Image and Beyond Exploration
In short
This exercise is meant to explore different perspectives towards culturally controversial matters. During the preparation period, the proposition is executed every day for a short period of time. Each participant spends his/her/their time attentively on an image picked by another participant and shares their reactions with other participants in the final meeting.
Set up
Five days of preparation and then a final meeting.
Timeframe
An hour session for a final meeting. It will take a week in total with an initial meeting and a five day preparation period.
Participants
Six or more.
Process
- Think of a culturally controversial matter that you feel personally affected by.
- Choose an image that captures this.
- Meet with your partner in a group of two or three and exchange the image with your partner. Tell your partner why you have chosen that image.
- Place your image at home where you can´t avoid seeing it. It could be a mundane place like in/on a kitchen cupboard or in a more specific way (e.g. by making a shrine).
- During the next five days, spend 15 minutes each day looking at the image attentively. Each day, express what this image evokes in you by writing a one-line note to yourself and intuitively adding an image or an object. Take a photo of your ‘collage’ each day so you end up with 15 pictures.
- Participants come together at the final meeting.
- Divide the participants into groups of three.
- Within each group, the participant will show the series of five pictures to the other two and ask them to react to the pictures. Share the five sentences you wrote with others and ask them to respond to them.
- Each group chooses one set of five pictures to share with the other group. The whole group will react to the images and to the texts.
Variations
This proposition could be completed when the participants come together online.
