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Flotilla debrief, Friday, 14 December 2012 10:34:48 AM
Rasa, Shelli, Tim, Nik, Maja, Uroš, Bart, Carole, Alkan, Christina, Pacome, Dismas, Natalya, Marko
three questions about how we work together on interesting things in this scenario:
yourself and the collective the flotilla as a possible future the prehearsal method
you and the collective
Tim
- like being permanently stoned in a safe space
- useful even if something self-imposed, creating a feeling of value by making our lives more difficult then more easy - like setting yourself a small maths problem
- the ladder added an extra degree of silliness to the proceedings, but was it necessary?
- gamemaster roles unclear
- engineering problem with the power - what is the scenario and what is a “real” issue? - unclear where the line was between this
- made-up responsibilities, but the feast the only real responsibility
Carole
- entering a very pretty and welcoming space, a home but different from home
- inspired by the names - first session transported me to the ship
- took me a while to realise about the electricity crisis - need a system in place for critical or dangerous situations
- names created an imaginary of a faraway land and involved a long rite of passage in choosing, which turned my journey into something else
- an emergency at home meant I had to leave my persona for the whole afternoon - really affected my personal experience - frustrating
- need to be very prepared for a 24-hour period in another role
- enriching over-excitement about so many great ideas and things to do
- felt everything took a long time to do - took ages to do simple tasks
Bart
- challenge to still be yourself while being something different
- difficult for a non-human
- inspired by Ben Okri
- I was not an agave plant
- wanted to stir up things if I was bitten by a rat
- impressed by the level of activity that developed
- struggle the first day, next day easier
- talking/interacting with objects, non-human entities, e.g. automaton
- lots of ideas about the future development of the non-human
- people created a multiverse, talking about external world a challenge
- surprised by the activities - not more done with the mayhem
- wanted to see people find resilience in their flotilla roles but people took up their typical roles in daily life
- the fiction vs nonfiction tension
Rasa
- natural role to play, suited me very well: serving food, organising, etc.
- festiveness worked well
- as a collective we have such a great bond with partners - like a family coming together, no need for ice-breaking
- great diversity
- group was a nice mix - at least one person you didn’t know but also lots of people you know
- names were great but difficult to remember
- creating the feast was extremely special - wow!
- some things quite silly and not necessary but they brought interesting dynamics
Christina
- activities very interesting but without aim or purpose
- only 24 hours to invent these purposes
- no real tasks or problems to solve (except preparing food)
- difficult to leave the scene of Marko’s departure and go and meditate
- constant business - strange to me
- skills make the group very resilient, but we had to invent tasks to use our skills - we managed this very well
Pacome
- didn’t want a specific role - nice to be a passenger
- food - basic task
- a passenger staying longer becomes something else
- ritual very important and nice for creating the fiction
- the mix of reality and fiction: a tool or liability?
Uroš
- came late to the ship which changed my experience - missed the rite of passage, of leaving something behind
- at first tried hard to observe and analyse
- then just enjoyed being at FoAM - a time off, a different tempo
- roles not very structured, not boredom, though some element of laziness
Dismas
- French kissing created quite a lot of poisons…
- choosing the name, chance to read about the culture novels
- collective responsibilities confused with many ideas
- being a cook was flexible - learnt a lot of things, e.g. making bread, schnapps, French kissing workshop, gardening
- working and living together with diverse people really good
- flotilla structure perfect
- all activities a bit chaotic
- openness about sharing information
- getting answer from flexible demeanour you got a flexible answer
- Theun was always trying to find time to sleep
- power cut - contingency plans for this
- real world vs imagined scenario - need to preempt the future
- never tried yoga - everyone talking about energy - bringing energy to people
- collecting resources for the future
Shell
- entry to the Flotilla very moving, opening it up to people not currently at FoAM
- enthusiasm and stress about the costumes was really touching because it showed how important they were for everyone
- many different roles esp. with documentation - really nice but on reflection maybe just one role would have been better - as a quiet meditation
- meditation on responsibility
- relationship to the collective - sometimes I need my own space
- didn’t take time to be there for myself
- dinner was magical
- a vague scheme materialises
- sense of humour really resilient
- to see the space transformed into the Flotilla was magical
- not sure if I understood the role switch - getting into character - maybe more distance to get into character
- magic to be floated away on the Flotilla
Maja
- continuous weight of responsibility of captain
- this ship would have sunk
- things going wrong - electricity was a simple thing but nothing happened
- magnifying glass on how things already are in this group
- amazingly strong with simple clear fun tasks, celebrations - rare to find such trust and ease of togetherness - we could run a restaurant or club easily
- but I’d be really scared to rely on other when things go wrong
- marko’s escape got done really well
- but the shared purpose part was lost in the flurry of activities that are nice but not relevant beyond the group
- very painful because it became crystal clear that many things need to change
Nik
- three main components of the exercise:
- feast
- publication
- maintaining and exploring the scenario
- good at randomly dissipating nervous energy - exciting and frivolous things
- a distance between activities and scenario - making the connection was difficult
- feast leaving behind apocalyptic visions
- the world didn’t end
- publication a good task to reflect on
- brought into focus patterns and antipatterns
- getting into character and finding a place within the scenario enjoyable
- we were building something, but it was very unclear
Natalya
- as a mushroom, mixed feelings
- didn’t know the people or the space
- confused with the costumes - over costumed, over-theatrical - just wanted to shake people out of this
- wanted to some inner connection
- lack of observation, decisions about how and what to do - ok for one day but not longer
- overplayed and artificial, but very enjoyable - still need to digest the experience
- Slovenia was very different - more time to develop
- good to see the same people in different situations but still within one network
Marko
- lost my resilience
- just had an intense month of real-world practices
- liberating situation - thought it was going to be very different - expected very concrete tasks - realised this was not the case
- stoned or removed from reality but shared common interests
- leaving the Flotilla was like bringing an inner world into the outer world - great sense of purpose in the morning - we actually had the ladder, otherwise would have to use sheets
- interesting to see what we were doing made sense
- role-playing was great
- sleeping arrangements and rhythms of sleeping interesting - rest extremely important for resilience
- tendency to sleep in this scenario - in any normal gathering no one would just start sleeping - quite beautiful
- morning really well executed - really sad to leave
- sent SMSs to report my progress after disembarking the Flotilla
- met the Slovenian prime minister (surrounded by about 20-35 women) at the airport after the Flotilla - how to explain where I’d just come from?
- 24 hours very short - read the bulk of the documentation just before the scenario
- shows we still have a child inside - this is the most important and resilient lesson we can learn
- how I described the Flotilla to others: “I was just with a group of very beautiful people”
Alkan
- had a screw loose
- struggle with the whole issue of personal vs collective
- compressed 24 hours was a nightmare come true, was dreading it
- will never be resilient in this kind of scenario
- planning was nice, but got flu just before starting - this made the lack of inner connection to the scenario more pronounced and made it unenjoyable
- but lot of beautiful little moments - like the the late-night silent “ghost” party
- but difficult to find a connection with prehearsal overall
Cocky [via email]
- the group dynamics were going down the drain
- the ones not willing to participate or giving to the whole might have the hardest time, and were just sucking energy from the others
- this mechanism amplified on the Flotilla
- everybody was sort of more floating around rather than heading towards a clear direction
- for myself, I would prefer not to to dedicate myself for/in a community (unless i could fulfil the role of a passenger)
- feels too enclosed - the Flotilla felt more like a cut off entity from the world instead of living in the world
Trudo [via email]
- IMO it proves that linear, and non linear travel are best suited as a way of working, collaborating, or simply getting together
- overall, the 24-hour timeframe, and the politeness of the participants prevented much of the fragility to break
- timeframe was short, on the positive: no need for a lot of magic to make us believe in the trip
Nico [via email]
- it is not an everyday thing for me to find company to speculate without boundaries
- somehow it ended happening that about a couple of dozen of us where gathered in the same space at the same time
- it is a efficient exercise to spend the most valuable resource that we all have (time) under this conditions
- being shameless in proposing new subjects which are then fed by the others is a dynamic in such interesting projects
- I just found a great tool that can be used many times and that will be shared with many others
Loes [via email]
- I think the well established setting (location, costumes, food supplies, gifts) was very good and turned out very important
- appropriating a role went quite naturally when you can stay close to your own person
- there was place for different ambiences: serious thoughts, silence at the campfire, fun, party, ..
- open questions that were posed:
- what does the outside world look like during flotilla?
- what catastrophes would make us actually change our lives this drastically?
- would you ever join a community like flotilla?
- the prehearsal reflects very well the travels and experiments we've taken during Resilients - it was good to have this experience with the whole group
what resilient and what fragile
- respect
- agreement on shared means
- shared supply issues
- issues with taking care of your own trash, awareness of your traces - cleaning up after yourself but goes beyond this to an awareness of the space, of others, of what you use
- as a group we could have resolved this - seeing the real problems and addressing them immediately with people able and willing to help
- issues of self-sustainability and responsibility
- documentation - important but fragile
- lack of clarity in certain situations - e.g. in an emergency: what is an emergency and what to do?
- but this is in conflict with the fiction
- weird in-and-out fiction-real situation contributed to this feeling of being lost
- set of principles (not rules)
- imbalance in principles
- rules and responsibilities emerging spontaneously
- how to self-organise when working together
- roles and real things - if every role had a concrete duty it might have enhanced the prehearsal
- practical down-to-earth survival vs cultural creative resilience - Carole did not know we were doing both - work and life - bot resilient and fragile
- ritual important - concretely for the group and keeping the fiction alive - bridge between everyday life and the fiction
- no game master, laws of physics - fragile
- 100% commitment fragile
- sharing knowledge, resources - resilient
- number of people involved - a limit to the number of people in a group that can function without resorting to formal rules - 25 people?
- original idea of flotilla to have 100-200 people - a mini-society
- demon of resilience - high expectations
- angel - playfulness and lightness
- and for non-humans? - they are both angels and demons
- time for feedback
- e.g. group photos a time for feedback, time out, “reality” checks
prehearsal method
- names - good for another role but took too long to remember
- introduced a fictional element that had less to do with us or our context
- made the exchange more difficult
- everything too complex to do in 24 hours
- people went out of role
- first shift too short - too many things to do
- first shift too long?
- boat metaphor good
- 4 hours a good time - long enough but short enough
- actual design of the flotilla not clear
- unexpected future but no unexpected things happening
- Rasa for example had lots of predefined tasks - she knew what would happen - but most of us didn’t have this sense
- Rasa not aware we would have to divide roles so strictly beforehand
- unequal situation - e.g. Rasa was at home and knew the space/scenario
- time to allow roles to evolve - part of the [pre]design or collectively decided
- everyone involved in the prehearsal should be involved in the scenario preparation from beginning to end - or else have a much more defined structure
- dilemma of more or less structure - if other people are coming in more structure is needed
- a neutral or new space
- methodology really important and takes time - is it really in character, performing, are you playing roles or is this necessary?
- extrapolation of yourself - what would have made this more clear?
- email terrible way of communicating complex stuff - so much left unsaid, what is really important and not
- briefing as important as the prehearsal: more time to talk before going into the prehearsal - deeper collective briefing
- no focus on the dinner the night before, and the morning was also chaotic
- last big meeting 6 months ago, wanted to catch up and talk about our projects but if I’m this character what do I do?
- an unstructured day where there were no roles, names, responsibilities would have been good
- but with formal thing first then people are committed
- tried the informal gathering in June but only two people would have been there
- handbook discussion first?
- preparation vs playing - different between preparing it for ourselves and preparing it for others
- confusion over playing for yourself and for others
- Marko’s role can fit in the scenario - so let it happen
- strictness vs spontaneity
- we could work Marko beforehand, didn’t know about Bart’s
- several briefings?
- e.g. only told our stories once
- but if at every shift change there was an elaboration of the story it would be more effective
- sit down for 20 minutes to write down our roles as a ritual
- prehearsing a skill you can learn?
- if we were on a ship, where are we going, what was the weather, sensual experience of being on the sea?
- scenario round the ship itself - out to sea on its own, travelling round from place to place?
- work on narrative details would have made it more effective
- lots of details not decided on - the network, the water, etc.
- world-building - more frequent discussions would helped this
- integrate a crisis plan for all participants
- building up the values of the flotilla - curiosity, integrity…
- characters - picked beforehand, not changing characters quickly
- confusing changes of characters
- could have made roles more clear from the beginning
- observers - where the ship was heading to - observing even the music as a way of telling where we were
- clearly integrated we could know where we were
- never put your eggs in one basket
- never put all resilients in one boat
- world-building vs improvisation
- develop links, foster the mycelia, where will the mushrooms pop up