Preparations for Being Together in an Unknown Period of Time
preparations for being together in an unknown period of time
The content on this website represents elements of individual research by students from the Master of Education in Arts, class of 2021.
A significant part of the two years attending the Master course was spent during the COVID-crisis, which included several nationwide lockdowns. This unique situation impacted our individual practices, as well as education in general. The isolation stemming from the lockdown made us increasingly aware of physical presence as a meaningful aspect of education, as well as of an urgency to devote ourselves to a collective decision-making process in preparing our research and presentation. Could we maybe collaborate and make the radical proposal to graduate as a group? We searched for common ground because we felt the need to land somewhere. In our search to stay connected, to the Masters and to the group, we experienced the complexities of collective educational practice in an unknown period of time, while at the same time going through our individual research processes.
What was perceived from the outside as kindness and respect towards one another in our group, eventually turned out to be an inability to come to decisions and occasional unwillingness to take individual responsibility for this collective process and we had to leave the idea of a collective graduation. Whether these characteristics stemmed from the situation we were placed in, our specific group dynamic, or a combination of both, is up for debate (but really it was the dynamic exacerbated by the situation). We do believe that this process has influenced our sense of collectiveness, and spurred us to stay in constant preparation for being together.
We tried to make sense of the shared digital space and throughout our sessions, questions emerged: How could we help construct a better working environment in digital space. What would we all need in order to better do/present our work? How would we each like to be present? In which ways are we each able to be present? The individual researches on the following pages were all influenced by this context, in one way or another, either deliberately or because it was impossible to avoid. We hope you will enjoy wandering around this binder and time capsule of a specific historical moment in time.