ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on a case study project with Mongolian participants and collaborators, Thinking Together, that took place in Ulaanbaatar in 2011. In this project, the negotiative process involved an envisioning of ground, initiated through the posing of questions and scenarios that trigger the imagination, combined with durational involvement and relational responsiveness. Participants’ articulated thoughts, ideas and emotions were translated into a visualised mental and contextual space in which Mongolians thought and moved in. The gathered responses corroborated a picture of the Mongolian ‘way of thinking’ as being ‘deep’, ‘broad’ and ‘unspecific’. The metaphor of an inverted ger represented these sentiments, and captured the idea of nomadic culture and knowledge as a very deep well. The visualised spatial installation then acted as a ‘field-ground’ that allowed exploration and envisioning of different possibilities, and facilitated the tapping into or drawing from nomadic culture and knowledge as a deep, rich resource. Collaborators who previously felt helpless and unable to move forward began discovering ways of moving forward. It became a ground for orientation, negotiation and calibration, producing realisations that looped back into the enquiry, and hosted an exploration and negotiation of values and ideas and differing ways of thinking.
