A full day
workshop organized through The Public School Helsinki, in the early spring
landscape of a lakeshore in a northern forest. The workshop was
facilitated by Jan van Boeckel.
Together with Mikael Malmaeus and Gunilla Kindstrand, Jan van Boeckel was
one of the keynote speakers at this seminarium about different
perspectives on ecological sustainability and the role of art in
environmental engagement. The day ended with a discussion about ideas for
establishing an ecological art centre at Ockelbo.
On 18
February, Jan presented two lectures and a clay moulding workshop for
the 63 garden architecture students at the Trädgårdsmästarprogrammet of the
Högskolan i Gävle.
Smiling birches, weeping firs: Making contact with a tree through art
Oslo, 20 September, 2009, in the
forest outside Soria Moria conference centre
In
September 2009 the conference "Ecology and Forests for Public Health" of
Nature-Culture-Health International took place. Its aim was to focus on
environmental, climatic and cultural changes that threaten the public’s
health today, and to analyze the importance of forests for people on
our planet. One of the presentations was by Jan van Boeckel. His theme was
"Connecting through art with trees." He discussed arts-based ways to
connect to nature, and he took as point of departure a eco-phenomenologically inspired
orientation. Part of this was the notion that a tree may " reveal" its being more fully to
one who tries to increase his or her receptivity to its expressions. His presentation had as its
motto, a line of painter Paul Cézanne: "The landscape thinks itself in
me, and I am its consciousness."
Jan tried to compare this sensibility and state of mindfulness to the way
people in traditional indigenous cultures seem to relate to the land, and,
more specifically, to the forest, and discuss the challenges of
reconnecting to the tree when we try to do this whilst living in and being
part of a "disenchanted" (post)modern world.
The talk included the making of a painting of a fir tree – or, if one
wills, allowing the tree to express herself through the painting.
The title of the session ("Smiling birches, weeping firs") was inspired on
the chapter "From the opaque to the concrete: The poetic side of Arne
Naess," by David Rothenberg, in his book Always the mountains.
Wildpainting summer art
courses in the Norwegian fjords
At Jølster, 6-10 July, 2009 and at Skarstein gård, Kandal, 27-31 July,
2009
At these painting courses,
which were taught by Jan van Boeckel, participants drew and painted the
rough and breathtaking landscape along the steep slopes of Fjord-Norway.
WILDPAINTING means two things: to paint wilderness and wild
landscapes, and to paint in a different, surprising way. The aim was to
open up to the aesthetics and the energies of the landscape through trying
to see (and smell, know etc.) as if one perceives it for the first time.
It meant basically to dare to draw and paint in quite a different way than
we are accustomed to: leaves don't always have to be green and the sky not
eternally blue. Instead the participants tried to observe afresh, deeper
and deeper, letting the motive come to them as they experienced it there
and then. In that way, the artistic process became something between
meditation and perceiving the world in the way a child does. We used
acrylic paints and heavy paper, charcoal and pencils.
The courses lasted five hours each day, for five days with regular breaks
for tea and coffee, for lunch, or for taking some time to talk about what
had happened to that point. Every participant got also personal comments
and advice from the course facilitator.
There was no demand of having prior artistic skills. What was needed was
the enthusiasm to participate and a desire to learn something new, and to
dare to participate in this process. The inspiration to the Wildpainting
courses comes from painter Paul Cézanne, who wrote: "The landscape thinks
itself in me, and I am its consciousness."
From 19 until 29 April 2009,
the Wind and Water expedition took place on the schooner Helena, from Kiel
- via Gotland - to Uusikaupunki
(Finland).
This EDDA
Norden intensive course entailed a distant learning period (17-31 March
2009); a sailing and working period (19-29 April 2009); and a period for
preparation of a temporary exhibition and evaluation (30 April - 3 May
2009). Participation on the course required taking part in all three parts
of the course.
The participants were students from Finland, Norway, Denmark and Sweden,
at EDDA Norden institutions that offer teacher training in art, media and
design. Teachers were Mari von Boehm and Jan van Boeckel of
the TaiK Research group on arts-based environmental education.
The core of the course was the voyage on the sailing vessel through the
seas that are connecting us, the Nordic and Baltic people. The schooner
Helena sailed from Kiel – via Gotland – to Uusikaupunki (Finland).
During
the course the participants investigated the ways in which art can be of
added value in the context of environmental education on marine ecosystems
and climate change. The participants travelled the natural slow way by
wind-power, and concentrated on the basic experience and appreciation of
the small size of humans in the whole, on engagement with the environment,
and on what the preconditions are for creating art in extraordinary
circumstances.
It was the first time that it is carried out on this basis and with this
structure as a pan-Nordic project. It built further upon the established
tradition within EDDA Norden of using nature as a resource in art
education (Snow and Ice Sculpting at Laino Snow Village, Finland, in 2007;
and the Light and Fire workshop in Notodden, Norway, in 2008).
Teaching of
course: Arts in environmental education (4 ECTS)
19.02.2009 -15.05.2009
Objectives
This class was practice-based and self-directed. It intended to introduce
participants to the potential role and existing field of using art in
increasing ecological awareness. There was only guidance by the tutor (Jan
van Boeckel, PhD candidate, Dept of Art Education) and supervisor.
Students had to take responsibility for their own desired learning. The
course was further monitored by Professor Pirkko Pohjakallio.
Central to this course was the triangle of art education, nature education
and pedagogical science. In the context of the education, we asked what
the benefits are of looking with an artist’s gaze at environmental or
outdoor education, and of looking with an environmental educators’ gaze at
the possible benefits of engaging art in the context of environmental
educational practices.
Contents
Participants were expected to read a reader and selected works from the
reading list. Every participant was required to write an essay of 6 to 8
pages on a subject relevant to the theme of the course.
* The work further consisted of practice exercises, resulting in an open
format presentation.
* The course startedwith putting together a personal statement of one
page.
* Participants developed their ownteaching module based on previous
examples. (Example: Chosing of 1 place and 3 tasks with different
approaches.)
* Participants performed planned activities, including methods of
reflection (feedback from everyone involved), and conducted research on
the field, resulting in one written essay on a related issue based on
articles, lectures, books, films, interviews, etc.
Lecture:
"Opening the senses to the more-than-human-world: the role of art"
Helsinki, Finland,
April 2009
Doctor of
Arts Seminar at Media Lab, Thursday, April 2, 2009, 17:00-19:00, 4th floor
lecture room
In his lecture, doctorate student Jan van Boeckel will talk about the
research theme that he has taken up at TaiK's School of Art Education. In
short, Jan is interested in how education about nature would look like if
it starts from an artistic process-oriented perspective. Usually
environmental education is founded on the premise that pre-established
scientific knowledge is handed down from teacher to student.
Jan will present his lecture in such his way that it resonates as fully as
possible with the open ended quality and rhizome-like character of his
research project. The aim is that its form will not be too different from
the content, and the medium in accord with the message.. Therefore the
listeners to the lecture will be encouraged to be active participants in a
co-creating dialogue on the interface of art and nature education.
A short film, accompanying the van Boeckel's lecture will be shown on
Friday April, 3, at 15:00, in the 3d floor meeting room at Media Lab:
The Betrayal by Technology: A Portrait of Jacques Ellul
"Technology forces us to go faster and faster. One does not know where one
goes. The only thing that matters is the speed." French philosopher
Jacques Ellul has analyzed modern Western society on basis of the premise
that technology has become an autonomous, all-determining factor.
In 1950, Ellul finished his manuscript La Technique ou l'enjeu du siecle
(The Technological Society), his seminal analysis of the way technology
shapes every aspect of society. As contemporary thinker, he was strongly
influenced by Kierkegaard, Marx and Barth. After a life, in which he wrote
close to fifty books, Ellul died in the summer of 1994, at the age of 82.
The team of ReRun Producties visited Ellul in 1990. During five subsequent
days, long interview sessions were held with him in his old mansion in
Pessac. The Betrayal by Technology is one of the very few existing filmed
recordings of Jacques Ellul speaking.
ReRun Producties: Karin van der Molen, Pat van Boeckel, Jan van Boeckel,
Frits Steinmann.
WELCOME!
-------------------------------------
Dr. Lily Diaz, Professor, Systems of Representation
& Digital Cultural Heritage, University of Art and Design Helsinki
135C Hämeentie SF 00560. Helsinki, Finland
'Art Outside of
the Classroom'
Weeklong workshop with art education students on the
island of Nötö in the Finnish archipelago (May 2008), followed by an
exhibiton at the Art Pedagogy Department of the University of Art and
Design Helsinki in September 2008.
In May
2008, Mari von Boehm did a workshop with Master students in art
education on the Finnish island of Nötö. This workshop could be regarded
as the establishment of a temporary environmental research station,
based on art. The idea was that the participants would be doing
their own arts-based research on the island,
choosing one point of view and one method on forehand, with which they
would work during a week. This could of course change when they would
actually see what the place was like. It was in a way similar to other
field research, which takes place within a pre-established framework, with
the idea to work further with the results.
Painting improvisation rotating circle at river Simoa in Norway
Kunstnerdalen. Sigdal, Norway, 14 October 2008
As part of
the conference "How to Cope in a Changing World? - Environment, Culture
and Health in Transition", Jan van Boeckel organized a
improvisation painting workshop. Moving from one conference venue to the
next, the participants joined in a one hour surprise event on a Sunday
late afternoon at the river Simoa.
They gathered in a circle on the river bank, amidst the beautiful autumn
colors and the setting sun. Every conference participant was divided in a
group: "air", "water", "earth" and "fire".
As part of
the three day conference "New energy in old landscapes" at Wij Trädgårdar
in Ockelbo, Sweden, Jan van Boeckel presented a workshop "När vi
formar landskapet: Färgar i landskapet". 40 participants painted an
agricultural landscape in different colours than usual. The worked in
groups of ten, one group following up after the other had left. The
painting easels remained and the newcomers had to continue on the painting
as it was left by the previous participant. At the start, each group of
ten was devided in a "wrong colours" and a "right colours" group. The
"wrong colours group started painting the fields as wrong as possible,
using the complementary colours (e.g. instead of painting the sky blue, it
would be orange). The "right colours" group started with an "accurate"
impressionistic depiction of the colours they saw in the same landscape in
front of then. Each subsequent group continued on the same paintings for
half an hour. But slowly the paintings would change: The paintings in
which wrong colours were used would slowly move a bit to the right
colours, and the ones in which the "appropriate" colours had been used,
would slowly move to include unexpected colours.
Workshop with the Reggio Emilia Network in
Finland
Kuusiluoto Island, Helsinki, 6 September 2008
On a nice
Saturday, 14 participants of the Reggio Emilia Network in Finland gathered
at the University of Art and Design for a presentation on arts-based
environmental education. In the afternoon, they walked to the Kuusiluoto
island. Together with Jan van Boeckel they did different exercises
there, connecting the imagination, nature, the human body and its senses.
The Reggio
Emilia Approach is an educational philosophy focused on preschool and
primary education. It was started by the parents of the villages around
Reggio Emilia in Italy after World War II. The destruction from the war,
parents believed, necessitated a new, quick approach to teaching their
children. The Reggio Emilia philosophy is based upon the following set of
principles:
Children
must have some control over the direction of their learning;
children
must be able to learn through experiences of touching, moving,
listening, seeing, and hearing;
children
have a relationship with other children and with material items in the
world that children must be allowed to explore;
and
children must have endless ways and opportunities to express themselves.
The Reggio
Emilia approach to teaching young children puts the natural development of
children as well as the close relationships that they share with their
environment at the center of its philosophy. A child must have control
over his or her day-to-day activity and learning must make sense from the
child's point of view.
Between 25 and 29 of August 2008, Pirkko
Pohjakallio, Mari Järvinen and Jan van Boeckel of the research group led a
introductory week for the new students in art education at the
University
of Art and Design Helsinki (TaiK).
The theme of the week was environmental pedagogy. Below an overview of the week's programme.
Monday 25 August
Sharing of preconcepts of "art", "pedagogy", "environment". How do we
construct our ideas? Lecture by professor Pirkko Pohjakallio.
Tuesday 26 August
Arts-based environmental education (AEE) and art of the environment:
lectures by Mari Järvinen and Jan van Boeckel. Afternoon: AEE exercise on
Kuusiluoto Island. See images and read about the
exercise
Wednesday 27 August
Integration in environmental education
Lecture: Pedagogical ideas in design education by Leena Svinhufvud. Visit
to the Fennofolk exhibition at the Design Museum. In the afternoon: Visit
to the Ämmässuo dump yard, guided by Riikka Hietala. See images
Thursday 28 August
Visit to ARKKI, the School of Architecture for Children and Youth. Lecture
by director Pihla Meskanen. Exercise in making constructions with
toothpickers and candy as building elements. Afternoon: Building willow
huts on a kindergarten play ground. See images
Friday 29 August
Visit to the Environmental Education Centre at Harakka Island. Exercise in
using the senses: Splitting up in small groups and individually
focussing on "only" hearing, "only" seeing, "only" tasting, "only"
touching, or "only" smelling the island environment.
Joint lunch with each subgroup preparing a special colour. Everybody
brought a special drinking cup of their own and told what it meant to
them, at the same time each gave their individual evaluations of the week. See images
Film
As part of Environmental Pedagogics course Autumn semester, art education
students Ilmari Arnkil, Tiina Humaloja and Tuuka Seppälä. at the
University of Art and Design (TaiK) in Helsinki, Finland. The film is
about the sense of hearing and plays with the combination of different,
unexpected sounds and visual experience.
Click below to see (and hear!) the film on YouTube:
'Wild
Painting' summer art course in the Norwegian mountains
Sandane, Norway, 28 July - 1 Aug. 2008
At this 4 day painting
course, participants painted the rough and breathtaking landscape
along the steep slopes of Fjord-Norway. Teacher was Jan van Boeckel. "Wild painting"
aimed at connecting with nature in new and exciting ways, in an effort to see
the colors in the world around us with fresh eyes. See images
Creating Nature. Art in the Landscape
Schumacher College, Dartington, UK May 26 – June 6, 2008
At the course 'Creating Nature: Art
in the landscape' at Schumacher College in the United Kingdom, Jan van
Boeckel was facilitator and one of the teachers. Other teachers were Susan
Derges and Lynne Hull.
The participants discussed the
relationship between art and the natural world. The course involved
exploration, discovery and creative practice in landscape. Nature in all
its beauty and complexity has been an integral part of art from the first
images and artefacts ever created by humans. Recent years have seen a
resurgence of its importance for artists, not just as inspiration but as
the actual medium within which they work.
Susan Derges introduced participants to the unique way she works within
the landscape to create works of art, and help them make their own art
inspired by the woods and gardens around the College and the wilds of
Dartmoor. Susan Derges is a photographer who uses the natural world as her
darkroom to create images of water flows and the night sky around her
Dartmoor home.
In the second week, Lynne Hull worked with the group to create, within the
College grounds, a piece of "trans-species" art which restores habitat
damaged by human impact while encouraging humans to understand wildlife
needs and to shift attitudes toward other species. Lynne Hull has
pioneered "trans-species" art, creating sculpture installations as
wildlife habitat enhancement and eco-atonement for human impact. She has
worked in the American West and eight other countries with a variety of
wildlife agencies. Currently she is working on Migration Mileposts,
linking communities in the Americas who share migratory birds.
Lynne’s sculpture and installations provide shelter, food, water or space
for wildlife, as eco-atonement for their loss of habitat to human
encroachment. Her current projects link communities from Canada to South
America through their shared wildlife. Some raise human awareness of our
trans-species relationship and harmonious ways to live that relationship
in the landscape. While assisting wildlife, when possible projects are
also designed with components of sustainable economic development for
humans. Lynne will work with the group to create a piece of trans-species
art within or near the grounds of Schumacher College. She comments on her
work: "I believe that the creativity of artists can be applied to real
world problems and can have an effect on urgent social and environmental
issues. I am increasingly aware that the greatest challenge faced by other
species is the need for change in human values and attitudes toward
conflicting rights, wants, and needs. I hope my work offers models for
equitable solutions."
Twenty artists from Finland, Poland, Netherlands, United Kingdom and
Sweden, plus crew of four, sailing with the schooner Helena from Oslo, Norway, to
harbor Uusikaupunki in Finland, during April 2008. Mari Järvinen
co-ordinated this project.
Jan van Boeckel participated in and
teached at the Fire and Light workshop of the EDDA Norden network at the
department of art education at the University of Telemark in Notodden,
Norway.
Mari Järvinen and Jan van Boeckel
participated in the Snow and Ice workshop at Lainio Snow Village, north of
Rovaniemi, Finland. The workshop was organized by the Art Education
department of the University of Lapland. Goal: The course aims to enhance students’ understanding in snow
and ice as artistic material, the dialogue between sculpture and its
environment and winter art as an architectural element. Students learn to
apply the acquired skills in art education with various materials in their
local environment. Content: To provide students with basic theory of winter art, snow
and ice architecture and practice in snow and ice sculpting. Methods: Orientation studies based on web material and given
literature (see below) prior to start of the course. Lectures in
Rovaniemi, visits to local instances involved in northern environment and
culture. Collaborative snow and ice sculpting in Lainio Snow Village in
Ylläs. Students will work in small groups to design and realize interiors
to snow hotel. The themes of the designs are related to the northern
environment and nature. Written and illustrated documentation of the
project.
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