These days we are in good flow. Planning the Atelier S P A C E tour for Japan, where we will discover stories for ‘The Way’, a winter series of the S P A C E mini-mag. That season’s stories are those I am really jazzed up to happen upon, and how this will take place, exactly, isn’t firmly fixed but is something that I have been outlining for quite some time.
Japan, and The Way.
Was waiting until the feeling was right and the theme came up that fit.
Given the theme, I am setting this trip up to venture well outside the ‘overtourism’ hotspots, so I’ll have to skip Kyoto. I have read terrible things about what has been going on there with the foreigners invading the personal spaces of maiko-san-tachi, which is like, so, so not what you want to do if you are in Japan. The city of Kyoto was where I was during my study abroad year a long time back. As much as it feels strange to not go back to my old ‘hood, I will not. I can’t. It’s not the same place, anymore, so it would be disappointing, anyway. I’ve learned this lesson a few times over now.
But when one door closes, another one opens.
Curious people venture into them.
Going where the going takes you: The Way of The Road
First stop, Fukuoka. Somewhere I went for half a day on the J-Rail pass years ago, but didn’t slow down to see. It will be different this time. Slow travel is part of ‘The Way.’
This is fun, planning to get going again. I had forgotten this feeling. There were times I was planning N for London or Bangkok that got me out of my comfort zone, and all the go-go-go-ness of me before covid. I had forgotten for sure, opting to hunker down (not by choice) in Viet Nam’s Ho Chi Minh City due to being ‘stuck’, long story short, quite a spin, with S P A C E, making bilingual issues when I could and collaborating with the most open-minded young people I’ve ever met.
I think that, nested in that culture, there were a very few people asking the big questions and finding relief in knowing someone new and foreign, like me, wouldn’t judge them for it. Thank you for sharing your stories with me, in Atelier S P A C E moments of bounded time in Da Lat and HCM, I learned, and unlearned, so much from people like P, V, and U. Maybe it wasn’t going to get me new projects or land me in some spotlight, somewhere, on a big stage, but, honestly, those moments really got me thinking and reshaping a lifetime’s worth of assumptions, beliefs, and ideals. I wrote Solitude (Kismuth Books / 2021).
I had time. I studied Vietnamese, lol. Yeah. That much time.
Lucky me.
I still remember this one person said, ‘Why would you study Vietnamese? No one uses it outside of Vietnam!’ and another one saying, ‘You will never get the tones. Ever.’
Yet, yet. I made my way, little by little, towards being understood and even cracking my terrible jokes with my limited vocabularies. This, to me, was an accomplishment. I also really love learning for the sake of it; I recognize this, now. This effort wasn’t for the sake of anything else but that. And when you hear and see how a language works, dissecting it, and coming to see the words in new ways, you get to know more deeply about the place where you are immersed in a way nothing else can show you. Everywhere you go, you have the naysayers. Maybe they don’t care about curiosity or value it. That’s okay; it doesn’t really change the fact that I do. Not everyone is going to like you. Cool.
So, this is why, I feel, running into curious people around the world while making Atelier S P A C E, all that, just went to show that even there, in the most unusual of circumstances, I gravitated toward and attracted the curious-est.
Enjoying the process, trusting where it leads
The curious and open-minded persona is the one that I have learned, through trial and error, is the very one who will resonate best with me and my projects at DK and other places. So many times those of us who want to ask, ‘Why?’ or ‘Why not?’ will be shuffled to the margins of [insert any group]. I’ve learned that this is just a fact; you don’t really see people breaking the status quo or questioning it because that is why it is the status quo. However, innovation dies in that circle. The best things that you can find are, I have come to understand, well outside of silos. Or siloed thinking. Or patterns of [deleted] in which you say, ‘We already know this,’ or, ‘But this is how we’ve always done it.’ But that gets in the way. Of staying open to the possibilities, and staying curious, and learning what you might not know you don’t know. This awareness is the center of it: those who ask questions, and those who insist they already know a thing and don’t need to. It’s how you know if someone is open, or not.
Flowing to the new
Everyone has a story of being shut down when they try to venture out on a new branch; some of us opt out of those closed-thinking environments, and others of us find ways to keep our curiosity and vitality nurtured. A hobby. A creative pursuit. An ‘outlet’, some will call it. I find this kind of thing to be quite common, but I don’t connect with those who make curiosity something that happens ‘on my own time.’ Rather, those I learn from and collaborate with best are always looking, staying open, wide eyed and not-jaded-or-cynical, though we have certainly had our moments, and doubted this way of going through things, we stayed the course and got older and somehow, people now are like, ‘How are you doing that?’
Staying optimistic? By being curious, of course. Which is perhaps why this is our theme for Autumn 2024, in S P A C E. I wanted to delve into it, from a research point of view, to see what ome other people out there are saying who study this or live it daily. It’s always fun to learn, for me, about things I care about. When the question makes its mark, I go into it. Deeply not superficially; to discover, and, thanks to S P A C E, to also report.
Which brings me to the point of today’s post. I found a cool piece on curiosity, as part of research for the Autumn issues of S P A C E.
Link at the end, but yeah. My favorite part of this piece was this section:
‘When the creative arts are integrated into the regular classroom curriculum, one notices that the teacher is not readily apparent. She is not in front of the room lecturing or at her desk dictating; she can be found working side-by-side with her students. In the creative arts classroom, there is a steady hum of industry: children reading, writing, building, questioning, and problem finding as well as solving. It is an imagination workshop with a true exchange of ideas, which builds upon each other pushing ever forward and transforming into new possibilities. Whether creating a piece of art, performing a drama, or designing a machine, students and teachers sense what renowned psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi refers to as flow or optimal experience.
‘Csikszentmihalyi explains, “The best moments usually occur when a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile. Optimal experience is thus something that we make happen.” (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990, p. 3) When children are completely engaged in the classroom activity, they are not worried about how they compare to their classmates.
”They do not view the teacher as judge or jury. They see themselves as actors in the true sense of the word. They are part of a creative process, responsible for their own learning. The teacher, through curriculum, classroom design, and active engagement, cultivates an atmosphere of deep concentration and reflection. Creative arts, curiosity, and the imagination mindset coalesce to form a place for optimal learning, where understanding evolves and persists.
Source: https://artsintegration.com/2018/05/01/fostering-curiosity-imagination/
Exploring in dialogues, in S P A C E
So many things came to mind when I read this. For example, I used to have some of the books in the citations. Now of course I don’t because there are fewer books around me, in Phnom Penh, generally speaking. There are pros and cons to this. Of course. Will share more fully, in S P A C E. To find out how to get the zine, go to this link. Note: there is a fee.
Next stop: Kyushu, Japan.
- See Atelier S P A C E | ‘The Way‘ for details.
Feature image: A precursor to Atelier S P A C E was me on the road hosting workshops. Like Flow. In Malmoe. / Photo by Dipika Kohli, Malmoe, 2015