Ecosystemic Creativity: fostering creativity through dynamic interaction with the environment
Course designed for teams and individuals looking to enhance their creative skills and confidence through an approach that emphasizes the importance of interaction with the environment to generate, explore, and articulate ideas. Facilitated by renowned creative professionals from various disciplines, the course fosters creative thinking, flexibility, exploration, and receptivity, using artistic practice as its foundation.
The course is aimed at teams and individuals who wish to be more creative and do so in a way that is more respectful of the environment and others.
The course consists of nine training sessions in the afternoon, distributed over three months and totalling 27 hours. The sessions are facilitated by renowned creative agents from various disciplines. Art is used as a vehicle for learning and as a means to develop perception protocols that improve attention, inviting participants to explore how we observe, relate, and respond to our human, non-human, material, and discursive environment.
The course structure is modular and progressive, allowing participants to advance gradually from theoretical understanding to practical application. Each capsule is designed to facilitate the integration and application of acquired knowledge, offering a dynamic and effective learning experience. During the week, participants do practical work to consolidate what they have learned. In addition, the application of skills and knowledge in real contexts is encouraged, ensuring a smooth transition from theory to practice.
The capsules will be held on Tuesdays, from 1 October to 26 November, from 5:30 pm to 8:30 pm.
Programme:
Capsule 1. Ecological creativity: situated, distributed, and relational
Tuesday, 1 October, from 5:30 pm to 8:30 pm
Capsule 2. Resonate
Tuesday, 8 October, from 5:30 pm to 8:30 pm
Capsule 3. Coexist
Tuesday, 15 October, from 5:30 pm to 8:30 pm
Capsule 4. “Contaminate” and let yourself be “contaminated”
Tuesday, 22 October, from 5:30 pm to 8:30 pm
Capsule 5. Unlearn
Tuesday, 29 October, from 5:30 pm to 8:30 pm
Capsule 6. Problematise
Tuesday, 5 November, from 5:30 pm to 8:30 pm
Capsule 7. Explore
Tuesday, 12 November, from 5:30 pm to 8:30 pm
Capsule 8. Attend aesthetically
Tuesday, 19 November, from 5:30 pm to 8:30 pm
Capsule 9. Articulate
Tuesday, 26 November, from 5:30 pm to 8:30 pm
Paula Bruna, environmental scientist and artist.
Ada Castells, writer and journalist.
Claudia Claremi, visual artist and filmmaker.
Pilar Cortada, creativity researcher and director of Eina Obra.
Rebecca Espasa, clinical psychologist and coordinator of the specialized psychology unit in EMDR.
Mariona Moncunill, artist, researcher, and teacher, as well as coordinator of the journal Inmaterial. Diseño, Arte y Sociedad.
Estampa, artistic collective.
María Ptqk, curator and PhD in artistic research, specializing in the intersection of art and scientific and technological culture.
Benedetta Tagliabue, architect and co-founder with Enric Miralles (1955-2000) of the international studio EMBT Architects.
Laura Vilar, performer, creator, teacher, and researcher in contemporary dance.
The programme costs €700 (15% discount for the EINA community).
The sessions will be facilitated by Pilar Cortada, Doctor of Philosophy, whose research addresses a situated, distributed, and relational concept of creativity focused on what she calls “aesthetic attention,” along with renowned creative agents from various disciplines:
Capsule 1. Ecological creativity: situated, distributed, and relational
Date: Tuesday, 1 October, from 5:30 pm to 8:30 pm
Location: EINA Bosc (Classroom B0)
Guest lecturer: María Ptqk, curator and PhD in artistic research, specializing in the intersection of art and scientific and technological culture. Curator of the Getxophoto festival and responsible for the Spanish-speaking development of the journal able (Art&Science Chair, Daniel and Nina Carasso Foundation). She has curated exhibitions at CCCB, Azkuna Zentroa, Espace Virtuel Jeu de Paume, LABoral, and the Centro de Cultura Contemporánea El Carme.
The first capsule aims to establish the conceptual foundation of the course, introducing the key theories that underpin it. We will explore the concept of ecosystem creativity, moving away from conventional explanations that tend to focus on the human mind and its cognitive processes. We will define creativity as a situated and distributed ecological process that emerges not so much from the manipulation of decontextualised representations, but through an organism’s interaction with its performative environment and how it addresses and relates to it.
Date: Tuesday, 8 October, from 5:30 pm to 8:30 pm
Location: EINA Bosc (Classroom B0)
Guest lecturer: Laura Vilar, PhD in Artistic Research, is an interpreter, creator, teacher, and researcher in contemporary dance.
The second capsule focuses on understanding that creativity arises from the sensory, affective, and intellectual attention given by an organism during its interaction with the world and in search of opportunities for action. We will explore how sensory and bodily experiences influence our understanding of and relationship with the world around us.
Date: Tuesday, 15 October, from 5:30 pm to 8:30 pm
Location: Bosque de Collserola
Guest lecturer: Paula Bruna is a PhD, artist, and environmental scientist. From her dual perspective, she uses artistic research as a form of knowledge in which different disciplines hybridise. She investigates approaches to non-human realities through a combination of scientific basis, speculative fiction, and artistic practice.
Coexisting means existing at the same time as one or more other things: harmony, cohabitation, simultaneity, etc. This capsule focuses on exploring how creativity arises from the dynamic interaction between an individual and their environment. The main objective is to develop an awareness of the performativity of the environment or field in which we act, as well as the opportunities for action that it offers. Participants are encouraged to explore, manipulate, and experiment with a variety of materials to expand their creative horizons.
Date: Tuesday, 22 October, from 5:30 pm to 8:30 pm
Location: EINA Bosc (Classroom B0)
Guest lecturer: Mariona Moncunill, artist, researcher, teacher at BAU, Centro Universitario de Artes y Diseño de Barcelona, and coordinator of the journal Inmaterial. Diseño, Arte y Sociedad.
Creative processes do not follow a linear and structured progression; they are subject to advances, adjustments, setbacks, leaps, and changes. This is because they feed on the interferences, differences, supports, and opportunities that arise from exploring, experimenting, creating, and collaborating. The actors involved, both human and non-human, are diverse and heterogeneous, come from different contexts, and have the ability to affect and be affected. As Anna Tsing points out, every encounter and every relationship we engage in “contaminates” us, and in turn, we also “contaminate” (Tsing, 2015: 29).
Date: Tuesday, 29 October, from 5:30 pm to 8:30 pm
Location: EINA Bosc (Classroom B0)
Guest lecturer: Rebecca Espasa. PhD in Psychology, clinical psychologist, and director of the Institut Espasa, a psychotherapy center specialized in EMDR and neurofeedback, techniques with scientific evidence to promote change by enhancing brain neuroplasticity.
We bring our own categories and concepts into a world we believe we observe directly (Sagan in Uexküll, 1934/2010: 11)*. These categories act as filters that include or exclude what we consider significant. As a result, each of us lives in our own umwelt, or meaningful environment, which not only influences our perception, but also our creativity. The aim of this capsule is to discover the importance of freeing oneself from preconceptions and managing biases to develop new thinking structures.
* Uexküll, Jakob von. A Foray Into the Worlds of Animals and Humans: With a Theory of Meaning. New York, NY: University of Minnesota Press, 1934. https://b-ok.cc/book/1250205/533732.
Date: Tuesday, 5 November, from 5:30 pm to 8:30 pm
Location: Eina Bosc (clasroom B0)
Guest lecturer: Estampa. An artistic collective based in Barcelona. Their practice is based on a critical and archaeological approach to audiovisual and digital technologies. Since 2017, they have focused their work on the uses and ideologies of AI. Their works have been shown at various festivals and museums, such as MACBA, Laboral, CCCB, and Caixaforum.
Problematising is a process of defamiliarisation that calls into question assumptions or beliefs that we take for granted. Problematising requires an inquisitive rather than responsive disposition, and involves working on ambiguity, nuance, and the ability to perceive things from different points of view. We will talk about and experience how we observe, and what it means to inquire and (re)define problems.
Date: Tuesday, 12 November, from 5:30 pm to 8:30 pm
Location: EMBT Architects
Guest lecturer: Benedetta Tagliabue. Internationally renowned architect and co-founder of the international studio EMBT Architects with Enric Miralles (1955-2000), with offices in Barcelona (headquarters), Shanghai, and Paris.
The principles adopted by EMBT, focused on an open approach, emphasise the importance of exploration and sensitivity towards context as a method for innovation to flourish. We will analyse the importance of actively exploring the perceptual field and of orienting and adjusting the sensory systems towards what is considered worthy of attention, encouraging the formulation of questions instead of forming opinions or offering answers.
Date: Tuesday, 19 November, from 5:30 pm to 8:30 pm
Location: PLANTA, Fundació Sorigué
Guest lecturer: Claudia Claremi makes films and explores the sensory language that makes image and sound possible, using various media such as video, analogue cinema, photography, archives, and performance.
The aim of this capsule is to expand perception, thus increasing the ability to aesthetically tune into an environment, perceive what is possible, and welcome it. We will focus on developing what we call “readiness status,” temporarily suspending reasoning, memory, evaluation, and expectations to give equal attention to everything observable.
Date: Tuesday, 26 November, from 5:30 pm to 8:30 pm
Location: EINA Bosc (Classroom B0)
Guest lecturer: Ada Castells. Catalan writer and journalist. She has been a writer and columnist for the newspaper Avui and a contributor to the cultural supplement of La Vanguardia. Currently, she teaches and offers various writing and journalism courses. Her latest novels are La primavera pendent (Comanegra, 2018), Madre/Madre (Navona, 2020), and Solastàlgia (2023), which she has transformed into a theatrical lecture.
The capsule focuses on discovering how to communicate complex thoughts and experiences clearly and effectively, organising and presenting information in an engaging way to facilitate understanding and emotional connection with an audience.