Travelling without Moving (TWM) is a series of essays documenting my mental and philosophical journey in 2020-2021.
The name came from an Arpeggiator Sound in Logic Pro that I was using in freewheeling a soundscape. It’s also a song by Jamiroquai from 1996
I felt the name fitted quite well with the troublesome year 2020 where – at least in Flanders – we already had two lockdowns and other less strict conditions throughout the year, basically discouraging contacts and travelling. But in my mind, I was still travelling, without physically moving.
The idea for TWM was triggered by an invitation from Jennifer Sertl who started StudioA3R, a weekly podcast dedicated to helping leaders navigate complexting by strengthening resilience, responsiveness and reflection.
Jennifer’s podcasts are organised around four questions:
Where have you been?
What have you learned?
Where are you going?
What’s required?
In other words, documenting the journey, the voyage one makes. One can answer those questions from different perspectives:
Location: where have you physically been? Flanders, Italy, etc.
Activity: what have you done? Tasks, Deliverables, Products, etc.
Mentally: what were your ups and downs, etc.
Philosophically: from Plato to Kant to Kierkegaard to Sloterdijk, etc.
But there is also a way to answer these questions looking at where your mind has been. What have I learned? Where is my mind going, what is required? What steppingstones did I step on? Is there any coherence in all this?
That’s the plan/ambition with these TWM essays: to share where I have been, what I learned, where I am going, and what is required. And hopefully also offer some inspiration to my readers, and – who knows? – find some co-travelers along the way.
Each essay will start from a keyword. Each keyword hides a story. Some stories are inspired by an event (something that happened), others by something I read or experienced. Sometimes it was a happenstance framing of the camera.
Traveling Without Moving (TMW) is also somewhat related to Studio Oxygen (SOX) and Pirate TV (PTV). Some essays will be published in sync with the launch of new episodes of SOX and PTV. And for booklovers: there will be plenty of references to interesting books 😉
Every essay will have a link back to this overview/intro post, so that you can navigate your own way back into the voyage.
Petervan memories from the 70ies – First artistic performances
It’s almost one year (!) since my previous Dec 2019 update. And what a year it was/still is! I basically stayed home for the whole period and had zero travel since Oct 2019.
I am publishing this on the day Belgium is entering its second Covid-19 lockdown. A forced pause-marathon starting on my 63th birthday on 1 Nov till at least mid-Dec 2020. But I am afraid the effort will have to run until deep into 2021 and I am preparing for it as an “interval of possibility”.
An interval of possibility is a temporal framing to see better what is and what can emerge. There is indeed still so much to read, to learn, to experiment, to play with. So many contexts to be architected. So many interesting people to (re)connect with (at least virtually). So much opportunity for spiritual, moral, and aesthetical advancement! Expect me to be quite generative in the coming weeks and months.
The Artschool Project
The Artschool academy year started again in Sep 2020, and I subscribed for a two-year curriculum labeled “specialization”.
“Professionalization” is probably a better title for what it is: a focus on getting the (art)work done, commitment, and ambition. We’ll learn to discover our own visual language starting from our personal frames and themes with the ambition to develop our own artistic maturity and identity. This is about personal reflection, self- and group-critique, evaluation, and research. About creative identity and creative disposition. And about how to create a portfolio, develop contacts with galleries, presenting your own work, setting up your own expo, etc.
From an artistic medium point of view, my main focus will remain painting on canvas, but I will keep experimenting with other (mainly digital) media.
I shared most of my recent work via my Facebook page, or on this blog under the heading “Sine Parole”. I also started selecting more straightforward subjects, such as vases, landscapes, cows, fruit, and everyday objects. In many cases the obvious and what is in front of you is interesting enough. Here is an example of some apples from our mini orchard:
I have something with cows (pun intended). I met many during my summer bike tours. It feels it is going to become yet another a thematic series, like the prison windows, or the birds, or the boxers.
Petervan Artworks @ 2020 – Cow Project – Digital Try-out
Petervan Artworks @ 2020 – Cow Project – Sketch of the Intervals of Possibility
One option is to create a cow-sign-language and typography, or maybe see how I can get them generated through in-the-cloud AI neural networks.
Via Mario Klingeman (@quasimodo) -AI generated shapes
Exhibitions
Last year, I visited some art exhibitions, including:
There is no Planet B – S.M.A.K., Ghent, Dec 2019
Inge Decuypere – Ronse, Feb 2020
Dali-Magritte – Museum Fine Arts, Brussels, Feb 2020
Love-Hate – ING Gallery, Brussels, Feb 2020
Keith Haring – BOZAR, Brussels, Feb 2020
Van Eyck – Museum Schone Kunsten, Ghent, Feb 2020
Stephan VanFleteren – FOMU, Antwerp, July 2020
Writing Beyong – Axel Vervoordt, Wijnegem, July 2020
Dechamps, Panamarenko and Co – Deweer Gallery, Zwevegem, Oct 2020
There were many more, but due to Covid-19, many musea were closed or had restrictions.
Stephan VanFleteren – FOMU, Antwerp, July 2020
My own exhibition
I ran my first solo (100% virtual) exhibition during summer. Some unexpected fans actually bought some of my works. Thank you: this is very encouraging. For those who don’t know: I also do commissioned work. If interested – in buying or commissions – please send me a private message.
We had a great summer in Flanders. Since the start of the first lockdown on 13 March 2020 we had good to excellent weather till mid-September 2020. Plenty of opportunity for being outdoors, with the occasional bike tour or walk.
Freelance
Covid-19 is not kind to freelancers, especially if you target what some people call the “event industry”. With the exception of a small gig in 2020, I basically got no work since October 2019. Contact me in private if you’d like to hire me for “interesting” work.
BANI
Already in 2018, Jamais Cascio coined the term BANI. See my post from Aug 2019 and Jamais’ update from April 2020. As mentioned before, I am working with some partners on a virtual multimedia workshop based on this framework, with a specific focus on possible responses. We have an amazing cast on-board, and it looks that we’ll be able to make some announcements soon.
Design Unbound
I am blown away and intrigued by the insights in Design Unbound: Designing for Emergence in a White Water World. This is about having agency in a world that is constantly shifting under you. It is so refreshing after all those business-, management-, leadership-, and self-help-books. It has become a healthy addiction: I am basically reading and re-reading and deeply internalizing everything that Ann Pendleton has written in the last couple of years.
We are building a team to design and deliver a corporate curriculum on this topic. Stay tuned on the “we” and the “curriculum”.
I got the chance to do a commission for a client on this concept and we – the client, the team, myself – learned a lot on what works and what not.
There are now two Pirate TV channels in the pipeline: one more business focused and one more “artsy”.
New toys
For Pirate TV, I wanted to become more fluent in video and sound creation. As there was nothing else to do due to Covid-19, I followed some online courses on Ableton Live, Final Cut Pro, and Logic Pro X.
These are such rich software environments. Also, their user interfaces make me think differently: thinking in layers, connections, patterns, and harmonies.
Studio Oxygen project
An idea that has been hanging around since 2018, actually.
People are exhausted. Tired of online meetings. Tired of being locked up in their houses. Tired of all the negative news. People crave for oxygen. People crave for small safe groups where they can share, critique, ideate, play.
With a small on-line collective, we plan to come together regularly online to have slow-paced conversations on a topic/seed that I plant. The seed can be the chapter of a book, an object, a poem, a job well done, or a failing forward.
With a no-frills focus on quality content, we hope these sparks of inspiration will give you “oxygen for the mind”.
Also don’t forget Robert Poynton’s “Do Pause”. Together with Josie Gibson we made 8 podcast episodes, one for each chapter in this book. The last episode is here.
Petervan Rides
Since July 2019, I publish every month a Spotify List with new releases combined with some oldies from the 60ies, 70ies, and beyond. Search for “Petervan Ride” and select “playlists”. Subjective selection of course, as driven only by my personal taste (or lack thereof).
Petervan Rides on Spotify
So, what’s next?
I will officially retire from corporate life as from 1 Dec 2020. Not that I plan to stay idle, on the contrary. Within limits, I will stay available for interesting freelance work – I call it “paid play” – and plan to stay very focused on my artwork.
The plan for the coming months is to work/play on (random order):
“Interesting” freelance work
Artwork
Studio Oxygen
Traveling Without Moving
Pickup Time Capsules again
So, that’s it for this edition. If there is something worth reporting, next update is for Apr 2021.
Musical harvest October 2020 > most are new releases > shorter as usual as not so many interesting releases > more fun when played in shuffle mode > more surprise > enjoy
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
Very very long essay by Eugene Wei about social capital. Is social capital the same as status, or is it more?
An initial introduction to Assemblage Space, part of an ongoing body of work around information, innovation and futures. By John Willshire from the Smithery.
An app that generates coordinates for adventurers claims to turn your thoughts into reality. TikTok and YouTube creators want you to believe it — but you shouldn’t.
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
The AI GPT-2 Model generated the following story, just based on the input “One morning in August,”:
One morning in August, 1991, two brothers were gunned down in the Jezeville Mansion on Jarvis Street in Detroit. This is one of several incidents where teenage boys were shot and left to die of self-inflicted injuries. Eight boys were killed after being shot in one of those four blocks on Jarvis Street. Five boys were subsequently recovered from the fatal gunshot wound on at least one of those spots. The other three were shot in the neck when a loose-walled mess hit them. One of those victims, Sylvester A. Dunlap, was undoubtedly intimidated by the fact that he had been a member of a terrorist organization before the defeat of 9/11.
Recent developments in the confines of Detroit have raised serious issues in the policing of the inner city. Chancellor Bill Blair stated several times during a presentation that research on neighborhood policing by Chicago’s public safety department will reveal problems across the city that explain the difficulty of enforcing sentencing for murders in the inner city. Blair also explained several times during a lecture in Ferguson, Missouri that he would want to use new tools to combat dysfunctional policing. His city council initiated a similar program toward ending torture for prisoners, concessions to American values, and criticism of Milwaukee County’s police policies in view of the city’s record on abuse of black people and an opportunity to address community issues. Since 1991, free speech trends shift responsive to the challenges facing black people within the region.
Like parenthood, news of new families and better education, mothers have no choice but to speak out. Their voices are heard every single Friday. Police lead agencies with, in fact, one of the longest serving party members in the entire country. This week the Detroit police chief announced that the highly visible Sunday soap operas of Salton Skelton will now be, by contrast, competitions for white children’s news. Please read the full article and consider donating to liberal blockbusters. Click here to support Indiegogo. What happens when you pry members of the guest activist ranks at the bottom of the parade? To fight only if, rather than an anti-black thing that goes next, you see a pattern of action.
One of the obvious reasons for the historical beauty of American democracy is that sometimes you almost expect people to perform one of the most aggressive and deliberately aggressive things imaginable outside of their own best interest. With a witch hunt, for example, one of death row inmates, Jared E. Souza, is described as both a teacher and a world class dancer. Eleven years later he was convicted of five counts of attempted murder by a female slave, including all counts of conspiracy. This in turn became an outlier for people incredulously, most notably in 1997 at the April 30, 1969, riots that marred all half-black-white citizens of American culture and led many to question just how African American society should be judged in a medical system that educates persons of color and not the idea of violent crime.
Laura Naumann, an assistant attorney general of the lower East Side of Detroit, estimates that 2.2 million people of color are incarcerated annually in the United States. Most incarcerated black people now have improved their status as citizens this year. About 10 percent of Chicago’s juvenile population comes from nonwhite. Black lives matter when living conditions only affect one’s race and language. What causes more crime? For example, though crime statistics show all people arrested last year on a rape charge tend to mean that one’s work can be disproportionately incarcerated. If you live in a barn, you have to subject the homeless to work and find work alone. If you live in a newer suburb, nearly every Hispanic won’t be able to vote that bad. In fact, many blacks are making it possible to vote a lot less than white Americans. And those unsupervised black men don’t actually have the blacks of color that The Mayor of Detroit led during “due process” legislation in the high-crime area of Detroit, one of the greatest systemic failures of any American society.
Today, the only way for African Americans to help our society is to remember that black men are also the only radical and peaceful voice in the revolutionary world. For instance, Harvard Law School professor Drew Doucette recently noted that black men and women are after-school most days of school; organizers sponsored several in-school free workshops, such as public-school online resources recording lessons, where black people were irrationally punished in the classroom.
If you are black, this is something you can do and do, but expect to see the strength of the movement, the power and involvement of black men in the struggles of communities worldwide. Violence on Our Streets As Cyrus Sadie writes of Wall Street: “Tragically, while there is no truly “safe” place for black men and women in our society today, many appear to be spending their financial time being unable to tell a large portion of the story in communities that are marginalized by racial discrimination
Auto-generated by GPT-2 using https://runwayml.com/ – “Machine Learning for Creators”. It is basically AI-as-a-service in the cloud. It just took 10667ms, on a standard Wifi internet connection, and a Mac.
Petervan Studios 