ARTICLE: Facilitation of Co-Thinking: Self-Examination and Creating Alliances

Initially, the Co-Thinking project had two aims. The first was to connect people working at the intersection of science and art, who are associated with such diverse disciplines, environments and institutions that they are often unaware of each other’s practices and have no opportunity to collaborate. The second was to create a space where these people could co-create knowledge and discourse about artistic research (AR) in Poland based on their experiences. In this context, facilitation—understood as supporting groups in democratic processes of getting to know each other and co-creating knowledge—seemed an appropriate teamwork method.

With this in mind, Anna Majewska, curator and initiator of the Co-Thinking project, invited Alicja Czyczel and the ¿Czy badania artystyczne? Trio (CBA), represented here by Paulina Brelińska-Garsztka and Zofia Reznik, to collaborate on a facilitation concept for the meetings. We drew on various experiences and facilitation strategies in the resulting four-person team. Alicja, who works in the field of choreography and somatic education, supporting groups and communities such as Przestrzeń Wspólna, the Squir group and the KEM School, contributed awareness of the embodied dimension of co-thinking, as well as rest and slow action as forms of resistance and reparation. Paulina and Zofia, on the other hand, collaborating as the ¿CBA? Trio (with Zofia Małkowicz), approached AR practices from diverse perspectives: academic, curatorial, institutional, business, passionate and creative. They were also constantly searching for space between different disciplines of art and science. Based on the experience of mapping the Polish AR community during a conference in 2020, they proposed, among other things, activities involving the use of Self-Examination Cards as a way of mapping the relationship between research and artistic practices of the participants, as well as reflecting on the diversity of disciplinary languages they use and methods of documenting, aggregating and self-archiving the knowledge created in the process of ‘co-thinking’. In turn, Anna, researching knowledge production practices at the intersection of art and science as part of a scholarship awarded by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, proposed a model of collective self-examination in which agency is taken over by people associated with the given field of study. Drawing on her curatorial experience and expertise in curating collective processes, Anna introduced tools to the Co-Thinking project that allow for the decentralisation of power in a project and group decision-making about the course of research.

Based on the experience of this collaboration, we share our reflections on facilitation as a self-exploratory method that enables bottom-up co-creation of knowledge about artistic research. In analysing the impact of our practices on the group process in this context, we have identified four aspects of facilitation that were particularly crucial to us:

1. Facilitation as a tool for mapping research questions and identifying needs in the AR community.
2. Facilitation as a method of decentralising power in knowledge creation.
3. Facilitation as a way of thinking with the body.
4. Facilitation as a method of building alliances in the mostly precarious type of work performed by most people working in the AR field.

Presented below is a brief description of these, in the hope that our observations will contribute to the further development of self-reflexive and embodied activities in the field of artistic research.

In the first phase of the Co-Thinking project, after drafting a contract governing communication in the group and the organisation of work, we invited the participants to pose questions that would set the directions for our talks and activities. These questions included the following:

1. Survival strategies: How can artistic research be conducted in precarious working conditions?
2. How would we want to work if there were no limitations?
3. How to obtain big money from business for artistic research?
4. What would happen if artistic research remained outside the mainstream, and what would happen if it entered it?
5. What collaborative practices exist in the field of artistic research in Poland?
6. How can we share knowledge and experience in artistic research?
7. What can our group do for artistic research in Poland?
8. What should cultural institutions do for artistic research in Poland?
9. How do we interpret the terms “artistic research”, “practice as research”, etc. in the Polish context?
10. What terms do we use to describe our practices and how do we understand them?
11. How to create a situated narrative on AR in Poland that considers the specificities of local practices? How to respond to the Western discourse on artistic research?

This diverse set of questions indicates three intertwined problem areas that the participants wanted: a discourse on practices at the intersection of art and science: grassroots strategies for collaboration and co-creation of knowledge. This problem map reflects the general situation of artistic research creators in Poland, who lack material and substantive support. Therefore, the common denominator of all the questions we have formulated is ultimately precarity—grassroots collaborations become survival strategies in the face of precarity. The creation of narratives about AR becomes a way to strengthen the position of its creators in the cultural field.

Some of the questions listed above reflect not only the need to improve the material conditions of work but also to oppose the neoliberal commodification of knowledge, which is weel suited to the appropriating form of institutionalisation of artistic research, which can be observed, among others, in Western Europe. In Poland, approaches to art and research take shape rapidly before our eyes, so we still have a chance to build alternative strategies for supporting experimental cognitive processes. When we mapped our research interests, this need to search for alternatives based on analysing grassroots practices and the experience of people working on AR in the local context was voiced clearly.

During the first meeting, each person in the facilitation team was responsible for a different phase of the process. This division of labour allowed us to rest and take our minds off the sessions led by the other facilitators and to decentralise curatorial authority and influence over the shape of shared thinking. By occasionally stepping out of the facilitator role and handing it over to someone else, we were able to include more facilitator perspectives in the process. Each of us used different strategies to support creative practices (discursive, speculative, embodied, etc.), which intertwined and activated different resources in the group. The possibility of changing roles allowed us to observe how different ways of conducting the group process—different sensitivities, working methods and ways of communicating—influenced the knowledge we co-created. This perspective allowed us to learn from each other and continuously respond to the group’s needs.

During the second conference, we decided to further distribute agency throughout the knowledge creation process by inviting participants to lead individual sessions on one of the research questions we had jointly identified. This form of participation was voluntary. Most of the people who took on this task prepared the session in transdisciplinary teams of two or three people. The sessions that took place within this framework included sessions on collective working methods in the field of AR (Julia Krupa and Paweł Świerczek), critical reading of theoretical texts on AR (Paulina Brelińska-Garsztka, Tytus Szabelski, Anna Majewska), the multisensory dimension of co-thinking (Anna Majewska, Antoni Michnik, Piotr Morawski), the creation of a performative glossary on AR (Katarzyna Kania, Anna Majewska, Piotr Morawski), and strategies for cooperation or AR with business (Aleksandra Skowrońska). During the preparation of the sessions, each group proposed a different co-thinking formula, tailored to the direction of our research and based on the working methods and experiences of the individual leaders. Involving the participants in the design of selected elements of the process opened the way to experimenting with new methods of artistic and research work, which helped us to find answers to the questions formulated at the beginning of the process.

In the final part of the second meeting we invited the group to decide on the next steps we could take together. We wanted to strengthen the potential for joint activities in support of AR in Poland, based on the interests and needs of the group, without putting pressure on the participants to deliver material results immediately. Together we decided that we would like to maintain the continuity of the co-thinking process in the current formula and deepen our reflection on the research questions outlined so far. At the same time, we want to gradually make the rich and ever-growing archive of Co-Thinking available to the public through various media and plan activities aimed at bringing other people doing AR in Poland into the conversation and supporting them in their production work.

The group has collectively decided that our working model will be cooperative in nature, allowing for the delegation of some managerial, production, and curatorial tasks to individual team members. To continue our work, Anna Majewska and Piotr Morawski, on behalf of Co-Thinking, are currently seeking financial support by obtaining grants and building alliances with cultural institutions that support AR in Poland.

In designing the framework for the facilitation process, we tried to consider the relationships of the co-thinking bodies with their natural and cultural environment: architecture, nature and the seasons. The first meeting took place in the summer at the European Centre for Geological Education in Chęciny, located on the slopes of Mount Rzepka in a disused quarry. The cavernous mountain landscape and the proximity of rocks and plants in the meadows inspired us to modify some of the facilitation suggestions (e.g. combining a walk to the top of the mountain with an extended mindfulness practice that preceded the discussion) and to facilitate meetings taking into account the time of day and the weather (e.g. working in the shade of birch trees, sheltering from the rain, listening to the sounds of flowing water). The relationship-building and group formation process was marked by extra-curricular walks and conversations around the fire. The architecture of the building allowed an instant transition from inside to outside, which made it easy for us to construct a temporary architecture for our meetings (notes stuck to the windows from which we created a spatial installation) and to choreograph the flow of bodies (resting, socialising, etc.).

We began most sessions by asking each participant about their needs, state of mind and body, which allowed us to be mindful of the somatic dimension of cognitive experience and knowledge creation. We tried to invite people to think together comfortably—sitting on the floor or cushions in the workshop room, laying on the grass or walking in the open air with a mountainous landscape and sky in the background. This practice contributed to the relaxation of the body and helped us to loosen habitual ways of thinking, unseal epistemic hierarchies and multiply friendly coexistence.

The second meeting took place in mid-November at WOK. The autumnal darkness and chill in the centre of the metropolis made it more difficult to think with our bodies than at the July meeting in the countryside. In these circumstances we felt the precarious reality of artistic and research work more acutely, the season of writing grant applications and managing grants was approaching, making it difficult to concentrate on the group process. Under these circumstances, a communal dinner, initiated and prepared by Julia Krupa and Monika Popiel, was a caring act for our weary bodies. The pleasure of cooking, decorating the room, smelling, tasting, talking and laughing together was intended to help us overcome the alienation from our bodies caused by our work’s precarious nature, making it challenging to think together.

Most people participating in the process did not know each other, so at the beginning of our collaboration we proposed several exercises to help us get to know each other’s research and artistic practices. One of them was to fill in Self-Examination Cards containing questions about the place of artistic research in our biographies. Everyone was asked to write their answers on the cards, which were then displayed on the windows of the Chęciny centre the following day. Then, everyone was asked to find commonalities between our diverse artistic and research practices and mark them in our space with coloured yarn. In this performative way, we were able to create a map of connections and relationships between us, which we returned to later, getting to know each other better, sharing different methods of working on the verge of art and science, laying the groundwork for future alliances in the field of AR.

The measures we took as facilitators to build group relationships were our own initiative and a response to the wishes of like-minded people who asked for more ‘gaps’ in the programme and for more casual, semi-open structures to facilitate more individual contact between participants. In response to these needs, we tried to create a space for spontaneous walks; we built a bonfire, we watched the opening of the Olympic Games together (which reminded us of film evenings at summer camps), and during the Warsaw edition of the meeting we even had a ‘dating pass’ aimed at setting up ‘dates’ to do certain activities with other people or talk in smaller groups.

Supporting the building of relationships between participants through various self-exploration and networking exercises, as well as movement, food and other shared activities, was crucial in the facilitation process of the Co-Thinking project due to the precariousness of the artistic research environment. Many people pointed to the lack of institutional support and recognition for the ways of creating knowledge practised in AR. We talked a lot about the need to constantly negotiate with institutions, to navigate grant procedures that are not adapted to our practices, and to figure out how to survive in precarious working conditions. These exhausting activities are linked to the experience of alienation of artistic researchers in the conventional and normative fields of art and science. One person summed up her participation in the process poignantly and emphatically by saying that she “needed the Co-Thinking project to stop feeling alone in what she was doing”.

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We share these facilitation strategies, based on awareness of the relational dimension of knowledge production and sensitivity to co-thinkers’ needs, hoping they will help other self-examination and self-exploration groups working in AR. We believe that similar practices will strengthen artistic and research co-thinking in Poland and at the same time allow us to preserve the political potential emerging from it. We want AR to remain independent and escape ossified epistemic norms. However, the ephemeral nature that allows artistic research to continue to resist the semi-capitalist commodification of knowledge should not be a reason for its underfunding and marginalisation. We hope that the Co-Thinking project will give rise to many processes of grassroots alliance-building which will create decent working conditions for people involved in doing AR while preserving the field’s diversity, liminal nature and subversive character.