My main concerns regarding the subject: Art performances (music, painting, dancing, singing, playing,...) help us have a really better world. But, how are they mostly taking place nowadays? Is it usually a decentralised and self-organised experience (think about a music concert, for example)? How could the experience be more enriching and "productive"? More empowering and self-reassuring? How could an art performance be designed to give the participants a more "ost-like" opportunity to enjoy and grow?
Another point: how could art performances enrich OS meetings? Would it be interesting letting a specific place for them in OS meetings? Would art be a good way to promote OS and get what an OS meeting is visualised?
Do you know any art demonstration that more or less fits the OS spirit?
Those are some of the questions that from time to time come to my mind and drove me to convene a meeting on the subject.
Harold showed me his interest soon and he gave us some examples related to the subject before I convened the session:
1. Grateful Dead - They used to have a very open way of letting people record their music, even jacking right into the amps, so there were many "bootleg" copies of their music going around. They would play for long jam sessions. And at concerts, there tended to be drum circles outside the event, so it became a kind of self-organizing festival.
2. Rainbow Gathering - These are extremely self-organized events in the woods which got started as a peace gathering and has a very strong spiritual bent - but everyone is invited 'who has a belly button'. People set up camps, kitchens to feed people, water lines, all the infrastructure goes up without any explicit control processes, and drums and music happen practically non-stop in the different camps. Some camps go much further in their arts and performance orientation, and set up theater spaces for performances with ample seating. And the main meadow of the event usually has a fire pit for a large drum circle.
3. Burning Man - This is a more organized event, but you see some of flavor of the open space principles in their 10 principles, which includes "radical inclusion", "participation", and "communal effort".
Ingrid Ebeling was first to appear and she shared some of her experiences:
Multisense Group: Ingrid does usually visual work in her Open Space meetings: repp-songs, sketches, painting sheets,...
She has also experienced using arts in opening breaking up and closing OS meetings.
Then Johanes Ponader joined and told me about some OS-like art performances: Open stages; Open mikes and poetry Slams.
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Before WOSONOS in Berlin I had written this message to the OSLIST and Suzanne Daigle had given her view._______________________
Finally, yesterday (2010-VI-15), Harrison Owen wrote some lines (and I put in boldface some of them) on a special OS event full of art, answering to a question by Sarah-Jane Rawlings (from Improbable) on the OSLIST...
"...Some years ago a large group of American Community Arts Councils did an OS on their work – just like you all. But it was an Open Space unlike any other I have ever seen. The participants were a talented crew, to say the least, with an inventive passion that seemed to know no bounds. Right from the start when they announced their sessions it was a new and different ballgame. Session announcements were danced, mimed, sung, drummed and just about every other artistic medium you can think of. And it went from there all through the two days. When they got to the end, I guess you could call it a “closing circle” but improve dance would be more accurate. Anyhow I would presume that you will be hosting a similarly talented group, and my suggestion would to invite them to brings anything that they feel might contribute to the party. Instruments for sure, but that might be just the beginning. Who am I to tell you and Phelim how to “do improv” – but I think you will have a lot more fun if you think of the gathering not (just) as an Open Space but also as a wonderful improvisation with 150 participants. And for sure the 3 year olds will be the stars!
Harrison
Sarah-Jane and the people of Improbable invite us for WOSONOS 2012 in London and this will quite sure be a very artish Wosonos, like it'll also be, sure, WOSONOS 2011 in Chile to which our "big boy" Juan Luis Walker so gracefully invites us next year :-)!
Convener
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Other participants
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Harold Shinshato, Ingrid Ebeling, and Johannes Ponader
BM31_ BILBAO: Mind Mapping-Open Space Technology-Creativity
- www.flowandshow.blogspot.com
- www.burumapak.blogspot.com (Basque)
- www.xmind.net/account/gentza (BM31's downlodable mind maps)
- www.bilbohiria.com/gaika/berbaz (Listen to our Basque :-)! radio interviews)
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