Thinking with space-time dimension of place (I)

(Open Spatial Laboratory)

Notes: The work arising within the Open Space Laboratory has a long-lasting character, with various groups of people and more-than-humans being able to enter it. It has the character of an open workshop – an event. The OSL framework represents an open process of embodied learning.

Within this Open Space Laboratory, we focus on Thinking with a space-time dimension of place. We try to look through a view that offers us to see a place or landscape as more than just a stable surface on which changes occur over time, and shows us that in motion (weather) both space and landscape can be imagined as concurrent of ongoing and unfinished stories.

After all, mindfulness is not only an art, but also an ethic, and every walk is in fact the beginning of complex and varied steps. The idea of walking is often considered established, requiring little thought. For children, a walk is mostly a game of wonder and drifting – of ourselves in a place, much as a storm and wind move. As the storm and wind move and shape our bodies (human and more-than-human), we feel the movement of man as somehow in motion with a multitude of other entities. Through our human and more-than-human nature, we can also recognize our Self as part of the Earth.

When a child records an encounter with a storm (or another element), he or she is also in some way trying to understand the relationship between himself and the weather. To this understanding, children invent and use various tools and ways through which they are able to communicate these phenomena.

In this case, children design a mobile architecture that represents a very living – organic structure that is able to absorb the meteorological world while offering a sense of security. A place from which other relationships can be made.

It is therefore imperative to note relationships and connections with more-than-human worlds and try to record them (through any medium).

photo Sea-Water Amplification (SWA) Lajes do Pico Atlantic Ocean Azores 2024