Age of Wonderland Daily Talk: Sense of Self, Eindhoven, World Design Event
A report by Coralie den Adel
“Sense of Self? How did we come up with this topic?’ Well, we noticed a lot of Days of Learning which were dealing with getting out of the system. We noticed that one of the big crisis we are in, is that systems are not compatible with what people really want.” Arne Hendriks, curator of Age of Wonderland, is trying to get things clear first on this third Talk during World Design Event in Eindhoven. What is Sense of Self and how do we incorporate it in the philosophy of 100 DAYS OF LEARING?
You are me and I am you
On stage with him are Christine Wagner (Hivos, Germany), Sandra Suubi (artist, Uganda), Sacha St-Onge Ahmad (public health practitioner and researcher, Pakistan) and Branly López (expert on Mayan ancient philosophy, Guatemala). Also joining is of course the public gather in the People’s Pavilion. Here we talk about a different subject each day — obviously Sense of Self this time — with the people who will have their Day of Learning that day.
Branly López kicks off. On Sunday the 22th he had his workshop ‘Learning Gratefulness’. Participants built kites which reflected on themselves and their personalities. “Self, for me that is how we do develop empathy to ourselves and everything around us, food, space, time, memories. How can we connect ourselves to the oneness of the Universe? This is the Mayan philosophy of ‘You are me and I am you’.”
“With small things we can make big changes”
Sandra Suubi is advocating sense of self in her powerful message: that what you need in life is already in and around you. Start paying attention to it, and start dreaming. Her Day of Learning of today, ‘A Dream Lab’ is simple but effective: “Make a physical representation of your dream by using waste material. Make time for you dream. Visualize, share and validate it.”
Real empathy
Sacha St-Onge Ahmad is illustrating her definition of sense of self with an example: “I met a guy from Botswana, who had twins in his family. When he gave his twin brother an apple, he waited with eating until his twin sister had one too. This was nature, nor nurture. For me this is real empathy. We should learn form that, be less selfish.” She also wants to put a footnote to this. “Imagine a young woman who only considers taking care of her partner, but sacrifices herself… We need to understand what the other needs, but also what we ourselves need.”
“Sense of self does not only apply to you, but also to the world and people around you.”
This immediately does relate to her workshop this day ‘Causing Harm with Good Intentions’, which has a personal story to it. “By the age of 22 I was an emergency. I was not married yet, so for my father is was ok to force me into marriage. He did have the good intention to help me, because in Pakistan there is no system for unmarried, indepenedent women. In his eyes it was his fatherly duty to get me a husband, on the believ that love would eventually comes. But I did not realize this was causing a lot of harm to me and my familiy.” Eventually Sasha did go her own way. Being truthful to her sense of self.
Then a girl from the audience stands up and brings her apple to Sasha, who gives it to Sandra sitting next to her. In this gathering is has become clear that sense of self is much related to empathy, which is the theme of the talk, coming Friday 27 October. To be continued…
This Day of Learning was part of Age of Wonderland’s Daily Talks.
At the core of World Design Event, People’s Pavilion at Eindhoven’s Strijp-S, Age of Wonderland hosted a daily talk show. Each day focused on a specific topic: Activism, Energy, Ecology, Learning by doing, Sense of self, Community, Intimacy, Empathy and Empowerment.
visit www.ageofwonderland.nl to find out more about this program.
