The idea
Philosophy In the Park looks at people and breaks stereotypes by asking meaningful questions about philosophy and art. This collective goes beyond the contradiction that philosophy can only be thought or talked about in certain context, and asks from the homeless to the Wall Street person what they believe about morality, aesthetics and the birth of ideas.
The collective
Anaïs Azzaro
blends arts and politics as a mean of expression. Currently working in media, she studies to be a doula and complete a Masters in political thought. Vancouver is home since 2015, moving from Québec.
Elke Dick
is a Belgian B.A. "orthopedag", deeper than a coach and lighter than a counselor, for lack of better definition. She strives to make this human experience richer by connecting with other humans.
Ghinwa Yassine
is a Lebanese interdisciplinary artist who moved to Vancouver in 2017. She works with video, drawing and performance, and explores the themes of displacement, authority and art criticism
The question
Philosophy in the Park started off with a duality, a binary, with a yes or no question. Is there or is there not a gap between art and life and is philosophy increasing this gap? And if we switch this question upside down, does the meeting of philosophy and art create an opportunity for art to engage and elevate society? Critically thinking about the art institution made us question whether we artists have created a new hierarchical system following mainly patriarchal figures, the philosophers. Have we made art inaccessible and perhaps useless to some people, thus contributing to social stratification?
The heroes
Philosophy In the Park is an on-going experiment that takes philosophy to the streets, particularly locations that mostly attract the underprivileged and the marginalized, and eliciting the voice of these people in regards to themes that are usually only accessible to the art and culture institutions. These people include but are not limited to social assistance recipients, people with disabilities, homeless people and refugees.
“What's the question? I have an answer, but what's the question?”
The experiment
We pick a spot where people from all walks of life might cross our way. And indeed they do. “Wanna talk philosophy?” we casually ask. And explain in the most simple way possible the philosophical concept of the Rhizome asking people if in any way they relate to the concept. During the first experiment we got a great deal of wisdom that we did not expect. People connected a lot of dots together, they anchored the concept in various events from their life and society in general. As people talk to us, we doodle all their thoughts on a scroll of paper that ends up looking like a map with no beginning and no end. There is no right or wrong answer. There are only connections and conversations.
“Do you wanna know something very interesting about mushrooms?
Did you know that if we did not have mushrooms,
the trees would not be living?
All the plants and everything would not be living.
Their roots will talk to each other, say hey,
we need more light over here or more water over here.”
“You get to a certain age you don’t think about things quite so much.
It doesn’t matter.”
“Chaos over structure.”
Volunteer with us to be able to reach more people in more places.