“It is in interactions that we draw the world”
Carlo Rovelli
Session #11 of the Series Let’s Dream Together - Experiment in Social Dreaming was designed with the idea to introduce the language of drawing in an online Social Dreaming. The design of the event comes by the collaboration between Sergio Di Giorgi and Steven Valk. The previous session brought a strong resonance with the theme of language underlying its limitations.
The LANGUAGE topic has been a very present theme, as this particular series see the attendance of people from many areas of the world, communicating in English but bringing different levels of proficiency, accents and dialects. This diversity and lack of common ground has both been a limit and a resource throughout the series. The imperfection of communication mediated by Internet connections and different uses of English helped in staying focused, forced to raise the level of attention and listening skills, creating a sense of vicinity rather than a barrier.
With the Drawings Experiment we tried to add a different type of language and expression in the process of dream sharing, a tool that like any visual art as a great power of crossing linguistic barriers.
SOCIAL DREAMING MATRIX
1) The Matrix kicks off with a dream about being naked in front of a window. A brand new modern building appears on the opposite with men looking from the windows. There is a feeling of embarrassment, feeling the need of covering the body.
2) A box come in the mail, there is a box within a box. Inside three dead babies, carefully covered with toilet paper on which a text is written in a language that cannot be translated.
3) Walking down the street I pass by a group of people. Something is happening in the group and I walked past them I hear a gunshot.Turning around a 19yrold is holding a gun. I felt the bullet enter the shoulder and hit the heart. I was on the floor and try to breath as I see the blood leaving my body, I see from far away an ambulance coming closer. It stops a and the paramedics grab me and put me inside the ambulance with a blanket.
4) I am a refugee escaping a country and I am pregnant. I get the help from people to get me in. I finally get to a rowing boat. I carry something wrapped in cloth, it is a brick. When I am finally to a safe place I examine a tiny baby. I reached Israel.
5) By a church there is an old man coming out. I go inside and it’s full of symbols I cannot interpret, it is frustrating. Relics are wrapped in white paper.
6) I am interviewed for a job by Bill Gates. He is holding a checklist with a lot of questions. He says “Somebody tells me that you are not very philosophical” I got offended and tried to teach him something but with no avail. There are a lot of rolls of rolling paper. He seems to be smoking a lot of pot. I am by myself in the apartment and I look around. Suddenly I meet a 20 something girl, asian looking. Bill Gates had a romance with this woman.
7) Dream of walking through a building. It is a white hospital, very big. I find the elevator, I don’t remember what I was looking for and I can’t identify the hospital
The Drawing Experience
At the end of the matrix participants are asked to make a drawing of the matrix that would capture the “spirit of the matrix” and the feelings experienced in the process.
After a break people returned and Steven Valk coordinated the showing of the drawing. People are asked to hold their drawing in front of the camera while giving a brief description. The showing happened in a cinematic way, a drawing work in movement, coming onto the screen. Participants spend around a minute each introducing and explaining. It was not compulsory to show the drawing but the invitation led to many contributions, and a richer presence of comments.
Sergio di Giorgi transitioned from the drawing to the spoken language with a reflection on the images and to certain risks posed by presenting images coming from the inside. When we give our images without the protection that words provide us makes us feel we are naked. It also a matter of habit: As there is little space for inner images in this digital mediated world (we are re-posting, sharing, absorbing so much of the polished media thrown at us) this experiment proved to be difficult yet rich.
The transition to the Reflection brought extra material to be integrated. The material, drawn beyond the lines of reason, transformed the matrix and many layers of WRAPPING resonate in the association between dreams, boxes, toilet paper, wrapping paper for the relics, the blanket in the ambulance, the wrapped brick. We don’t understand the writing on the wrapping or the symbols in the church. We are leaving the wrapping behind to concentrate on the images, peeling away protective layers of concepts and theories and ideas.
A peculiar box, the elevator, takes a lot of space in associations, with movies (Die Hard), childhood memories of playing in the elevator (a dangerous place) and the movement up and down that elicits associations to sex (following the up and down movement) but other anatomical association like breathing with air moving up towards the head and the mouth and down into the body.
The BABIES appear to be dead or in trouble, there is blood leaving the body, a murder or abortion, a fear of our own innocence. Life to be taken care of. The last pregnancy on Earth that spell the doom of extinction.Three dead babies transform into three drops of blood in the drawings.
The spirit, the marijuana smoke in Bill Gates’ place, the smoke coming from the gun introduce an ethereal dimension referred to as the spirit of the matrix, felt by some participants and described as welcoming, encouraging, a superimposed presence.
Lastly the building again: hospital, cinemas, tall new buildings with windows. New building that take place of familiar landscapes, again a church as in other sessions of the series but one hard to recognize. In which building are we, do we need to design different buildings?
POST MATRIX INTEGRATION
Images from the matrix are not shared in this write up because of concerns which arose in the reflection in terms of privacy and confidentiality. Extra energy was needed to contain and elaborate this anxiety while experimenting this format of online social dreaming.
Sometimes when you introduce novelty as we did in the Experiments, boundaries get blurred. The extra task of drawing while extremely powerful in bringing out more elaboration of the matrix content posed as well challenges.
In particular:
– Dreams are images coming from the inside, and so they exposure, the nakedness feelings is often felt in SD. The extra layer of drawing, a skill that is often times under appreciated, discarded because useless (unless you are an artist). In this sense Social Dreaming matrixes pose a risk of obscenity (intended as ob-scene, off the scene, like the green room where actors take their mask off) or to have a look under the hood.
END of Series Consideration
The first series of Experiments in Online Social Dreaming has come to and end. This end of the year is a good pivotal point to take advantage and be ready to switch gear for the future.
There has been an incredible evolution since the first Matrix last April. This process happened spontaneously through active collaboration, the passion and the ideas of many participants that decide to join the Dreaming Board as both a way to gain experience in hosting a Social Dreaming Matrix as well as to bring creative ideas and experience to the evolution of social dreaming. The support from the Center for Social Dreaming and its community has been also precious.
This evolution need to be synthesized. The work done till now could offer fundamental knowledge to elaborate the lessons learned, underly critical issues, and generate hypothesis for future experimentation. Its elaboration could benefit the community at large.
If you want to contribute in this process of synthesis and communication, feel free to contact me through this website.
USEFUL LINKS TO EXPLORE THE USE OF DRAWING IN SOCIAL DREAMING and BEYOND:
– https://digitalcommons.ciis.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1070&context=ijts-transpersonalstudies
– https://www.themindfulword.org/2014/making-marks-open-imaginations-floodgates-stream-drawing/
– https://www.lboro.ac.uk/research/tracey/drn/
Hi Fabio, I feel that the drawings gave an opportunity to express the unverbal that presented to us in the form of symbols, colours, use of media, shapes, that’s what provided the additional dimension to the matrix and enriched it. I enjoyed it greatly.
Hi Kasia, thanks for your comment. The drawing indeed offered a a wider scope of expression, and in a way brought more voices than usual out in the reflection. With verbal comments many people don’t feel like sharing and you end up hearing the same voices over and over. Thanks for your contribution!