Sensing Harm by Design
This is a six-week course designed to support you to activate dispositions that can expand your capacity to navigate increasing volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity (VUCA) and to hold space for what is difficult and painful without feeling overwhelmed, immobilised or demanding quick fixes or rescue from discomfort.
hosted by Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures
GTDF are a trans-disciplinary collective of researchers, artists, educators, students & Indigenous knowledge keepers.
Module 2 The negative impacts we impose on those around us.
Acknowledging your role in systemic issues can be a difficult and uncomfortable process, especially if it's your first time. Your natural defences may kick in to shield you from this discomfort. To regain equilibrium, you'll need to employ the techniques provided in the course.
Module 3The damage that has already been inflicted upon the Earth
As you recognise & acknowledge the vast scale of devastation that has already been done to our planet, feelings of sorrow and despair may surface, potentially ones you've kept at bay to sidestep unwelcome emotions. Acknowledge and examine these emotions as they arise.
Module 4The ways in which we suffer & the consequences we face
You reflect on how the deliberate creation of a sense of separation, or the illusion of being separate, lies at the core of the issue. In truth, we are interconnected with everything around us, both the positive and negative aspects. At this stage, some individuals may feel a deep sense of emptiness, while...
Module 5There are no shortcuts to meaningful change.
You begin to shift your relationship with hope and despair, and learn to be more comfortable with discomfort, uncertainty and the fact that there is no end to or place of arrival for this life-long and life-wide journey.
Module 6Towards eldership
By the end of the course, most participants report seeing things differently, feeling better equipped to navigate complexities, uncertainties, and complicities, and being more motivated to engage in challenging work, including the task of composting patterns of denial and avoidance, as well as the endeavor...
hosted by Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures
GTDF are a trans-disciplinary collective of researchers, artists, educators, students & Indigenous knowledge keepers.
hosted by Sharon Stein
Sharon Stein (VANCOUVER, BC / MUSQUEAM TERRITORY) is an assistant professor of higher education at the University of British Columbia and a visiting professor with the Chair for Critical Studies in Higher Education Transformation at Nelson Mandela University.
hosted by Kyra Royo Fay
Kyra is part of The Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures (GTDF) research/arts/ecology collective. Which is a transnational and intergenerational collaboration among researchers, artists, educators, students, social justice and environmental activists, and Indigenous knowledge keepers.
hosted by Willow Cioppa
Willow Cioppa is a multidisciplinary writer and storyteller based in Tiohtià:ke (Montréal).
hosted by Dani D’emilia
Dani D'Emilia: Non-binary, transfeminist, white-italo-brazilian artist and educator working in the intersections of performance & visual arts, somatic practices, radical pedagogy and social-relational-ecological justice.
The usual premise is that there is a problem with the current system that needs to be solved, or the system itself needs to be replaced and the “good people” (most virtuous, woke, moral, righteous, deserving, enlightened) are the ones to do it. We start from a different premise. Our premise is that the current system requires harm by design.
The system requires violence towards other beings and the planet in order to exist, and thus it is intrinsically harmful and unsustainable—we have reached the tipping points and we are headed to the end of the viability of the current system. We are both harmed and implicated in reproducing harm, consciously and unconsciously. This happens because the current modern-colonial system:
- has kept us tied and addicted to its promises and comforts;
- has limited the ways we can see, feel, relate, desire, heal and imagine;
- has led us to deny the violence and unsustainability that are required for it to exist, as well as our interdependence and the depth and - magnitude of the mess we are in;
- has encouraged us to create narcissistic delusions about our sense of self-importance and our perceived entitlements, keeping us in a fragile and immature state that leaves us unequipped to face the challenges of our times; and
- has untethered us from the realities of the planet, and the fact that our modern-colonial mode of existence can cause our own extinction.
It is immensely difficult (but not impossible) to interrupt these patterns and let go of the harmful attachments and co-dependence we have developed with the system itself. Without doing this, we will only be able to want and imagine different versions of the same modern-colonial system.
This course offers a container and methodology for developing this—identifying and interrupting the usual patterns, and committing to a process of cognitive, affective, and relational “decluttering”—as a continuous practice.
