Saturday, in catches and glimpses, unordered: learning by doing • designing by making • art as its own language •  art as its own, different way of interpreting the world • or each artform as a unique way of interpreting the world • Nancy Adler: strategic planning by design, rather than by analysis • or designing an option worth choosing, not choosing an option • or focusing on a positive vision, rather than a negative criticism • Tim McDonald: the difference between making buildings, and making buildings on paper • weight, balance and tension • don’t try to design an experience; art is not a meatgrinder to push people through • but also “I don’t design buildings, I design communities” • Marx and Hayek: emergent and planned, top-down and bottom-up, edge versus centre • drawing as a conversation with what comes to the surface • thinking with your hands • Richard Serra as an artist of weight • “have you ever seen a Rothko?” • depiction versus representation • Paul Klee ~ do not paint the thing, but what brought it into being • Phil Ochs: “Ah but in such an ugly time the true protest is beauty.” • art as a tool • the need for beauty in the mess of today’s world • cactus music • the sun and planets • and the music of the spheres • 250 cardboard boxes • abecedarians • clowning works by going to the essence; that is why it works without words • thinking so essentially all the time would be exhausting • the birth of the modern public • problem solving through dance • art as a tool • found phrases and found sounds • the gap between sound and music • “do you smell me?” • “thank you for sharing your privilege” • music and brain science • “I wish I could be friends with all of these people” • dancing around a conflict point • stone and water • circle, full circle • creation as an act of humility • How Should a Person Be and the value of recognizing ugliness • “really quite accomplished pieces” • eight dimensions of the actor’s work • having the patience and humility to let the ideas come to you • thinking with and without concepts • the role of language in thought • writing, dead and alive • you can just tell when writing is a lie • teaching writing by revealing lies • breaking social codes as the core of humour • and timing, always timing • music as a material, spatial medium • the role of collaboration in artistic discovery • letting what it will be unfold • the need for new ways of understanding the world • the hegemony of the word and the hegemony of the image • how collaboration changes art • the centrality of making art, not just experiencing • Mark Antaki: “Art thinks somatically, bodily.” • The Tempest • playing with the idea of performance and performativity by switching the actor half-way through the scene • the depth of the text • frenetic, but only when she is thinking with words • Karl Polanyi • Quebec Solidaire • day camp for art nerds • finding the wallness of the wall • architecture as a dynamic medium • and musical • Adorno v Heidegger • radical politics, in theory and practice • global leadership, “as if that were a thing” • language, art and dream as  forms of thought • the combined and inseparable presence of two actors in one character • as I wrote, the poem revealed quite deep, intimate memories • Pop-pop • men who want to harness energy, which is to say, us • down here with the dancers • poetry, which wants to hitch a ride on the freight that words already carry • drawing without looking at the object • drawing without looking away from the object • disability studies, forcing us to re-examine our assumptions about ugliness • social structures and the structures of thought • the mess we are in • and who is “us”? • teaching an art form in three hours • progress, balance and beauty as regulatory ideals • capitalism and its agendas • what we need more of and what we need less of • the need to look at the world differently • “and of course, repetition” • the impact of framing on the experience of the audience • the impact of framing on the experience of the participants • “we have raised a lot of questions, but not found a lot of answers” • fresh-ground jasmine • spandrels • collaboration and meta-collaboration • picturing and planning versus making and finding • small failures and experimentation • capturing light, literally and metaphorically • don’t work towards an imagined user experience • let me paint you a picture • the productive possibilities of artistic thinking • artistic thinking as counter-narrative to economic rationalism • revealed rather than curated experience

Addenda: how could you teach an amateur as much about law in three hours as the facilitators did about art, given that they had to curate collaborative art-pieces to be completed for presentation once the time was up?