If you can’t get enough of these and want more than 5 articles, you can hang on to the firehose, the extended version of Petervan’s Delicacies in REVUE. Also in this edition with loads of videos. Subscribe here: https://www.getrevue.co/profile/petervan
For the past years, I have been on a quest to discover what is required to enable change. I try to avoid glorifying terms like “deep”, or “meaningful” change. What we are after in the end is just “good” change, right? In my opinion, good change is change that leads to ethical, moral and spiritual advancement. All the rest follows: profit, happiness, communities, and networks of returning customers.
Deeply influenced by the work of Robert Fritz on structural conflict and structural tension, and that structure drives everything – especially behavior – I became dissatisfied by the responsive reaction in many organizations that can be summarized 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.
So, the key starting point is to know what you want. Let that sink in for a moment. To know what you want.
Once you know what you want, you can create and change the structure that will at least be helpful – not working against you – in letting emerge and amplify the behavior that leads to what you want.
Structure is broader here than hierarchy or reporting lines. Structure includes contexts, vision, vehicles, mechanisms, and networks. Like an architect, you design spaces and structures to enable certain preferred – at time messy – human behaviors. In a corporate environment, you don’t architect buildings, but you architect contexts. You become a context designer. As an architect, you are not only responsible for the imaginative part, but also for seeing through the execution ànd adaptation needed as the context changes throughout time. Structure and contexts drive flows of information. Like water in a riverbed, if you change the course of the riverbed, the water will behave differently.
Structure drives flow drives behavior.
Let’s add Leandro Herrero in the mix. He wrote “Viral Change” and “Homo Imitans”. Key insights: people copy behavior and behaviors drive culture. If you plant people with the desired behavior into your organization, there is a good chance others will start copying that behavior. Hence “Imitans”. Like viruses infecting others – in a positive way. Do I need to make a drawing in this Covid-19 era?
Leandro’s bottom-line: behavior drives change and not the other way. And you can design for certain preferred behaviors. It’s bottom-up. It is not because an executive team defines culture that everybody will start behaving like it. It is because you have seeded infectious behavior that a culture will emerge through imitation.
Like changing and influencing the structure of a building or a riverbed, we can influence the information flows in organizations. These changed flows lead to different behaviors that on their term drive culture. In the end culture drives change and advancement
That the disposition of a culture is already embedded in the play preceding it.
“By this we do not mean that play turns into culture, rather that in its earliest phases culture has the play-character, that it proceeds in the shape and the mood of play (Huizinga)”
“There is a third function, however, applicable to both human and animal life, and just as important as reasoning and making—namely, playing. (Huizinga)”
This brings me to the insights of John Seely Brown in “A New Culture of Learning”, who quotes Huizinga extensively.
Visual/Insight inspired by John Seely Brown (JSB)
JSB talks about a “21st Century Augmented Imagination”, with a better balance between Homo Sapiens (Man as a Thinker), Homo Faber (Man as a Maker), and Homo Ludens (Man as a Player). Where imagination is triggered, tested, and augmented by play. And discovering the rules of the (future) game to play by playing it.
“In a world of near-constant flux, play becomes a strategy for embracing change, rather than a way for growing out of it (JSB)”
BANI stands for Brittleness, Anxious, Non-Linear, and Incomprehensible.
Let’s focus on the “A” of BANI.
I suggested that the preferred response to Anxiousness was empathy or agency.
But that felt too open ended.
Empathy with what, and agency in what kind of world?
And was it forward or backward looking?
A possible world or a preferred world?
I went back to the most common definition for anxious:
“being worried about what may happen or have happened”
Like a rabbit caught in the headlights, some people are so frightened or nervous that they do not know what to do. They sometimes remain still because they do not know where the light comes from or which way to go.
Another reaction is to fake that you know what to do, especially if you are in the spotlight for one reason or another. In other words, to bluff yourself out of an anxious situation.
Imagine a workshop where the top executives of a firm are sitting on the first VIP row of a theatre (in COVID-times, it would be a massive Zoom session with all the employees being able to look over the shoulder of their executives).
All the employees are sitting in the rows behind the VIP row to witness how their executives manage a difficult situation, or even more frightening, being able to see inside the heads of those who bluff to know, don’t blink an eye, and confidently steer their troops in the wrong direction, efficiently of course.
Remaining still or bluffing strong are most probably not the wisest responses to anxiety.
A better response would have to do with orientation or some kind of possibility mapping.
Great background explanation by Joseph Voros here.
These days, you can buy out-of-the-box possibility mapping workshops from some of the big-4 and many boutique consultancies. Some of them already fully COVID-proof online, with Miro boards of future cones, chatrooms, Clubhouse conversations, Slack and other real-time streams.
But all this online-first coolness can also be distracting. What I am exploring is some kind of new genre, where we also inject artists to resonate with and for the content at a non-cognitive level, not as entertainment, but with an aesthetic that is demonstrative, not just a gimmick overlay.
An aesthetic that has a sense of stillness and serenity that makes the effort and work real, beyond perception and reason, with an anchoring in humanistic relevance.
Without falling for the temptation to add such toolkit to a “Pot-Pourri” of other coolness, as a tapas-bar, a Chinese menu to choose from.
What is missing in the “Pot-Pourri” is a sense of agency, a sense for direction and choice. Choice as in opinion, and direction as in judgment and daring to step forward with preference.
If not, the online-first future cones become a surrogate for analog Post-It-driven brainstorms, just mapping future concepts on the dimensions of possible, plausible, probable, and impossible.
The crux is daring to address the preferrable future. Because that is using the map beyond seeing better what is and what could be. It is using the map for standing for an opinion, a direction, most probably in the space of moral, spiritual, and aesthetical advancement.
That’s of course a more difficult sell.
But for now, let’s summarise, not as a conclusion, but more as a beacon in our developing story that a possible response to anxiousness is possibility mapping with the courage to set direction and preference.
Next time we’ll talk about “Unbound” – Unbound from thingness that is.
Huizinga believes play is of all times, and not limited to humans.
Animals play also.
A lot.
It is not “play” as in “game”.
Game – at least finite games – hints at some underlying sense for competition.
This is play without competition.
Play just for the pleasure of play.
Like birds in the sky,
cows in the pasture,
dogs on the beach,
humans teasing each other…
The core message of Huizinga is that play drives culture.
That the disposition of a culture is already embedded in the play preceding it.
By this we do not mean that play turns into culture, rather that in its earliest phases culture has the play-character, that it proceeds in the shape and the mood of play (Huizinga)
Play is irrational.
Play is a voluntary activity.
Play has a tendency to be beautiful. It may be that this aesthetic factor is identical with the impulse to create orderly form, which animates play in all its aspects. The words we use to denote the elements of play belong for the most part to aesthetics, terms with which we try to describe the effects of beauty: tension, poise, balance, contrast, variation, solution, resolution, etc.
Play casts a spell over us; it is “enchanting”, “captivating”. It is invested with the noblest qualities we are capable of perceiving in things: rhythm and harmony.
The child plays in complete—we can well say, in sacred—earnest.
But it plays and knows that it plays.
Play is a voluntary activity or occupation executed within certain fixed limits of time and place, according to rules freely accepted but absolutely binding, having its aim in itself and accompanied by a feeling of tension, joy and the consciousness that it is “different” from “ordinary life”.
We do not play for wages, we work for them
@Huizinga
The last one resonates well with my current state of being. For me, and especially since my retirement from corporate life on 1 Dec 2020, “work” has become “paid play”, although most of the work in 2020 was “unpaid play”.
But it is play.
In 2017, in my series “Trends for human advancement”, I strongly believed that structure is driving everything, and landed on the phrase:
So, to be able to change, we first need to re-learn to play.
“There is a third function, however, applicable to both human and animal life, and just as important as reasoning and making—namely, playing.”
@Huizinga
This brings me to the insights of John Seely Brown in “A New Culture of Learning”, who quotes Huizinga extensively
I rediscovered John Seely Brown (JSB) when reading “Design Unbound” that he wrote together with Ann Pendleton-Jullian. Much (!) more about that book and Ann’s work and how it changed and formed my thinking in 2020 and ongoing.
Visual/Insight by JSB
JSB talks about a “21st Century Augmented Imagination”, with a better balance between Homo Sapien, Homo Faber, and Homo Ludens
Play, questioning, and—perhaps most important—imagination lie at the very heart of arc-of-life learning
In a world of near-constant flux, play becomes a strategy for embracing change, rather than a way for growing out of it
Play fuses the two elements of learning that we have been talking about: the information network and the petri dish (or bounded environment of experimentation). That fusion is what we call the new culture of learning
@JSB
Later in this series, we’ll also talk extensively about the concept of “Studios”, leveraging the practice of practices that is architecture (again, as so well documented by Ann Pendleton-Jullian in “Four Studios (+1)”)
The key point here that play and critique are indispensable tools and skills for collective learning when integrating game play and game design in the scaffolding of the disposition of imagination.
Next time we’ll talk about “Anxious” one of the states of a post-VUCA world. And what a possible response to that anxiety can be.
From there – in subsequent posts – we’ll leave the road of reductionism and will enter a space where we will mix more abstraction and holistic thinking.
Also in the new year, I will continue with my usual, incoherent, irregular, unpredictable collection of interesting sparks. Handpicked, no robots. Minimalism in curation. Enjoy!
About the creative and philosophical implications of designing spaces in virtual reality, as well as philosophies around tools for thought and software that can completely change the way we think creatively. With the amazing Andreea Ion Cojocaru.
If you can’t get enough of these and want more than 5 articles, you can hang on to the firehose, the extended version of Petervan’s Delicacies in REVUE. Also in this edition with loads of videos. Subscribe here: https://www.getrevue.co/profile/petervan
After the Silence post of last week, we continue with Pause.
In “Silence”, I mentioned “Stop the clocks – Manifesto for a Slow Future”, Joke Hermsen’s book about Silencing the Time. Minutes after I published that post, I got a notification of a new book by Joke Hermsen
“Ogenblik & Eeuwigheid” or “Moment & Eternity” opens with Joke’s reflections on a Kairos/Chronos exhibition she curated in 2017 in the Gaasbeek Castle south of Brussels. Coincidence or not, but I happened to be there, and here is a video of one of the installations exhibited then.
“This is about that mysterious moment when our soul is unguarded and spreads out its wings. Kairos manoeuvres virtuoso between two worlds: the measurable and the immeasurable, the known and the un-known, backing out of our knowledge, covertly showing us a glimpse of the possible”
Her new book is once again about Chronos and Kairos and the potential of art to move us into the surplus of Kairos
Het surplus aan tijdservaring die de kunst voor ons in petto heeft verschilt aanzienlijk van het louter meten van tijd op de klok.
The surplus of time experience made available by art is quite different from the pure measurement of time
Together with Josie Gibson from The Catalyst Network, we started some 1-1 calls to share what these books trigger for us and our communities. We decided to start a small experiment: we read a chapter of the book, schedule a 1-1 call to let flow our minds, record it, and share it with our communities.
Very down to earth, no tricks, no gimmicks, just a gentle and calm wandering and meandering of minds from two opposite sides of this earth. One person from Melbourne, Australia and one from Aalst, Belgium; one person in autumn, one in spring.
These are very calm conversations; so best is to take a pause, install yourself in a quiet corner and enjoy!
It is an invitation to calm and tranquility as powerful sources of vitality ànd relaxation.
Yes! They can go together.
But sometimes the rhythms of an ordinary day offer stillness as well.
Even the ticking of the Chronos clock as a background soundscape can bring me in a state of calm and stillness.
Like monks doing their miniatures.
I found this online clock that ticks for 12 hours.
It’s the only thing it does.
And in the meantime, I am drawing thousands of little bricks in brick bonds.
It’s useless, I know.
But it brings me in a Zen state, a state of deep calm and happiness.
I am literately and metaphorically losing my time.
In a recent newsletter update about “pottering” in his garden, Robert wrote:
“When I do what I am drawn to, I am absorbed by my surroundings – by what I see, or hear, or smell. My attention is open, soft, pliable. This stills something inside me and I find a kind of quiet calm.”
“This stillness is something that is given to me, not something I create. It is a gift; and one I cherish. It is settling, if not nourishing to be reminded that the worries and concerns that bother me so, are mostly of my own invention. And that moving around can help me to be still.”
I am attracted by Robert’s pause, his stillness as a gift.
A place where I want to hang-out, where I can lose my Chronos time.
In the meantime, I got many conversations with Robert. I shared with him my ideas on creating better gatherings, beyond “conferences” as entertainment, but more as learning experiences, resonating beyond the cognitive, and how we can do much better than just copying the analog.
(Not) to my surprise, Robert spent a lot of time as well on how learning can be done better, differently. And together with Alex Carabi, he created Yellow Learning. I mention it quickly here, as Yellow is one of the other keywords in this series Traveling without Moving.
I was part of the second cohort ending next week. Yellow is fee based. But worth its money, trust me. If you are interested, the call for the next groups Jan-June 2021 is open now.
I am excited to announce the launch of one of my new channels: Petervan’s Pirate TV – Art-Tribe Edition
The first episode will premiere on YouTube on 1 Dec 2020 at 09:30am Los Angeles – 12:30pm New York – 6:30pm Brussels – 1:30am Hong Kong (next day)
The YouTube live chat will be open for feedback, critique and encouragements.
I suggest you set the YouTube reminder so you don’t miss the premiere and the live chat.
The video will remain available for viewing after the Premiere event
Virtual events ambition cube
Pirate TV is a new genre that sits somewhere between a vlogcast, documentary, film, and TV show. In the events ambition cube, this sits in the lower right quadrant for a tribe-connectedness.
Current plan is to have two editions: one more business related (the Biz-Tribe Edition), and one more artistic related (the Art-Tribe Edition).
The Art-Tribe Edition launches on 1 Dec 2020, the Biz-Tribe Edition will launch on 2 Feb 2021.
As I strongly believe that magic happens at the cross-section of artists, scientists, engineers, and business people, I expect that sooner or later the two editions will start to blend.
Art-Tribe Edition is intended as a platform for artists in conversation with Petervan.
The artist-in-residence for this first episode is Frank Poncelet.
Frank Poncelet is an independent Artist/Director/Producer who graduated from “The Academy for Visual Arts” in Ghent in 2017. While he has no intention of pursuing professional animation in the future, he enjoys the process and will continue to make animations and VFX shorts. After his Graduation film “A Night On Gor”. He worked for One year on an Animation Mashup “Bug’s Club” inspired by “Hell’s Club” from Antonio Maria Da Silva AMDSFILMS. In 2017/2018). Frank Also Produced his short sci-fi film “Alpha” in 2019. Currently Frank is working on video art using Neural Style Transfer techniques and on a sequel to “Alpha”.
I hope you will enjoy this first episode. Here is the trailer:
The soundtrack of the trailer is here:
If you are an artist, and you are interested to have your work shared and discussed on this channel, please contact me privately.
This post is part of a series of essays bundled under “Travelling without moving”. Intro of that series can be found here.
My 2020 journey started with a Direct Message via Twitter from Mark Storm on Feb 8, 2020 a couple of weeks before the first formal lockdown in Belgium on 13 Mar 2020
Mark says “Maybe you will find this an interesting essay about Mark Rothko. Have a great Sunday, Mark”
Thanks for sharing, Mark! And yes, I found it interesting, in as much that I choose it as the start of this series 😉
Here is the direct link (Dutch only) to the Rothko essay (PDF) by Dutch philosopher Joke J. Hermsen. The essay is about the effect of stillness on an audience in front of a Rothko painting. It is an ode to Kairos (time as experience) as opposed to Chronos (time as clock-time).
Mark Rothko – Yellow Over Purple (1956).
Some highlight from the essay:
Het onmenselijke geweld van de oorlog bracht hem ertoe een laatste zoektocht naar de kern van menselijkheid te ondernemen: ‘Ik wil mensen daarheen brengen waar ze hun menselijkheid weer kunnen ervaren.’ En dat kan volgens hem alleen als een kunstwerk ‘tijdloze momenten schept’, die de mens tot een nieuwe ervaring van zichzelf en vervolgens tot een nieuw inzicht over de wereld kan inspireren.
The inhumane violence of the war had induced him into a last quest for the essence of humanity: “I want to lead people to a place where they can experience their humanity again”. And he believes that is only possible when a piece of art “creates timeless moments”, inspiring men to a new experience of himself and subsequently new insights about the world.
Er bestaan geen goede schilderijen die over niets gaan
There are no good painting that are about nothing
Om ‘te kunnen worden die je bent’, dienen de oude waarheden en inzichten als het ware opgeschort te worden. Het is een ervaring die door Nietzsche ook wel extatisch wordt genoemd, omdat het letterlijk een uitstaan naar is, kortom een zich openstellen voor en zich overgeven aan het onbekende. Rothko spreekt in dit geval van ‘transcendentale ervaringen’
In order “to be able to become who you are”, old truths and insights need to be postponed. Nietzsche labelled such experiences as ecstatic – literally standing-out – opening up to and surrendering to the unknown. Rothko speaks in this case of “transcendental experiences”
Deze ‘transcendentale ervaring’ wordt door Rothko een ‘tijdloos moment’ genoemd, omdat deze niet aan de klok gebonden tijd als het ware haaks staat op of inbreekt in de as van de lineaire tijd.
This “transcendental experience” is called a “timeless moment” by Rothko, because this non-clocked time is at odds with or breaks into the axis of linear time.
De identiteit van de toeschouwer wordt voor een moment doorbroken, waardoor hij de indruk heeft niet langer tegenover het werk te staan, maar er door omringd of opgezogen te worden
The spectator’s identity is momentarily broken, giving him the impression that he is no longer facing the work, but is surrounded or absorbed by it
The suggested translation for the title is “Stop the clocks – Manifesto for a Slow Future”, although I feel that “plea” is probably a better translation than “manifesto”, and I would have translated “Stil De Tijd” as “Silence the clocks”. I wrote about time in the past, and in this post from May 2018, I already mentioned Joke Hermsen.
Here are some of my notes/highlights/moods from the book.
Tijd schept ruimte
Time shapes space
Verlangen te realiseren wat er nog niet is.
Desire to realise what is not
Opnieuw zien we hier hoe zowel het wachten als het openlaten van de tijd en het opschorten van betekenisgeving aan de oorsprong staan van de creativiteit en het denken.
Again, we see how waiting as well as leaving space for time and the suspension of giving meaning are at the source of creativity and thinking
Het wachten (attente) is voor Blanchot dan ook het vrijleggen van een ander soort aandacht (attention), die zich niet op het reeds bekende van de verwachting richt, maar op het onbekende, het onverwachte, het nog niet ingevulde.
The waiting (attente) is for Blanchot the release of another sort of attention (attention), not pointing towards the known knows of the expectation, but towards the unknown, the unexpected, what has not yet been filled in.
Picasso: ‘Ik zoek niet – ik vind.’ Over dat onderscheid tussen zoeken en vinden, zegt Picasso: ‘Zoeken, dat is uitgaan van het oude in een willen vinden van het reeds bekende in het nieuwe. Vinden, dat is het volledig nieuwe. Alle wegen zijn open, en wat gevonden wordt, is onbekend. Het is een waagstuk, een avontuur.’
Picasso: “I don’t search – I find”. About that difference between searching and finding, Picasso says: “Searching is starting from the past, in an effort to find the already known in the future. Finding, that’s what’s completely new. Alle options are open, and what is being found, is unknown. It is a venture, an adventure”
Belangeloze aandacht
Disinterested attention
Last highlight:
Die creativiteit wordt aangewakkerd als we ons bij tijd en wijle aan het regime van de klok kunnen onttrekken en ons durven overgeven aan ervaringen die haaks staan op het gestaag voorttikken van de wijzers. Wachten, vervelen, luieren, mijmeren, nadenken en nietsdoen, zijn vormen van ontvankelijke passiviteit waarmee men in deze rusteloze, door de economie opgedreven tijden misschien weinig applaus zal oogsten, maar die in vrijwel alle hier opgenomen essays noodzakelijk bleken voor de mens en voor de wereld om niet te verstarren en te verharden.
That creativity is encouraged when we can detach us from time to time from the regime of the clock and dare to surrender to the experiences that are orthogonal to the ongoing ticking of the moving clock-hands. Waiting, being bored, idle, musing, reflecting and doing nothing, are all forms of receptive passivity that are not really appreciated by the inflated time of the economy, but that are essential in all essays of this publication, essential for the humans and the world in order not to fossilize, become rigid, petrify and harden.
I make similar reflections during my bike tours in nature, asking myself who is the real me, what is my original rhythm, finding my own rhythm, re-finding myself.
During one of those tours, I spotted a path to my right, with no signage, leading into some small woods and boskets. A small hesitation, but in a blink, I decided to turn right, right into the unknown.
Only a couple of minutes later, I found myself in an open space, in the middle of the green, in almost complete silence, and saw this snail sunbathing under a parasol of green leave.
The silence and nature had made me soft, with indeed a disinterested attention, but active attention anyway, not passive.
After years of – at times – hectic corporate life, and after a semi-pause of about four years, I realized it was only now that I started to cool down, to wind down. It was only now that I started to enjoy that state of detachment from Chronos time, detachment from anything, actually.
It should therefore not come as a surprise that my next essay in this series will be about… pause.
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