week 1 thoughts

The workshops of Monday and Tuesday (experiencing space) where very inspiring. Today we live in a modern transient society. The people living in the metropools of today come across a lot of contradictions and shifts in events, ‘overexposure’ as Virillio called it in his article ‘the overexposed city’¹. Therefore we (people living in these metropools) create an protective organ against all these influences. This organ protects against the profound disruption with the fluctuations and discontinuities of the external milieu threaten it. Instead of reacting emotionally, the metropolitan user reacts primarily in a rational matter, thus creating a mental predominance through intensification of consciousness, which in turn is caused by it. Thus the reaction of a metropolitan user to those events is moved to a sphere of mental activity which is least sensitive and which is furthest removed from depths of the personality².

What we did, in my opinion, this past two days is trying to ‘turn of’ this protective organ and experience space as pure as we can. With al our senses, especially not the ones you use daily, like the eyes, but also trough sound, through smell , trough touch.

What also was interesting was the notion of how you think of your body. Do you use your legs only to move or do you really live ‘inside’ your legs. Becoming more aware of your lungs, breathing, smelling, touching, experiencing your body. Becoming more aware of the spaces you are in.

1.: The metropolis and Mental life - Georg Simmel (blz. 12) 1903
2.: The Overexposed City - Paul Virilio (blz. 544) 1984