Reflections

WE. THE RESEARCHERS. REFLECT.

The introducing document to this interdisciplinary research seminar leaves no doubt concerning one of its governing imperatives stating that the research conducted and its translation into action are distinguished in the continuous search for the anthropological perspective. Indeed, the search for such an anthropological perspective dominated most of the past 5 months for most of the participants of this seminar. In many ways:

The CADES program truly constitutes a melting pot of cultures and identities. Our group, the Creativity in Dissent & Development group alone, merges the combined experiences and identities of 5 nations from 3 continents in 7 men and women. Moreover, our professional backgrounds couldn’t be more eclectic, ranging from a trained lawyer and a professional musician to a psychologist and, finally, a trained anthropologist. Against such backdrop further contemplations of the trinity of anthropological research seem appropriate, if not imperative:

Positionality. Context. Reflexivity.

While Bronislav Malinowski classified his own, learned social interpretational sovereignty as a personal feature that had to be overcome before and during the research process recent approaches are characterized by a more holistic notion. The acknowledgement of the messiness of life – which in itself is being drawn up within the eclectic context of human interaction – lead to the conclusion that the researcher’s personality does not constitute an obstacle on the way to scientific insights – but rather a resource.

Hence, the the reflection of our own positionality and its repercussions on the results of this research adventure is an essential part of this process and in itself part of its findings. These section will therefore focus on this group.

Unlike the final result of this research the personal reflections remain subjective. However, in an attempt to also create a mutual mode of reflecting as a group. While perceptions and interpretation had to remain individual we wanted to generate a process that was characterized by at least one consistent element. These considerations resulted in a section we call S.O.M. – the State Of Mind – series.

STATE OF MIND

80 % of human communication occurs nonverbally – which includes written communication. Any serious attempt to ponder one’s own relation to a certain issue thusly requires a certain visual element to account for the non-verbal realm of our communication. The use of still pictures seemed to best correspond with both our goal and the feasibility of the project within the context of a webpage to be design. The photos nevertheless would be function as representation of the visualisation of inner processes and emotions.

We therefore scheduled a series of photo shootings once a month. Each group member was given the task to convey his/her feelings concerning the individually perceived status quo of the research process and/or her/his positioning therein. A series of 5 pictures per person respectively represents the evolution both of the research process as well as certain aspects of group dynamics. The pictures will then be complemented by classical, written accounts. Each member of the group will be entirely self-responsible to generate – or not generate – such content.

The picture series’ will, of course, be again open to interpretation or in other words a dialogue between the member of the group and the viewer. As such it requires no conclusion but the only the willingness of the viewer to engage with both this group and the topic and issues we present here. The S.O.M. series then constitutes an important aspect of this group’s search for the anthropological perspective.

Group dynamics

The experience of the team work has been a positive one for all of us. We are a group with a diverse background of talents and experiences. We were brought together by our common interest in creativity and dissent. In the beginning, discussions often generated into healthy disagreements where some members would stick to their view points and where others felt a bit uncomfortable to speak their mind. We had to spend one of our Tuesday meetings discussing on how to work together. This happened in the third week. We agreed that we needed to be a bit less formal, that everyone should be allowed to communicate freely and that we had to create time to meet outside formal Tuesday meetings. We met as a group for a Bowling game outside the Tuesday meetings. Afterwards, we were more comfortable working together. This also included to learn about the strength and weakness of the other group members. In the process we learned that Rowena is Jen gives the best advice and is the programming expert in our group. Bas is empathetic and interested. Janine is very talented and sweet. Sebastian is caring and pulled us through. Cindy is an amazing writer and very supportive. Trevor is unshakable and sees people for who they are. Karen is sociable and wanted everyone to get along with each other. We were able to rely on each other’s strength in all our tasks as a group. We actually became friends in the process and this made the research seminar an enjoyable experience.

Throughout half a year we continuously met every Tuesday for the research seminar. We started the first meeting with an introduction and a brainstorming about the ideas and topics we would like to work on. These included African diaspora, globalization and art, politics and art, art as a commodity, and LGBTI among other themes. To get a better insight into the topics, we started reading literature, informing ourselves and got acquainted with the topics and tasks at hand. During the next meeting we gathered ideas about project we would like to work on that fit well in the umbrella of art and dissent. We further tried to group topics according to their thematic and delved into the context of the different projects. We had a lot and long discussions about several of the ideas and tried to reach an agreement on what we would like to focus on. Especially in the beginning we had to discuss several of the ideas in depth with each other. We started allocating each other tasks and planned some fun activities to get to know each other better. Next we started working on the mind map and came up with ideas that were related to creativity and dissent.

After narrowing down the topics a bit we started contacting several actors we would like to work with. We had ideas about working with an activist Filipino group in the Netherlands, talked about the Refugees for Refugees event, considered Globe Aroma and urban gardening projects. The initial process on deciding on our actor took a lot of discussions and we considered several factors in the decision-making process. After we finally settled for Globe Aroma as our actor, we started to get to know the project, get involved and meet the artists.

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