Intraview One:
Lorie Potts (a pseudonym) interviews Brandon WilliamsCraig on the Process Arts
LP: What is it?
BW: The Process Arts?
LP: The short form, to begin with.
BW: It is a phrase I coined in the early 1990's to refer to the developing art form and vocations that include power-distributive facilitation, inclusive participation, conscious conflict, and compassionate awareness of group dynamics, such that any given group and, finally, our world of groups can support all involved.
LP: That's quite a scope.
BW: World-size ideas are often, I always hesitate to say "always", extensions of the dreams small enough to be held by individuals and smaller groups in specific places. Consider the Platonic academy, first century Christian communities, Islamic Makka, Independence Hall in Philadelphia, Saint Petersburg and the October Revolution, LDS Salt Lake City, the list is not inexhaustible but is certainly extensive,
LP: It sounds like you are advocating revolution.
BW: Not in the way it is usually understood. Let's add Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Bulgaria in 1989. Only a few months after I ended my undergraduate semester abroad in Rome, the Autumn of Nations changed quite a bit and, with the exception of Rumania, with a dearth of literally rolling heads.
My habit is to sidestep a yes or no response and ask "how is a proposal revolutionary and how is it not?" I hope for the later Latin meaning fromrevolutio- "a revolving," rather than revolveree "turn, roll back". The former suggests a helical return to a partly familiar place but at a different depth. Rolling back suggests to me a problematic fantasy of return to an idealized past wherein all was ringing bells and fields of daisies. My question is one of location - "where are we in the midst of our choice-making", rather than "what needs to be classified as Truth or Falsity and then demolished or believed in order to reestablish Utopia."
LP: so the question is not "is it a revolution?" but is "how is it revolutionary?"
BW: As a beginning. Consider the use of adjectives, advocated by James Hillman when talking about things archetypal, rather than literal nouns. "How is it fill in the adjectival blank ?" rather than "is it or is it not a/an noun ?" The best question at this point is not "is a question and answer session with a pseudonymous other an interview or not?" Better questions arise from turning around in a nest of associated ideas. What is suggested by interviews,intraview , pseudonyms, identity, coining terms, process, art, revolution, archetypal, etc. The questioning brings up associations and related ideas, thereby creating a web of understanding for many related influences.
LP: Hard to get at the truth that way.
BW: Well practiced, this is complimentary to the analytical/scientific approach of deciding what does not relate and cutting things away from consideration to get to one thing that is true or operative. It allows space to keep more mysterious material that the analyst, in their invariably limited knowing, might not have cut away. It allows for calling the whole process of cutting into question without excluding it as an option. What about sifting, digging, kneading, free associating, dreaming, singing,ritualizing, etc.?
LP: Let's return to the core topic. How does this all relate to Process Arts?
BW: Contemporary life inherits a long tradition of single-focus, triumphal, heroic ways of getting at how to be human - both as an individual and a part of groups. If you're sick then cut or burn out what ails you. If you failed then you let somebody or something beat you. If there is disunity or ongoing disagreement then you clearly didn't work hard, sell, develop, or insist strongly enough on your position. If something you love dies then you didn't devote yourself enough to it's victory, or at least to its getting a fair shot.
LP: Taking personal responsibility for your health and mission is bad?
BW: The field we are discussing is a fundamental revisioning of familiar therapies, organizational development, healing, coaching, and change methods, in that Process Arts can include but do not necessarily seek to "make changes happen", or "maximize fullest potential", or drive toward "commitment to a shared vision of the future." It is my contention that such triumphal but also useful ends defeat themselves and prevent their own realization when they are required by "keeping both eyes on the prize" and "moving on", thereby leaving the darker deeper soil untilled. The more mysterious and systemic dilemmas are engaged by imagining that friction and difference, rather than unity and similarity are the doorways to functioning and purposeful community. The inclusive, mysterious, difficult conflicts need the most creative systemic space and attention for a while because we've been "moving on" for so long.
LP: Does anyone really want to stay in the dark instead of looking for solutions?
BW: It is not an "instead of" but learning how to be in darkness and also to look for or be given or come upon shared solutions. "Process" emphasizes continuing meaning-making and does not aim at Wholeness or optimum efficiency, though either may arise, or be carefully developed, and do make wonderful visitors. Art is not about perfection but authenticity and impact. It weaves difference and similarity, spectra of beauty and repulsion, into experiences which condense and reflect life - like theater and literature. Thereby shared meaning is created from which to be peaceful, by which I mean an extensive and compelling fiction of conflict done well, rather than an absence of friction.
LP: On what do you base the claim on the Association Building Community website that " the movement toward Community On Purpose" has been "long underway in a hundred manifestations? "
BW: For an extensive tracking of the roots of the idea I'll ask you to have a look at the web summary based on the review of literature from my dissertation. A web search of "process arts" also offers interesting avenues - many of which are tracked or tagged by sites like del.icio.us. But this paying attention to how we do what we do is a next cultural step beyond the industrial focus on what we make and its distribution, and so is all over the place. This kind of thinking is partly as old as philosophy, like most big ideas, and partly rose to consciousness with psychology in the late 1800's. That era's attention to the dream and movements of unconsciousness is visible first in its poetry, as is often the case, and created ripples we are only beginning to really feel in our bones. The progeny of psychology are spread worldwide into vernacular and pop-culture. Have you seen the USA Network's TV show "Monk"? "Obsessive-compulsive" and "phobic" used to be psycho-jargon and entirely unfamiliar to the general public. Ever been called "anal-retentive"? Now teenagers and young adults alike call each other all manner of technical psychological terms as a result of generations of their parents participating in the ritual of psychotherapy and various associated fads.
LP: So anything psychological is process artistry in action?
BW: Rather than an "is it, or isn't it" approach, I prefer to make distinctions about what is more and what is less a Process Art in an environment, in practice, and in motion. The questions I ask include "Is there an ongoing, habitual, auto-critical function operating here?" "Can individual and shared directions develop in the same space, in parallel, or even in opposition with creative attention?" "Can unified action and conflicting choices both arise, live and die as needed, and consequences fully develop which lead to both mysterious and clear choices?"
LP: This seems unlikely to produce clear joint action?
BW: Then you'd probably be one of those amazed to see folks learn to fight cleanly and also put conflict aside for a bit because they know there will be more time for it later, disagree profoundly, agree in surprising ways, and also make clear choices that benefit everybody involved, because that is the shared expectation as differences continue to develop and arise. You make space for my differences and I for yours and the world goes round and round.
LP: Sounds like Utopia?
BW: Nah. It still hurts to get misunderstood, called out for being dense, selfish, or self-absorbed, launching some shared initiative and watching it crash for lack of clear or sufficient communication, etc. All that stuff still happens. We just don't freak out when it does because process artists, like martial artists, expect to struggle and work to get good at it. It's all practice.
LP: So you are martial artists?
BW: Some identify that way. If you are saying the process and martial arts are related you'd be right by my lights. But so are the performing arts where ensemble is the ideal, and the liberal arts where collegiality defines the character of deeper learning communities. If you're asking if they are identical I'd have to say "probably not".
LP: Why "probably"?
BW: Who am I to say anything absolute about anything that abstract? I am definitely a professional process and a martial artist, but speaking about those similarities make more sense to me because Aikido is one of my core metaphors and practices. My first career was in the professional theater. I continue to be an academic. The Guardians of Peace aren't fully born yet.
LP: That certainly leaves me wanting to know more. Is there anything I should have asked you that I missed this time around?
BW: I'll let you know next time. It feels important to me to acknowledge James Hillman, Thomas Moore, David Miller and the ideas of Archetypal Psychology in general before we end this intraview. They are where much of the theory comes from for this shift and, incidentally, the idea for this format. None of the best ideas belong to a particular person. The contributors deserve credit. I'd like attribution for contributing to this work and coining the term that frames the field. The most important thing is that the ideas get used, developed, and have their impact.
LP: Until next time, thanks for your time.
BW: My pleasure.