Being Zoöp photography workshop, March 2023
Experience your surroundings from the point of view of a rabbit or a goose, or feel at one with the greenery and be hypnotised by the ripples on the ponds. In March, the Nieuwe Instituut Zoöp held a second Being Zoöp meditation and photography workshop. Institute employees put themselves into the mindset of the non-human life in, on and around their workplace, together with artist, curator and coach Patricia de Ruijter. "While photographing," explained one participant, "I tried to imagine how an ant would look at the sky."
27 April 2023
Since spring 2022, the Nieuwe Instituut has been the first Zoöp – a cooperative with all life – committed to working together as equals with all non-human life. Within this model, plants and animals in The New Garden become a kind of colleague and cooperative partner, with their well-being contributing to the resilient habitat that a Zoöp aims for. After the first Being Zoöp workshop on 24 November, Patricia de Ruijter led the second photography workshop for Nieuwe Instituut staff on 24 March 2023.
Being Zoöp
De Ruijter describes Being Zoöp as a method for simultaneously becoming more aware of one's own body and its place in a larger ecosystem. We often view our environment in the way that prevails within Western culture, she explains, using only a human perspective and 'head-thinking'. That approach has brought us to where we are today: nature is unsettled and increasingly receding.
The starting point of the Being Zoöp workshop on 24 March was: In the garden on a chilly day, we hear a lot of urban noise and construction sounds. How would the plants or birds around us feel or hear these?
With yoga, meditation and qigong exercises, we try to open up all our 'sensors' and other intelligent parts of our body and mind, says De Ruijter, reducing that head-thinking. "In order to observe the environment as if we're seeing it for the first time, we start the workshop with movement – shaking our bodies loose and emptying our heads. We let our bodies sway with the wind as we stare into the water until distant and near begin to blend together. We kneel on the ground to feel more in touch with the elements and with the greenery that begins to reappear in spring. We're pleasantly surprised to find seaweed-like plants emerging from the raised sea sand of this urban environment, and how geese fly over us while coots manage to find the surface of the water."
One participant responded: "By so consciously taking the time for something, by daring to be slow, you regain the freedom to look around you, curiously, like you did before you grew up, got busy, and became more and more focused on yourself."
It is this kind of practiced awareness that allows us to quietly connect ourselves with the rest of the Zoöp. We then create physical and spiritual connections with the garden around us to photography, using a non-human perspective by photographing, for example, an image from the perspective of a bird, rather than of the bird itself.
"As humans we're used to our human eyes," explains De Ruijter, "and cameras are made to capture images as we see them through our eyes, giving us a very limited view of reality." Citing the book as inspiration for looking past that limitation, An Immense World by British-American science journalist Ed Yong guides readers through the immeasurable dimensions of the world that reveal themselves when you do not let yourself be stopped by these peculiar eyes in the front of our heads.
"The field of vision of a mallard, for example, is completely panoramic, with no blind spots either above or behind it. We use the phrase 'bird's eye view' for any image from above, but a bird's view is so much more than a kind of human view from higher up. For humans, the world is in front of us and we usually move in the direction of our gaze, but the bird world is seen from all around as they move through it."
"This workshop is about the whole experience and certainly not just the result – the photographs. What the camera brings you is a heightened alertness, a challenge to look carefully and repeatedly because, after all, you're going to take a picture. It also involves the opportunity to experiment, to be creative." There is no right or wrong here, no pretty or ugly, and the only requirement is to concentrate and dare to let yourself be surprised. What presents itself spontaneously, what have you never seen like this, and what have you never realised before?