In my Mid-Jan 2018 swan song post, I invited my readers to start a conversation on “Let’s do something interesting”.
Tourists stroll on a pier in the Black Sea town of Balchik, Bulgaria
August 2017, Picture by Dimitar Dilkoff / AFP / Getty
A couple of Skype calls later, I stumbled upon a number of criteria that I would use to assess whether proposed work is interesting of not. The five criteria fit into a handy acronym A.F.E.A.R. that of course has nothing to do with fear but all with continuous learning opportunities.
A.F.E.A.R. stands for: Advancing, Fun, Edgy, Alertness, and Risky
Fun: not much to add here, other than that it is not about entertainment. Fun is about meeting interesting people and novel insights, lots of laughs, a good meal, a good drink. Joyful would equally qualify.
Edgy: the work has to be edgy. Like “at the edge” of comfort and trends. In Dutch there is an expression “Er moet een hoek af zijn”, meaning a bit “dotty”. Many synonyms here, I particularly like: absurd, odd, unconventional, weird.
Alertness: The work must include the creation of situations and interventions where people feel slightly at sea, because that’s the place of highest alertness.
Risky: as in not yet done before, an experiment. I never do something twice. I have no templates, starting from scratch for every new project. There are no best practices of the past. I live in the present.
I could have added another “A”, the “A” of Art. Because I have a deep belief that only by using art as support to content – aka not art as entertainment – we can resonate with our guests at a level beyond the cognitive.
In a recent intro letter for a gig, I wrote:
“I am not in the event-production or entertainment business. I am in the business of creating immersive learning experiences. I am an experience architect, and work with professional production companies and facilitators. My work is edgy and risky. I believe that the arts are a limitless and untapped resource that can bring experiences and content to new levels.”
So, my work is “Edgy and risky”: do you still want to play?
My sabbatical has come to an end, and I left SWIFT on amicable terms mid Jan 2018.
I also decided to drop the whole idea of Petervan “Productions” and killed the related website. It just simplifies a lot. The “Productions” branding of my work confused people more than anything. I am not in the event business; my work is more about artistic experiences. I am not running a company. Just a guy on his own, cranking out some stuff that sometimes people find interesting (or not).
I will continue my journey now as a free agent to do “interesting” stuff. Here is an open invitation: let’s talk about what “interesting” means and surprise each other!
“What I want to do is make situations where we’re all slightly at sea because people make their best work when they are alert. I’m now 68, so I might have another 15 to 20 years left – talking about my history. So, given the little time I’ve got left on this planet, I would really love to focus on some of the new things I’m doing.” (Brian Eno)
I am not 68 yet, but I feel the same desire not to talk about the past but to focus on the new things I discovered during my sabbatical, and to help you make your best work.
"Celui qui tombe" by Yoann Bourgeois
Dance performance with music “My Way” by Frank Sinatra
The Artschool project
I am really enjoying my time at the Art Academy in Ghent (KASK), and love the freedom and feedback from my mentors Chris, Koen, Inge, Marie-Ange, and Annique.
Prison Window – Art installation by Robert Gober - 1992
I also found a theme to work on for the rest of the academy year. The theme is labeled “Hot dogs tonight” and the inspiration was an art installation “Prison Window” by Robert Gober.
I will work on a series of very abstract artworks and installations based on a minimalistic geometrical interpretation of that window. Here is my basic shape to start from, and a first painting exploring this meme:
Petervan concept interpretation of Prison Window – 2018
Petervan artwork – Hot Dogs Tonight #1 – 2018 – Acryl on canvas – 120x40cm
I did an impromptu Skype presentation about this project to a friend in San-Francisco, and I was amazed how the work seems to be an open invitation to have a conversation about what it means to be a full person and not only a reputation or influence. Ping me if you’d also like a run-through of the plans for “Hot Dogs Tonight”.
This project can keep me busy for quite some time, and to make sure the thing does not become an obsession or pain in the neck, something that I have to do, I will still produce in parallel some more figurative work.
The Poem project
Several poems written over the last couple of months, but for this edition of Petervan’s update, here is a really a short one, just two lines:
I dreamt I was reading a book of dreams,
and forgot where and why I was
Five trends for humanistic advancement
I found it a good moment to condense my sabbatical thinking into a couple of levers that could enable high quality advancement for a humanist future.
Any of the trends described could evolve in a good or bad direction, but as an optimist, I chose for the path of “advancement” vs. the path of decline and degradation.
The Performance project
The organisers of FinnoSummit kindly invited to do the premiere of my performance as the closing keynote for their Miami event on 9 Oct 2017.
To give you an idea of the storyline and subject covered, here is a link to the slides:
The keynote performance also includes self-composed and performed live music, poetry, soundscapes and other artwork. To have an idea about some of the soundscapes, here is a snippet of a very long self-composed ambient that I use while the audience walks into the room, purposefully called “Opening Walkin”: http://soundcloud.com/peter-vander-auwera/opening-walkin The snippet is about 40 seconds long, the real thing lasts for 29 minutes.
Thank you Andres and Fermin for letting me do this.
The Pigs & Chickens Project
This is just a moniker for my garden project. I know of a friend who years ago left corporate life to start a pig farming business. True story 😉 But my wife said no to pigs, so we’ll have chickens instead.
Tatooed Pig Jamie by Belgian artist Wim Delvoye - 2005
Besides spending more time in my kitchen garden and orchard, I plan to be more in nature in general. So expect some more pictures of my bike rides in the country of the Flemish Primitives.
The Studio Oxygen project
Being in nature is also about taking in more oxygen. I am running a small on-line collective that (un)regularly comes together online to discuss a seed that I have planted. Sometimes we’re ten people in the call, sometimes nobody shows up. The conversations are very unstructured and open-ended, like with no agenda, but they generate all sorts of inspiring thoughts and ideas, and people seem to like these sparks of inspiration and refer to them as “oxygen for the mind”.
So I plan to experiment with some formats to create a platform letting people share the interesting stuff and ideas they are up to.
What’s next?
During Jan – Mar 2018, the plan is to work on:
Pigs & Chickens Project
Hot Dogs Tonight
Studio Oxygen
More artwork
Whatever feels interesting and comes naturally into my flow
Petervan artwork – Early pre-study for concert hall – Jan 2017 – Acryl on sketch paper – format A4
That’s it for this edition. If there is something worth reporting, next update is for Apr 2018. Looking forward to hearing from your latest adventures as well.
And if you have an idea to do something interesting together, please contact me.
This trend is part of my five trends for human advancement. For an overview and background, check here:
Kanaal Site – Axel Vervoordt – Wijnegem, Antwerp
Deeply influenced by the work of Robert Fritz on structural conflict and structural tension, and that structure drives everything, I have become dissatisfied by the responsive reaction in many organisations that can be summarised as “what problem are you trying to solve?” It is too solutionist, reductionist to my tasting, and I prefer Robert’s suggestion of the creative orientation of the artist/creator who is not solving a problem but develops mastery to create what she really wants.
Combining Robert’s insight with that of many others like Leandro Herrero and Niels Phlaeging, I have come to the following condensation:
Like changing/influencing the structure of a building or a riverbed, we can influence the high quality information flows in organisations. These changed flows lead to different behaviours that on their term drive culture. In the end culture drives change and advancement.
It would be great if we could create a baseline for humanistic advancement and track its progress over generations, driven by structural interventions. A new sort of humanistic index based high quality connections, respect for the collective unconscious, a coherence between narrative, motives and governance, all powered with a desire for aesthetical, moral and spiritual advancement. In other words: growing better, not necessarily bigger.
This trend is part of my five trends for human advancement. For an overview and background, check here:
During my sabbatical, I had the luxury of visiting many art related expositions and retrospectives. I have been particularly struck by the beauty ànd the intensity of work from artists like Dries Van Noten (celebrated Belgian fashion designer), Rem Koolhaas, Winy Maas and Ricardo Bofill (renowned architects), and the urban (packaging) projects of Christo and Jean Claude.
Prep sketch Christo and Jean Claude retrospective Nov 2017
Picture by Petervan
Why are they heroes? For one because of the high quality work they produced, the intensity of their work, and the high level of preparation in everything they do. Advancement in aesthetics has a lot to do with it. But there is always a dimension of moral and spiritual advancement as well.
For a better humanistic future, everything important will have a dimension of aesthetic, moral and spiritual advancement.
Petervan Production 2017 - Acryl on canvas - 60x60cm
2017 was a special year for me. I decided to disconnect from corporate life for a yearlong sabbatical focusing on art creation, and reflecting on the possible role of artists to enable structural change in organisations.
Over the last 10 years or so, I experimented creating immersive learning expeditions, but I wanted my work to progress and resonate at a level beyond the conscious. I started a research on high quality change, ill-named “deep” change, and I subscribed as a painting student at the Royal Art Academy of Ghent.
Begin December my good friend Rudy De Waele (@mtrends) – he recently launched Human Works Design with Canay Atalay (@canayatalay) – invited me to write down my five Humanistic Future Trends 2020.
It found it a good moment to condense my sabbatical thinking into a couple of levers that could enable high quality advancement for a humanist future.
Any of the trends described could evolve in a good or bad direction, but as an optimist, I chose for the path of “advancement” vs. the path of decline and degradation.
“Pop is not the same as populistic”, says Winy Maas from MVRDV Architects at minute 14:19 in this wonderful talk about innovating in the future of architecture. This sentence got me thinking about roles, styles, and staging. This post is a follow-up on “Is being normal boring?”
The talk is about design and architecture, but you will notice it’s really about a different way of living, of reflecting about our world. Also check out The Why Factory: a global think-tank and research institute led by the same professor Winy Maas. You can also find some awesome research publications there.
Winy talks about things such as:
Porosity and air
Transparency, mirrors and infinity
Individualism: Is it about staging, making a statement?
The stair and activating our roofs
Activating new circuits
Block attacks (around min 32 – 33)
Infrastructure follows your composition
From Small to Big
From Individualism to Collectivism
From Egoism to Wegoism (W)EGO
And about pop and populism
Pop is about the (style of) the performer. Pop is about belonging to a tribe. The tribe of the style of the performer. Pop is about selfies. Pop at its worst or most extreme is probably like Netherland’s rap “artist” Boef performances who films himself on stage, and his fans filming himself filming film.
Rap "artist" Boef performing live
A strange loop of pop. A strange kind of loop. Like an endless mirror.
Instead of that endless empty mirror of pop, I prefer the mirror of Claudio Monteverdi, not only for the magic polyphonic music by the Huelgas Ensemble on this record, but for the way Monteverdi was staging as an artist.
The Guardian described his work as “the extra chronological disjunct here is enjoyably disorienting”
“Enjoyable Disorienting” ! Wow !
It has to do with self-image or self-picture. Picture as in Alva Noë’s Strange Tools. Picture of a role. It has to do with role. Being somebody or nobody. With or without role. Anonymity.
The anonymity I am thinking about is one of role-lessness. The anonymity of being normal. The anonymity of Buzz Aldrin, who was the second man walking on the moon. Being in the front, or blending in the background, like the fashion designer who just says hello at the end of the show and then disappears. Who is the composer and who is being staged? Without the composer, all the rest does not happen.
Art and philosophy are strange tools (of staging), says Alva Noë in his excellent book (Amazon link): he explains the difference between choreography and dance:
“Choreography, as we have seen, is not dancing, it is an engagement with dancing as a phenomenon”
“Choreography, and all the arts, are organizational, or rather, as we shall see, reorganizational practices”
“Choreography makes manifest something about ourselves that is hidden from view because it is the spontaneous structure of our engaged activity”
Roles and titles. Role-ness or title-less. Is the focus of our energy the work itself or the attention for our confabulated stories – crafted after the facts – to make/fake sense of why we do what we do? Titles are usually confabulations. That’s why it is probably better to drop them altogether from our bios, business cards and alike. They are an explanation after-the-fact. To make/fake sense for and about ourself. The attention is on self, not the other, not the audience, not those who come to listen.
Painting the role. Painting the knight, the farmer, the father, etc and not the man. Filming the filming rapper or not. Rembrandt and Cranach are not in the same kind of business. They made different kind of pictures.
Cranach on the left - Rembrandt on the right
Painting the man (as a mask – or the physical container) and painting the person is a different kind of business. Staging the speaker and staging the person is a different kind of business. Staging content is not about letting see what others already see. It is about letting see what you see and others do not see yet.
Like Monteverdi, who was already looking back from some distance at the previous century – already inventing a kind of neo-Renaissance gloss that simultaneous confirmed him as a master of the old polyphony and blazed into new baroque sounds and styles
Whether it is in painting, or making poetry, or architecting an experience, I believe we have to approach all of them like artists. By practicing and getting better at the art of staging, staging like in choreography. This goes beyond pop, roles, and style. A different kind of business: the business of stagecrafting. Or is this yet another strange loop of labeling when I just want to get rid of labels, roles, and titles?
Summer is over, autumn settles in, leaves are falling but here and there some late sunflowers reminding us of the bright sun and the fertile soils. I am now my last 3 months of my long-term sabbatical as Petervan Productions. If you are interested in my developing journey, my Jan 2017, March 2017 , May 2017 and Aug 2017 updates are still available.
The House project
Our house move is now done and we are fully settled. As planned, the art studio is complete now. The easel has landed:
Spotless easel in Petervan Productions studio
The Artschool project
Initially the plan was to join the art academy of Aalst, only 2 miles away from where I live. But after the first session, it felt like a mismatch: very limited space to work, a quite older population than what I am used to, and I did not feel a click with the coach.
Upon recommendation of my coach of the last two years (Ann Grillet), I decided to do some better homework and I checked out about five other academies. In the end I decided to join the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Ghent, one of the oldest academies of the Low Countries (South Netherlands and Flanders). The academy was founded in 1741.
On my first day I felt a bit like a Flemish Primitive: I learned BTW that the term Flemish “Primitive” has nothing to do with “basic” or “archaic” but is related to “first” or “early”, because the Flemish Primitives were innovators in finding the right compounds for paint to use on panels and canvas. In other words: how to make innovation stick!
Royal Academy Ghent painting studio and my blank personal corner
I restarted painting, and upon suggestion of Ioana Guiman from Allevo (thank you, Ioana!), I started experimenting with timelapses of some of my paintings. It is an interesting format: you can pause the video where you like it most and then make a sort of personal still and print-out.
Here is one of the painting “Girl Dancing in Flemish Fields”. I did a quick soundscape for it as well, so volume “on” is recommended.
The falling of the leaves and the autumn humidity of the soil inspired me for a poem:
Herfst
Vervaagd
Het beeld van zondag
Een boomgaard vol fruit
Warmte onderhuids
De zoete hap vergeet de kleur van zon
Vliegensvlugge paardebloemen
Verstrooien nog snel het land met hun laatste zaad
Quote by Kurt Vonnegut - Found in Royal Academy studio on kitchen wall
The Performance project
As mentioned in my August update, I was invited for a gig at FinnoSummit in September in Mexico . Some sort of keynote, including some elements of my performance “Tin Drum is Back”. The talk is about structural change and archetypes of change agents. It is very much related to my research about Good Change – Bad Change (more about that later).
FinnoSummit was scheduled as a two-day event on 19-20 Sep 2017, but at 13:14pm on day one, the 7,1 magnitude earthquake hit, and in the end the whole event was cancelled as the venue could not get clearance from the authorities to re-open before the appropriate stability checks of the meeting location.
Although experiencing a 7,1 quake is quite an experience in itself – I was sitting in the top of the 1000 PAX concert hall shaking at least 50cm from left to right – I was most struck by the huge wave of solidarity throughout the city by all layers of the population, helping the rescuers and the victims with food, water, blankets, etc…
This occurs when agents are motivated to take action for the collective benefits due to an intensely focused experience, as was the case in Mexico City after the earthquake last week. The focused intensity of the need to act and the physical actions of many agents create a reinforcing feedback loop of contribution, all dedicated to the collective whole.
The talk also went into the topic of patrimony and spaces of memory, and I will update the talk with the earthquake experience of damaged patrimony, the emergence of commons, self formed solidarity brigades, and “moles” (the name of the special rescue forces that start digging into the rubble of the quake.
The organisers of FinnoSummit have kindly re-invited me to do the premiere of this performance at their Miami event on 9 Oct 2017. The venue is again stunning: they selected a place called “The Sacred Space”.
The Sacred Space in Miami
The Deep Change project
Patrimony is one of the components of a research I started some months ago on “deep” change. Check out the previous posts here, here and this one where I highlighted the importance of patrimony and its combination with contemporary. Or the respect of the memory of an organisation and its combination with the DNA of innovation.
Although the term “deep” is a somewhat glorifying term – as glorifying as “meaningful” or “authentic” – it has some meaning as the change I am trying to describe probably has its source in the more deeply wired connections in our brains and being fully conscious.
The plan is to come up with a body of work, describing what is deep change, to articulate the levers to accelerate deep change, and a more tactical set of recommendations on how to get started and keep going. The format of that body of work is not decided yet, but it could go from anything like a publication up to a performance and/or experience expedition, as I believe learning happens best through experience and not through teaching.
For this project – funding permitted – I intend to do 10 “in residence” immersions, complemented with additional interviews with a collective of leaders, visionaries, artists, craftsmen, designers and producers.
In essence this is a sensemaking expedition on the what and the how of high quality connections and long lasting cross-generational structural change that goes beyond innovation tactics such as bootcamps, start-up competitions, accelerators, incubators or whatever these concepts are called these days.
I have by now a quite solid outline in place and feel ready to get this one going.
Sponsorships
There are different kinds of sponsorship available for the Deep Change project. Please contact me in private if interested.
On a separate note, I would love to combine my FinnoSummit Miami trip in November with one of the best conferences in the world: Techonomy. I believe many of the topics on this year’s agenda could be solid anchor points for the Deep Change project as well. It would be great if somebody would be willing to sponsor my attendance. Let’s discuss what sort of deliverable you’d like in return. Please contact me in private if interested.
What’s next?
During Oct – Dec 2017, the plan is to work on:
FinnoSummit Miami keynote/performance on 9 Nov 2017
Covering Techonomy (pending sponsorship)
Continue the research on deep change
Get some blogs and reflections published
More disciplined agenda again
Permeke – De Vespers – 1927 - Oil on Canvas – 128x149cm
That’s about it for this edition. If there is something worth reporting, next update is for Dec 2017. Looking forward to hearing from your latest adventures as well.
As I have increased my social media activity, some folks think I am back at work. I am not. I enjoy the silence, and try to focus on my 4 priorities: Deep change research project, performance, artwork, and experience expeditions (events). If you have anything interesting or related to one of these domains, please contact me.
Warmest,
I am in the business of cultivating high quality connections and flows to create immersive learning experiences and structural change. Check out: https://petervanproductions.com/
Petervan Studios 