Aesthetic Qualities of the Experience
Video / Seminar
2012
Interviews from 3 different windsurf spots in Portugal where I asked windsurfers who just came out of the water. to describe the feeling of flow.
2012
Interviews from 3 different windsurf spots in Portugal where I asked windsurfers who just came out of the water. to describe the feeling of flow.
These interviews were part of a one-day seminar investigating The Aesthetic Qualities of the Experience of Flow in Windsurfing
presented at Fábrica do Braço de Prata, Lisbon 2012 with guest speaker Prof. in Philosophy Nuno Nabais and performance by Gabriel Barbi.
A series of One-day seminars investigating
The Experience of Flow from Windsurfing as an Aesthetic Experience
Why windsurfing?
I remember the first time I experienced flow when I was windsurfing. I had been struggling for months to get it all right. Just balancing the board was difficult for me, and then the manoeuvring of the sail, testing what the sail could do for me and the realisation that the sail was my friend.
I remember a lot of falling in the water and the heavy weight of pulling the sail up again. The scare of the harness, fixing the torso to the sail and the feet to the board. I knew it would be painful to fall then.
But the first time I dared to do it, I leaned back and everything else did the work for me. I was sitting in a huge couch, flying close over the water surface and the sound of flaff flaff flaff from the board touching the water was all I could hear.
For several hours later I was so indescribable happy, satisfied, safe, light and strong.
I believe that this great experience has a unique power of emancipation and creativity and that such state have a critical potential that needs to be articulated in the context of art.
By putting the experience of flow from windsurfing into the context of aesthetics, I will organize a series of One-day seminars, which will be held in 4 different cities in Europe, within a One-year period.
The opening seminar will be held at Fábrica do Braço de Prata, Friday 13th of July, 10 pm to 1 am.
The seminar will include:
Stine Kvam (Artist) will introduce the idea behind the seminar.
Nuno Nabais (Professor in Philosophy at the University of Lisbon) will discuss the critical qualities of flow as aesthetic experience,
Gabriel Barbi (Artist) will make a performace.
The starting-point for the seminar is based on following questions:
-Can flow as an aesthetic experience contribute to the critical potential that art inherent, in its search for new territories of conception and understanding of our life and existential issues?
-Can flow posses a critical potential in the representation of art, in the fact, that this aesthetic experience challenges the role of the spectator and the regime of visibility in art?
-Can flow as an aesthetic experience re-actualize phenomenological concepts in a practical context?
-Why do beginners keep on windsurfing when they fall in the water, again and again and again and again?
-Is windsurfing, due to the amount of equipment and free time needed, an activity reserved for the middle-class and others with financial means? How does this relate in a social context?
-Why go surfing when this experience of flow is so dependent on conditions and is so difficult to achieve? Why not take a pill?
-Is the Do-It-(For)-Yourself attitude in windsurfing an emancipation from social, political and institutional structures in society?
-Or is it merely a concept of modernity, always looking for the next kick?
It's in the nature of flow that the practitioner cannot get too comfortable. If he or she masters the situation too well, they will lose the flow.
-Does this property of non-comfortability have a potential in a political context?
Because the experience of flow is a fluid and indescribable experience, the seminar will search for different approaches, contradictory points of views and possible dead-ends in search for new ideas, conceptions and understandings of art and human beings in our time.
Stine Kvam (organizer)
I'm a Norwegian artist, currently attending an Independent study course at Maumaus in Lisbon.
The Experience of Flow from Windsurfing as an Aesthetic Experience
Why windsurfing?
I remember the first time I experienced flow when I was windsurfing. I had been struggling for months to get it all right. Just balancing the board was difficult for me, and then the manoeuvring of the sail, testing what the sail could do for me and the realisation that the sail was my friend.
I remember a lot of falling in the water and the heavy weight of pulling the sail up again. The scare of the harness, fixing the torso to the sail and the feet to the board. I knew it would be painful to fall then.
But the first time I dared to do it, I leaned back and everything else did the work for me. I was sitting in a huge couch, flying close over the water surface and the sound of flaff flaff flaff from the board touching the water was all I could hear.
For several hours later I was so indescribable happy, satisfied, safe, light and strong.
I believe that this great experience has a unique power of emancipation and creativity and that such state have a critical potential that needs to be articulated in the context of art.
By putting the experience of flow from windsurfing into the context of aesthetics, I will organize a series of One-day seminars, which will be held in 4 different cities in Europe, within a One-year period.
The opening seminar will be held at Fábrica do Braço de Prata, Friday 13th of July, 10 pm to 1 am.
The seminar will include:
Stine Kvam (Artist) will introduce the idea behind the seminar.
Nuno Nabais (Professor in Philosophy at the University of Lisbon) will discuss the critical qualities of flow as aesthetic experience,
Gabriel Barbi (Artist) will make a performace.
The starting-point for the seminar is based on following questions:
-Can flow as an aesthetic experience contribute to the critical potential that art inherent, in its search for new territories of conception and understanding of our life and existential issues?
-Can flow posses a critical potential in the representation of art, in the fact, that this aesthetic experience challenges the role of the spectator and the regime of visibility in art?
-Can flow as an aesthetic experience re-actualize phenomenological concepts in a practical context?
-Why do beginners keep on windsurfing when they fall in the water, again and again and again and again?
-Is windsurfing, due to the amount of equipment and free time needed, an activity reserved for the middle-class and others with financial means? How does this relate in a social context?
-Why go surfing when this experience of flow is so dependent on conditions and is so difficult to achieve? Why not take a pill?
-Is the Do-It-(For)-Yourself attitude in windsurfing an emancipation from social, political and institutional structures in society?
-Or is it merely a concept of modernity, always looking for the next kick?
It's in the nature of flow that the practitioner cannot get too comfortable. If he or she masters the situation too well, they will lose the flow.
-Does this property of non-comfortability have a potential in a political context?
Because the experience of flow is a fluid and indescribable experience, the seminar will search for different approaches, contradictory points of views and possible dead-ends in search for new ideas, conceptions and understandings of art and human beings in our time.
Stine Kvam (organizer)
I'm a Norwegian artist, currently attending an Independent study course at Maumaus in Lisbon.
Speaker Prof. Nuno Nabais