Gaia Storytelling Conversations in Berlin

Berlin GAIA STORYTELLING CONVERSATIONS 2020 April 15-18 2020
600 euros for 6participants, 300 euros for students including PhD students

LOCATION INFO www.traditionelles-yoga.de
Brunnenstr. 147
10115 Berlin (M)

           Contact for Registration: Julia Hayden <julia.hayden@eusg.eu>


Storytellers shaping the Gaialog spaces

Julia Hayden: bodymind therapist and Princess Gaia

Anete M. Camille Strand: Material storyteller and associate professor at Aalborg University

Jens Larsen: True storyteller and founder of OldFriendsIndustries

Kenneth Mølbjerg Jørgensen: Terrestrial ethics storymaker and professor at Aalborg University

David M. Boje: A shaman, true storyteller and professor at Aalborg University and emeritus at New Mexico State University.



Four keywords are essential for program: 

natality, personal rework, material practices and politics.

 

Natality is the ground principle of sustainability: the principle of rebirth and of multispecies storytelling as the foundation for rebirth and of the eternal recurrence. Our participants will be ivited to encounter Latour’s work in simple ways on the distinction between Gaia and the Globe. We will  introduce the Gaia hypothesis with its principles here. It is powerful to illuminate that we call human time and space of Gaia and not the other way around.

 

Personal rework is the work with personal stories. We are inspired by Latour’s notion of being “grounded”, making the world “flat” and us the vortex metaphor to try to illuminate the different life processes unfolding differently around us with a different speed and intensity and with different consequences concerning the life processes of Gaia: water use, air, plastic and other resources for instances. In organizations we can say that the problem concerns the way the life processes of processes of finance, production, people and so forth are inconsistent with the life processes of Gaia. Mapping out these relations in a practical way is critical for Gaia storytelling.

 

Latour talks about moving people from material-discursive practices organized around the axis local/global towards a grounded terrestrial beingness, a fundamentally different and progressive kind of discourse and storytelling. It is this kind of rework on both a personal and collective level which we see as important for Gaia Storytelling. In regard to the personal rework we also have some important concepts and tool in protrepsis and body whispering. They can both be seen as important for listening to inner voices of body in terms of what is right and what is wrong.

 

With material practices, we refer to the practices of the organization and thus the technologies for using and manipulating resources and create something different from these resources. Technologies refers to the crafts, skills and judgments of people and the use of material objects and artefacts. Here we become very material but we might need to. Too much ethics has been focused on the personal and not the material. We still need to know about the spacetimemattering of material practices. Sustainable management is also about time, space and matter. And the metaphor of being grounded with the different life processes spinning around is probably because we can illuminate the misalignment between corporate practices—finance, production, resourse use, product life cycles, water, air and so forth—and Gaia cycles of life. In these means, we use material storytelling to map these relations in a three-dimensional way and to make the move from the personal to the material and collective.

 

Finally politics refers to the organization of the collective spaces in which managers and other change agents can make alliances and make things happen. Itis important to consider both standing gaialogical spaces between private, public and plural sectors of society and spaces within organizations. Here we are talking about institutionalizing and initiating changes. Arendt’s terms the public space and the space of appearance is of course important here because it denotes a space that is common for us all and is thus a space where we handle what is common for us all. What is it that we have most in common other than Gaia. The water we drink, the air that we breathe, the life that we all depend on and so forth. We cannot leave that responsibility to companies or to politicians as we have seen in the Trump case and Scott Morrison case.


Tentative program for Gaia Storytelling Conversations:

 

Wednesday 15th

Thursday 16th

Friday 17th

Saturday 18th

Meeting at around lunch time. Lunch and introduction to the program. (for whoever has booked a Session Bodywhispering comes from seven o’clock on in one-hour-rhythm) (5h)

 

Walking tour in the city combined with protrepsis.

 

Summary of protrepsis.

 

Princess Gaia reads…

 

The difference between Gaia and the Globa (presentation and discussion)

 

Dinner in the city

 

 

 

 

 

 

7.00-9.00 meditation, yoga and breakfast

 

9-12.

 

Introduction to storytelling and the true storytelling model

 

Identification of specific problems that participants want to work with.

 

12-13. lunch

 

13-16: personal rework, organized around principle 1 in true storytelling model.

 

Gaia storytelling

 

16-18: Body whispering…  (eventually this could be done in parallel to the sessions). à I would do Body-Whispering from 13-18 on both days. (5h)

 

Dinner in the city

7.00-9.00 meditation, yoga and breakfast

 

9-12.

 

Material storytelling: the tensions between material practices of organizations and the life processes of Gaia.

 

11-12. Summary: where to work with organizational strategies.

 

12-13. Lunch

 

13-16:

True storytelling: rework strategies

Principles 2, 3 and 4.

 

16-18 discussion and body whispering exercises….

 

Dinner in the city…

7.00-9.00 meditation, yoga and breakfast

 

9-11.30:

 

Creating the spaces for action…

 

True storytelling principles 5 and 6…

 

11.30-13.00:

 

Evaluation: true storytelling principle 7.

 

If I do Body-Whispering after 13 until 18 again, we have another 5h (that makes 20 Participants)