Despite all the problems that the pandemic has brought, new ways of learning and connecting have proved to be extremely important.
In this scenario, I had the opportunity to participate in a workshop given by Madelon Vriesendorp and Charlie Koolhaas called “The mind game”.
Each participant developed its “room” with things that had at home.
These things represented symbols of the unconscious.
These things represented symbols of the unconscious.
After that, each design was presented and evaluated by Charlie, Madelon and the group as a form of self-knowledge.
"Now we are in isolation, but perhaps not alone, we are inclined to rethink who we are, what we want, and why. We are already inside. Let’s go further to discover our inner character.
Isolation can be hibernation or metamorphosis, stasis or transformation. We are going to design a room that reflects the discovery of our inner world in which no one is our critic, except ourselves. We put this room, maybe it's a cabin, in our dream surroundings (forest, garden, lake, ocean, town) and place the objects that symbolise our psychic transformation.
With our hands we are going to craft small, strange but deeply meaningfull objects, that will be able to speak (for us). Inspired by he universal visual languages that we have in our collective consciousness, from our materials we will each forge symbols, objects that represent words and concepts. We want to look for what the ‘things’ that we live with say, and how they could be used to create meaningful conversations.
After that is accomplished, we will all play with the result in a game called 'The Mind Game - a home analyses Kit'. We will analyse each other's room, with all the analytical power we possess, Freudian, Jungian or with an entirely personal and completely new system of rules. We will take a fresh look at ourselves and see ourselves through the eyes of others. We might learn something about our personality. We might be happy with the new perspectives on our character, or we might disagree or disregard them.
We might feel we learn more about others and prefer to share our observations on their character. But of course we want to reveal something about our own nature that we hadn’t noticed before. In this game, there are no losers. It’s a WIN-WIN situation."
Isolation can be hibernation or metamorphosis, stasis or transformation. We are going to design a room that reflects the discovery of our inner world in which no one is our critic, except ourselves. We put this room, maybe it's a cabin, in our dream surroundings (forest, garden, lake, ocean, town) and place the objects that symbolise our psychic transformation.
With our hands we are going to craft small, strange but deeply meaningfull objects, that will be able to speak (for us). Inspired by he universal visual languages that we have in our collective consciousness, from our materials we will each forge symbols, objects that represent words and concepts. We want to look for what the ‘things’ that we live with say, and how they could be used to create meaningful conversations.
After that is accomplished, we will all play with the result in a game called 'The Mind Game - a home analyses Kit'. We will analyse each other's room, with all the analytical power we possess, Freudian, Jungian or with an entirely personal and completely new system of rules. We will take a fresh look at ourselves and see ourselves through the eyes of others. We might learn something about our personality. We might be happy with the new perspectives on our character, or we might disagree or disregard them.
We might feel we learn more about others and prefer to share our observations on their character. But of course we want to reveal something about our own nature that we hadn’t noticed before. In this game, there are no losers. It’s a WIN-WIN situation."
- Madelon Vriesendorp
