (for the individual and the social) subverts and problematizes; this action is joyful, embodied and intellectual at the same time, creating new ways and new forms, is playful.
It is the power of dreams and utopias and a radically liberating Popular Education that cannot be arrested. It is flowing water giving verdant life to the driest of deserts, nurturing seeds of rebellion, making it flower. Play and playfulness is the water that flows through local, popular and activist experience.
Reflecting on so-called "community arts" in preparation for teaching this Fall, i've been revisiting many texts about arts, creativity and activism. This book, If You Want To Write: A Book about Art, Independence and Spirit by Brenda Ueland was recommended to me over 20 years ago by a friend (thanks, Clara). It remains one of the most inspirational and useful texts i've read in my life. Over and over again Ueland makes the point that everyone is creative, that creativity is hardwired, as it were, into what it takes to be human. She puts it plainly and unequivocally in the first pages: "This is what I learned: that everyone is talented, original and has something important to say." The rest of the book, in one sense, is the persuasive case for this proposition. It is filled with practical advice and it is also one very extended and effective pep talk. Ueland is very good at persuading you that you have it in you to write or create with whatever medium on which you set your hands and eyes and imagination. Strangely, having read this book, i did not think to hunt down other writing by Ueland. This is unlike me; characteristically i "discover" an author i like and then proceed to hunt down everything they ever wrote. As a teen this was almost exclusively science fiction and fantasy writers (Heinlein, Clarke, Asimov, Bradbury, Leinster, LeGuin), later it was politics, pedagogy and spirituality (Starhawk, Freire, Galeano, Alice Miller) and so on. I'm uncertain why i did not apply my usual readerly zeal to Ueland but perhaps it was because i knew it would be years before i had satisfactorily absorbed the lessons i had to learn from her words. And simply exercising my normal fanboy instincts would, ironically, be an act of avoidance. Re-reading Ueland's work after 20 years i can see that i have internalized many of her ideas so effectively that i cannot recall the moment (if there was such a thing) when i did this. And what i'm noticing is a profound similarity between her ideas and those of Paulo Freire, Augusto Boal, Alice Miller, Corita Kent and many others. These are ideas that have shaped my life.This is the reason: When we are listened to, it creates us, makes us unfold and expand. Ideas actually begin to grow within us and come to life. You know how if a person laughs at your jokes you become funnier and funnier, and if he does not, every tiny little joke in you weakens up and dies. Well, that is the principle of it. It makes people happy and free when they are listened to. And if you are a listener, it is the secret of having a good time in society (because everybody around you becomes lively and interesting), of comforting people, of doing them good.It is a strange thing about language or perhaps it's just our use of it that we talk about "writing" as though it were a thing apart from "reading" - first one, then the other. We do the same thing with "telling" (or "speaking") and "listening". I have long been persuaded about the power of listening and i am really excited to find this elegant and persuasive text. If this is what listening meant in our political, pedagogical, economic world, what then?
Notable for being one of the first films produced by the NFB’s Indian Film Crew, The Ballad of Crowfoot is also remarkable for its haunting archival images set to an impassioned ballad written and performed by director Willie Dunn...I am moved once again to watch this film and listen to this song. Especially given the context of recent aboriginal activism in Canada (from the work done on the legacy of residential schools to Defenders of the Land). And given the nature of my family, i am more connected to this history than i ever imagined i would be.
This publication includes some excellent articles on community arts practice by Jumblies members - a Toronto, Ontario-based arts group. Ruth Howard introduces the collection:This publication was conceived in 2007, out of enthusiasm for Jumblies’ new public seminars, which grew, in turn, from our learning and mentorship program – the Jumblies Studio – and the realization that there is a lot of knowledge and experience to share.There is a groundswell of community arts practice in Toronto, both as a result of the excellent work of several groups that have been creating wonderful work and community for years: Jumblies, Shadowlands, Clay & Paper, Red Pepper Spectacle, Sketch, ArtsStarts, Regent Park Focus, Storytelling Toronto, 1,001 Friday Nights of Storytelling, Carlos Bulosan Theatre and many more. For several years now York University has had a Certificate in Community Arts Practice (CAP), unique in Canada (here's their blog), and a joint program of the Faculties of Environmental Studies and Arts.
[Joe] Berridge [a partner in Urban Strategies] encouraged conference attendees to revitalize our workplaces, our working practices and, ultimately, our cities; transforming them into exemplary hubs of creativity. And he had specific ideas as to how we should do it. In order to revitalize, Berridge suggested that we abolish meetings and other collective processes, and embrace the individuality and inductive thinking that he argued are essential to an artistic modality. “Beauty is not a collective product, it is an individual product...This runs completely counter to the way we have structured all of our institutions, in which the power of the collective suppresses the power of the individual”, Berridge insisted.I find it rare that advocacy against collective creativity and for an individualistic notion of the artist and art is as brazen as this. I'm sure Joe has some goods ideas about art in the city. But this opinion that Maggie reports is one of those dominant notions that fits so nicely with a capitalist-individualist (even aynrandian) world. And it is one that i think is wrong - but that's a longer discussion than i have time for now.
What About Me? Trailer - USA from Double D Productions on Vimeo.
A good friend who lives with CFS/ME sent me the links to two trailers being used to raise funds to produce a feature length documentary. CFS/ME remains misunderstood, misrepresented, disbelieved in and ignored by medical systems and practitioners around the world. The suffering that people living with CFS/ME is made all the worse by this ignorance. This documentary could help a great deal.King Solomon once commanded his councillors to fashion him a ring and inscribe on it something that, when read, would turn his mood of joy to sorrow and of mood of sorrow to joy. The councillors worried over this conundrum for some time and, after much thought and work, presented Solomon with a ring. Solomon took the ring and was pleased when he read the inscription: and this too shall pass.
I picked up John Banville's new novel The Infinities, read the first paragraph and was instantly hooked. Narrated by none other than the ancient winged-helmeted trickster Hermes, the prose packs a poetic wallop that brought tears to my eyes. Here's how the novel opens:Of the things we fashioned for them that they might be comforted, dawn is the one that works. When darkness sifts from the air like fine soft soot and light spreads slowly out of the east then all but the most wretched of humankind rally. It is a spectacle we immortals enjoy, this minor daily resurrection, often we will gather at the ramparts of the clouds and gaze down upon them, our little ones, as they bestir themselves to welcome the new day. What a silence falls upon us then, the sad silence of our envy. Many of them sleep on, of course, careless of our cousin Aurora’s charming matutinal trick, but there are always the insomniacs, the restless ill, the lovelorn tossing on their solitary beds, or just the early-risers, the busy ones, with their knee-bends and their cold showers and their fussy little cups of black ambrosia. Yes, all who witness it greet the dawn with joy, more or less, except of course the condemned man, for whom first light will be the last, on earth.This morning's Astronomy Picture of the Day (above) got me to thinking about terrestrial and celestial phenomena and the fantastic imagination of human culture. Is it any wonder that humans once looked upon such sights and created stories of angry and fearsome superbeings? Do we see here Zeus' or Odin's wrath? And, as we know from geological science (if not simple observation) following such volcanic activity is the formation of new land which, as many know, is what the word lava means. And so we have a piece of the puzzle of wrathful, titanic gods and their equally titanic abilities to destroy and, of course, to create.
Two monks, one old and one young, were walking through the forest from one monastery to another when they came upon a woman standing beside a river. She was finely dressed in delicate fabrics and was clearly afraid to attempt crossing the river however shallow it might be. The old monk approached the woman and offered to carry her across. The young monk was shocked. Once on the other side the old monk put the woman down and together with his young companion continued through the forest. Many hours later, as the day was drawing to a close the young monk spoke up saying, “Master, I do not understand. It is strictly forbidden in our order to touch women and yet you didn’t hesitate to pick up that woman and carry her across the river.” “Ah, yes,” said the old monk. “I am surprised at you. I put her down many hours ago. You must be very tired from having carried her all day.”
I've just learned about this 5th Int'l Conference of the Popular Education Network and am urging people to connect with it. If anybody trips across a pot 'o gold and feels like sharing... hint, hint. More likely, if someone from the Toronto-area can make it, please bring back news. Edinburgh, folks! Sweet. (It's my father's land).
I am both scare-proof and creeped-out-proof on account of a life of reading and watching science fiction and horror literature and film. So when a story or film gets under my skin I know two things right away: it will be with me a long, long time; and it is an unusual and powerful work of art. Such is my subjective measure for such things. Only a few minutes into the film and I knew District 9 deserved to be on the same shelf (in my brain) as Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery, W.W. Jacob’s The Monkey’s Paw and Ursula K. LeGuin’s The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas; all stories that were written into the base code of my self, you could say. I loved District 9. I thought it funny, poignant, challenging, iconoclastic (of many science-fiction conventions), and thrilling. It's also extremely violent imagery, an 11 on the gross-out chart and therefore not for the squeamish and, on top of all that, it creeped me out.
While this film is not for the squeamish, the visceral violence is all contextual and sound, as far as the narrative is concerned. And, like many such stories, the visceral violence exists in contrast with the more subtle (and entirely more horrifying violence - at least it should be more horrifying) casual brutality of the corporate weapons profiteers - willing to experiment, Nazi-like, on living creatures; willing to murder with ease to advance their greed; willing to commit genocide to win their comfort and power. How does that bureaucratic and corporate greed and horror compare to dismembered body parts, blood and ichor? The latter is gross, distasteful, stomach-churning, perhaps. But the former should chill us down to our bones. Does it? This storytelling tactic reminds me of Todd Solondz’s movie Happiness which I found a wickedly clever film that played a fantastic trick on the viewer. It tells a number of stories of unhappy lives using a subtle, somewhat wicked satire - akin to the subtle comedy of Chekhov. What happens to the characters is awful and yet, they are grown-ups who, arguably, have made the proverbial beds in which they lie. But in the midst of the comic misfortune is a story of real horror. While the film has us amused by the stories of adult misfortune, it gives us a story, no different in the telling, of true horror. Just what do we find ourselves laughing at in this story? How quickly do we distinguish the satire from the horror? The film is a test. And, while I think I “passed”, it has been over ten years since I saw Happiness and I can’t claim that I haven’t conveniently revised my memory. I do think that since seeing Happiness I have been more mindful about how film and art plays with my emotions.
And my emotions were disturbed by this story on many levels, not least of which was how the audience reacted - which was with silence. In the first half hour to 45 minutes of the film i seemed to be the only one laughing. I figure that the humour was either too subtle or that people were utterly ignorant of the history of apartheid South Africa - though i think you could substitute knowledge of any authoritarian/draconian regime (or read Kafka, for heaven's sake) in order to see the mocking farce with which the film portrays bureaucrats and pundits alike. I grant that as an anti-apartheid activist throughout the 80s and early 90s and as someone who visited townships while the apartheid state still existed, i am not your average viewer. However, the satire that courses through this film shouldn't need that much historical knowledge or experience in order to be appreciated. Of course, maybe i'm wrong about that.
What will it take for the ruling forces of our nations to admit that capitalism isn't working? Of course capitalism is almost never overtly talked about in the popular/mass media and certainly not in our governments. It is effectively veiled behind the supposedly neutral jargon of "the market" and "economics" both of which are used in place of "the capitalist market" and "capitalist economics". The legacy of the red-baiting 'fear of communism' tactics remains so strong that we cannot use what should merely be the name of one approach to economics - if we use the word "capitalism" in public discourse, we must go to great pains to project an air of neutrality that presumes that listeners will wonder if you're a socialist. Most people accept that we are in an "economic" crisis and not a crisis of "capitalist economics" (or, still more simply stated, a "crisis of capitalism"). Nor have the gargantuan relief efforts - cynically limited to the biggest institutions as well as cynically abused by those same institutions - shaken people's confidence in capitalism. After all, it's not capitalism that is failing, it's the economy - or so the mass of people would like to believe.