Allan Kaplan and Sue Davidoff came to Argentine to give a course with Buhar with Martin Bunge and http://www.proteusinitiative.org/ . I would like to make you know them, who you are, and get people to know what are they doing in Southafrica, because they are from Cape Town. They wrote the book artist of the invisible.
Florencia: "Thank you very much for being in Argentine Sue and Allan, it was very nice to meet you and to share all this moments, these three days that we had the course, we saw how to be artists of the invisible." I think it was an amazing experience, i feel that it was an amazing experience more than what i think. Would you explain us a little bit what your initiative is about, what are you working for, how can people know more about about you? Your concepts are so amazing, we can apply them in any area of our life, our work, the environment, the relationships between groups for peace. Would you explain us what we lived these days and which your message is?
Allan: The preteus Initiative is an attempt to work with a new way of seeing. With a way of seeing that is able to look into the processes, and to look into the living processes, also in the social processes to look at the sources, of how life lives and what emerges, in the social situation that we meet and to try and work with the practice of observation, as a healing modality work.
Sue: I want to add to that that the social world that we lived in, is alive is moving all the time, it is constantly in change and part of what we are working with is to help people to recognize that while that under movement is invisible, is what makes social process, natural process alive. And if we are able to see that movement, then it enables to work inside in the flow of life, and it is a social responsibility to act in service of life giving, life healing ways and let happens to see the world experiencing that it is alive rather than static as we often tend to do.
Allan: So we try to work in a very delicate but radical way, in the sense of not try to manage, to intervene in problem solving, to impose in all of these issues that we face, but rather to work in which all of us are emerging and participating in the world, and it enables the world to shift in it radical way rather with intervention. But the attempt to see in the heart what it is happening, enables situations to transform themselves.
Florencia: In an active role. You called us to be active members of this world.
Sue: Yes, to be active, and to be receptive at the same time. So it is a different kind of activity. Because as Allan was saying we are all participating in shaping the world as it is and when we are fix only on doing and doing and doing, and so then intervening and controlling and manipulating, then we are creating a very particular kind of world. But when we are active in a way that really allows the world to really speak to us, then we enter into with a different sensibility and that reciprocity that we are really in search of.
Florencia: Yes you talked about the movement. Those movements that life makes us do, to get the outside world to the inside and then make life alive. So you have a place in SouthAfrica that you told me. A very beautifull place where you do some activities. Would you explain us what is it about please?
Sue: It is not in Cape Town, it is about 400 km east of Cape Town and it is in the mountains, deep in the mountain and it is what we have created there over some 20 years, it is a work of a stretching center, where people come to do workshops that we offer in the line of what we have been speaking about now, but it is also opened to other groups to come and work and for us it is a very important project of enabling the natural world to give full expression to itself and yet for us enter into relationship with it because, the softly wild spices live on the earth we realize, and so this feels really really important to engage in a way that we also realize how much we learn from being in that space and how much people will come to learn from the natural environment and also how much there heals, so it is not what we are expecting, nature to heal us, but once again if we enter into a reciprocal relationship with the environment, the nature, the healing happens in both direction.
Florencia: Have you had much people in your place going there? How long have it been?
Allan: The first was in 2009 for people to come. We had been working on it for many years, slowly, by hand, carefully, not wanting to impose the wilderness, and eventually in 2009 we had our first people coming from the public to ten workshops or processes, now in 2016 we had other facilitators who come and work with this relationship with nature and ourselves.
Florencia: Oh so you had a very nice experience working there with people.
Sue: and some other parts of the world. We had people form New Zealand, Australia, India, Germany, Namibia, Netherlands, Brazil, it is amazing thing to see how many people have been in Towerland touch it and had been touch by towerland.
Florencia: Very nice. And you have a master degree?
Allan: Yes we run an international masters degree, in reflecting social practice, what we call reflecting social practice run out by Proteus Initiative in collaboration with other universities http://proteusschool.org.uk/, London Metropolitan University and we travel where the place where students are living and come together and we work together observational practice inside their work practice.
Florencia: it must be very interesting for the academic environment, because they are not accustomed to this kind of practice.
Sue: yes it is very interest because we designed a process which doesn´t compromise academia at all, what we are trying to do and we have been very fortunate to be able to create a program which people can be accredited of but it which is completely faithful to what we are working out.
Allan: and it also demands rigor and standards, that academia doesn´t work, it is helpful for our practice to also meet material of rigor, but we do it on our own way, we have an alternative kind of certification,
Florencia: it is a kind of system thinking because you talked about the inn and out. What you feel inside, what we feel inside and what the world is, it is like a systemic thinking about life.
Allan: it is about asking ourselves, can we change the world being opened to be changed by the world. It is a real relationship with the world, not assuming that we are here to fix it or so in the way we use it, but rather that we are in the world and the ability to see how the world is. It is a relationship that we have to support.
Florencia: I think the academia must write papers with your experience. It would be very valuable for science to learn from practice and that is what you are doing. So how can we do the master if we would like to go from Argentine to Southafrica to do the master that you are teaching.
Sue: You have to wait for the next master program to begin, because now people will come this next one, but we can give our website and then people who are interest, can look on our website and just see what we are doing that is available there. Generally with programs, because we have another terms of programs also outside the masters. We are running a program here in Argentine.
Florencia: So you are running a program here in Argentine.
Sue: Yes a three year program
Florencia: And you are giving it with Buhar.
Allan: we do the three year program between the Proteus Initiative and Buhar. We have no relationship with any university.
Sue: It is not an accredited program, but you can do it here in Argentine.
Florencia: Thank you very much for your time today, it was a great pleasure to meet you, to know that you have very valuable initiatives threw you, threw Buhar, i am very pleased to have you here and i would like many many people to know you here so take and know your initiative and to make a better world. Have a nice staying in Argentine.
Sue: And thank you for the opportunity to speak with you.
Florencia: Oh Thank you, Thank you, you are welcome!
