Way to the Personal Process

This is a part of my process with­in A Mem­o­ry Lane to Ana­lyze the Phys­i­cal­i­ty. See more about the basic premis­es and ideas behind this blog here. I present the Stock­holm Uni­ver­si­ty of the Arts Project I will be men­tion­ing in this arti­cle is in more detail here. This time time I will be think­ing about my approach in more detail. I will present some pos­si­ble top­ics that I am cur­rent­ly lean­ing towards. Then I tell a bit more about the direc­tions I am inter­est­ed in.

The groups and individuals

I have always been inter­est­ed in the human beings. My idea of good time is to dis­cov­er new fas­ci­nat­ing phe­nom­e­na of human behav­iour. I have noticed that if there are more than (about) six indi­vid­u­als in my ensem­ble, my process will need me to put more effort and time for remem­ber­ing every­one and not just using men­tal short­cuts to remem­ber everyone. 

I can nat­u­ral­ly treat larg­er groups as ‘a col­lec­tion of peo­ple’. This means I think it as a social­ly and phys­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed organ­ism con­sist­ing of these peo­ple. Ensem­bles work for me very dif­fer­ent­ly from how the indi­vid­u­als work, and I would be inter­est­ed in find­ing some brain sci­ence to explain it.

In prac­tice this means that I feel like I can either study groups or indi­vid­u­als with one set of tools. If I want to swift my per­spec­tive between the two points of view, I need two com­ple­men­tary toolsets. It makes sense to me that con­sid­er­ing the things from both of these per­spec­tives might be very fruit­ful. Groups con­sist of indi­vid­u­als and indi­vid­u­als con­tribute to the group itself, so study­ing one with­out the oth­er would­n’t make sense.

The two time scales

I have two basic time scales that inter­est me with this work. First scale is about the per­son­al lev­el. It fas­ci­nates me. What kind of jour­neys of life-long learn­ing do exist? How do they form the artist? What kind of struc­tures are cre­at­ed in the moment by the cir­cum­stances of a situation?

A moment of time

Cir­cum­stances of a sit­u­a­tion, or con­text, are some­thing that I can per­ceive and define myself. Nat­u­ral­ly I can­not record it in full detail as can­not do the work with­out any per­son­al bias.

I can actu­al­ly per­ceive a lim­it­ed amount of infor­ma­tion in a moment. But if I pick apart the phys­i­cal­i­ty of the moment, the process gives me a lot of infor­ma­tion about what hap­pens. I already dis­cussed this in the sec­ond draft of my research plan. Adding some his­to­ry to a moment would give me an under­stand­ing of why some phys­i­cal choic­es are made in the moment. Phys­i­cal­i­ty of the past moments lingers with any cho­sen moment of time. This lin­ger­ing inter­ests me greatly.

Under­stand­ing the flow of moments feels like some­thing that helps me “hold the space”. Hold­ing the space is a ped­a­gog­i­cal con­cept which I under­stand to mean doing small phys­i­cal choic­es to con­trol the ebb and flow of a les­son. In this research my skills in hold­ing the space could form a basis of what I will be look­ing at.

The journeys through time

The sec­ond time scale of my research must be about longer jour­neys. What hap­pens in the space builds on the indi­vid­u­al­i­ty and the expe­ri­ences of the peo­ple. It would be dis­hon­est if I did­n’t in some way con­sid­er their past experiences. 

I feel that dis­cussing things with peo­ple them­selves is the only way to under­stand the fin­er details of a sit­u­a­tion. The con­tent of this dis­cus­sion is still open to me.

If I remem­ber cor­rect­ly from my per­son­al­i­ty psy­chol­o­gy stud­ies, ‘a per­son­al­i­ty’ could be defined through three vari­ables. These are per­son­al nar­ra­tives (‘I am…’-stories), per­son­al­i­ty traits (mea­sure­able traits of per­ma­nent nature, like Big Five) and behav­iour­al pat­terns (what a per­son does, how they think etc). I must nat­u­ral­ly still recheck the sci­ence behind this. I feel like what I would be inter­est­ed in all three of these. I don’t have the the­o­ret­i­cal back­ground need­ed for their prac­ti­cal appli­ca­tion. They do still give me a sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly defin­able pic­ture which would give some weight to my research.

The spectrums of humanity

I would also be per­son­al­ly very curi­ous of how neu­rospec­trum affects how peo­ple work. Artists with an autism or ADHD might be able to offer some inter­est­ing views on how the sit­u­a­tions affect them. I feel like this kind of idea could be use­ful to cre­at­ing stronger, more colour­ful artis­tic spaces.

Still, I feel like I am a sto­ry-crafter with a super­pow­er in lis­ten­ing. Can I cre­ate data out of sto­ries I hear from peo­ple’s lived expe­ri­ence? I would love to treat their per­son­al ten­den­cies and inter­pre­ta­tions “as they are”, with­out need­ing to use psy­cho­log­i­cal mod­els to put extra lay­er onto them. Nat­u­ral­ly, psy­cho­log­i­cal mod­els can offer me some gen­er­al expla­na­tions of what hap­pens and help pre­dict the dynam­ics of future spaces. They might still not offer a good start­ing point for this kind of research where I am after the fine details. 

I am inter­est­ed also on the dis­cus­sion about jour­neys length and depth. I am only inter­est­ed in the moments and not the per­son­al lives per se. The lives of the peo­ple phys­i­cal­iz­ing the moments do still have their lives, and their past expe­ri­ences will affect how they expe­ri­ence and act in a room. As a teacher, I any­ways sel­dom have or need a priv­i­lege to see to the past of a per­son so it feels unnec­es­sary to delve too deep into it while doing research on the moments.

Study of Intentional Spaces?

Idea to study the intentionally-created spaces and the choices we do to shape those spaces interests me very much. 

Vocal­iz­ing the intent of the space with­out going to the prac­ti­cal, phys­i­cal choic­es (see Facets of Phys­i­cal­i­ty) might be an inter­est­ing choice. I am unsure how well it would work, and if a process to go into a more detailed def­i­n­i­tion might be need­ed. Sim­i­lar­ly to when a per­son nav­i­gates con­sent, we might need to estab­lish a [meta­phys­i­cal] con­tain­er. A con­tain­er that defines what is allowed in the space — or what might not be allowed in the space.

Through my expe­ri­ence with inti­ma­cy direc­tion prac­tices I have noticed that it is often more use­ful to define what kind of con­crete behav­iour is expect­ed with­in the con­tain­er. If a per­son knows the areas where they are allowed to touch the oth­er per­son, and the ways they are allowed to deliv­er that touch, they can act accord­ing to that with ease. If I only know what not to do, there exists always an uncer­tain­ty about the unsaid intentions.

We can cre­ate an inten­tion­al space. This could mean hav­ing a dis­cus­sion what kind of behav­iour­al pat­terns we expect in that space. It could include defin­ing the rules to nav­i­gat­ing the space.

My thoughts on professional spaces

I used to teach as a part of my Ihmis­lähtöisen impron työ­ta­vat (human-based improv prac­tices) that any respon­si­ble improv needs three sets of prac­tices to func­tion. First set defines how we pre­pare the space to serve its pur­pose (1). The sec­ond defines how we nav­i­gate the space in the moment (2). And the third type of prac­tice means nav­i­gat­ing it after the real­i­ty and the space clash (3). These prin­ci­ples tend to work for any process with human beings. See some screen­shots from the pre­sen­ta­tions before.

These prac­tices will always be there whether we speak of them or not. Some­times they are out-spo­ken and writ­ten rules of con­duct, safer space pol­i­cy or some­thing more for­mal. Oth­er times they base them­selves on some­thing less for­mal. These laws, reg­u­la­tions and best prac­tices could just be some­thing every­one knows because of their pre­vi­ous experiences.

Intentional professional spaces

I am expect­ing the spaces to be dif­fer­ent kinds of safer or braver spaces or pro­fes­sion­al spaces. Numer­ous dif­fer­ent kinds of pro­fes­sion­al spaces exist with very dif­fer­ent processs­es. They are built based on par­tic­i­pants pre­vi­ous expe­ri­ences in sim­i­lar spaces or on dis­cus­sions had at the space itself.

It might be inter­est­ing to look at how the assump­tions based on pre­vi­ous expe­ri­ences and train­ing will pro­vide room to the choic­es peo­ple make. How pos­si­ble dis­cus­sions are nav­i­gat­ed. I am cur­rent­ly con­sid­er­ing the study of pro­fes­sion­al spaces as one of the point of views for my research. Writ­ing about it already now has helped me to col­lect my thoughts a bit to pre­pare for a smooth start.

Memory Lane Recap

In this arti­cle, I have dis­cussed three aspects of what I am cur­rent­ly inter­est­ed in. First was Indi­vid­ual-group dichoto­my. Then the dif­fer­ent lengths of the process­es I wish to study (moments vs indi­vid­u­al’s life jour­ney). In the end I dis­cussed short­ly the inten­tion­al­ly defined pro­fes­sion­al spaces. I must return to this lat­er on.

The blog A Mem­o­ry Lane to the Phys­i­cal­i­ty tells a sto­ry about my prepa­ra­tions for the jour­ney with­in Stock­holm Uni­ver­si­ty of the Arts Pro­gramme. I will be writ­ing it as I pre­pare for the project in order to keep things prac­ti­cal. Project starts in 2024.

A Mem­o­ry Lane is an intro­spec­tive blog, inac­cu­rate and rough, but thrives to add trans­paren­cy and com­mu­ni­ca­tion to my process. That is why I will be look­ing for­ward to hear­ing any com­ments or obser­va­tions that you might have.

Thank you for join­ing this jour­ney with me. Look­ing for­ward to con­tin­u­ing it with you!