Me: I learned to take my place and not to shut down even when things aren’t the way I feel, imagine, wish or like them to be. but it’s a hard process of learning and I’m glad I had experience this frustrating emotions before the year actually started and with this environment and safe space of movement that I’m familiar with. I had difficulty with me being block sometimes by things one might have said or done or by too many explanation/ questions/ arguments or ideas that was thrown to the air. I think I still was able to show myself and give honesty, sensitivity and understanding as well as challenging perceptions or triggering, artistically. I was present in any moment even when I was block and I was listening and caring all the time.

Marisa- I’m very happy to get to know you, your practice and your collective. I’m grateful for your openness, generous, honesty and friendly way of bringing knowledge, holding the group and yet let everyone be heard. Although it felt to me it was too democratic, I realised that this is new to me and therefore it is so challenging and difficult so I’m taking the frustration as a learning point.

The group: I’m grateful to get to know so many different personalities, colours, practices, and souls. They were challenging me to think outside my comfort zone, brought new ideas of conversation, consent, and artistic perception. I understand that some fear of being hurt, or being unheard raises and created for me hesitation about taking risk, step out of the familiar and literally just try, jump into the water and try with our bodies and souls and less with our brains. Those moment for me was difficult to feel part of the group, but I think I overcome it by saying my opinions.

Practice: although most of the exercises were familiar to me as my main discipline is dance and I’ve been guided some of these practices but in different names I always find it interesting to go back and try them again, especially with a new group and without having to be the leader. I wish to have more time of practice rather than talking and explaining and less adapting each exercise till it got confused but I understand that that was the need of the group. I enjoy mostly the interviews as I always like to work with movement and text and with personal materials. I feel like it’s the most honest and touching way to get to know each other. I was interested a lot in the textual fantasy, though I feel like it wasn't fully executed. Besides Marisa example which for me was one of the most collective moment of the whole week I felt like the rest wasn’t quite evolved into practice or that maybe I had big expectations to have something more performative and that the practice is at the core of the exercise, I felt it could have gone deeper and I wish to do it again in the days we will meet again. I would love to guide one textual fantasy.

Regarding weekly practice, I would be very happy to do it. My options for the weekly meeting would be:

Mon-Wed - I could mostly attend once in every two weeks at any time of the day.

Thursday - I'm free from 13:30-16:30 and every 2 weeks also after 16:30

Friday - free after 17

Sat-Sun- free every 2 weeks.

Transcript of audio recording

Hi Marisa, and anyone else who's listening to this I guess I will address it to you Marisa because I view you as the one initiating and response was taken care and was responsible for the module and I'm speaking this message right now on the last day in this time slot that was given for feedback yeah I'm outside and walking around on the ramp and yeah feeling a bit tired and a bit slightly grumpy but not super grumpy but maybe a little disoriented also just to give my state and I didn't really organize my thoughts in advance but I think I like to yeah just follow the movement of my walking and this movement practice thinking and moving together from the feedback around also um here and yeah

I think a lot of the things we were working with this week or a lot of the things related to doing this kind of collective processes are quite close to my heart or important to me I think or aspects of them at least and so for me it's nice to give feedback and I also feel a lot of trust towards you as being very experienced, Marisa, being very grounded and very open and not defensive or something very meditative also, and interested and observant and just not judging so quickly or not so reactive in a surface way. I don't know if that's clear but anyway I feel comfortable giving some feedback and the trust that it's welcomed and on listen to in a very open way, which is really great nice feeling.

Normally I don't I just give feedback if I don't feel comfortable or, if it's maybe anonymous, maybe it's very frustrating because I like to be engaged and sharing my voice, and saying my opinion that is already a treat so, yeah, anyway blah blah blah blah blah that's a lot already this voice message is going to be long. I hope you have some patience maybe I will have to transcribe this into text, I don't know. So yes, and also I was thinking do I want to name all that some thing's may become as sounding more positive or negative, like things I liked, didn't like blah blah. I don't know if I should try to make it like super balanced or I have a feeling like I have more clarity maybe about the negative things which are some details maybe or larger things and then the positive things are more there are some specific things but also more diffuse.

I feel like some processes were happening this week that are not yet clear to me that are yeah that are subconscious or that they're moving on different channels than in my prefrontal cortex and I really feel this is happening but I don't have a grasp of it so that's something I want to acknowledge that I think there was something very rich and nursing and interesting that did happen on a level that's not really accessible right now.

I think especially because of working with the body that thinks things are happening yeah through the body doing these exercises being together blah blah blah, yes and then on the more conscious level I think maybe one of the things that stands out most to me is inspiring and interesting for me both, I think in particular just how I am as a human being and everything I do but also in whatever creative endeavors or work I'm doing, but really just as a way of being with people and with myself and in life is something I observe you Marisa like your way of working with us and just like there's something very dancy about it. I guess the word I would say is something that's like grounded, and fluid at the same time, flexible but also intentional, yeah, those are nice active adjectives to describe it, I think.

And yeah this is how I want to be in my life, yeah, grounded, fluid, flexible, intentional and I felt like this was really cool to see it in front of me in the way you were interacting with us, and I think it was both like in the individual interactions one-on-one, and then also with yourself and also with the group decision-making, guiding leading space open, but also making decisions yourself and guiding the flow of things sensing also the energy in the room, sensing when it's, you know, people are right for a break, or like that people are not really into this open sharing. Maybe there's different moments where this sensitivity was really, I thought, very fruitful or lovely as a way, as a guiding thing, yes. So that for me was a major, like, inspiration and valuable thing for me in this week, yeah and I think maybe what else could I say as a feedback… Well maybe I go through the… I have a small list of things I would do differently and this is yeah my personal spontaneous momentary feeling about it as suggestions or impressions from my personal point of view. 

Let's see, yeah, okay, so one thing I don't know, like, I think one thing is related to this feeling and maybe I could have asked again or clarified I think I still have this feeling of I don't know what we're doing in this week, and I think more clarity around the purpose or for example what we're planning to disband now, like, what is your research question and we are part of your research process actually, and you're talking about consent and research, and I think part of me feels like “Oh, I actually want to know more what it is you're interested in when working with us in this way”. And maybe a clearer sense of how we will be working during the week, like, I guess something about feeling a bit confused of what's happening and then I'm sort of like “Okay I'll wait and see”, but then by the time you wait and see you don't have this moment of being able to relate to it or decide about it because it's already then too late or something.

I don't know, there's a conundrum there a little bit, maybe saying it at the beginning doesn't clarify because we don't see it yet so maybe this can run in parallel, but I think I was missing a bit of like OK what are we doing or I think just give the feedback of like collective decision-making process. There could have been a more explicit discussion for example about how we want to decide things together and in the very first day you said something about you don't want to work hierarchically you want to work at eye level and I'm regretting this whole week of not insisting or questioning this beginning moment, like, what does it mean to be at eye level and what kind of decision-making structures do we want to use. And what do we want to wait and what is important to follow and what not, and I think sort of this more explicit talking about how we intend to be together would, for me, have been something that created more trust and more clarity and more sense of engagement.

Also because I know what it is I'm relating to and then I feel more like I can decide how I position myself motivationally or consensually or intentionally to it, so maybe it's connected also to this theme of intention, like what are the intentions more explicitly could also be a way to get it. Yeah so I don't… this is maybe having a trouble articulating myself completely clearly, but I think I would have wished for various things including how we make decisions or whose responsibility or what are the different rules to be made more verbally explicit, more specific yes.

So that's I think maybe the topic. Then on the first day some concerns were raised about consent and touch. I think I didn't I didn't raise my voice on the first day for whatever reason not wanting to be speaking or things, but I shared the concerns that were raised and the feeling I had also was a bit like, okay, for a group that is heterogeneous and some people might not have experience with touch, some people might have, yeah, various traumas with touch so I felt like the physical interview exercise on the first day without talking about consent, for me that also went just a bit too fast.

I think just as a specific detail, yes, and I think in general I also don't know, like, this week is maybe really the focus on movement so then maybe it doesn't make sense to do a lot of things about verbal consented communication or trust. But if it's about collectivity for me I would have appreciated more attention also on, yeah, on these aspects of consent and on the communication maybe on trust, yeah. And then connected to that I was saying today in the physical interview at the end, I felt like not as connected to the group as I would have wished, and I think this has to do with like wanting to hear how people are doing really or authentically and I think there are techniques that can be used to really create actually more trust than we had I think.

We had a lot of trust and I felt good in the group but I also didn't feel like really in touch with how people are doing and didn't feel like they were speaking up that much about how they are and what's going on and, for example, having like one-on-one check-ins, like not in just the big group but a smaller one-on-one check in that just stays between those two people or a three-way check in – those kinds of format, in my experience, they create a different kind of space for sharing that creates connection in the group even if it is only exchanged between a couple of people. But if you do those things over and over each day you can have, yeah, this sort of decentralized checking in that creates a web that helps connect the group. So that's one concrete way I could imagine feeling more connected, yeah, and maybe there would be more trust and more authenticity whatever that is, yes.

If anything else, I think that's maybe some stuff enough. Oh yeah, maybe the other thing was that like what is this useful for what is the reflection time I think, for my person, I would have wished to talk about, like, what could this be useful for, or why are we doing this, what is the purpose of this because it was framed a bit for me, in my head, it’s like “Okay, these are things that are transferable or helpful for generative processes for collaboration”, but maybe talking about that a bit earlier, for me, would help me, yeah.

I think I already said this in the group but connect to what we're doing not just on the last day, but a bit earlier maybe on the third day or the second day, or maybe have that be, like, a little bit on the second day and a little bit on the fourth day or something, yes. Another thing I would wish for while I'm making a wish list, I guess, is dedicated time for personal writing that's longer like 1/2 hour of personal reflection or writing time in the course. I mean, of course I know that I could do it on my own time, but life is also quite dense at times, and consider that as part of the practice, I think, it would be great. I felt, I think I got over saturated or suffocated with always being in interaction, or interactimg a lot so having this sort of alone time with the material, and reflection and writing would have been fruitful for me, yes.

And yes, besides that I think I can say it was quite rich. It was connected to various topics that interest me a lot especially like, yeah, movement and thinking and movement and writing different practices. I feel like I got in touch with a lot of ideas of how one can be interacting with these topics. like. the exercises and the variations of them also the different reflections that happened in the group were very fruitful for me, I think, because I heard other people's thoughts, I had new ideas or different feelings or observations were confirmed that I was like having a shared experience.

These kinds of things were for me, I felt, sort of, yeah, little seeds that I can nourish if I want to or follow threads that I can follow if I want to, so I felt like there was a lot of a lot of like seeds and threads that started here. What I was bit maybe missing in the experience of it is the feeling of going into a rabbit hole a bit or a depth or going a little bit deeper. It felt kind of, yeah, more horizontal than vertical if that makes sense, but, yeah I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. I think for my taste I would like to go more deep into something like, in the future, in the lab for example, yeah, I'm not sure exactly what deep means but I'll leave it just as a word and yes I think I will wrap it up there.

Again, a lot of appreciation for the way you did everything, Marisa, and also, like, very impressed with your sensitivity, attentiveness to everyone, yeah, the groundedness, relaxedness – really, really respect for that. Yeah, a lot of care and also that you respected your own individuality and your own desires in the process. I thought that was great, like, you also weren't sacrificing yourself for the group or something. It was… it's you're owning your own thing which I guess makes sense, very much sense to me, or I felt that at least. It's maybe just an interpretation or it's just an interpretation of mine but that makes sense to me when you say this is, yeah, not as you teaching us but an exploration together, yeah, and in general that's what you were jumping in and not being apart, like, away or distant, but you jump in. And putting yourself in, also that created definitely a lot of trust for me and, yeah, respect and interest and yes, okay, I just talked a lot. This is probably very long, apologies if it's too much or too convoluted. I guess this is what I have to say. Bye.