At the end of September over a ten-day period, 3E hosted around 30 collaborators for a rolling event called “Perceptual Ferment.” The event was planned using techniques for self-organizing gleaned from our experiences with SenseLab. There was an emergent agenda composed on the fly by “pop-up propositions” coming from participants. Anyone could propose a collaborative activity or exploration at any time, even if times overlapped. There was no imperative for participants to go to any particular activity. The propositions functioned as lures that gathered their own participants around themselves, on a purely invitational basis. Propositions were written on a long brown paper scroll as the event progressed. This process was a great success at mobilizing interested participation while allowing each participant to pace themselves, dip into and out of activities, and to respond to them and build on them with new propositions. The common thread was provided by a philosophical reading group that discussed in detail a short extract from Whitehead on his unconventional and suggestive concept of beauty. The “fermentation” of the event’s title referred both to literal fermentation activities, using plants sourced at 3E (medicinal tinctures, balms, saurkraut), and to the formative ferment of perceptions arising out of a complex ecology of relation. After more than 3 years of tireless activity setting the conditions in place (land regeneration, house renovations, greenhouse construction, improvement of the off-grid energy systems) this event felt like a threshold to a new phase where we can concentrate more and more on activities. A number of them are brewing, almost always with a possibility of participation by zoom. Online reading groups are continuing in parallel. The longstanding reading group on Whitehead (and now Bergson as well) called “Diagrammatic Thinking” continues, joined by others, including the latest on Nego Bispo, a Brazilian poet and philosopher from the Quilombo community (Afro-Brazilian rural communities founded by enslaved people escaping from the plantations).
