August 2022, Salzburg, Summer Academy

Experimental Education Protocol 4: The Ethereal Forest

Let’s imagine our body as a plant.

Let’s imagine our body as a seed plant- ed in fertile soil. The seed sprouts and in time, it grows into a plant. The plant blossoms and bears fruit, which ripens and drops to the ground. This com- bination provides fertile soil for the next generation of seeds to sprout and grow…perpetually regenerating the life cycle. This is how everything works on Earth; a continuous birth erasure and so on. This is how we are all interconnected. Our final purpose for all is going inside the earth.

There is no example that embodies the connections between plant and body better than the mandrake, due to the fact that its root looks like a hu- man figure. This specific hybrid exam- ple of human and plant is the centre of many metaphysical stories. First in the ancient world mandrake’s pharma- ceutical and hallucinogenic substanc- es. Then it was mentioned in the Bible for its aphrodisiac properties. Magical properties were also attributed dur- ing medieval times and mandrake was considered that he/she held a reincarnated man/woman. Mandrake can be seen as the first post-human.

An etherized soul is being reincarnated.

A radical being is being cultivated.

An underground organism is being revealed.

The case study of the mandrake will act as a joystick for our pedagogi- cal method, procedure and concept. Possible relations to other bodies, constituting a forest made of bodies, constituting a forest made of minds, constituting a forest made of ether. All the above is our discussion for the 4th edition of the Experimental Edu- cation Protocol. An attempt to play a role in a new pedagogy without techniques and methods from one small group “that knows” to a bigger group “that doesn’t know”. An unpredict- able school that eliminates conven- tional instruction and forms a series of workshops where spontaneous communication will aspire to blur the boundaries between teachers and pu- pils. Each one of us or together (co- experimenters) will create educa- tional ideas and workshops that take inspiration from this statement and its possible relations.

The fourth version of the Experimen- tal Education protocol is happening in Salzburg as part of the Summer Acad- emy. We will make ourselves a bridge between aspects of nature and as- pects of self, taking as the case study the properties of mandrake and beyond.

The workshops and meetings among the participants will be performed both indoors and outdoors. The course will be divided into 3 stages.

In the first stage participants/co-ex- perimenters will survey the local con- text, bridging places/situations/people related with the general statement for the preparation of their workshop/ presentation. In this stage, there will be individual and communal consulta- tions.

The 2nd stage is to conduct the work- shops in a conversational mode. One participant can also conduct more than one workshop. One workshop can be conducted by more than one person.
In addition, the 3rd stage is to design a PDF/ book that brings into all material generated from all the participants in the form of interviews and research material.

In addition we open our brains to have the confidence to be able to talk in pub- lic, work communally, create our own content through the use of concepts of self-publishing.We will temporarily deny physics, the logical codes be- tween conceptual and aesthetic, natu- ral and artificial, physical and ethereal, present or ghostly.

Our Body is the school, our school is the spirit, our spirit is the cosmos.

Angelo Plessas