Art and sustainability education course at Arbavere, October 2022

For the fifth time, I taught this annual three-day course at Arbavere near Lahemaa National Park in Estonia last week, at invitation of the Estonian Academy of Arts. This time there were 18 participants – from Belgium, Estonia, France, Germany, Mexico, and the Netherlands.

On the first day a bus drove us out of Tallinn into the woods and we started with an activity that spiralled around the sharing with a group partner one's lived experience of an important walk once made earlier in life, and doing this while hiking together along the Viitna lake in the forest (on basis of an idea developed by Alan Boldon).

In the afternoon, I presented a first lecture on 'Art and Sustainability', followed by a workshop in which the participants again formed pairs. One of the two held a plant image of Karl Blossfeldt or of microscopic images of seeds by Svjetlana Tepavcevic, in such a way that their partner could not see it. The invitation to them was that the one holding the photograph would describe it carefully (rich with metaphors to hint at the visible forms) to the other who would try to draw it on basis of that (without being able to see the image). Course participants later that day drew at the side of the river Loobu j?gi, first blindfolded, with a black charcoal in their left hand and a white pastel in their other hand. Black for earth and river sounds, white for sounds of the sky. This was followed by making a drawing with the awareness of dhristi, or ‘soft gazeafter just having perceived and drawn this quiet natural place with eyes closed, now trying to make a new drawing on basis of that same awareness - but then now with one’s eyes fully open.

In the evening we did the ‘Silent Becoming’ clay workshop, on the processes of metamorphosis of clay forms (inspired by a course with Antony Gormley at Schumacher College). To learn more about this workshop, see my article: https://bit.ly/3fKN1Tm and description of the workshop: https://bit.ly/3VegwND. On the second day, I started with a lecture on arts-based environmental education. And then we did the workshop ‘Lines of the hand’ on imagination and storied memory of sensory experiences in landscapes. See on this the following article: https://bit.ly/3RQIlsC. This was followed by another presentation by me with the title ‘Artistic research in relation to Earth and to ecological consciousness.’ In the evening we watched a documentary on Andy Goldsworthy, which we afterwards reconstructed collectively through a rich conversation, on basis of key concepts mentioned in the film.

On the last day, we started with a presentation by me, entitled ‘Putting one’s hand straight into the silence. Artful processes and thinking, feeling, and acting differently in an age of uncertainty and climate fear’. After this we did a silent walk, as a meandering snake of people walking behind each other in silence. This was followed by a final workshop with clay, called ‘Making a little me’. Participants made a sculpture of their own body with their eyes closed. On this, I wrote the following article, https://bit.ly/3MlHHCl, and more elaborately section 6.3 in my dissertation, ‘At the Heart of Art and Earth’, see: https://bit.ly/3CjRJz3.

My article ‘A pedagogy of attention to the light of the eyes’, delves deeper in the intention behind this kind of artful education with both students and the natural environment: https://bit.ly/3ysSbtC.

Photos: Ceciel Verheij.