The Proposal

Have you ever woven a basket? Getting started is the toughest part - making the first two sticks stay together the way you need them to; tight with sufficient gap. But once you get past that initial hurdle the rest is a lot easier. You slowly start to figure when to pull and how hard. You can now hold the sticks the right distance apart. There’s a technique, yes. But just the articulation of the technique isn’t enough. You are learning something each time you repeat the action. Your hand swiftly moves to grab the next strip. You choose the right one from amidst the bunch in the bucket. You hardly care about the final product anymore - there isn’t a desire for a break or a change or anything of the kind. Your brain is alert and it’s watching the palm leaves in your hand. Each action is complete and whole in itself - in, out, up, around, tug.

There are multiple things that I have gleaned from this and similar experiences of making over the last few semesters. There are moments in the process of making, irrespective of the material, where my usual line of thinking seems to dissolve. There seems to be no purpose for the act that goes beyond the act itself. In these moments, me, the material and my actions are all part of the same movement as one informs the other.

Action for it’s own sake

Through the coming few months I propose to develop for myself a practice of action for it’s own sake. Action for it’s own sake implies a state in which one is completely engaged in the present without any agenda. In this state one is alert to the experiences of the senses and allows this to guide the action. I propose that it is in such a state that one’s mind is open to taking in information and reshaping mental models.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the Hungarian American psychologist, describes this state of being as the state of flow. He attributes a few characteristics to this state of flow - a feeling of being completely present (of timelessness), of being outside everyday reality, of being focused, of going beyond the boundaries of the ego, etc. The concept of flow, though not completely new to the Eastern world, has found great value in shaping educational and occupational practices in the Western world. J. Krishnamurti, the Indian philosopher, describes this as the state of attention in which there is no agenda, no past and no present - a selfless state. Francisco J. Varela says in Ethical Know How and Know What, that humans are constantly moving from one state of ready-for-action to another. He calls any such readiness-for-action a microidentity and the corresponding lived situation a

microworld. He also states that it is the breakdowns, the hinges that articulate microworlds, that are the source of the autonomous and creative side of living cognition.

The concepts mentioned in the paragraph above have been critical in shaping my own concept of action for its own sake. Below are some of it’s key characteristics.

- Completely attention (mentally, physically, spiritually)

- One is able to observe the movement in one’s own thought field

- Clear observation of the present as it is without any biases

- Observation shapes action. Action shapes observation.

- No agenda or prescribed outcome

- Going beyond the Self (Self, as an illusory identity that is created by the mind. It holds on to past experiences, projects future experiences and creates a boundary that limits one’s ability to see the present as it is.)

As an educational practitioner I propose to enquire into the need for action for its own sake in the design of learning spaces or experiences. I will further attempt to design a framework for the facilitation of such a state. This, however, appears to be in stark contrast with the British education system prevalent in India today where there is a constant assessment of learning through predetermined outcomes and goals. Having arrived at these questions through my observations of making and of Papert’s constructionism in practice I will continue using these as the key tools in developing my practice of action for it’s own sake.

Seymour Papert, American mathematician, scientist and educator put forward a theory of learning called constructionism. Similar to Piaget’s Constructivism, Constructionism too states that a learner constructs their own reality through an engagement with the world around them. However, constructionism further states that this happens most effectively when people are active in creating something external whether it’s a sand castle on the beach or a theory of the universe. Being deeply interested in mathematics, the tools Papert created and sought to create were largely within a mathematical, technological or digital framework. Digital tools such as LOGO and Scratch have been some of the revolutionary artefacts to have emerged through the pursuit of this learning theory. Despite this, ideas put forth by Papert such as the value of the following in learning is relevant to all educators:

- Build

- Create

- Investigate

- Experiment

- Situated concrete knowledge

- Objects-to-think-with

- Situated-ness in one’s culture

- Tools for relating with people

These form the basis for my enquiry into the construction of knowledge and learning through making.

The public education in Indian today is directed by it’s emphasis on abstract intellectual growth with little or no emphasis on the holistic growth of a child and it’s people. This, however, had not been the traditional way of learning in India prior to it’s colonisation. S.N. Balagangandhara, Professor of Western and Indian philosophy at Ghent University, contrasts the Eurocentric knowledge systems to Indian ones by stating that the problem of action in these two cultures is that in one culture one has to know to act and in the other one has to act to know. His essay, Comparative Anthropology and Action Sciences - An Essay on Knowing to Act and Acting to Know further states three key properties of action knowledge - first, that in Indian knowledge systems exemplar actions generate new actions, second, that it is the context dependence of the action that lends it it’s generative quality, third, that it is that one’s ability to execute a new action is indifferent to the presence of absence of goals.

The handicraft traditions in India have been passed on for centuries from one generation to the next. The ways of living and being within their communities have been shaped by these traditions of making and doing. I propose to enquire into the embodied knowledge systems that have evolved and exist in such Indian communities. The assumption is that artisanal practices are a form of action knowledge and are thereby characterised by some of the properties mentioned in the above paragraph. I hope then to develop an understanding of these traditional practices through the use of participatory learning approaches and hope to illuminate how one can understand and facilitate action for it’s own sake.

Gandhi’s educational philosophy, Nai Talim, is one of the most prominent and significant pieces of work within this paradigm. Even in the earliest stages of it’s evolution Gandhi had identified that manual and productive work through local handicrafts should be the primary mode of learning for the Indian people. Whilst he was not against the study of literacy, math and the sciences, he believed these ought to emerge from one’s own embodied experiences. Here too, Gandhi’s greatest concern was an unbiased observation of the truth. The recommendations put forth by the Kothari commission, set up by the Indian Government in 1964-66 to examine all aspects of the education system, too prioritised the need for vocational education and work-experience for the children and people of India. It states the importance of these practices for the moral and holistic development of a child. Through both these examples one can find that in India, particularly, there has been a long felt need for educational practices to involve manual work as a way of constructing, sharing and nurturing knowledge that goes beyond the defined boundaries of literacy, math, science, religion, etc.

As K.G. Subramanyam so lyrically puts it in his manuscript of The Magic of Making:

A study of the methods of these potters and brass-founders can revolutionise our concept of sculpture. Sculpture that drapes a dynamic core. Or holds a breathing space captive. Or grows from simple architectonic units to complex figuration. Or Jumps from one figural entity to another. Also change our views on the nature of perception, showing that it is fluid, not fixed, moving from image to image; that no image is final; that to give an image to a fact, we take recourse to fantasy, an image being the image of the model we have devised of a thing. And tell us how a sculpture that merges with the landscape can also stand out and reanimate it.