on session 6 (Participatory diagramming and the use of visual techniques)

During the past two weeks some people apparently have been reading my diary entries. After some few have approached me, the one unanimous comment is that I overdid it… Which made me think I might be writing more and participating less… maybe. I guess I just have this feeling that everything participatory is somehow meant to disappoint. I’m exaggerating, but I am in a crappy mood tonight. After Rosalba presented us the Rivers of Representation project [which hoped to bring into a LGBT collective a valuable space so that its members saw that fighting together was meaningful making use of metaphor to represent life after HIV+ diagnosis (through drawings and self-narratives including poetry)] I was reminded of a conversation I had had the previous night with Soumita. Her anxieties (and mine) over aesthetics as being pivotal in our lives seemed somehow given an answer with this method. An odd answer, for I believe neither of us really meant to say, read this kind of poetry, stare at this kind of painting.

  

To make the point even clearer, I entered the room happily because I had just opened the Concert Gebouw magazine I had just got from my mailbox as I rushed for class. Our cultivated souls have made our arable tastes elitists. The engagement with the products of such participatory action will be mediated by the aesthetic sensibility of the interpreter (a difficulty also expressed by Larissa in a previous session) in order to make sense out of these materials. But the participatory exercise was yet to begin.

“A diverse, dynamic…” information “means” empowerment… something like that went the story behind one of the interventions presented. It was an idea that privileges [certain] accumulation of knowledge as an improvement. But what if you don’t want to be informed (and I’m not thinking about a masochistic self-tormentor that privileges suffering over more orthodox conceptions of well-being)? What if there’s too much information changing too much too many times? Dufflo made the point (somewhere sometime) that poor people would be better off if they had a bureaucratic apparatus that took the right decisions for them all the time, like accessing vaccination programs or other healthcare decisions. Reinterpreting her, to fight the bureaucracy is easier once you’re in it, the richer you get the more it is part of your life, the poorer, then the further away you are from accessing it. Zizek stresses a similar point [somewhere sometime] when claiming that he is lazy and he prefers to live in a place where there is a state that takes decisions for him, instead of having to be involved permanently in participation and engagement. This is of relevance to me because the double ‘preventive’ mastectomy of Angelina Jolie that she disclosed here, some days after Peggy Orensteins had published a more comprehensive and informative article about breast cancer where she gives the feel that so much is known about the disease without really knowing what to do with it (how to detect it, how to treat it and what to do after it is treated). This comes at a time when a close friend of mine has just been detected breast cancer.

I got torticollis. The round structure of the plenary might not be as adequate for a lecture as… more a place with more comfortable chairs. About the power of those who have the technical ability to produce images of representation, Rosalba commented that if you hold a camera [in Mexico/Peru] you are immediately thought of as someone who can pay for that image. . Additionally, on the commodification of images, my first boyfriend got connected with a project called “Disparando Camaras” or Shooting Cameras for Peace where [poor, marginalized…] children were taught to build camera obscura and how to take pictures with them. Their depictions of their environment were translated into their “identities” that made it to the UN NYC building after the most posh curatorial process…

But now for our participatory exercise! Joyce and Lenny set the mood after our chocolate post-break boost citing Speedy Gonzales: “Ándale, ándale, arriba, arriba”. Talk about the internationally corporate commodification of images, from the US to Colombia to the Philippines, through the family name of some brothers. We rose from our seats to take pictures that represented the ISS for the incoming batch. Although Fungai and Maria had cameras I didn’t understand why or how we ended up using only the pictures from my phone. Maria was crucial for the editing, knowing the collage-making website, filtering the images into “warmer” takes… which brings me again to the aesthetic subjectivities that are lost as they are rendered into academic research standards.

During the round table discussion on the exercise, Gina whatsapped me. She asked me if I believed her comment about color-difference had been inappropriate. I responded looking at her expressing my awkwardness. “Why would it have been an issue at all?” I thought. “What are you talking about?” I believed that was the only justification of the Attrium’s colorfull bird-like kites. But then this was across the room and Lenny, sitting in the middle of the circle read my face as referring to what her group was saying. It was only after class that I understood (because Gina and Marcela explained to me) that the color phrase had a racial subtext that I had not read. But I overdid it again so I stop.

Some pictures from artsy-farty apps for smartphone pictures:

 

 

 

on session 5 (Participatory research on sensitive issues or with vulnerable communities and/or groups)

Today's session was in Aula B, an ampler and cooler environment. More comfortable chairs and three screens for the PowerPoint presentations. Hurra! This set the stage for a picturesque, although somewhat extended, other-knowledges wise talk on trying [the impossibility] to make in-the-middle-of-the-field methodologies horizontal... through drawings.

Athi waves his hand making a point I didn't register in my diary. Carolina doesn't seem to be taking notes here either. I apologize for my inability to straighten the picture. These are very dark photographs. Next time I'll try photoshoping them.

Everyone seemed focused on what he was saying but I cannot longer tell what it was. 

I will center, however, on the second part of the session. Did we really trivialise women-who-have-sex-with-women (WSW) rape victims? Performance therapy (for lack of memory of "the better" name of the intervention) conducted with a group of women prostitutes in Bogota gave positive feedback regarding the possibility to distance themselves from their experience by enacting them/role playing. As Shakespeare or Borges or 1001 Arabian Nights (to recall "the classics") they played a play inside a play. "Family constellations" is another technique from the psycho-suffix experimental adventures into performance as the way to bring the hidden/unnamed visible.

Besides, we, as victims of different types of abuse eventually trivialise our misfortunes. So sings Tori Amos, when she voices herself as rape-victim, motives unclear (but most probably the "slinky red dress" in a patriarchal Midwestern US), "but I haven't seen Barbados, so I must get out of this". Whatever it is you associate the event on a narrative account does not demean the accountant. This is to say, the tragedy remains as such despite the fact that you have to "live with it", even through trivialising exteriorizations. I recently saw a lecture given by Judith Butler (in 2011) discussing what my/hers/our ethical response to suffering at a distance should be or imply. As a very mediocre attendant at a distance (in space, in time, and reason) of that leccture, I believe myself mediated by the scatter thoughts her ideas provoked.

What happens when we, development-concerned people, declare in outrage and from our spatial constraints, be it Den Haag or a non-expat entourage, that something abominable is happening to a set of bodies (e.g. one or many WSW) completely estranged, if only because it is placed in the most remote location of the globe where we have never had accessed or never intend to have access (if only google-wise)? Where does that solidarity arise from? The existence of images that moves us into action might be enough for us to feel their problem ours.

Role playing brings forward problems of representation, the tensions of multiplicity behind apparent identities. The (staged) representative family was not representative at all and came to being through collective imagination. Such creativity should be helpful for a policymaker, be it governmental or not, to imagine policy making, even if the imagined stakeholders are unable to take part (willingly or not) in the Chapatti (or whatever the PAR-tool might be).

There is also the problem of consent. Did we tacitly agree to deal with the "sensitive issue" or was it imposed to us and its structural paranoia? Athi's absence during the participative second half might have been his decision not to deal with the imposition from the outside. Should he be morally obliged to be involved? Or is he, as an empowered subject, making a rightful use of his agency to deny his being there, to refuse response to a suffering he did not cause and/or had no (external) intention of confronting?

I appear very concentrated on appearing concentrated.

My (brief) enactment of a rape-victim did not cover the issues I felt needed to be said, because I was also concerned that the exercise had taken too much time already. As Marcela commented, "I always insist on leaving the classroom by 5 no matter what, but end up with the office clerk attitude: I end up staying there irregardless". I might have extended my story, but then, how valuable (if at all) might it have been to keep everyone from engaging in alternative activities, more productive or of leisure? What was the opportunity cost? Is my concern derived from the (economics) marginalist revolution or is it much more classical (e.g. Bastiat)?

The metaphors of inclusion/exclusion relate to the seen/unseen, light/dark, free-enlightened/bonded-ignorant dichotomies that perpetuate the Westernized cleresy's thought. Despite the flatbread two-dimensional reference to India I cannot tell if our groups and plenary were creating knowledge or simply reproducing Knowledge-as-usual. I imagined Colombian rape-victims, not of WSW in particular, much less in South Africa or Indonesia. I completely missed the contextualizing video screened by the facilitator-group during the break. These ethical dilemmas of representation and its constraints permeate pretty much all participation but somehow expound when addressing vulnerable communities.

An excercise in role-playing. As WSW that had experienced rape we had a hard time using the subordinated green circles. EVERYTHING was of utter importance.

The Chapati diagrams grouped on the floor (upsidedown in this picture), as we re-enacted and/or improvised our postures.

on session 3 (Participatory approaches and techniques)

More theory. Tons of people (the circle broke and I had to bring in another chair). More on the Moodle conundrum of diary submission.. . So we have a touch screen… and my diary is being screened to everyone… Kees responds to the comments (Carolina’s, mine ?) on the pertinence of the Honduras’s video… but of course I/we got the point that it was an example of PAR (although I pause before conceding that it wasn’t interventionist). Anyhow…

I feel hideously dressed and everyone is taking pictures! (Ok. So only two persons, but then I like to exaggerate) What’s Soumita telling Alma? I’m not concentrating [evaluation of past session’s lesson, the cascading exercise…]. Make it four persons with cameras. Maria Roda is using a tape-tag: “Maria”. Kees shows some ppt, a tool he outspokenly hates… reiteratively. I believe some credit should be given to PowerPoint as a very useful tool that made paper presentations more entertaining and/or visually appealing as compared with the tools from 20 years ago. Flash is nice but even still it can also be boring and/or disenchanting. Are there no substitutes for PowerPoint-like tools that can be used for this case? Or does this Microsoft Office theme fit the purpose?

Maggie got her tag out. I have mine here but I’m not taking it out.  I don’t want to. I should slept more yesterday. Carolina is looking amazing and she’s right in front of me. Howard conveniently grouped with his girlfriend (lucky him, I guess). Buzz group exercise: “helps flow (?) your ideas… get to reflect a moment with someone else… a question should be out there”. Chambers is one of Kees heroes; he took [from PRA to PLA (?)] out of an NGOish image. It became an easy way to get what “people” wanted [or their undemocratic representatives]. RRA was “quick and dirty”… but “at least it was rapid”, commented Kees, and an “appreciation of local knowledge”.

Methods: triangulation (and others) was a paternalistic, top-down approach, not really very participatory.  Transex diagram… what? Oh! Transect diagram! Just my imagination. A transex diagram sounded so much interesting. Local knowledge can be appreciated, e.g. the locals know where the good soils are. Which reminds me of the pop-art Colombian movement: CARO ES CARO was a statement/engraving that the hippie artist Antonio Caro made contradicting his then recent valuation for his works. His works (a Caro) had become expensive (in Spanish caro). Art valuation tends to be a topic of heated debate among economist… probably more than the valuation of these techniques in the heavily funded development supply side interventions inside their own speech communities. But back to the toolbox: Chapatti Diagrams... would Ven ever imagine his image compared to a usually round wheat yeast-free bread (mainly Indian)? How can comparisons be validated, especially when the proponents of the original ideas are absent? How do these tools account?

India is in the air. Body language, as an alternative to a written or spoken one, might not be as universal as we usually expect. Take for example tapping! Kees sustained that tapping someone in India was different than tapping a person in The Netherlands. Howard nodded but Kees sought only Indian responses… so Soumita had to answer… however contradicting this anti-universality. Tap a person downward = CALM DOWN! Tap her upwards = SPEAK UP!

Lenny is unwrapping candy and Umbreem is chewing gum. I feel tired all of a sudden and want to eat something. I’m writing a lot today. Inequality and wealth rankings… social map of the village [I forgot the name of this… oh yeah! Social cartography]. Kehinde seems to have gone to the toilette. Everyone looks bored. Yeah, Chambers promotes FUN as an important distinctive factor of PRA. Disadvantages to PRA: technique used in development business with hidden agendas. Santiago (in Paris) blames the weather: imagine then summer productivity.

As a result [of the criticism?] the third strand came: PLA

Tree diagram: gina comments from her experience what it consists on. The intelligent board is very dusty. Reflection is learning? What? Reflection as learning? I guess I missed it. Nice example of Disempowerment: a YouTube video. But first Kees´s synthesis. Should I include quantitative data into my RP? Just to tell a different story or less ambitiously, controvert a dominant view. Maggie says, “this looks like a role play” Yeah! It does! I was thinking the exact same thing. Kehinde: “You need a skillful person to direct/facilitate a participatory actor”. So e.g. I shouldn’t do it. I like Marlon’s explanation “this looks like the end of a day where everyone just wants to get it over with”.

I complain too much in these diary entries. What is simply a metabolic disorder that I must address with yoga and a change in diet can be taken for a whimsical attitude which I do not have. I somehow miss the cheerfulnes that a good rest + good health provide. Dear reader, please be patient and forgiving.

 

This word has given me a very hard time! I feel so glad that I have the opportunity to pronounce it and to identify with it! I valued this greeting symbolism greatly.

 

Another (less amazing) use of local resources. People cannot complain they have not seen a map of the Hague.

 

Umbreem asked me to take pictures with her panoramic app. Picture taking and participating in the exercise overall made me put my note-taking aside :) (I was very happy that happened).

   

Alma and I thinking on cool things to do for further integration.

 

This is me engaging in participatory action!

  

Kyla guiding us as another group at the back debated heavily on their listing. Madurodam discounts were the new voting token.

 Our votes, dispersed.

 Some tape was introduced to uniform the votes along the red tulip like lines.

 Lenny and Carolina very proud of our group work... despite the fact that we didn't come up with a tenth activity.

 Gina and Marlon continue to tape their listing, just to make sure it would not fall (which it didn't).

 Associating ourselves with emotions. Like Kees, I thought the surprised expression (lower right) was possitive and lay my red square on it.

on session 4 (Knowledge, Power, and Transformation)

Imagine yourself remembering something. Now imagine yourself imagining memories. It has been less than a month since i visited a Mitsuo Miura public intervention in a globally posh setting, Madrid's Cristal Palace as curated by the Reina Sofia Museum. A mostly empty space with soft-colored circumferences suggested to  me as either podiums or umbrellas, situating me for say, a picture, or as a shade-seeking someone in at a summer-hot spring. Where and under what I stand were important loci of how I related to the space I was in and especially to how the work of art was transforming such space. However, this wasn’t a solipsist universe, I would soon be reminded: my mother who insisted a picture should be taken in such and such pose, the guard that impeded me or any other from sitting on the circumferences (stand-only postures, please), the woman I almost hit while I walked in reverse staring at the glass ceiling… The production of space was beyond my controls and desires. Yes, I was in Spain, in Madrid, where some great great male ancestor had once walked through the courts before me and my mother had traveled through other means and purposes all the way back to reinvigorate our bonds. The space I was at was a collective construction.

I bring this to mind because I have carried a leaflet of the exhibition inside my diary since the first day of class, hinting its association with this class, but without being able to relate it in a concrete fashion. Despite being a white male I always felt dispossessed of something important, transcendental, essential. I was brought up in a “white” all-male school and built an outsider identity for 12 years. “white” in quotation marks because that was what all the boys were trying to be in the Colorado-Benedictines-founded institution, not strictly correspondent to hitlerian tone-of-skin standards. Although probably the cheapest bilingual (English-Spanish) "international" schools, the poorest families were middleclass, but most came from the higher income elite. Outside that space I would later learn I could fit in, but it was through exclusion that I learned to relate to others. I learned to distrust the self-centered and self-secure displays of identity and to sympathize or even commune with monsters and almost anything abject. That is still, broadly speaking, how I know the world and how I develop interests about it. 

In a way ports have become important for the reasons mentioned, they’re a way of scape. Centraal, Holland Spoor, Laan van NOI were my first referents of the city. Of course, they were my port of entry but they have become also the way to exit it. Those came up first on my list of spots outside-the-ISS-bubble, to be followed by parks, the cinema, and places of worship. All places I frequent mostly by myself but that I am happy to share every now and then with those who are willing. Not that I don’t worship Haneke or von Trier or even cinema itself, nor do I go to the mosque to worship Allah or to an Evangelic or Catholic Christ.

These subjectivities were not accounted for. I did not mention them to my mapping group, nor were they collectively discussed into a particular category. The taxonomy into which consensus was allocated excluded, probably due to time constraints, a more pluralistic classificatory logic. I will never know if someone else understood ports similarly or if it is through sentiment that another order of reality might be achieved.