The Art of knowing through (un)learning: A Transdisciplinary research study on time, play and dance with children and trees

Application summary

Developing and practicing new ways of knowing is critically needed in our time of eco-social polycrisis. Our transdisciplinary explorative project investigates the art of deep knowing through collaboratively and reflectively (un)learning with researchers, dance artists, teachers, children and forests. The project develops artistic and scientific research methodology through putting in dialogue three ways of doing: a) artistic practice and research through dance b) educational ethnography and c) philosophical reflection. The goal is to expand our sense of hope and agency by developing alternative ways of being and knowing which can empower us to decelerate, pause, listen to and protect ourselves and non-human beings that protect us. This requires that we develop our sense of time and how we experience time. To do this we need to widen our dominantly Western, adult-led, human-centered scientific and artistic approaches to knowledge production, and include more embodied, intuitive, imaginative and caring ways of exploring and listening. These include playing with children or learning to play as adults with the help of children as experts and following of non-human participants such as trees. We ask: How can we develop a truly transdisciplinary, participatory and democratic methodology that illuminates the play process of the playing subjects and the environment (forests) as a way of knowing? We invite inclusive groups of participants to develop these ways of being together with us in a series of artistic dance workshops and philosophical inquiry workshops that we organize both in urban settings in New York City and in urban forest settings in Helsinki and Loviisa. The dance and philosophical workshops act both as a method and as data for us. As a result of these workshops we produce both scientific and artistic outcomes: Dance performance and scientific contributions including the fields of early childhood education and philosophy of scientific methods.