How the research project and question came about
The research question
was invented in dialogue
with two ladies: Mirjam & Maike
representing two professorships
one for the arts
one for pedagogy.
The artistic-pedagogic question
has to relate to the main theme
of the place where I'll be working:
a biiiiiiiiiiiiiig land
with a lot of trees
where the city of Tilburg
in collaboration with partners
such as Fontys Pedagogy
has bought the land
to preserve and further develop
it's social purpose;
into a pedagogic freezone;
where youngsters can grow up
differently, that is
freely and not
like a cog in the wheel
of a burnout society
in a liquid society
and a post-truth society.
Major themes of the pedagogic freezone
are youth participation and identity formation.
Participation is about power and how it is distributed. And about agency, responsibility, vulnerability and trust. During the process, the notion of 'emotional emancipation' has popped up. It's about giving voice and thereby participating in what moves you emotionally. I think what moves you emotionally is vital content to work and live and think through.
Identity formation is just what's going on our entire lives, as we make narratives of our 'selves' and time is constantly changing; we are constantly reconfiguring the stories of how we identify ourselves. But obviously youngsters / adolescents go through more intense periods and transformations neurologically, physiologically, sexually, socially - in every way identities at a younger age are more dynamic, more unstable, more in development.
The social dimension of identity is often overlooked because we live in such liberal, individualistic times that we have learned to think about ourselves first of all. Repairing social bonds, communities and solidarity is part of the work we aim to do at the professorship for 'artistic connectivity'.
So next to the theme's of participation and identity formation, that are more or less given by the agenda of the pedagogic freezone, there was another agenda about alternative perspectives. This was given by a set of Big Ideas around arts education that were assembled by collegues from Fontys in collaboration with the University of Tilburg. Art is assumed to be able to create alternative perspectives.
Okay, so all in all, in dialogue with the different ladies with different agenda's and different theme's, we came up with the question >>>
How to deal with the theme?
> A quadrant of tensions between
NORMAL - ALTERNATIVE;
PERSONAL - SOCIETAL
Thematic unison & difersifaction through dialogue (participation) with youngsters
Starting with one theme of 'identity' --->
narrowing it down in dialogue with the participants to the theme of 'appearance' --->
diversifying in dialogue with the participants into subthemes: - gender - sexism - perfectionism -
Main answers to the reseach question:
1. Presenting a Negative Perspective
In the performance a diversity of struggles is presented with regards to the theme of identity formation and more particularly how these youngsters struggle with how they see their own physical appearance; struggles about sexism, perfectionism and gender are presented. Besides these individual perspectives, they play common scènes in which their different struggles are united in the same struggle. Representing the struggle can be seen as an alternative perspective, as we live in a society where we are mainly confronted with images of positive relations to ones physical appearance. To work with negative, vulnerable ideas happens for the sake of what I've come to call: 'social-emotional emancipation'. To make room to express painful ideas in the process as well as in the performance offers an alternative mode of imagining ourselves in contrast to the dominant way of imagining ourselves infinitely beautiful, positive and happy.
The idea of contemporary culture being pervaded by the idea of happiness and a lack of knowing how to deal with pain, is inspired amongst others by the book The palliative society by Byun-Chul Han (2021) and the passage about "the happiness turn" in Toward a transindividuial self by Ana Vujanović and Bojana Cvejić (2022, p155-62).
1b. Strategies of trust
If the aim is to connect around fragile content, I assume that an atmosphere of trust is vital. These are strategies I have used to create an atmospher of trust.
- work in nature; it gives space to calm down and deepen the connection
- position myself in a fragile way; it invites others to respond in a fragile way
- make space for informal time; spend time together over coffee or pizza and get to know each other in a non-working mode
- use freewriting around fragile topics; invite people to read out what they've written; invite them to put their soul on the table
In contrast to the heavy, tragic, negative scenes, we have developed and integrated scenes in the montage that is much more lighthearted, playful, humerous and hopeful, thereby offering an ambiguous perspective with regards to the issue of identity formation and affirming the affective dimension of the theme. As an alternative to the dominant way of understanding and validating identity on the basis of quantifiable, measurable results, we aim to nourish a more ambiguous and affective understanding of such a vital theme as identity formation.
2. Intergenerational perspective
What has been very pleasurable as a researcher / theatremaker, is that I have been working with an alternative theme and alternative theatrical material - stuff that I could never have invented my own. Through opening up myself for the ideas and forms of the participating youngsters, and by creating a space that is safe for us to be vulnerable, very beautiful and meaningful material and ideas have been able to emerge. For example: The youngsters chose themselves to focus on the issue of how they see their physucical appearance. Also, the youngsters came up with the idea to integrate play and improvisation as a structural element of the play.
The material that emerges in collaboration with the youngsters is alternative to me, because it does not spring from my imagination, my mind, my lifeworld. I think it is meaningful because it implies a dialogue between different ways of seeing the world; through my adult eyes and through the eyes of the youngsters. This dialogue between alternative perspectives does not only happen in the process between me and the youngsters, but also for any adult who will be watching the show as a spectator. It's a dialogue between perspectives from different generations; an intergenerational exchange.
HOW CAN WE IMAGINE ALTERNATIVE PERSPECTIVES
IN THE SEARCH FOR
WHO (OR HOW) YOU ARE
IN RELATION TO THE WORLD AND THE OTHER?
On the left: The basic phases
- 3 days to co-create the concept & generate material
me = facilitator
- 3 rehearsals to make the performance
me = director
On the right: More elaborate phases (sketch):
1. Organising & preparing the project
2. Start with youngsters: explore theme & forms (writing-, drawing-excercises, games)
3. Script writing
4. Rehearsing + Script rewriting
5. Performance
6. Evaluation with audience & youngsters
7. Reporting
Supported by:
- Fontys Professorship Artistic Connective Practices
(guided by Falk Hübner), Fontys Professorship for Pedagogy
(directed by Maike Kooijmans) & Landgoed Sparrenhof
Abstract:
‘Mijn Lijf Mijn Lief’ [My Body My Love] was a small artistic research project happening in 2024 on Sparrenhof in collaboration with adolescsents from the mbo Theateropleiding Brabant. The main question emerged out of a dialogue with the participating youngsters: How can we imagine alternative perspectives in the search for who (or how) you are in relation to the world and the other? The process involved a lot of free-writing exercises, that led to several monologues that functioned like miniature portraits. These spoke about a diversity of themes (as diverse as the group); about gender-trouble, online and offline perfectionism and sexism. Next to these texts, we developed music and song, scenes of improvisatory play and movement scenes in constant cocreation, that were ultimately composed together into a multi-thematic, multi-disciplinary theatre performance that questions body positivity.
