Fwd: Being in Beauty- a course to re imagine art
Manu Sharma
From: Jinan KB <ji...@existentialknowledgefoundation.org>
Date: Sun, Jan 17, 2021 at 10:05 AM
Subject: Being in Beauty- a course to re imagine art
To: Orangehues <orang...@gmail.com>
Hello,
Awakening sense of beauty as a tool for de-schooling, unlearning, de-colonization, and de-conditioning.
Art is a mental construct whereas beauty is part and parcel of our biological makeup. Beauty is a dynamic configuration of appropriateness inherent in nature. We are born aligned to this configuration and in people in indigenous communities where there is no ‘teaching’ keep up this alignment spontaneously and organically as they grow up. So naturally what they do turns out to be beautiful. Modernity, due to its mental preoccupation, derails us from this alignment. Instead of awakening us to our inherent qualities, education in general and art education in particular conditions us to the mental construct called art and to its various theories on aesthetics. Experience is replaced by mental myth-making.
So, the way art is practiced within the context of modernity is still in the realm of mind even while claiming otherwise because within the context of modernity there is no way we can experience or reclaim the primacy of body and experience. Modernity in general and education in particular systematically create beauty-disabled people along with other cognitive and psychological damages. Most of the time we find ourselves in the state of mentally present but physically absent as we are living in our mind most of the time. To be in communion with the beauty around we need to be present. How did we become absent and how do we recover our natural way of being present- the way children are all the time till we also make them absent? The paradox is that beauty cannot be understood in the realm of language and probably could tell what is not beauty.
I am offering a retreat for reclaiming the sense of beauty. As words began to dominate our lives, the world seems to have hidden the real, the unexplainable, and where language cannot penetrate. There are many things in life that can only be sensed, felt, and lived. No words can even understand this let alone communicating this. So, words can take to the place where we will be informed that from now on go alone- without words and thoughts. Beauty is one of them. The attempt in the workshop or retreat is to travel to the place where words cannot enter………
Please visit the website and if it connects with you please let me know
https://www.beinginbeauty.org/home
WHAT THE WORKSHOP WOULD ADDRESS
BEAUTY – THE BASIC ORGANIZATIONAL PRINCIPLE
The invitation is to relook at the very notion of art itself. Beauty and creativity are the fundamental principles of being alive. These are rooted in our biology, the original elements we are made of. Eliminating senses and beauty from our educational process has not only killed true creativity- creativity that enables us to create knowledge- but has also produced beauty-disabled people.
ART- THE TRAP OF THE MIND
Art as self-expression and art as a mental activity is the ‘gifts’ of modernity in which the sense, feelings, body, experience, the feminine, and the child-like qualities have no role to play. In fact, the whole educational purpose is to outgrow all these life-affirming qualities.
WHAT RETAINS THIS MISUNDERSTANDING
We see art as a separate activity (for a few so-called creative people) and not as a holistic cognitive activity. This stems from the way natural learning system- the content, the context, the tools, process, and purpose- has been negated and replaced with a teaching-based system.
REIMAGINING ART
If we were to focus on the 'process' of making ‘art’ rather than teaching skills, we would acquire qualities related to OBSERVATION, patience, and involvement. That would make us present, silent, and hence meditative. With such an approach we directly connect to nature, establishing one to one relationship with the beauty around and this will naturally take to the realm of the unknown
Please visit the site to see more details
http://ekfoundation.in/being-in-beauty-reimagining-art/
