Topics

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Photo by Jassy Earl

Home - With children in mind, what is home? How do we build it? Who has a right to define it? Can we do it alone or does home, by definition, require a community? Who are the communities or agencies who enable or prevent this? Is this a local issue to be dealt with in small communities or rather, a matter of importance to national and federal states? Are children's voices being heard in the discussion and decision making around these issues? Does home have a different meaning for children and for adults?  Through this topic we will explore the concept of home and ask if home is somewhere that implies a degree of permanence as opposed to a point on the map where you originated from. If you spend twenty years being raised and educated in Tehran then live in Belgium for another twenty, where is home?  What is it to live in a middle space where neither country is fully home?

Failure - Congratulations, you have failed. Why does it sound strange to accept this? Why do we consider failure as inherently negative? When and why did society develop the ideal of complete and everlasting success as the norm of human achievement? And, when and why did society impose that ideal on all human beings as the standard of life? The best student, the best son, the best daughter, the best father, the best mother, the best family, the best friends, the best teacher, the best director, the best artist, simply the best.  PUSH+ will explore the notion of failure, why we fear it, what are its artistic possibilities and whether it stunts our appetite for taking risks and discovering ourselves and the world around us.

Different Bodies - The most basic ”thing” humans have in common is the body. No matter which culture you come from, which colour you have - you have a body and so do I. And yet the body, as well as the mind, is subject to many layers of references, meanings, expressions and biases. The ‘right’ body, the disabled body, the oversized, the old, the healthy body.   The body is home of the mind and closely connected to it. If anything happens to the body, it affects the mind and vice versa. Through life both body and mind change in ability and expression. We are so used to regarding the young, normal, well-developed body and mind as the ideal, that we may find it difficult to open up to other expressions: that an old body can move in an artistically interesting way; that a person with Down’s syndrome has a broad variety of expressions; or that a child has the ability to reflect on a deep level through sensations and a psychical approach.