site: othernessproject.org address: Allegade 44, 2 – 3000 Helsingør – Denmark e-mail: othernessproject@gmail.com phone: +45 25 38 37 60
Othernessproject: “Turning differences into dialogues” Othernessproject uses Performing Arts as a tool for connection, creation and community building through workshops, performative events and research
Description of Transnational Workshops and Lecture-performances with specific examples
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site: othernessproject.org address: Allegade 44, 2 – 3000 Helsingør – Denmark e-mail: othernessproject@gmail.com phone: +45 25 38 37 60
‘I found it very interesting to experience a sense of community in the otherness that the different cultures and languages created. It felt good to be together, to feel the trust as we open up to each other. I thought the workshop was well-thought-out, with the newer excersises always completing the previous ones. I am grateful to have attended the workshop and also for the eventful weekend that I got to spend with these exciting people.’ (T.Viktoria) ‘In our region, ethnic tensions are still very present, so it was helpful to talk about these issues from a different perspective and with a deeper understanding. I am still thinking about the question of otherness – although, as you may remember me saying, I don’t believe such a thing really exists.’ (Zsé) ‘I loved it when inarticulate sounds and irregular movements helped create surprising gestures, face expressions, sounds and moves, how these all became significant, like we haven’t seen them before, like we are expressing them for the first time. For me this showed the unknown possibilities in ourselves and also that these possibilities can only emerge if we are able to let go, to relax, to take risks.’ (T. E.)
Please note: tools and methods of Othernessproject are protected by the copyright law. They are to be used free of charge by a facilitator or organisation other than our project with a single restriction: methodology and practice has to be observed, followed and discussed by an Othernessproject facilitator until receiving full rights of use. Details of methodology, use and representation are subject to a written agreement. Contact: othernessproject@gmail.com
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site: othernessproject.org address: Allegade 44, 2 – 3000 Helsingør – Denmark e-mail: othernessproject@gmail.com phone: +45 25 38 37 60
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site: othernessproject.org address: Allegade 44, 2 – 3000 Helsingør – Denmark e-mail: othernessproject@gmail.com phone: +45 25 38 37 60 Questions: How can we meet in a short time, in an easily accessible way with people speaking different languages, having different cultural background? How can we give voice and empower participants through art to express their individual, personal feelings, while understanding their own cultural, historical, social, economic, linguistic background? How can we create positive, reinforcing discourses together? How can we raise empathy and foster social inclusion through metaphoric-artistic language? Key notions: Observing. Participants perceive and observe the space, themselves, their stories, objects, and each other. Space, time, exercises are conceived to allow perception, observation, reflection and self-reflection. Boundaries. Storytelling uses the sideways technique, never enters spheres of privacy or trauma: it asks for personal stories related to the participants’ names, childhood, favourite objects, this way the participants can regulate themselves how far they go in their storytelling, they set up their own boundaries, are in control of their intimacy and of how much and in what way they are sharing and taking part in forming the temporary community of the workshop. Metaphor. The workshop employs the simple and effective use of metaphor as a vehicle between semantics and imagination, it helps the participants express themselves in an artistic framework, protects their privacy and foster their creativity. Empowerment: these tools and notions foster expression and (re)formulation of own identity, without re-traumatizing, labelling and self-labelling, categorizing of the participants. It aims for empowerment and seeking ways of self-expression and always fluid self-identification. Methodology: action-research, learning by doing: For introductions, icebreakers, closure: exercises, games are inspired and further developed from Augusto Boal’s and his followers’ ample work and techniques, and from actor voice and body warm-ups. For connecting and co-learning: personal story telling, Socratic circles and Socratic debates, gamification: inspiration from visual arts, from objects, own personal story. For co-creating: relational art, experience design, performative techniques, common narratives waved from personal story telling.
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site: othernessproject.org address: Allegade 44, 2 – 3000 Helsingør – Denmark e-mail: othernessproject@gmail.com phone: +45 25 38 37 60
Transnational Workshops
Part of the series of interdisciplinary workshops: Otherness Dialogues
Genre: Otherness Dialogue workshop is a practice-based approach that offers hands-on, bodymind-soul experience for all participants, using performative and relational techniques; empowers and gives voice through co-creating, offers space for self-expression and connection. Games and artistic frames with simple rules are used in which participants immerse themselves to the extent they feel secure and try out the temporary community to be their platform to share and receive small personal stories, and convert them into the metaphorical language of art.
Participants: a heterogeneous group of local, migrant communities, social, cultural and community workers.
Parameters of each workshop: Number of participants: 30 (please, dress casually) Duration: 10 hours: 5 hours/day (between 10,00-12,30 and 13,30-15,00 each day) Venue: 40 m2 room, equipped with 30 chairs and one table. Props: A4 paper, 6 of large sheets of paper, pens and pencils, coloured pencils, watercolour, colourful threads, 4 decks of cards, an object brought by each of the participants.
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site: othernessproject.org address: Allegade 44, 2 – 3000 Helsingør – Denmark e-mail: othernessproject@gmail.com phone: +45 25 38 37 60
1st day: CONNECTION
The goal is to be able to share and receive simple own stories on the spoken, gestural or visual language chosen. Language, cultural, social barriers are constantly challenged as the simple stories have to be translated for the others to be understood not only semantically, but also culturally and metaphorically. Raises curiosity, questions, relations, reflection, selfreflection on our own complex background and that of the others’. Introductions, ice-breakers: 30 mins Light movement and physical games: throwing my name, keep the boat afloat, who is the leader, the spot on the wall. Connecting: 3 hours The story of your grandmother/grandfather (storytelling, contextualising, real/fictional stories) Nursery rhymes (language, translation, context) Colourful threads (movement-object exercise, without speaking) The story of your name (etymology, cultural and family background, identity) Your birth story (on a chosen language: spoken, visual, gestural) Card game (a card game that teaches meta-languages and recognition of signs, selfaccommodation, understanding of new context) Between the tasks: short games, movement exercises. Closure: 30 mins Discussions, feedbacks and the ‘keep the boat afloat’ game.
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site: othernessproject.org address: Allegade 44, 2 – 3000 Helsingør – Denmark e-mail: othernessproject@gmail.com phone: +45 25 38 37 60
2nd day: CO-CREATION
The final goal is to create one common piece of art: a (maybe polyglot) poem, song, symphony, installation, intervention, action, etc. The paths leading to this co-created art piece is sharing personal stories within a set framework that allows the participants to keep their privacy as much as they decide to do so, and to share parts of their stories, embodied by their objects, in a common narrative. Introduction: 20 mins Light movement games: throwing my name, keep the boat afloat, the spot on the wall, trust exercises. Co-creation: 3 hours Personal story telling - object exercise: tell the story of the object you brought. Using all the techniques we learnt the day before, the participants can choose a language to tell the story of the object they brought to present. The group, finding common points, interests, associations, and acknowledging, highlighting and explaining differences, has to create a common narrative with all their objects and stories. Based on the common narrative, taken as a script, the group creates a common work of art, deciding on the style, genre, methodology. They can choose all these tools from their former experiences, from the methods used the day before, getting feedback and questions to orientate them from the facilitator. Closure: 40 mins Discussions, feedbacks, analysis of the co-creation.
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site: othernessproject.org address: Allegade 44, 2 – 3000 Helsingør – Denmark e-mail: othernessproject@gmail.com phone: +45 25 38 37 60
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site: othernessproject.org address: Allegade 44, 2 – 3000 Helsingør – Denmark e-mail: othernessproject@gmail.com phone: +45 25 38 37 60
Lecture Performances Genre: Lecture-performance is a cross-over genre between arts and science; it is a form of teachingas-art. Teaching, more specifically, co-learning is seen as an indispensible part of art, and through this hybrid genre participants experience and acquire academic knowledge and artistic tools on the given topic. Othernessproject conceives lecture-performances to disseminate their tehniques of connection, communication and co-creation within temporary communities, with the aim to foster understanding, inclusion and societal justice. These lecure performnces take a closer look at some of the basic tools used by the bodymind-soul workshops of Othernessproject, to shed light on corner stones of their methodologies, their psychological, social and philosophycal backgorund, and offer space and discussion of them. Participants: all interested, preferably social, community and cultural workers. Former attendance of Otherness workshops is an asset.
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site: othernessproject.org address: Allegade 44, 2 – 3000 Helsingør – Denmark e-mail: othernessproject@gmail.com phone: +45 25 38 37 60 Parameters of each lecture-performance: Number of participants: 10-15 (please, dress casually) Duration: 3 hours: 1,5 hours/day (between 18,00-19,30 each day) Venue: 40 m2 room, equipped with 20 chairs and one table. Props: A4 paper, 6 of large sheets of paper, pens and pencils, coloured pencils, watercolour, colourful threads, 4 decks of cards, an object brought by each of the participants. Technical equipment: projector, screen, Internet connection. Aims: -
to share and discuss the key notions of Otherness Dialogues, with examples and explanation, to share and discuss the methodology of the workshops, to deconstruct and discuss parts of Connection and Co-creation, to detect possible pitfalls of the techniques and methodologiesused in workshops and find solutions for them, to share and discuss means and tools of communication with and without spoken language.
Methodology: -
presentation, performative lecture, action research: learning by doing, research cycles: 1. Diagnosing, 2. Planning, Taking Action, 3. Evaluation, Socratic circles and Socratic debates, role playing games.
Topics we deal with: 1. What is Performing Arts? How is it different from black box theatre? 2. Interdependence of art-culture-society. 3. Cross-over genres and some of their roots: Ancient Greek theatre, Gesamtkunstwerk, Theatre of the Oppressed, Indeterminacy. 4. Arts-education-healing. 5. What is space, meta-space, story, meta-story, character, meta-character in participatory performative events? 6. Why observing, boundaries, metaphor, empowerment are the key concept and what do they mean specifically? 7. How can we plan a participatory performative event? 10
site: othernessproject.org address: Allegade 44, 2 – 3000 Helsingør – Denmark e-mail: othernessproject@gmail.com phone: +45 25 38 37 60 Please note that throughout a lecture-performance, due to its succinct and experience-based methodology, we can exchange an unusually large amount of information and experience. Still, it is possible to focus in depth and in details to the core notions and questions, giving also an insight into one or two methods and techniques. Attendance of a lecture performance offers you an insight into our values, notions and techniques, but it does not entitle you to facilitate workshops and events. The role of a facilitator requires in-depth studies of colearning methods and Performing Arts.
1st Lecture performance – How we relate? Introduction: 10 mins of icebreakers, movement (from workshops) Storytelling: 70 mins. Practice: storytelling based on a picture. Questions we tackle with: -
Why storytelling in a heterogenous temporary community? Why sidyeways? How to protect boundaries? How to tell a story on different languages? How to find the main focus of the story? How to reduce a story to a metaphor? How to open/discuss/approach a metaphor?
Closure: 10 mins. Movement games.
2nd Lecture performance – How and why should we create together? Introduction: 10 mins of icebreakers, movement. Co-creation: 70 mins. Practice: waveing together two different stories. Questions we tackle with: -
What is creativity? What is association, metaphor, smybol, ekphrasis, storytelling? How to activate creative work? How to activate team work? How to empower creative imagination? How to facilitate team work? What are the best frames for facilitating co-creation?
Closure: 10 mins. Our common installation.
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site: othernessproject.org address: Allegade 44, 2 – 3000 Helsingør – Denmark e-mail: othernessproject@gmail.com phone: +45 25 38 37 60 Selected international activities of Othernessproject:
Workshops: https://youarewelcomeproject.wordpress.com/local/international/2-thessaloniki/ https://othernessproject.org/category/events/refugees-migration-language-2016/ https://othernessproject.org/category/events/languages-communities-2015/ https://othernessproject.org/category/events/motherness-2015/ https://othernessproject.org/category/events/gogol-2014/
Artistic projects: https://othernessproject.org/category/birth/ https://othernessproject.org/2016/08/13/27-ways-to-be-born/ https://othernessproject.org/2017/02/05/hybridspace-anthony/
Research: https://othernessproject.org/category/otherness-dialogues/otherness-reader/ https://othernessproject.org/category/otherness-dialogues/otherness-stories/ https://othernessproject.org/2016/07/10/otherness-and-the-performing-arts/
Links to videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIwJT3Ji6gk&feature=youtu.be https://www.facebook.com/lilla.proics/videos/835502796504666/
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site: othernessproject.org address: Allegade 44, 2 – 3000 Helsingør – Denmark e-mail: othernessproject@gmail.com phone: +45 25 38 37 60
Facilitator: Dr. Rita Sebestyén: university lecturer and artist/reasearcher, working itnernationally (DK, HU, RO, GR, DE) in creating collective experiences and artistic frames for co-creation. Temporary, hybrid communities, art as research, art and science are the fields she works in. Throughout the 20 years of artistic and academic experience she worked out her own methodology to create hands-on, body-mind-soul experiences to make palpabale the most complex philosophical and sociological issues, conceiving and facilitating co-creation and community building through performing arts understood in its widest sense. Rita co-founded Othernessproject, being its artistic director from 2013. Since then, she started to conceive and create performances, participatory performative events and workshops internationally, being invited to festivals and conferences in Sweden, Denmark, Greece, Hungary, Romania, Portugal. She also publishes academic papers and literature EU-widely and in Canada. Goals: -
to create a co-learning, participatory environment in which art-education-healing takes place, to empower the marginalised and the oppressed, to educate and raise awareness of human rights, to talk about oppression and priviledge in a susceptible yet acceptable way for both parties, to foster and encourage communication and self-expression, to foster and encourage curiousity, reflection and self-reflection, to inspire communication, cooperation and co-creation within temporary heterogenous communities, to transcend cultural, social, economic, political, language barriers, to disseminate tools that faclitate connection and collaboration beyond all possible boundaries.
Rita has addressed her work to facilitate and offer a creative, playful, yet profound interaction between majority and minority communites such as: migrants, ethnic, religious and language minorities, women in their different life stages, the elderly, the poor, academics and artists, LGBTQI communities, cultural and social differences among countries (Eastern, Western, Southern Europe, Scandinavia, Africa). Portfolio: http://sebestyenrita.com
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