ABSTRACT
This chapter has been written on the basis of experiences and ideas about modern life learning, which have been important for the establishment of the Performers House Folk High School. The section also includes reflections that form part of the process of evaluation that has taken place over the course of the three years and more for which the school has now existed. This chapter constitutes a case study about this form of learning that is getting the students of Performers
House to learn to take action through art and to experience and reflect through aesthetics. This learning process has an existential aim, seeking to train our students both in theatrical art-skills and personal lifeskills. My thesis therefore claims that the aesthetics have certain extraordinary learning possibilities and that this learning very much is connected to how the learner is consciously able to deal with the aesthetic experience: an experience that offers the learner an interaction between senses and analysis. The extraordinary learning therefore starts when I observe that I’m observing, and through this position am able to interact with my expression and the community. As a consequence – in my terms – aesthetics should be understood broadly, and in this context as dis-
tinct from art. Aesthetics must therefore not be understood as learning about art history or about the sublime in art. On this basis, aesthetics is to be understood as a universal human language that includes a sensory, emotional, intellectual element and a form element. It can be used to formulate thoughts, insights and knowledge that cannot be formulated through discursive language.The aesthetic offers no fixed right answers, but a multitude of possibilities outside absolute models of interpretation. Aesthetics are distinguished by the interaction between me and my memories/experiences and formulation/expression and a receiver/community. Aesthetics are marked by a desire to discuss, to meet. Regardless of form and expression, aesthetics are marked by a wish for communication and interaction. It is in the synergy between experience, reflection on our experiences and the specific actions through
which these are expressed that make up our transitory formation of identity. Therefore aesthetic life learning means looking at oneself while one looks – listening to oneself while one listens – tasting while one tastes – in brief, rediscovering the sensory dimension or the aesthetic experience in life. I stress,
rediscovering. For me, the aesthetic means seeing the basic, latent possibilities in people, where significance and meaning are linked to values and norms, which are in turn linked to religion and the prevailing power structure. Even though the aesthetic is highly fashionable today, it is not a new solution to all our problems, but rather a possible means of experiencing ourselves and the world around us. One of today’s great drama teachers and directors, Augusto Boal (2000): writes as follows, going right to
the heart of the matter of why it is meaningful to use the aesthetic process in a reflective, awareness-forming and educational context:
Theatre is mankind’s first invention, and it paves the way for all other inventions and all other discoveries. Theatre was born in the moment when mankind discovered that one could observe oneself. Observe oneself while acting. Discover that one can observe oneself in the action of observing. Observe oneself as an observer. Observe oneself in a situation.1
