Mellan oss skapas världen

Time to gather again for
the 11th Summer Seminar
since 2006

- a continuation of the open-end ed multiverse…
…each one contributing to widening perspectives,
becoming wiser together in the challenge to…

“...bring our system back to an appropriate synchrony
or harmony between rigor and imagination.” (Gregory Bateson)

We are especially intrigued by one word in
the quote above: AND!

"Rigor AND Imagination"

which also is the overarching theme for
the Summer Seminar 2025.

The Programme is spun around the Swedish words:

ORDA – JORDA – JORDFÄSTA – FESTA

(wording/storytelling – worlding/flowing mutual learning within nature –
“pin to the earth”/bury/decompose – make feast/party)

Who are inviting?

We can hardly believe it ourselves, two 60+ grannies who this Easter start our 57th year of playing together. The first years we played in an old hen house and in the ruins of an old barn. It was in the years of the Vietnam war, huge starvation catastrophes, the cold war and oil crises etc. A lot of our playing was around how to survive… deadly seriously -and fun!

It was a time when the big wave of modernity hit the countryside and most young people and families moved into cities. Our families moved the other way. Still there were many of old and, from a modern perspective, very odd persons still living in the neighbourhood. One of them was “Olle i Köl”.

We could sit on his kitchen sofa listening to the clock ticking and Olle telling us about his latest encounter with a fox. Describing in detail every move, slowly, intensely not really paying attention to us being in the room. The most tangible living presence in the room was the fox…

Years passed by and as teenagers we both became activists and engaged in several organisations although we no longer lived in the same area. When we became older and turned to higher studies… funny enough…looking back, it seems like we went the path of rigor and imagination right from the start. Miriam studied natural sciences and ecology - with emphasis on rigor but was frustrated about the lack of imagination. Åse studied drama and social sciences with emphasis on imagination but was frustrated about the lack of relationships between rigor and imagination.

Nevertheless, when we reconnected some years later, we discovered that we were working on very similar paths with collaboration “in between” - in networks of networks… trying to do our best - with rigor AND imagination.

We had both noticed that in many (major) structures, rigor tends to turn into rigidity and imagination either fades out or cuts loose to operate without any concerns about ethics or living contexts.

We have seen it and experienced it in our skins and bones throughout our working- and project lives. No matter how good the intentions might have been; the old patterns of control beating living processes, quick measurable results beating profound transformation. Our working places, as labour, has often been heavily burdened under stories of what it lacks more than what it offers. We have found it difficult to play in the cool “hot spots” where moves are mortgaged with tight scripts and a rigid developmental professionalism. Even passing a talking stick can be done in a superior and exclusive way to devoid the messiness - and thereby reduces all other possibilities. Often on the bus home, we share a quiet moment of shame, of compromising integrity, of compromising the senses in our bare feet that were temporarily disconnected. And simultaneously the shame for acting with integrity and not behaving by the script.

Our anti-dote when structures have closed in on us have always been Play. It's fatal not to Play. Play that is alive, reciprocal and recognizing… Other interpretations are possible, other stories, previously hidden beneath our soles of our feet can be perceived. It's the stories of “Olle i Köl”, it's the stories of how the sun whispered to the thick moss, it's the stories of the choices of the soles of feet that walked on the paths before us. And the enormous love for the steps behind us - and the whispering steps ahead… Being Grannies sets things into perspectives, memories mixing and blending into a rich “mulm”, humbleness in the long shadow of death. Accepting disintegrating, but NOT accepting loss of life, loss of play whilst being here in our settings, places. Fostering and spinning on lifethreads is the mycelium that connects all our Summer Seminars, Intercultural courses, RCE West, AkHUt, Warm Data Labs etc.

These days, we can also see a FATAL play with humans, more- than humans, with life itself because seemingly total absence of rigor and ethics, in many cases worldwide. Squeezed in all kinds of situations all the way from boardrooms to geopolitics, we seem to regardless reconnect also with the fundamental frustration, sadness and anger we felt as kids when realizing the life hostile cruelty going on in the world. How to survive? How to stay sane? Questions we have shared with so many colleagues, friends, fellow travellers along the way.

The local Summer Seminars invite different voices, friends and relations of many kinds. Not as representatives. Not because of position. Rather, what we have had in common is a willingness to Play, to allow the Other to take form, shape and simultaneously be formed, shaped; an intersubjective collaborative dance beyond Ownership, beyond the Declaration of Property. Carrying the memory of “Olle i Köl” and asking ourselves the question; would Olle feel welcome and safe here? Would he feel comfortable to sit on a chair, shy and quiet as long as he would wish? For us that's our number one quality criteria, not out of any other reason that if Olle cannot breathe, no one can. And no hesitant fox can become alive in the room…

Respons Ability.

As old Grannies we feel an immense love, respect and response ability for these two kids for their play, their integrity and stamina insuring the relationship to sail on - Relationshipping.

I am with You when You pose a question in a room when No-one gives any response, but a sigh of discomfort.

I am with You when You suggest an installation of Teddybears in the corridors of the Uni.

I am with You when we painfully reconsider new sides of the taken for granted.

When unfold the untold... I am there to question, annoy, when in doubt.

The yarn is stronger than the fear. We belong - by being. We are - by belonging.

Now we can sniff the fresh air from the freedom from leaving labour life, yet we are all the experience and lessons …. We can appreciate and enjoy the theories and accumulated knowledge we can access through memories, books and relations…

Still, we feel the itching need to return to the nature of mind we inhabited as kids. The vastness of the adventure, the urgent call from the trees, the magic stories that took shape while wandering around, the eruptive giggling laughers, the enormous responsibility of being a co-being. The almost never- ending following each other on the road back home in the evening. A road that was jam-packed with new findings. A flat stone, a hollow mark in a tree, a rainbow of colours from a diesel filled pud.

My oh my, how criticality craves integrity and care; rigor and Imagination!