Description of the track

The storymaking track is the searching track, the track in which we level with Wittgenstein’s philosophy about the ‘not knowing before being in the performance’. Or to put it more Deleuzian, we are the experimentarium, in which we acknowledge we don’t know where we are going. We don’t seek to escape the frame of reality, but to unfold reality with the knowledge that there is always something that could be different. This track sets out to playfully explore the question “how might one live”?

• How one might perform StoryMaking in Supervision?
• How one might perform StoryMaking in Therapy?
• How might one perform StoryMaking in Social work?
• How one might practice StoryMaking with families?
• How one might collaborate in StoryMaking with marginalized people?
• How one might perform StoryMaking in pedagogic work?
• How one might perform StoryMaking within and without oneself?
• How one might objectify and subjectify oneself in StoryMaking?

With contributions from different genres of narration this track seeks to catch the surf in the pool of diversity of discourses and create music with words. In this track of StoryMaking we allow ourselves to expand through the different narrations of e.g. authors, philosophers, therapists, bloggers, Facebook updates and the production of stories of daily life that continuously shapes the differences to the already experienced.

Like in improvised jazz we will take the conference to the virtuality of resonance, in which we through the different contribution will be led towards something new, a slight difference to what we already knew.

This track is arranged and designed by Narrativ Kommunikation & Terapi, Narrative Perspektiver and DISPUK.

Plenaries

Keynote by Johnella Bird 17th August Morning

A Practical Guide To Life Changing Conversations

The recorded history of most nations is punctuated by invasions, war and suffering. In recent times the news has recorded the atrocities committed daily in Iraq and Afghanistan. When we hear about these atrocities, committed in the name of loyalty, a government, a God or an ethnic group, this can leave us feeling helpless and powerless. I believe as practitioners, we also witness the relationship dynamics that closely replicate those conditions that create national conflict. Consequently I have chosen to discuss the importance of orientating our counseling, super-vision and management practice towards an orthopraxy rather than an orthodoxy. A commitment to orthodoxy requires us to uphold the ‘right’ belief. In contrast, a commitment to orthopraxy challenges us to search for the ‘right’ practice. When we prioritise orthopraxy this directs us to find those practices that reflect a living out of the ethics that are central in our lives. While orthodoxy promises certainty through truth, in practice adherence to orthodoxy delivers judgment, alienation and violence. In contrast orthopraxy promises change through a negotiation of truth positions within relationship practices. This has the potential to create closeness, connection and dialogue. Throughout the plenary I will use clinical examples to illustrate the practices I use to invite people to participate in life and relationship changes.



Keynote by Art Fisher 17th August Afternoon

Unfolding Significance: A Retrospective of Visual Narrative Practice, Philosophy, Social Justice, and Art

In this keynote, I will visit briefly with my personal and work history in order to explore some of the concepts I currently find useful, such as “unfolding significance” (vs. thickening preferred ways).  I will explore some of the critical questions I ask myself in the name of supporting my skills.  And, I will share some of the resulting complexities of story making practices involved in my everyday non-profit relationships with marginalized youth, adults, families, and communities.  Lately I’ve been noticing that my past is becoming much more extensive than my likely embodied future.  When I sit with these increasing limits of my life and agency, some ways of being here on the planet with you and performing stories, particularly stories about “responding to violence”, are so important to me. But I’m not very interested in promoting normalizing stories about “moving away from abuse and toward respect.”  Instead, I’m profoundly disturbed by the colonization, double standards, and crazy making normalized within modernist Narrative interpretations of feminism, Foucault, Derrida and Deleuze...  I wish to focus on these complexities, especially in story making with folks who know first-hand how marginalization operates.