Reflecting on Reflections: Pedagogy of the Swan
Let’s recognise “(…) the legitimacy of a pedagogy that dares to subvert the mind/body split and allow us to be whole in the classroom, and as a consequence wholehearted.”
–bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom, p. 193.
I experienced a crisis a few years ago, having to transform and re-design all my teaching from on-campus to online, due to faculty requirements. From then on, I have grappled with a paradox I thought I could never solve: How to combine embodied, experiential learning and digital pedagogy. I still consider it a paradox. But like the mystics, I believe in contemplation: You can hold on to and inwardly consider from a peaceful, non-confrontational stance, that is, contemplate, the seemingly opposite elements of the paradox, even though they may seem totally incompatible. Something, some sort of answers, will start to emerge.
During Digital Pedagogy Lab (DPL) 2021, in my thought processes, the extraordinary Swedish artist and painter Hilma af Klint's (1882-1944) work started to intertwine with the insightful DPL online discussions. The DPL keynotes, the participants’ tweets and links to myriad gems of online resources started to echo with a newly published book on af Klint in my hands, this one in Finnish, my mother tongue.
On Saturday, after a week of invigorating and refreshing discussions at the Digital Pedagogy Lab, I had to take it easy due to some heart-related symptoms I had been experiencing the past few weeks. Having spent time reading on Hilma af Klint throughout the DPL week, I decided to lie low and watch an online lecture titled “The Complications of Hilma af Klint” by Michael Carter (MFA), available on YouTube. The lecture had been delivered at the Philosophical Research Society, LA, California, on August 18, 2019.
What caught my interest was the way in which Carter reflected the Swan, a series of 24 works, painted by af Klint between 1914 and 1915.
The Swan series starts with a white and a black pair of swans, as if representing a pair of opposites, or reflecting two sides of a mirror, so that the two opposites meet in the horizon which is placed towards the centre of the canvas. The series evolves into a very abstract sequence of forms and colours, yet the horizon line, the meeting line, is repeated throughout (see for example Moderna Museet's or Guggenheim's resources on af Klint).
In his reflection on the Swan, Carter referred to the symbol of swan in the Hindu and Vedic traditions and offered for example these quotes:
“The Swan is equally at home on land and water; similarly, the true sage is equally at home in the realms of matter and of spirit.” (…)(Paramahansa Yogananda, God Talks with Arjuna – The Bhagavad Gita.)
Hilma af Klint’s Swan series could very well be read and interpreted from this point of view, as a sense-making process, or a glimpse into realms that are both seen and unseen. That is how I saw it, at that point. The idea of holding any seeming opposites together, in contemplation, trying to see how they are true at the same time – this is the cornerstone of Christian spirituality, too, although not a very often paraded one.
In a sense, my own non-visual, formless, “disembodied” thoughts gained some kind of a reflecting surface through gazing at the photos of Hilma af Klint’s abstract paintings, as well as reading about her life and work. The setting for these reflections was the presence of nature in our home yard, the Finnish pine forest and the August evenings’ warm sunshine, with the Red Admiral and Mourning Cloak butterflies floating and dragonflies zooming around during the DPL Zoom discussions and live keynotes as I took part in them on our patio while gently spooning wild blueberries into freezer bags - both the discussions and the frozen blueberries to be enjoyed throughout the following Nordic winter... Later that evening, the scent of lighting the fire in our garden hut, my spouse and I warming ourselves in each other's company and by the fire. This all gave rise to a most holistic human experience.
Then, from my own contemplation and reflection on an apparent paradox between in-class and online, something starts to emerge, also for this teacher who would like nothing more than in-class, immediate, de-virtualised, re-wilded (see: Re-wilding pedagogies) instead of mere online interaction with fellow learners but feels that she is forced to stick to online.
What emerges? A pedagogy of the Swan. Hope, to start with! That the fully embodied and fully online can be contemplated as two sides of a mirror, both true and valid at the same time, and that they indeed have a horizon line, a meeting line where the two sides come together, within my praxis, too.
Our Embodiment in Digital Pedagogy track instructor, Jessica Zeller explained her teaching praxis – this in my wording, she put it much more elegantly: You first embody something yourself, you put it “out there”. Then the participants in your course take it on and re-embody it for themselves. That is, learning takes place through an embodiment – re-embodiment process, a constant flow of sorts, enabled by becoming aware of and reflecting on what it is that is being embodied and why.
So this is something I aim to embody in my forthcoming online and on-campus courses, too: Openness, the way of embodiment and re-embodiment, freedom to be who we are, in an atmosphere of trust. A free flow of thoughts and various learning processes; communicating respect by giving "space" to each other, listening to and acknowledging each other through open, honest, and caring dialogue.
All the while gently reminding myself and fellow learners of the fact that we are humans, holistically, all the time, in Hilma af Klint’s words:
“As I describe the road, I walk the road forward.”
*****
More on Hilma af Klint, a place to start:
More on paradox cognition, a place to start:
In the context of science, paradox cognition has been studied at length, for example in relation to the innovative thinking of Nobel laureates, as well as in the arts and work life successes. The conclusions propose that critical and creative thinking, problem-solving skills as well as experiences of work satisfaction seem to improve through practising paradox cognition or a paradox mindset. https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20201109-why-the-paradox-mindset-is-the-key-to-success
More on Christian spirituality, a place to start:
Center for Action and Contemplation, https://cac.org/.
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