____Arely Amaut____Sigrid Espelien____Irma Alvarez Ccoscco___Tatjana Kolpus___
_________José Dominguez_______Liisa-Ravna Finbog______Karl Swinehart_______
Together we build a groundwork that we called Collective Thinking Machine.
Collective Thinking Machine is an ongoing practice-based research around how and what we can learn from sharing our multi perspectives and inhabiting apparently opposites but complementary technologies. For instance contemporary and ancestral practices.
We recognize collaboration as a public space it creates itself. It started as an exchange of knowledge and skill, resulting in a deeper level of sharing and affection between us. This is also associated with some Collective Thinking Machine processes that are translatable like clay, craft, digital fabrication, open source design. It is in the nature of all to be shared.
How can we share the knowledge and build a society together? In what way can artists work collaboratively with others in order to question the individualization of society? These were the questions that became the starting point of this research. However, the context of these questions seems exceedingly wide for an answer. I rescaled them based on my own experiences, as well as experiences from the transition phase, onto investigating the structure needed to inhabit or navigate between ontologies, cosmologies, Oslo, Peru, languages, etc.
My collaboration based approach has come close to answering how one inhabits the complimentary contradictions of the transition phase. The question then shifts to an engagement on not having control, thus our structure of sharing doesn't need an end, a goal, single fate or single objective. How does one collaborate with other perspectives? This was very clear to me; collaboration is a way to embrace the complexity of being together.
![]()
Collective Thinking Machine is an ongoing practice-based research around how and what we can learn from sharing our multi perspectives and inhabiting apparently opposites but complementary technologies. For instance contemporary and ancestral practices.
We recognize collaboration as a public space it creates itself. It started as an exchange of knowledge and skill, resulting in a deeper level of sharing and affection between us. This is also associated with some Collective Thinking Machine processes that are translatable like clay, craft, digital fabrication, open source design. It is in the nature of all to be shared.
How can we share the knowledge and build a society together? In what way can artists work collaboratively with others in order to question the individualization of society? These were the questions that became the starting point of this research. However, the context of these questions seems exceedingly wide for an answer. I rescaled them based on my own experiences, as well as experiences from the transition phase, onto investigating the structure needed to inhabit or navigate between ontologies, cosmologies, Oslo, Peru, languages, etc.
My collaboration based approach has come close to answering how one inhabits the complimentary contradictions of the transition phase. The question then shifts to an engagement on not having control, thus our structure of sharing doesn't need an end, a goal, single fate or single objective. How does one collaborate with other perspectives? This was very clear to me; collaboration is a way to embrace the complexity of being together.
Tatjana:
Arely approached me after I’d taken part in a talk with the title “Healing by Making—Duodji1, A Way Of Life.” She showed me a piece of paper on which was a poem written in a language called Runasimi2, along with its translation into Spanish. Spanish is my third language and I could easily read and understand the words. But Runasimi—this was completely new to me, and stirred my curiosity. Especially when Arely told me that clay was her means of expression and that she’d like to find similarities between her art, Andean cosmology, and duodji. Liisa-Ravna had presented some of her research during the talk already, so I could see there is a connection between the Andean Mountainsand Sápmi.Within minutes, we had found common ground to meet and share on. Also having two languages in which to share and talk lends our dynamic a different flavor, I believe, with regard to some of the cultural connotations hidden in language.
Sigrid:
The starting point was a shared interest in 3D printing with clay. From that point on, we began learning from each other through conversation: about Peru and the previous mountain research Arely had done, as well as about mapping as a tool, local clay research, archeology, folk science, ancestral practice, and digital fabrication. These exchanges made us want to create a space in which we could continue our conversations.Irma:
The idea is that to hack-craft a hegemonic language and its concepts is to transcend the barriers of translation and even of interpretation—usually by using literalism or re-phoneticization; but more than that, it is to pass from the source language to the end, carrying over its semantic field. Words have power. A concept that comes from a transcend language like Runasimi, even if correctly translated into the target language, could lose its semantic field and, hence, also the cultural worldview it connotes.
Arely:
We wanted to create a structure that would combine ancestral practices and contemporary technology and allow us to share: and we called the result our Collective Thinking Machine. The machine operates with two tools. The first tool is a hacked machine, a Clay 3D printer to be used for different purposes. The second tool is a poem about ancestral practices with clay, which was written in Runasimi, Peruvian ancestral language. The name of the poem is “T’uruwan Quillqaq, Escritor de Barro, The Clay/Mud Writer.”Tatjana:
In any meeting between two or more people, there will be a sharing of sorts, energetically. If there is an evident willingness to share, I take it as a sign to continue the process. A safe space for sharing was the premise of these meetings from the start and this, I think, is what enabled us to open up. The intent behind passing on our knowledge, stories, and perspectives is always to learn from and get to know one another1 Finbog explains in her writing BÅASSJOERAEJKEN TJÏRR: returning (to) the language of our ancestors: “Traditionally the term has been translated to mean craft, but it is more in line with the concept of a creative and aesthetic activity related to practical skills.”
2Composed of Runa, meaning being, male, female, both, and simi, meaning mouth, Runasimi is a popular term for Quechua, an indigenous language family spoken by the Quechua peoples primarily living in the Peruvian, Bolivian and Ecuadorian Andes but also in other highlands of South America.
2Composed of Runa, meaning being, male, female, both, and simi, meaning mouth, Runasimi is a popular term for Quechua, an indigenous language family spoken by the Quechua peoples primarily living in the Peruvian, Bolivian and Ecuadorian Andes but also in other highlands of South America.
