Showing posts with label culture. Show all posts
Showing posts with label culture. Show all posts

Tuesday, June 20, 2017

Paradoxes of hospitality.



Was the blank wall an invitation?

Was this graffiti first seen as a criminal desecration of property?

Is the tagged wall accepted, protected now?

What do tags tells us about the vibrancy of citizenship?

Do they speak of inclusion?

Do they speak of exclusion?

Are they artistic statements, vandalism?

One house owner appeared to have taken things into his/her hands.

The double garage door appeared to have a commissioned piece of street art.

Would tags superimposed on the masterpiece be an embellishment or a sacrilege?




Was the art gallery a consecration?

Is this another example of cultural appropriation?


Basquiat Skull

Or is the presence of the artist here a Trojan Horse?

 "How Basquiat Challenged Police Brutality Through Art."

I wandered through the gallery in Lyon.

At first sight the sculpture was a meaningless jumble of junk.




On closer inspection, the assemblage demanded reflection.

There was purpose in the positioning of objects.

There was a meeting of minds.

It begged attention.

We need to take our time to revisit, to explore, to question our own assumptions.

I read "It's like a Jungle" an installation of  Henry Taylor.

"In his installation work It’s Like A Jungle (2011), Taylor presents an assortment of used objects, including boxes, crates, and furniture, suggesting the refuse that accumulates on L.A. streets from provisional downtown community housing."

What does the presence of the ensemble say about power?

What does the ensemble say about hospitality?

What does the title evoke?

It's like a jungle?

What is like a jungle?

Did the black oil cans evoke black power salutes as I read somewhere?




The Californian beach house was a burnt out wreck.

Viewed through the lens of John Divola, what is there left of our Californian dreams?




The hashtag was an "open" invitation.

How open was the invitation really?

Were the hosts ready for all comers?

Were the guests ready for all comers?

What were their expectations?

How did they imagine the stream in Twitter?

Was there an implicit injunction to bar transgressive behaviour, to bar transgressors?

I felt out of place.

I left a few tweets.

Was I tagging territory?

Was there an "in-crowd"?

It appeared so.

How did the "in-crowd" recognise each other?

Did they have history? Did they share gender? Did they share marginality?

Were the memes I left  seen by some as unwelcome noise?

Was I an ungracious guest?

Having blogged angrily, having tagged haphazardly, having felt an outsider, I felt sensitive to criticism that might come.

I found a video left by Chris Gilliard.

I watched it. It made me sit up and think.

Was I a rude, invasive guest?

I felt like jacking in the whole #digciz malarkey.

Then I thought a while.

I doubled back and reread Kate Bowles' comment on my post "For giving"  

 "Hello, I wrote a long comment but I think the Internet whisked it away. 

So this is the shorter thought: is it the word "hospitality"? Does it come with something? Or is it the problem of conversation itself, in this world?

I'm really troubled by the idea that dialogue is the opposite of action. 

(Have read your blog many times, thank you for writing it)"

 I was all ready to rush off a reply - "of course hospitality is a problem!"

I felt like I had found myself back in bloody church with people all terribly nice.

I remember their knowing looks, "Poor boy, he's a lost soul." 

I remember feeling an undercurrent of polite violence.

I went and read Betjeman - Death in Leamington (birth place of my mother).

Death in Leamington.

 She died in the upstairs bedroom.
By the light of the ev'ning star
That shone through the plate glass window
From over Leaminton Spa

 Beside her lonely crochet
Lay patiently and unstirred, 
But the fingers that would have work'd it
Were dead as the spoken word.

 And Nurse came in with the tea-things
Breast high 'mid the stands and chairs-
But Nurse was alone with her own little soul, 
And the things were alone with theirs.

 She bolted the big round window
She let the blinds unroll, 
She set a match to the mantle,
She covered the fire with coal.

 And "Tea!" she said in a tiny voice
"Wake up! It's nearly five"
Oh! Chintzy, chintzy cheeriness.
Half dead and half alive.

 Do you know that the stucco is peeling?
Do you know that the heart will stop?
From those yellow Italianate arches
Do you hear the plaster drop?

 Nurse looked at the silent bedstead, 
At the gray, decaying face, 
As the calm of a Leamington ev'ning 
Drifted into the place.

 She moved the table of bottles 
Away from the bed to the wall;
And tiptoeing gently over the stairs
Turned down the gas in the hall.

On reflection Kate's comment stirred action.

Indeed dialogue is not the opposite of action.

Genteel conversation in conferences often feels to me like Death in Leamington.

 Sorry.

I suppose being caught between boiled eggs with the bishop at the Rectory and pub talk with the apprentices from the factory, I felt drawn to those who lacked veneer but brimmed with candour.

This explains why I get allergic reactions to those who I feel (perhaps wrongly) are performing intellect.

Then I went and found a video that I remember I had watched before.

A bloody French seminar on the philosophy of hospitality.

Oh la la.



I confess to a weakness for French philosophers since Rhizo14.

Before going back and watching Anne Dufourmantelle's seminar for the fourth time, I try to remember some stuff.

First this idea of Derrida (if I remember rightly)  "hospitalité inconditionnel"  - the idea that one can not expect a foreigner to adopt the language or the expectations of the host.

Connections between host-hostis-hostile-hostility-hostage-hospice-hospitality.

Inherent violence in the relationships of hospitality.

Dialogue between host and guest, host and hostage.

On reflection, I started to wonder whether the video that Chris Gilliard had shared was not an injunction of my multiple meme posting but rather an story about the black man brought as hostage by the host to the white sofa. I thought of the language and the gestures of Rick James, who makes his mark on the white sofa not in the way that one might expect.  There is no compromise given to the host who offers him his place on the sofa. There is no means for him to be a genteel part of the furniture.  I began to wonder how others might react to the behaviour of others, foreigners, outsiders leaving their marks on a Twitter stream.

I came back to think about the conflict between Torn Halves and Maha Bali during the run up to the aborted Rhizo16. Maha has been hurting from the episode ever since, has blogged at least twice, and her trust in myself and others was undermined.

How could people who said that they cared for her be seen to support the rudely aggressive intellectual jousting of a Torn Halves?

I have hurt from this episode as well.

I posted at least three blog posts on the story, tried to talk it over with Maha.

Nothing would change how Maha felt it appeared.







That hurt, that really hurt.

I do care. I cared about Torn Halves too...I don't know why.

I felt that there were no doubt good reasons for being apparently uncaring for others' feelings.

I tried writing about being kind to monsters.

 Be kind to monsters.

That did nothing to keep Rhizo16 from splitting up into factions.

That did nothing to keep Maha from feeling that I had betrayed her.

I am reminded of  "hospitalité inconditionnel" that Derrida suggests we should have as our horizon.

Of course, we all have different vulnerabilities, different levels of resistance, different burdens of oppression to unpack.

Retrospectively, it is unthinkable for people with some experiences to be able to confide in those who are members of an oppressive group - whether they be white, men, straight.

We all need places of safety.

We all need places where we can speak our minds and spill out our vile without fear of retribution.

Art is a start, it is not enough.

Hospitalité cadré.

 For there to be hospitality one needs to have a witness.

For myself, I only survived this far thanks to the "hospitalité inconditionnel cadré" of a psychoanalyst.

With this person, I was able to say nothing, for hours.

With this person, I was able to explore what is was to hurt, to hate, to love, to fear, to live.

Nothing was taboo.

With each act, acte Sarte might say, I came to see the confines of the world in which I had been born.

With passing months, I came to see the implicit rules by which I had been expected to live.

One moment, I suppose they call it transfer, I took it upon myself to be host to the child that had been hostage.

I welcomed the child.

I learnt to speak anew.

I learnt to learn anew.

I came into being here, through dialogue, year upon year of dialogue in a place of trust, of safety.

There are those who don't understand this vital need to retreat into ourselves, to be with those who can listen to our stories without judgement nor aggression.

I found this shared by Maha


 Online hospitality.

I saw somewhere that Sundi had talked about starting not from "me" but from "us".


I started psychotherapy not from a position of me, but from them.

I is never ever singular it is always plural.

I think now of online hospitality.

I suggest that we are often starting from a simplistic idea about receiving others into our conversations - as long as they behave to our own rules.

We are hospitable in the sense that we say HI! Welcome on board!

We are jolly nice, we are jolly inclusive.

Until we are wounded by the guest who has not understood our rules.

Then we start being defensive and putting up the battens and calling people names.

"Anti-intellectual"

 "Mansplainer"

 "White privileged guy"

 "Noisy neighbour"

We are never so hospitable as when we are not moved to question our own assumptions.

We are never so hospitable as when we are appreciated in our self-given role of host.

Oh thank you!

We speak of insertion.

We speak of assimilation.

We speak of coming onboard.

Fuck that my friends.

Let us rock this boat.

OK, Twitter is not a Quaker reading room.

OK, Facebook is a trap.

OK, Mastodon has a lot of echo.

"Hello, Hello, Anybody there?"

Let's look at what we have managed to do so far.

Never in my life have I been thus challenged.

Never in my life have I been able to be kind to trolls who shared my childhood.

Never in my life have I been able to have my own colonial family story put into such relief by those who now I count as friends.

Never in my life have I been able to simultaneously write poetry with people in three continents.

The value of "digital citizenship" is to constantly question my own visions of hospitality, my own practices of learning, my own prejudices concerning those who are noisy, those who are silent, those who are aggressive, those who are contemplative, those who frankly I would never ever come across in a non-digitally networked existence.

We must take time to be changed by the other, to celebrate the graffiti on our walls.

We mustn't run away from each other when faced by conflict, we must consider that we are in this together for the long term.

We must take risks to learn to live together in peace when our interactions spark fight or flight instincts.

When Maha talks of love, there is a choice.

We love despite our differences.

There is something there of a "cadre".

There is something there of "hospitalité inconditionnel."









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Sunday, April 9, 2017

Darkness that binds us.



"And one by one the nights between our separated cities are joined to the night that unites us."

Pablo Neruda

 Alone Together.

The door slammed.
She had left.  


Alone together. 
Sole babe in arms.
A barmy night, 
Window open wide.


Gaze up at stars.
Quiet now, in awe.

Owl hoots.
Startled, 
Turns to me.

"Oooh"

With his lips.

Wonder.

Love.

Loss.

Aches.

 In my body.


 Enlightenment.
"Nothing can dim the light which shines from within."

 Maya Angelou.
Enlightenment

We called ourselves "enlightened".  

God, was Jesus "enlightened"?

 We became fishers of men.

We caught them in our net.

They walked on water.

We sailed the boat.


Inclusion.

I think of stories of inclusion. 
I feel suspicious. 
I wonder why.  
I go and think in pictures.

Go figure.
Go wonder. 



We are forever longing for being a part of a whole.

We were whole.
Then we are born.

Conception, one, two, four, cells, subdivide and multiply.

Skin.

Illusions of separation, identification, of being apart.

Storybound, story bound, history bound, bone bound, dust bound.

Be suspicious of inclusion.

Be open to change.

Love is not to possess, it is to be open to loss.

The unenlightened?



The unenlightened?




The unenlightened?



The unenlightened?




Open education?
Refine, define, define the terms, the licence, the rights.

Who belongs, who is apart.

Fill space.

Draw lines, write words.

KNOWLEGE.

Enclose field.


EXPERT.


NOW LEDGER.


FREE DOM I NATION.


Englightenment untruth.

 Post truth.

 Unravel power.

Untravel story.

Unravel ego.

Post haste.

Open education resources.
Detritus.
Detritruth.

Apple for the Toothless.

A gift economy.

Uber fuck.

Hasta fascista baby.

Open education values?



Open education values?




Open education values?

Open education values?

Open education values?

 Let us not share our enlightenment.

Let us share the darkness that binds us.

Facts lie! Post truth! 

"Poetry 
melts my bones.
enters my blood.

 and changes 
its composition."

 Sanober Khan


"Night is purer than day; 
it is better for thinking and loving 
and dreaming.

 At night everything is more
intense, more true.

 The echo of words that have 
been spoken during the day
takes on a new and deeper 
meaning."

 Elie Wiesel.



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Thursday, July 7, 2016

Beach-wear battles.



"And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons."
Genesis 3:7

"When I was a child," he would say, "I fell off the steps of a bathing machine and had to be rescued."

"What's a bathing machine?" I would ask.

"Well ladies used to wear long dresses to go for a swim and they would be taken out to bathe in a sort of beach hut on wheels which was pulled by a horse."

"I remember being in the bathing machine and suddenly I fell off the back. I almost drowned"

I listened to the explanations but was unable to process what I was told. 

It all seemed so unlikely. 

I couldn't understand  it at all. 

My father had almost drowned in the preservation of his aunt's modesty.

I couldn't understand it at all.

I was unable to imagine the beach lined with horses and huts on wheels.

I gave an invisible shrug of my shoulders and went back to building the sandcastle.

Costumes, suits and trunks.

"Oh you can't go on wearing that swimming costume. It's dreadful!"

My father was a little upset that my mother was critical of his "swimming costume". 

What strange words they are:
  • "swimming costume"
  • "swimming trunks"
  • "swim-suit.

Those words became a battleground between generations.

There was a cold war between mother and daughter-in-law.

The swimming trunks horrified my grandmother. 

"......" (sharp intake of breath)

The swimming costume embarrassed my mother.

"Oh you can't go on wearing that."

My mother triumphed.

My father's chest would be thereafter bare.

We were in the 1950's for goodness sake.

We were no longer in an Edwardian age.

My grandmother maintained a dignified, disapproving silence.

I suspect that my father was fearful at first.

I suspect that my grandmother said prayers, willing God to intervene.

I suspect that my mother felt rather smug.

I listened to my mother's story.

I was unable to understand the strong emotions.

I went back to building the sandcastle.

Sundays in summer.

The following day the sun rose.

We were greeted with a perfect English summer's day.

My thoughts were fixed on that sandcastle.

I would feel upset, frustrated, angry.

It was a Sunday.

We wouldn't be going to the beach.

NO BEACH, NO FOOTBALL, SUNDAY BEST, BOILED EGGS FOR TEA, BIBLE STUDY, 
CONTEMPLATION, PRAYER, LETTER WRITING, SUNDAY SERVICE, SOLEMNITY.

I developed a deep loathing for Sundays.

Beach-wear battles

My friend Maha reminded me of these stories.

She writes of her personal battles with beach-wear.

http://blog.mahabali.me/blog/parenting/the-colonization-of-propriety/

She talks of her daughter yearning to play with her in the sea.

"I watched my girl in the water with her dad. And her looking at me with a yearning in her eyes. And I thought, “I could have that. Give her that”. And I saw no loss of dignity in that."

I was brought back to those beach-wear battles between my grandmother and my mother.

I was brought back to those feelings of utter frustration as a child.

I remember all that was forbidden. 

I remember the embarrassed silences.

I remember the boiled eggs.

I think of the joy of the child frolicking in the waves with his or her parents.

That thought makes me happy.

I think of the hurt that my grandmother must have felt.

That thought makes me sad.

Fall from Eden.

The sun is shining now.

We shall be going to the South of France soon.

There will be people in various states of undress.

Nobody will give a fig.

There will be no risky bathing machines.

We shall swim, lark around and build sandcastles every day.

I want my children to have the freedom that I never had.

Post Script.

I went back and read what I had written.

I read, "Nobody gives a fig."

I thought of Maha. 





















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Friday, May 20, 2016

Peoplescape.




"Before it can ever be the repose for the senses, landscape is the work of the mind. Its scenery is built up as much from strata of memory as from layers of rock." Simon Schama Landscape and Memory. 

I have been roaming. Je suis flâneur. I am one of the "chattering classes".

It is nothing to boast about. I am historically privileged.

That's how it is. It's in my genes. I have been programmed to act like this. My parents had nannies.

I may not be able to do much useful manual work but I am brilliantly adapted to doing nothing.

I roam apparently freely, artfully even, beyond the lines of what  others might suggest I should.

I am what some may label an 'activist'...

"If you do, like I do, blog and tweet messily, you are probably an activist." 

says Naomi Barnes bravely in Hybrid Pedagogy.
http://www.digitalpedagogylab.com/hybridped/messy-minds/

Goodness, I do feel like a kindred spirit. I am an "Activist"!!

No, Naomi, I am a privileged flâneur.

I walk without luggage but goodness am I weighed down with "enlightening" cultural baggage.

I virtually never wander alone even if I am alone.  

I am steeped in Empire stories of "discovery."

There are the pictures of an ancestor in the 18th century Americas. 

There is the ancestor's book on the shelf from 19th century Sarawak.

There is the regimental sword from the Highland regiment.

There are the sepia printed photos from a Nagasaki mission post.

I am just doing what is normal for my types...nothing terribly useful to great portent. 

(He poses the unfamiliar word there with an fairly ignorant flourish - an amateur [in its privileged sense] needs as many letters as he can get to fill the scroll.)

That's right, I am writing to great portent. 
(pretentious git).

I go out with friends, family dead or alive, the dog, and their words, acts, perspectives, music, memories, places.

This page may be in landscape format but to tell you the truth it is really exemplary of my peoplescape.

That's right, it's a clever pun: Landscape is People - People is Escape sic: Peoplescape.

This is a paltry escape, I warrant you. 

I don't believe that the way to vanquish alienation is "work" Mr Marx, it's play...amateur play.

I am, as you know, (he places that importantly) set on a odyssey of exploration.

It goes by the name of "lesmauxdesmots". 
(God I do enjoy my French - It adds a certain Je ne sais quoi).

I have set sail with a crew of people who are quite, or more or less unaware of this venture whose destination is quite uncharted. 

It's a line of navigation that one might call rhizomatic.

I and multiple assemblages are writing myths at this moment.

Those others are both fellow (if unwilling, or unknowing) shipmates and myth-makers.

I do like a bit of myth particularly in May.

Years back when I was working in the parcel depot, we would deal with our alienation with beer, darts, the Mirror and Saturday football. 

Now its rhizomatic learning with Deleuze and Guattari and the aforementioned crew.

It is pretty similar really, larking around, these are jolly japes.

We pass the time until it's time to clock orf (chortle).

Roaring, roaming autodidact.

I am an ideal: an idle (amateur), ideal (amateur) self-motivated learner (activist), up to not much good, to borrow Audrey's borrowing of Tressie McMillan Cottom:

“ideal, self-motivated learner," "embedded in the future but dis-embedded from place.” Dis-embedded from place, disembodied – an erasure that just as easily serves as a re-inscription of a “universality” of the white, middle class male." (me)

I do feel Much less ignorant on reading Audrey Watters blog all morning (I don't know about you?)

There were a number of chapters er posts.. that I lapped up.



Indie, as in tomb raider...



I am Indie aren't you? I do love my label...

We are all Indie...(well those who understand their Indies from their Indies)

http://hackeducation.com/2016/03/18/i-love-my-label

It says "edupunk" on my Twitter profile but frankly writing it on Blogger is just as well.

I do love Joe Strummer that fellow public school boy "revolutionary".


Yes, I'm with Joe, I'm edupunk, I'm Indie...

"Indie means we don’t need millions of dollars, but it does mean we need community. We need a space to be unpredictable, for knowledge to be emergent not algorithmically fed to us. We need intellectual curiosity and serendipity –"

Oh yes, I have all the time in the afternoon for intellectual curiosity and that gorgeous word 'serendipity' - only a pity that the guys in the parcel depot wouldn't get to know that word.

Being blind drunk allows for serendipity too...if only they knew.

When I roam, I don't see desolation of bombed cities around me.

I see a caring peoplescape with hope.

I suppose that's a freedom..of sorts.

We need all the freedom we can get.



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Wednesday, February 10, 2016

Land ranging and roving.

There is a book on my shelf.

It is waiting for me to take the time which it deserves.

 "Landscape and Memory." 
Simon Schama

We have become illiterate to the land.


How much have we written on its surface?

I look at the map.

Map

A diagrammatic representation of an area of land or sea showing physical features, cities, roads, etc.a street map
MORE EXAMPLE SENTENCES
  • The discovery of the city wall remains was not a surprise to the City Council as maps had pinpointed Peter Street as a location for the historic ruins.
  • You have to identify a street with a name, using a map or a road sign.
  • There have been no measures initiated nor a road map charted out, to rectify such fiscal imbalances and to restore balance for long term growth.

A river arcs across the grid.

It continues beyond the fold.

How will I gauage its flow?

I put my licked finger to the wind and wander North.

I come to a fence and a sign.

The threats stop me in my tracks.



Ranger

A keeper of a park, forest, or area of countryside:park rangers
MORE EXAMPLE SENTENCES
  • That was not a secret in the city, and the police and park rangers turned a blind eye.
  • Most students were restless while the park ranger explained about the animals in the area.
  • During the trip, one of the kids is bitten by a snake and their guide, the park ranger, heads back to base for a serum.

 I turn around the barbed forest, looking for open ground.
Rover


A person who spends their time wandering:they became rovers who departed further and further from civilization
MORE EXAMPLE SENTENCES
  • I could take on a crew and sail to Canada in my own boat instead of booking passage, or turn into a rover of the sea, going where I please and doing what I like.
  • But who is he, this invisible being that rules me, this unknowable being, this rover of a supernatural race?

Book


A written or printed work consisting of pages glued or sewn together along one side and bound in covers:a book of selected poems
MORE EXAMPLE SENTENCES
  • After some serious research he wrote a book on the subject, Ancient Mosaics in Bulgaria.
  • Rosie bought me the DVD along with a book on philosophy.
  • I sat there a while longer, staring down at the vellum pages of the book on the low desk before me.

Memory


The faculty by which the mind stores and remembers information:I’ve a great memory for faces[MASS NOUN]: the brain regions responsible for memory
MORE EXAMPLE SENTENCES
  • No problem there, I have a terrible memory for names so didn't even remember them five seconds after leaving the room.
  • She still has a great memory for all the old Irish songs and poems.
  • All creatures do need a memory for basic functioning and survival.


Wide ranging questions.

The more maps we need the more we lose/have lost our (emotional/physical) attachment to the land?

What is close reading if we are detached?

Is writing to be detached?

Apparent detachment brings paradoxical attachment.

Is it to be "out of body" or is it to be "embodied"?

I know knot what I write.
(He keeps the typing error k)

Roving

I am roving across the page. I pause an instant.

There are decisions here which are hardly conscious.

I reach out for a defintion.

One definition calls over another.

A song.

I am conscious of the space.

I pause an instant.

I remember.

I pick up the memory of a man who has lost his.

I place it there.

I scroll up.

I retrace my steps.

How much of my memory is dependent on what others have forgotten?

Where was I now?

I had Googled Domesday Book.



We are surrounded by cartographers, rangers and accountants.

We are much endebted.

References.

Blommaert, J., 2010, Historical Bodies and Historical Space.

Schama, S., 1996,  Landscape and Memory

Wesch, M., 2014, Why we need a why.








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Wednesday, January 27, 2016

My lawyer is a dog.


"Wuf, wuf, snarl"

I am, against my better judgement participating in conversation with people talking about...
(who is this better and why is he/she speaking to me?) 

  INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGN.

"wuf, wuf, snarl...huh?"

I felt it wasn't for me.

I never read instruction manuals (until it is too late).

I once worked with people who called themselves  'Ingénieur Pédagogique'
(instructional designers).

I was impressed.

I am just a teacher.

I asked annoying questions about LMS's.

I obviously didn't understand.

Serious Business.

In France if you are the business you are an engineer of something.

I blame Napoleon bloody Bonaparte, that great liberal thinker.

I looked at the invitation to participate in #MOOCMOOC it included the words:

INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGN.

I had nightmares of Skinner and bloody CD roms.

 "It's a nice day today, isn't it? [REPEAT] It's a nice day today isn't it?"


 

"Oh gawd!" I thought.

I didn't feel that it would be for me.

INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGN

I have been conned into participating.

It happened on Twitter.

I fell into a dialogue with PEOPLE.
They have my attention now...at least for now...



I now have a bloody Storify to work on from last night and then blog about.

There aren't even any deadlines or badges.

Shit!

What am I letting myself in for?

Shit!

Coffee break.

So I sat down for coffee with a bunch of playmobil and a few students.

We started talking about their research questions.

With about two hundred students to help get up and curious, I need coffee and a comfortable chair.

Banter scaffold.

Some are immediately curious and are looking for a sounding board for their ideas.

(It was pretty much like the conversations that I am still working on for #moocbloodymooc.)

We engage in a bit of banter - throwing ideas, pictures, and sounds off of each other.

They go off with enthusiasm...(like me here.)

 Banksy approach to education.

I was delighted to be learning in the company of some of my fellow co-learners (students) this morning.

With one, we started talking about Street Art and its influence on political debate.

We framed and reframed the debate...together.

Is Street Art still Street Art when it is shared as a photo on Twitter?

Is it Street Art when Deborah De Robertis 'exposes' herself in the Musée Orsay? 

Is her performance art pornography?

Why is Manet's painting of Olympia not pornography?




What is the relationship between viral images like 'Je suis Charlie' and the 'traditional media' and the politicians and mass demonstrations in Paris?




I wasn't expecting to be co-framing such a debate with one of the students from Sport Science...over coffee.

Coffee tables, and comfortable chairs restructure relationships.

 I never know what I will learn.

That is the joy of what I do, it is never predictable, I have to jump from Drugs in Sport, to Perfect Pitch in musicians, to Sport Fishing, to mushroom hunting.

I feel energised by our dialogues.

Other students have much more difficulty to ask questions.

They seem to have little practise in asking questions, most of their time is taken up by content.

Changing symbols...playing with people.

We sat around the coffee table and a bunch of Playmobil.

We started playing with the little people, the dog, the cow, the house, the boat, the medical bag.


Manipulating the toys seemed to help them to disassemble the tortured sentences that they had been trying and failing to write.

Were we talking about all the people, the kids, the women, the doctor, the policeman?

Were we talking about all the world, a town, a village, a house, an organism?

 Do I have to speak dog?

Confronted by the request to define a research question, one student was freaking out and came up to me to ask:

"Est ce qu'il faut que la question soit poussée?" "Does the question have to be sophisticated?"

What he meant was:  does the question have to use that language that the experts I don't understand in class use.

We sometimes forget that others don't understand us
We sometimes forget that others are not all as enthusiastic as us.
We sometimes forget that others don't have the same literacies as us.

 Being literate...being illiterate.

Playing Minecraft with my son made me realise how our joystick/gaming literacies are so far apart.

 We are playing the games of others...

Working with high-performance athletes makes me realise how amazing their physical literacies are...

Moving around a dense text (network) requires the ability to connect, engage, orientate, select, synthesise...

It is not quite the same as pole-vaulting.

There is not quite the same exhiliration...for them.

Maybe we are blind to our/their literacies?

We could imagine 'scaffolding' which might be more or less adaptive to the individual learner.

(often text based or computer based - no good for people who are allergic to text.)

Liberté pour tous?

We could imagine 'scaffolding' which is deliberately opaque to certain groups of learners so that they are excluded from a knowledge community.

Language is clearly a hell of a great way to include and/or exclude people.

"Quoi?"

Language is clearly a hell of a great innovation to enable sophistication of connections between people(s) and their environments.

Cultural/narrative environments...(networks) are clearly more or less apparent to us.

After all, I'm a fish what the hell is water?

 Fish interlude.


Scaffolding may be deliberately, or unconsciously conceived to protect certain groups' privileges.

(The LMS anybody?)

I AM AN ADMIN. 
(I am ingénieur pédagogique)

 Dog speak.

My lawyer is a dog.

He is deliberately bred to obscure contractual relationships, for the benefit of the privileged.

When I read the small print on terms and conditions of internet services...

I can't be bothered to work through every clause...

 Is this web freedom?

I submit. 

We go for a walk.

Dog translation

There are others who are prepared to translate dog into English.

But God, those guys are necessary.

 http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jun/15/i-read-all-the-small-print-on-the-internet

Our relationships have become so complex...(complicated?) ...we need experts.(we do don't we?)

They can give us a cheat code to get to the next level...
(for a small sum)

I suppose this is what we try to do in education.

We unpick dog.

We teach dog.

 HOLY DOG!!

 Science, technology and text literacy are holy untouchable.

OUR HOLY BOOK (s).





I understand much more now one of Dave Cormier's provocation:

"Books are just stupid people."

KILL THE DOG

There is a question which keeps dogging me.

Are we so used to unpicking dog that we kill the dog?

Is our frame of reference, our Western culture: this frame we have had since the Lumières... killing us?

LIBERTE

Are our frames of reference the only way to live the world?

Are our frames of reference killing the world?

We frame so we are human.



We encourage agency of the individual. We live by freedom-Freire. Does that kill (a) people?




In encouraging agency of the individual do we lose sight of how we are connected in this tapestry we ourselves have woven?

Our tapestries are so beautifully diverse....yet.

Are we missing this essence beyond our words, beyond our ken?





"wuf, wuf, snarl..."

My dog is trying to tell me something...






















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