Speaking to the imagination

Following is a short excerpt from my e-book Near and Far, which is a collage of excerpts from interviews I did about the arts as a transversal process within interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary collaborations.

I’ve decided to put two short excerpts together in this note. Anke de Vrieze and Lamine Sonko are both talking here of getting past language that “confuses” by tapping into the imagination, something that everyone has whether they know it or not.

Illustration by Rebecca Stewart.

Anke de Vrieze, Centre for Unusual Collaborations

Anke: (Having described how CUCo uses creative facilitation methods to train their research teams) So, this use of metaphors and metaphorical thinking is already something that we find really useful in this working across disciplines, because language is also something that confuses. Because we often think we talk about the same thing, but we don't. Using metaphors is a way to realize that or to explain something to someone who's not from your field in a way that they can understand. So, I find something that is more of an arts-based mindset to work with these metaphors to be useful. So that is something that we do.

In the training that we now provide to new people who want to enter our Spark program, we use a lot of arts-based or creative methods that also accommodate different ways of knowing. So not only words and the cognitive, but also more embodied ways of learning. These creative forms also add some fun and humour to it which also breaks the ice. So, I think that's also important.

Lamine Sonko, Interdisciplinary Artist

Meredith: In all of these interviews I've done with people, I've always asked, when do you counter resistance to what you do? When you take your arts practice into other spaces where maybe they don't understand your beautiful philosophy, of how your art is embedded in a Senegalese vision of the cosmos and our place within that? Do you get resistance from people saying: what does that mean? And what do you do with that resistance?

Lamine: I guess we come across some challenges in trying to share a concept that is maybe not understood by many people. And I think it's also the - I wouldn't say the beauty - but it's like the strength of that challenge gives me as a director the get up and go to try and find ways to communicate an idea or a concept that some people may not find a connection to at the very start but may later start to digest. And it also goes back to the knowledge system we are sharing as well. It takes a lifetime to try and connect with it. It takes a lifetime to know how to navigate and put the yin and the yang type of energy together.

But it's important sometimes to just acknowledge that there are challenges or misunderstandings; once you accept that it's there and bring it to the surface of your thoughts, it just kind of helps to find ways to share it in levels that people who don't know much about it can then have time to journey with it in their own time as well. But there are definitely challenges. Sometimes even in organizations where we want to maybe get them to endorse our ideas.

They may not get the concept, but it doesn't mean the concept is no good, it's just that it doesn't speak to the language of understanding. And I guess that's what sometimes is beautiful with art. It goes beyond words, and it goes beyond cultures. It's speaks to the imagination. And we're trying to make our work very profound so that everybody can travel with it in their own way of using the imagination.

Join me for a creative conversation…

Transversal artistry: How do the arts and creativity affect interdisciplinary collaborations?

Join me for a 1-hour discussion. 8am OR 6pm 28 Feb. 2024 AEDT. Free. Online. Book HERE.

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