reflections on the poetics of unsolvable problems

i went to a most interesting salon evening tonight. i drank too much coffee and had my head filled with so many new and exciting ways of thinking about things that i can't sleep. i went because the title of the talk was the poetics of the unsolvable and i loved both the notion that there was a poetics, but also that something could unsolvable in these times when we think there is a quick fix for everything. what it turned out to be was a researcher who had looked at the ways that creative interventions in management training could change things for managers and how they think and learn presented his research. best of all, he asked us to try out some of his experiments. i don't yet have it all straight in my head, but already i feel that it awakened in me new ways of thinking about things that will be very valuable to me.

in his study, he asked his subjects to come up with a problem that seemed unsolvable. then he asked them to take three approaches to it. in the first, he wanted them to do a systematic, rational analysis of the problem, which would eventually result in a map of their assumptions - a problem statement, who the actors were in the problem, what their interests are, then the distinctions and eventually a set of dimensions the problem (i understand these dimensions as a kind of list of binaries and quite black and white). it was these dimensions that could eventually be mapped in some way. we had only a short amount of time, so all we did was write a problem statement and begin looking at who was involved and what were their interests. i didn't get as far as distinctions (partially because time was short and partially because i didn't entirely understand what he meant by that). i would actually say that this resembles my usual approach to solving problems in quite a rational, systematic, analytical way. it undoubtedly lends to overthinking and confirming yourself in your opinion that the problem really is unsolvable. ironically, it also makes you think you see the problem more clearly and in some sense, maybe you even do.

the second approach was to apply metaphors to the problem. he asked us to think of the problem as a plant and quickly sketch or describe it. then he asked us to think of the problem as a movie or novel and note the work that first came to mind. we didn't delve a whole lot deeper than this and alas, fargo was the movie that sprang to mind when i thought of my problem. i'll need to ponder the meaning of that a bit more. actually, i had two problems noted down (that's how i roll) and the film that sprang to mind for the second problem was the matrix. that's also something that bears more thought. i tried to make books spring to mind for my problems, but oddly, none did. in his experiment, he sent the subjects out with cameras to take a photo that would stand as a metaphor of the problem. i would love to have done that (and let's face it, i do it most days here on mpc - after all, blogging is cheaper than therapy).

the third and perhaps most interesting approach was to describe the problem as a sensory experience; to give it physical sensation. this was difficult (especially in a short time) and my list included broad emotions - stressful, negative, tense. i had to keep reminding myself to stick to physical sensations - loud, grating, jarring. but it wasn't easy and the exercise gave me a tightness in my chest and i felt a little bit that i couldn't breathe. so trying to describe it as a physical sensation actually caused a physical sensation in my body. this made me realize that mind and body are so much more connected that i generally think they are. and this made me think i need to take better care of my body and use it more wisely. i'd like to think i take better care of my mind, feeding it with nourishing books and images and thoughts. my body probably needs less caffeine, alcohol and unhealthy foods. i must remember that (she says as she takes a sip of wine).

and although listing my problem as a sensory experience caused a physical reaction in my body, it also had a distancing effect, making me more able to look upon my problem from a new angle, with less emotion and less judgement. which is quite new and i think it's quite difficult for us to be judgement-free, as we come loaded with expectations and judgements from all of our previous learnings and experiences. it was quite freeing to somehow let go of that. i'd like to do that more.

if we'd had more time, he would have asked us to write a poem based on the list of sensory experiences. he would have given us only 20 minutes, so that the poem would be more automatic and we wouldn't have time to sensor or polish it. he showed us some of the results from his subjects and they were powerful. i feel i missed the window on the poem for this experience, but i'm going to go through the exercise again.

and do you want to know what the problem i thought about was? (at least the main one?) it was the problem of being productive in an open office environment. because i think that's pretty much impossible. i won't say that i solved it, not even remotely, but i got closer to seeing a clearer picture of why i don't like such spaces. and that may be a step towards an eventual solution. and that feels pretty powerful. i'd like to think of myself as more reflected than most and i do (as you know, if you are a regular reader), tend to over-analyze things, so having new tools which will help me think about things in new ways is awesome.

glass distortion

although artist mette colberg was very nervous and it seemed like she cut her TED talk abruptly short (probably due to her nervousness), my interest in her work with glass, especially her filter project, was piqued. she works in glass and has made some blown-glass "lenses" to fit onto a camera, in order to explore the way which glass transforms the objects which we look at through it.

always keen to do something new with my daily photo project, i came home and started looking at the glass around the house in terms of how it might give me a new view on the everyday scenes around me. last night, at the dinner table, i noticed the orangey sunset light coming through the big jar of stones on the windowsill and decided to snap a few photos through the thick glass of the jar. the double layer of thick glass rendered the sunset scene almost watery and wavy, despite the clear skies. the tree branch sticking up outside the window ended up looking a bit like one of the big steampunk electrical pylons that are visible in the distance when you look at it through the much clearer lenses of your own eyes.

it's interesting how glass both clarifies and distorts. if i didn't have my glasses or contact lenses i'd practically need a dog to guide me around, so some glass makes things clearer. but other glass, even the glass on our windows, can distort the things we see, transforming them into something strange and unfamiliar.  to do this intentionally is an interesting notion.

this is the sort of thing i hoped TEDx Copenhagen would do for me - inspire me to look at the world around me in new ways. so, although i thought mette become overwhelmed onstage and exited much before she had intended to, she did inspire me to see the world just a bit differently.

more on TEDx Copenhagen as i continue to ponder the experience.

an assortment of bottled-up thoughts

an assortment of bottled-up thoughts are tumbling through my head after a weekend of mad amounts of cooking (on saturday, i made chutney, pickles, raspberry jam, bread, ricotta, lasagne, garlic mushrooms which i picked myself in our forest and a plum cake). i did it all while watching doctor who on netflix (except the walk in the woods to pick mushrooms, i took a break then). i'm not sure i'm fully onboard with the doctor. there are a few too many zombies and crude robots with funny voices for my taste. it leaves it seeming a bit cheesy in a way that becomes tiresome after awhile. so today, while patching up all of husband's work jeans and shorts, i went over to the spinoff - torchwood. i think it's a bit more up my alley. but how great is netflix? what did we do before we had it?

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i'm pondering ways of displaying my minifigure collection. i think i need a new typecase drawer, as i don't want to use the "official" display cases made by lego. i wanted husband to make me a little shelf that goes all the way around the ceiling, but he's not really that keen on the minifigure collection. something about plastic junk we don't need that i tuned out. there are worse things i could collect. shrunken heads, for example. or human teeth. or toenail clippings. it could be much, much worse.

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this morning, a friend on facebook posted this piece on the power of language and the power of appropriating someone else's terminology (e.g. racism) and i found myself thinking about it all day. i've had racism on the brain of late, as i look around at denmark and find it becoming increasingly racist (just check out this proof). i've also been uncomfortable using that term, as i feel it's reserved for the black vs. white discussion and have hesitated to appropriate it more broadly. in the danish context, it's less about skin color and more about general xenophobia - fear of The Other, many of whom are as white as the danes. i've wondered if racism as a term really applies. but when considered in terms of power, oppression and privilege, it is in many ways racism which is on the rise in denmark. and if we don't use that stark terminology to point it out, we contribute to allowing it to happen (remember what happened last century when no one spoke up against a little moustached fellow named hitler?).

i do realize that this isn't what the ambiguously-gendered jamie of the article is saying - s/he's saying that outside of the black-white context, we shouldn't go bandying around the word "racism." but i think we not only should, we need to (tho' i agree with the examples given that it is a misuse of the word on the part of a bunch of whiners who have been slighted by someone). because racism needs to be stopped and it needs to be said, out loud, that it's not ok. 

oh, and i completely disagree with jamie that anyone's mind will ever be changed by a discussion on facebook.

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a month or so ago, i came across a reference to ray bradbury's zen in the art of writing and ordered it from the library. i've not read any bradbury before (perhaps the odd short story back in school), but it is absolutely uncanny how i keep running across him all of a sudden. zen in the art of writing is a marvelous little book and i've got to own it, not just have it from the lbirary, it won't do to be without it. i am already making lists of nouns as he advises and can't wait to see what kind of stories come out when i sit down to use them.

then, on friday, i came across this spoken word piece by corin raymond and who does he refer to but ray bradbury? it's an hour long, but very much worth it. play it in the background while you're cooking or ironing or sewing or painting, it's about listening to it anyway. after listening, i ordered fahrenheit 451 and dandelion wine from the library. how can i have gone this long without reading them?

and then just now, i sat down with infinite perspectives, a book on the history of mapmaking. and who do you think wrote the foreword? ray bradbury. 

this can't be a coincidence. 

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amazing albanian women who have lived as men for their whole lives.

in denmark's soil

out in the ål klitplantage near oksbøl, there is a very interesting exhibition going on. there in the forest, in 1946, just after the war, there was a camp with 35,000 german refugees. artist kate skjerning and her husband, photographer niels linneberg (who is a flickr friend of mine) have created an exhibition entitled i danmarks jord (in denmark's soil), that's a memorial of sorts to those refugees. guided by poet agnes miegel's poignant, sorrowful poem of the same name to 4,132 children who died in 1945 on their way to the camp, the 1km route through the cool, quiet forest features larger-than-life photos of 175 contemporary residents of the area, fixed around the trees, as if they're standing there in the forest.

i love that this guy was actually photographed in front of this tree originally - even the bark matches up!

there's something piercing and intense about her eyes.

the portraits are striking, but there's no real connection, other than location, between the people depicted and the german refugees - no indication that they stayed behind and made their lives in the area, producing descendants who are still here.

it was quite funny with this family group, because we had seen them in real life at the beach about 15 minutes before we visited the exhibition.

at the beginning of the route, there are people here and there, one at a time, but then it opens up to a wide area with many people on many trees. the effect is striking and a little bit eerie. the girls said that they wouldn't want to walk out there at night.

mostly, i love the idea of a photography exhibition out in nature and i think it was a brilliant means of accomplishing that. the fact that at least some of the people were photographed in front of the very tree where their photo is displayed is really cool. i don't think all of them were, but on those that were, the effect was somehow strengthened.

but i will say that it didn't provoke me think that much about the german refugees. despite the sorrowful words of the poem guiding our way, i couldn't really conjure them or their ghosts in that place. maybe it just affects me less, growing up as i did so removed from the war. even after all this time, it's just so much more present for europeans than it is for me as an american (not to mention that i wasn't even thought of at the time it occurred).

what it did make me think about is all of the talk of udkantsdanmark - the outlying areas, where it's hard to keep people because of a lack of jobs and opportunities in the smaller towns of the periphery. these faces of those who stayed are a fascinating essay of sorts into which all sorts of sociology could be written. i might have to go back and ponder it some more.

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i've just updated my photo portfolio blog with a cool new pinteresty template.

i'm liking how it looks.