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Saturday, January 4, 2014

Workshop on Awakening Beauty & Creativity


For whom --- Anyone.  Where  --- At Nilambur, When ---- February 5th to 9th 2014.


Awakening? 
Awakening is not the same as developing. Both beauty and creativity are inherent to all human beings and  gets awakened naturally if external conditions allow. Modern spaces (schools)/conditions (consumerism) control and stifles this by conditioning ones sense of beauty and making a belief structure with 'knowledge'. To get out of this box one has to break open the lid of reason, knowledge etc. 

For details Email me at jinankb@gmail.com, 
Beauty
 Tell them dear, that if eyes were made for seeing,
Then beauty is its own excuse for being
-  Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Rhodora
The retreat is an attempt to awaken our sense of beauty inherent in all of us by connecting with nature. Ability to see nature awakens beauty, deep sensitivity and silence in us and makes us rooted to the world in a real way. Ability see also makes one to be 'here and now'. Once we acquire the ability to actually SEE then there no limit. Everything around one comes alive, showing its colour, texture, shape, shadow, movement, stillness.
Creativity
Clay  will be used as the  medium to awaken ones creative potential. Rigid habits of the mind that hinder creativity will be explored in the process of engaging with clay? Can one explore clay with out planing, controlling, reasoing. Can one allow spontaniety to happen? Can one sit exploring the nature of clay with out making anything?
Some of these questions will be explored.
At a deep level the workshop also will attempt to re integrate our intuition and reasoning, our feminine and masculine, our innate and outer knowledge.  So the gathering is meant for addressing our mechanical, fragmented, uncreative and habit formed selves, de intellectualizing beauty which means to be with beauty without creating theories, sensitizing our senses to become aware of the world as it is, addressing our reasoning mind, understanding the organic way in which we remember and comprehend. In a way to become child like again, to be open, curious, attentive, innocent, humble. Or like children to live in meditation all the time.





Tuesday, December 6, 2011

‘Awakening the Aesthetic Awareness’ feb 2012


I am again planning to do a retreat  called ‘Awakening the Aesthetic Awareness’ at Nilambur from 20th   Feb to 25th  Feb 2012 (Monday to Saturday). Link to the last years event is  www.awakeningaestheticawareness.blogspot.com .

Last june I was also started an initiative near Pune called re imagining schools which was to work with a school to totally redesign the very concept of school. See the link www.reimaginingschools.wordpress.com . The intense engagement with children and exploring cognition has helped me with new insights on experience.

This retreat is in a way the culmination of my work related to recovering authenticity, originality in terms of aesthetic sensibility and cognitive process.
This has been developed from my past 20 odd years of work (learning from) with artisans and children. (www.kumbham.org, www.rediscoveringchildhood.org,  http://www.my.opera.com/jinankb )

Two parallel explorations I have been engaged has been to understand how we have been damaged – homogenized, cloned, de skilled, fragmented, alienated- by the modern education and other conditioning institutions and tools– market, hospitals, TV, news etc. and how as a biological organism born with tools to make sense of its world understands it and inhabit.
School prepares us for processing and storing information by excessive importance given to memorization and development of conscious and instrumentalist reasoning. These two skills seems to be incapable of perception, creativity which is what is required in the realm of unknown.

This 5 day workshop do not claim to solve any of that but would probably initiate a journey towards that end.

Thursday, July 21, 2011

Being in Beauty


B e i n g    i n   B e a u t y
A   m e d i t a t i v e   e x p l o r a t i o n

When       12th to 18th September 2011
Where      Nilambur, Malapuram, Kerala


A gathering to de intellectualize, de conceptualize and de institutionalize beauty,
The attempt is to recover the natural way of being in the world which has been damaged by the modern culture.
Homogenization, mechanization, fragmentation is the beingness of modern man.
Spontaneity is replaced by planning and control which stems from the fear of unknown and uncertainty. The beingness of modern man is in reason.
This damage is brought about by the shift in language as communication tool to language as cognitive tool.

Learning to see
The biggest damage caused by textualisation of experience is the loss of the senses. So the retreat is about recovering our ability to SEE without conceptualization. Only true seeing can take us out of the conceptual world in to the real concrete world.
Insight occurs with clearer seeing.

Learning to be
This happens when seeing becomes natural, non-conscious. Involuntary.
When one is aware of being aware awareness is lost. Children are aware without being aware. Recovering our childlike quality might help us to be.


For whom
Anyone who wants to reclaim the authentic natural learning process and creativity. This could help Parents and teachers to enable them to see children’s real potential and to enable them to let children be.
Fees  and registration
Rs10,000 to be paid by 30th August 2011 along with the registration form. Any contributions over and above the basic  registration fees are welcome to support those who can’t pay. (Fees also includes stay and food)
Stay and food
Simple stay will be arranged in a neat hotel in Nilambur town and food will be Kerala traditional home food.
Route
Nilambur is 70 km from Calicut, 100 km from Palghat and Trichur Rly station. 45 km from Calicut airport. Passenger trains run between Nilambur rly station and Shornur. 

Contact for more details.

Postal address: Surabhi, S.N.Park, Thrissur, Kerala. 680004




Tuesday, March 1, 2011

A note of dissent : Development Goals and Final report from the Second World Conference on Arts Education

"The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all; it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to down dissent and originality. That is its aim in the United States, whatever pretensions of politicians, pedagogues other such mountebanks, and that is its aim everywhere else."


Friends
The above quotation is from a speech delivered by top of the class student Erica Goldson during the graduation ceremony at Coxsackie-Athens High School on June 25, 2010.
See the link http://www.sott.net/articles/show/212383-V...aduation-Speech


After I returned from Seoul I did post my response to many presenters. let once again raise some issues. 
The main issue that has been bothering me is the cloning of human beings though modern education. All cultural diversity is being killed and replaced by one world view.
The problem with power is that it not only corrupts the mind butt also make one blind.

As a person from India and having some what come out of the western conditioning I feel what is happening is a re colonization of non western world though the various projects- the UN, the academia, the corporate world etc.
I think a deeper enquiry/ meeting/ soul searching is required to understand and do something about it.
I consider myself a victim of modern education in general and having gone through design education at the post graduate level aesthetic education in particular.

I say this because it killed my cultural rooted ness, originality and authenticity. All of us in the non western world are being taught the western art, design and architecture and the respective histories and various movements etc.
The result is that we have a homogenized world being made today. I see this all the time in India. It is a real tragedy.
We once had several forms of architecture, artifacts and art forms and all are being destroyed by choosing the western idiom. All modern living spaces look alike.
I would request  UNESCO and the rest of the members to re think the issues raised and set up a research team to understand the whole issue all over again.
How is culture formed? How did traditional cultures create diversity?
And why is modernity creating homogenization?  How do we deal with the harm we have already done and is being carried out. Can we set up new ways doing this with out killing the originality in children?
The most important aspect missing is the understanding regarding biological basis for cognition and aesthetic sense. Why did nature create us with the propensity for beauty. (art is an intellectual construct but beauty is a biological phenomenon).

I think the real issue is to explore the wholistic way of being in the world again by re integrating art, science and language', ‘re integrating work, play and learn’, ‘re integrating intuition and reasoning’, ‘re integrating the mind and body’, ‘re integrating the feminine and masculine’ , ‘becoming PRESENT to the moment’. This is the condition in which children are born but we the so called educated end by fragmenting everything.

Schooling causes several damages. It turns us in to second hand people as we keep learning about what others have thought and did. We are all born original but schooling makes us second hand. All our senses are crippled as we never use them to make sense of the world.
Boredom is an experience typical to 'modern' human beings, again caused by schooling as it forces us to do things we do not like to do and on top of it do things against our biological or natural propensities. I suspect boredom has its roots in making us sit immobile from childhood quite against our will. Schools makes us in to rigid, mechanical and second hand  beings, ready to serve or to order as we learn 'authority' at schools. Authority of teacher, authority ofknowledge.

Let me cut short my mail. Hope we can continue this dialogue.
I am attaching the abstract of the paper i presented and link to the presentation ishttp://www.slideshare.net/jinan/awakening-the-aesthetic-sense-not-teaching-rz
 and 

Jinan


Participants/ details and expectations etc of Retreat on Awakening Aesthetic awareness

Akshatha is a UKG student at Yellow Train, Coimbatore, and is at the workshop to play.



Currently researching the musical cultures of children, Chee Hoo Lum is an Assistant Professor of music education at NIE, Singapore.Chee Hoo became interested in Jinan’s work after reading 'Note of Dissent'- the email Jinan had sent to the members of the UNESCO conference in Seoul. Chee Hoo has no specific expectations from the workshop, but is open to everything the workshop may offer.


Principal at Harishree vidyalayam, Chennai, Deivanai’s interest in the workshop was sparked when she received an email about it. Having been an educator for close to a decade, she expresses a sense of dissatisfaction with the current system. She is keen to explore alternatives to mainstream education, and hopes that this workshop could be a springboard for the same.


Pushpa Gopal is also a teacher at Harishree Vidyalayam, Chennai and hopes to fine tune her senses, and achieve a new, different way oflooking at things, particularly, education.
Chitra is a home-schooling mother of two from Coimbatore. She found Jinan’s website by chance, and was fascinated by his ideas on education, some which resonated strongly with her own views. She has brought her two children- Shruthi and Akshatha- to the workshop and hopes to spend time with Jinan and the children, and become more aesthetically aware in the process.

Shakti is a class 5 student from Coimbatore who is being home-schooled. She came to know of the workshop through her mother, and liked what she heard of it. She hopes to learn new things, enjoy nature and make new friends.

Shwetank Powar is a final Year Psychology student from Pune, with a special interest in child and education psychology. Currently exploring his options for postgraduate education, he has been disillusioned with the existing alternative systems of education. Shwetank has been intereted in Jinan’s work since he read an article by him a year ago, and hopes to learn from his insights.

Khoji is from Baroda. He is part of Swaraj University, Udaipur, and loves to travel.  He followed his gut-feeling to Aruvacode after receiving an email about the workshop from a friend. He hopes to further explore his concept of heart-based spaces- Non-Violent Spaces- at the workshop.

Sridhar is an architect from Bangalore who first heard of Jinan through his wife who had met him at a conference. He isn’t sure of what to expect from the workshop, but is on a quest for knowledge He hopes to understand what aesthetic awareness is, and to help his children preseerve their natural selves. Sridhar is particularly interested in the intersection of  aesthetics and spirituality.

Shikha Nambiar is a lawyer from Pune who received the opportunity to participate in the workshop as a birthday present from her mother- a teacher who has previously attended Jinan’s workshops. Shikha intends to trade a career in law for art school, and hopes to connect with her creative side through the workshop.

Devi K from Madurai, is currently awaiting the results of the Civil Services Exam. A mother of two, she has been home-schooling her younger child for the last 10 months. Devi is here to learn. She came to know of the workshop through Sivakumar, and hopes that it will help her understand the many dimensions of ‘sense’, and open herself to the many ways of approaching a single thing.

Sivakumar B, a filmmaker and animator from Chennai has previously attended one of Jinan’s workshops as part of the events at a Tamil Heritage group run by his friend. Father to an 18-month old, he is scouting for the best method to occupy his child without resorting to standard education, and is here to observe and explore.

Ravi, from Pune, has recently begun a travel company. He met Jinan and became interested in his work during the course of setting up tours with a focus on culture and tradition. He hopes to improve his aesthetic appreciation and to enable himself to think from the heart rather than the head.

Joseph is a traveler, seeker who has been on the move since 15 years. Joseph is an amazing soul – patient, loving, humble, wise, uninhibited and fun to be with. He has spent the majority of the last 15 years in the Himalayas on his spiritual quest and generously shared his experiences with anyone who was interested. He also guided the early birds with Yoga.

Jinan, the initiator of the retreat has been exploring the damages of schooling for the past 20 years and was keen to to share the journey and see others felt about the issues.






















Tuesday, December 28, 2010

Retreat on Awakening Aesthetic awareness

A w a k e n I n g A e s t h e t I c A w a r e n e s s
The wholistic way of being in the world.
're integrating art, science and language' ‘re integrating work, play and learn’
‘re integrating intuition and reasoning’ ‘re integrating the mind and body’
‘re integrating the feminine and masculine’ ‘becoming PRESENT to the moment’




Why we should awaken the sense of beauty within ourselves?

The retreat/workshop is an attempt to repair the psychological, physiological and cognitive damages done by modern institutions (schools, market and hospital) and culture.
Schools makes us in to rigid, mechanical and second hand beings, ready to serve or to order as we learn 'authority' at schools. Authority of teacher, authority of knowledge.
Another damage is the inability for creativity as we loose our intuitive ability because of over use of logic and dependency on memorized knowledge. The reasoning ability is often used to reason away, to maintain status quo of our rigid and static mind.
Since our link to the world is through text our experience is textualised.

WHEN
16th Feb to 20th Feb 2011 (Wednesday to Sunday)

WHERE
Nilambur, Malapuram, KERALA


HOW
Beauty is the most fundamental of human existence. Beauty is what truly makes one authentic. Beauty is what binds us to the external world.
Senses are our doors to knowledge and beauty.
Consciously learning to experience the beauty of the world by seeing, touching, feeling.




PROCESS

Engaging with nature, Habit breaking, Dialogues, silence, reflection, sharing,
Sensitizing senses, Awakening of aesthetic sense is brought in as a central issue. making, drawing, seeing, listening This helps them to move away from ‘rational’ mind to some extent.

For whom

Anyone who wants to reclaim the authentic natural learning process and creativity. This could help Parents and teachers to enable them to see children’s real potential and to enable them to let children be.

Fees and registration

Rs 7,500 to be paid by 20th January 2011 along with the registration form. Any contributions over and above the basic registration fees are welcome to support those who can’t pay. (Fees also includes stay and food)

Stay and food

Simple stay will be arranged in a neat hotel in Nilambur town and food will be kerala traditional home food.

Route

Nilambur is 70 km from Calicut, 100 km from Palghat and Trichur Rly stations. 45 km from calicut airport. Passenger trains run between Nilambur rly station and Shornur. Contact for more details.

contact details. jinankb@gmail.com mobile 09447121544 or 09995495325. www.rediscoveringchildhood.org http://my.opera.com/jinankb/blog/sensing-nature, http://awakeningtheaestheticawareness.blogspot.com/
Postal address: Surabhi, S.N.Park, Thrissur, Kerala. 680004

Sunday, October 3, 2010

The wholistic way of being in the world.

The wholistic way of being in the world.

're integrating art, science and language'
‘re integrating work, play and learn’
‘re integrating intuition and reasoning’
‘re integrating the mind and body’
‘re integrating the feminine and masculine’
‘becoming PRESENT to the moment’

“We are students of words: we are shut up in schools, and colleges, and recitation-rooms, for ten or fifteen years, and come out at last with a bag of wind, a memory of words, and do not know a thing.”
    Ralph Waldo Emerson
Language forces us to perceive the world as man presents it to us.
Julia Penelope
there are children playing in the streets who could solve some of my top problems in physics, because they have modes of sensory perception that I lost long ago.
J. Robert Oppenheimer

Why
The  retreat/workshop is an attempt to repair the psychological, physiological and cognitive damages done by modern institutions (schools, market and hospital) and culture. All the tools and skills we acquire become tools for escaping from ourselves. To escape from facing what is wrong with us we do ‘social work’. We are afraid of confronting ourselves.
Foremost that comes to mind is our tendency to imitate the west which causes inferiority complex. As you know most of what we do is imitation of the western culture. But in response to this our reaction is to imitate the east since ‘to imitate’ is what we learn at schools. Imitation as a way of learning is drilled in to us and any exploration is disallowed.

Schooling causes several damages. It turns us in to second hand people as we keep learning about what others have thought and did. We are all born original but schooling makes us second hand. All our senses are crippled as we never use them to make sense of the world.
Boredom is an experience typical to 'modern' human beings, again caused by schooling as it forces us to do things we do not like to do and on top of it do things against our biological or natural propensities. I suspect boredom has its roots in making us sit immobile from childhood quite against our will.
Schools makes us in to rigid, mechanical and second hand  beings, ready to serve or to order as we learn 'authority' at schools. Authority of teacher, authority of knowledge.
Another damage is the inability for creativity as we loose our intuitive ability because of over use of logic and dependency on memorized knowledge. The reasoning ability is often used to reason away, to maintain status quo of our rigid and static mind.
Since our link to the world is through text our experience is textualised. With the digital era this is getting totally illusionary. Even beauty is intellectualised. since we lack experiential and concrete way of being in the world words become our guide.               
So workshop is meant for addressing our mechanical and habit formed selves, de intellectualizing beauty which means to be with beauty with out creating theories, sensitizing our senses to become aware of the world as it is, addressing our reasoning mind, understanding the organic way in which we remember and comprehend.
In a way to become child like again, to be open, curious, attentive, innocent, humble.
Or like children to live in meditation all the time.
Any attempt to search for alternative end up with in the frame work of the fragmented modernity.

Objective

1. to attempt to regain child like qualities that enable one to be creative .
2. to enable the adult to understand what the child needs to retain their creativity.
3. to address various damages caused by schooling.
1. To address the fragmentation caused by schooling. To re integrate the wholistic nature of human being
2. To address the alienation caused by schooling. To regain originality and authenticity.
3. Initiate awakening of senses so that they become more observant and attentive which will make them to strive for becoming first hand.
4. To awaken their aesthetic sensibilities so that their being in the world becomes contextual and this also helps the learner to learn to engage with the world aesthetically.
5. To learn to observe children with out the biases of the so called educated mind.
6. to address various aspects that blocks unbiased learning like power, lack of humility and innocence, partiality of all types etc
7. to address the block created by the ‘reasoning’/ rational mind.


Why/ whom/

1. For Parents and teachers to enable them to see children’s real potential and to enable them to learn from children.
2. for the cognitively damaged adults to enable them to re look at certain fundamental issues related to How learning takes place or how human beings learn and to attempt some recovery. Modern education damages our cognition and fragments the being. We not only sees the world fragmented but also fragments the our very being. We become mind, word and reason dominated with the loss of body, intuition and experience.

how human beings learn?

Knowing is an integrated act, not separated by language, science and art
nor is it fragmented as learning, working, playing etc.
Children, in the process of making sense of the terrain in which they find themselves, observe, touch, smell, twist, break, taste, make. They engage with the world with out fragmentation.
Toy is an idea totally misunderstood by the modern adult. Playing is actually learning.
The world outside is integrated and the child is born holistic and is part of this NATURE.
This is the way human beings respond as biological organism.

What schools do?
As we all agree what ever is happening at schools are terribly wrong. We are crippling our children and ourselves.
Children are born in to the experiential paradigm to be rooted but we soon pull them out to believe in our distorted intellectual notions about life.
We need to understand how cognitively damaged and totally confused we are regarding all this and try to undo the damages.
How learning happens- conditions- internal and external
Like water knowledge flows from above to below. So if one needs to learn from children one needs to give up power.

Why learn from children?

When we compare ourselves with children it is clear that they are superior to us in the following qualities.
They are more observant, open, honest, inquisitive, innocent, flexible, daring and also in constant wonder. They are totally rooted and present. They are in touch with the beauty of the world.

Which of these qualities do we still retain?

The paradigm in which we are bringing up our children is one of greed, power, authority, brute force, competition, selfishness, pride, cheating, hypocrisy, boredom etc

The topics I would like to address.

Biological basis of knowing. To understand how as a biological organism we learn.
Bilogical basis for beauty. To understand what is the basis for beauty. Art is a psychological construct where as beauty is a biological fact.
Human being can live with out art but beauty like breathing is absolutely necessary for the human organism. The beat of his heart, the gait of his walk, his connection to nature all are part of this biological necessity.
Human alienation begins with the disconnect between the biology and psychology of BEING.

Cognitive damages of schooling. To understand how schooling damages us.
Paradigms of knowing. To understand how the cognizer is conditioned by the paradigm in to which he is born.


Process

1.Mirroring- facing oneself
First phase is to make the participents realize where they stand in terms of their learning capacity, knowledge base etc for example rigid, habit formed mind. Dependent learning style , initiate self reflection etc

2.Habit breaking
This phase is to make participants address their habit formed responses, biases, inhibitions etc

3.Sensitizing senses.
This phase is for the participants to awaken their observation skills and aesthetic sensibility.

4.Re birthing
Hopefully this will happen may not be during the workshop but may be at a later date.

Techniques used.
Meditative work with clay, habit breaking activities for body and mind, sensitizing the sense activities, Theatre workshop, drawing, painting, clay work. Dialogues, silence, presentations etc


Material requirements.
Clay, Poster colour, 6 inch scale, pencil, paper, sketch pen.
Duration
For any substantial impact the duration should be a week to 10 days.
Rule of conduct
During the retreat the participants need to follow instructions strictly as other participants will be disturbed. No reading, no watch, no mobile phone, news papr, tv etc. no discussions as silence is required during the workshop. No processed food allowed. As far as possible un cooked food. eat less, eat only when hungry, break away from routines. Listen to the body, Respect the body

Jinan
I am no expert in the above said matters but have been at it from 1982 or so.
I am a victim of modern education and culture that crippled me in several ways. For the past 25 years engaged in recovering what I lost with the help from children and non literate people. No credentials to prove anything. Just that the search/ research had been a very consistent and a committed one.
Would like to share the experiences and insights.

Links

SITES
http://re-cognition.org/children/sensingnature.htm

   http://www.rediscoveringchildhood.org/sensing.htm 

BLOGS 
http://my.opera.com/jinankb/blog/sensing-nature                                 
http://awakeningtheaestheticawareness.blogspot.com/

Powerpoints 
 http://www.authorstream.com/tag/Jinankb   
http://www.slideshare.net/jinan 


Youtube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNFM-uUzqE8
Biology of knowing links
http://www.vimeo.com/8026239
http://www.vimeo.com/8214350
http://www.vimeo.com/8430320
http://www.vimeo.com/8355866