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100 Days in the Survival Room

Survival Room: Day 2 of 100 days.
A man arrives with two apples and a packet of pumpernickel to participate in the ‘Views of Survival’ process.  With them he explores the history of human movement and forgetfulness, from hunter-gatherers and the first farmers to the destruction of biodiversity in the present.  His ‘story’ highlights how it is possible to live with other life forms without exploitation and destruction, and how their ‘sweetness’ does not just sustain us physically but enables human beings to make music, food cultures and social forms of cooperation. At the end of an inspiring 3-hour process, contrasting the Persian garden of paradise with the Judeo-Christian garden of paradise lost, a small group has gathered [within the Covid limitations].  He writes on the Yes /No blackboard:  Yes to apples and bread, milk and honey.  No to the ownership of land.

This is one example of the Views of Survival process that anyone can participate in.

Join us in the Survival Room

The Survival Room is a place of questions!

All you need to do is bring something from home or from the Euro shop, that opens up questions about ‘survival’.

Do I/we really need this to survive?  If so, at what cost, and to whom?

The Survival Room is also an arena for understanding Beuys’ expanded concept of art in practice – for working with our thought-structures, our capacities to perceive, our attitudes, and our capacity to reshape our thoughts.

It is a place where questions about ‘survival’ can be explored as part of a ‘connective practice’… that links inner transformation and outer action.

Creating new forms of assembly, so necessary for a humane and eco-social future – from a social sculpture perspective – need to go beyond  gathering and networking in big events where we cook and eat together. They are equally about developing new ways of thinking together and enhancing the inner culture of the human being: about protecting, valuing, and restoring the capacities that our global society is rapidly destroying

Beuys: “The powers of cognition, the ability to think, intuition, inspiration, awareness of one’s Self [I -consciousness], the power of the will. These are all things that have been badly damaged in our time. They have to be saved. Then everything else will also be saved.” 

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