Presentation for the Art of Douting

Some extract from videos I took of people reacting to the book. This is a really short summery of what I collected.

The flip book itself is very playful and people like to interact with it. They start flipping through the pages and create different combinations. Some react by just commenting no/yes. Others start a whole discussion about what they see. And sometimes when they read something, they remember a person or a story.

It made people definitely aware of their relationships, but still something was missing. The connection to the other party seemed to be quite one sided. The others do stay silent in this experiment. Expect some cases when two people do look at the book together.

first iteration

second iteration

In the last iteration the focus was on a 'I' reacting to an other party, that was not present in the moment. Trying to leave the bubble of the 'I', I changed the setting for the second iteration.

This means instead of letting somebody read: 'I cry in front of a stranger' and letting them react to it. I would myself search for somebody that is a stranger to me, and confront them with the question: 'How would you feel if I start to cry now? How would you feel?'

Still I was searching for the feeling of a community, which was both missing in the first and the second iteration. So for the next experiment I wanted to work with a whole group and ask this group about their sharing and trusting to others. I choose to use a group I am part of, because I did not want to create the feeling of 'I' seeing them, but the feeling of community around me.

I sat together with my roommates and we walked through the apartment and talked about different objects. Do we share them? Why do we share this and not that? Could we imagine to share it? What would be the border?

Later I showed the cards to other people and asked them to write down what their habits are. This again was a individual I asked. Preferably as a next step I would like to show the set of cards to a group of people how are also roommates and let them us it without myslef being there.

This was a complete shift away from my topic, to the topic of intimacy and how the showing of privte emotion can make people uneasy.

independency = freedom = happienss
independency is a lie
together we are stronger

I started with these three statements. They contradict each other and still seem to be true. I did research about independency, dependency, freedom

resarch

summary

and happiness. One tobic stood out: the group

Why do we form groups?
I researched animals living in swarms and herds and also why humans form groups. The philosopher Harari says that the humans are different from animals in one specific thing: We are not only able to talk about existing things but also about imagination. This makes us able to have a collective imagination or dream. And this means we can trust and work together in groups with people we do not know.

So the way we share and trust actually makes us stronger? In my research I found hounders of lists like: "How to be more independent in 10 steps" or why "8 points why independency makes you happy" They imply that independency is the goal and independent people are strong, confident and happy. I do not
I do not believe that independency is a complete lie. On some levels it will create freedom, but to be independent you still have to understand the relationships that define you.

Over all I think the first iteration will raise your awareness and start you doubting about the relationships that are around you. The second one, made me doubt about the iteration itself and helped me define the borders of my project. The last one works in one specific kind of groups "the roommates". It concentrates on object, but still it starts a conversation on how we live together and what other things we could imagine.

I moved away from the topic of independency and dependency during my process and started focusing on relationships and the groups that form, but I still see a connection to it as these relationships can be defined as independencies, dependencies or interdependencies.

My conversation pieces were created to make you aware of your relationships and what groups you form, what rules apply in your groups, but also to realize that these things are fluid and intersectional and not static, which means you can change them.