002. MPCers first long day

It was our first long day ever and we knew we will had some cool things in our plate but at that moment we didn’t know what those were. One of the activities that we had was to read a quote by David Bohm from the book On dialogue. It was the following:

"if people are to coooperate (i.e., literally to "work together") they have to be able to create something in common, something that takes the shape in their mutual discussions and actions, rather than something that is conveyed from one person who acts as an authority to the others, who act as passive instruments of this authority."

             - David Bohm, On Dialogue -

We literally talked about this for almost an hour and some of us realized how much you can take out of an apparently simple quote. But we also realized that it that at the beginning looked apparently hard to understand was becoming clearer while we were talking with our friends.  We got to agreement that the quote relates to what we are doing at MPC since we are trying to create something together and that is cultures. Yes my friends! We discover that we as MPC students and specially as Pioneers are culture builders and don’t passive instruments of an authority.

Person:

Then we had the visit of Amable Sanchez. I knew him from other fields and even when we have talked about random topics we never engage in a formal dialogue. We prepare the space and made a very nice circle using a rope.  We talked about the meaning of the word Pioneer or “Pionero” in spanish. Honestly I loved the way that he explored the meaning quoting some parts of the dictionary and other from works as Don Quixote. It was an amazing dialogue of discovery with him not only about the word but about the person. He shared with us some highlights about his life, his growing in the Spaniard agricultural fields, he escaping house at the age 16 to become a catholic priest and then quitting his vows to marry a woman who literally fall in love with him.  He shared his views in such a poetic way and I learned from him to be really carefull about the use of the words and the interesting stories that each hold.

The rhetoric of Image

We start reading and discussing a piece that honestly seem in the beginning as inextricable but later showed very clear and pristine. The paper talked about the use of symbols and the use of images in communication. And what is the usual opinion about both. It also talked about how both work, one being digital (as with signs coded and decoded) and other analogical (being a copy of the thing). Well those are not his exact words but that comparison with telecomunication language served me to understand it.

Movie/Video:

We start watching the movie Shooting to the Past from which I learned the powerful images specially photography in black and white can be. I love the fact that the movie told many interesting and awesome stories just referring to images. But what I noticed after analysing a bit more it was how useful is the documentation to create a better idea of the events, actions and in general the culture that happen in one time.  This I connected with our task as documentators in the MPC and how our present actions (to documentate) will influence the future storytelling of our endeavour as Pioneers.