Filmic intersection: an encounter always about to happen¹

Abstract

This paper, which is part of a PhD research, aims to put into movement different fluxes of thoughts by means of a filmic intersection, inciting one to think a educative experience. It aims to attempt to what has the potential to affect and disquiet in a filmic encounter, making the production of different arrangements and textures possible. Through the narrative triggered by the crossing between the movie ‘O Balão Branco’ and the book ‘Pedagogia Profana’ (2010), from Jorge Larrosa (along with the undergraduate students in Visual Arts of UFSM), connections with teaching were possible to be made. The problematizations raised by the intersection among the filmic image, the narratives produced by the students, and the concepts operated in the investigation, especially the concepts from French philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, acted as a resonance vector, impelling, by means of the resulting echoes, the invention of multiple and unique scenes to education.

Keywords thinking; filmic intersections; resonance; educative experience

Resumo

Este texto, que é um recorte de uma pesquisa de doutorado, intenciona movimentar diferentes fluxos de pensamentos a partir de uma intercessão fílmica, incitando a pensar uma experiência educativa. Busca dar atenção àquilo que tem a potência de afetar e inquietar em um encontro fílmico, possibilitando a produção de diferentes arranjos e tessituras. A partir das narrativas disparadas pelo atravessamento entre o filme O balão branco e o livro Pedagogia profana (2010), de Jorge Larrosa (com os acadêmicos da Graduação em Artes Visuais da UFSM), foi possível tecer conexões com a docência. As problematizações suscitadas a partir do cruzamento da imagem fílmica selecionada, das narrativas produzidas pelos acadêmicos envolvidos na investigação e dos conceitos operados na pesquisa, especialmente os conceitos dos filósofos franceses Gilles Deleuze e Félix Guattari, agiram como um vetor de ressonâncias, impulsionando, a partir dos ecos repercutidos, a invenção de múltiplas e singulares cenas para a educação.

Palavras-chave pensamento; intercessões fílmicas; ressonância; experiência educativa

What instigates our thinking

In relation to educational experiences, what forces make the thought leave its inertia and acquire power to provoke encounters, intercessions and resonances?

Deleuze and Guattari (2005) state that thinking is not something inherent or acquired, thought must be provoked for we only think when thought is coerced, forced. Hence, it needs to be crossed and instigated by different streams of forces that may interrupt the apathy and paralysis that imprison us. Deleuze (2006) points out that "what forces us to think is the sign" (p.91). However, the sign is not the thought, but what can propel it to detach itself from its stagnation.

"The sign is the object of an encounter; but it is precisely the contingency of the encounter that guarantees the necessity of what it provokes to think" (Deleuze, 2006, p.91). It is in this field of confluences that the signs are emitted, so they do not appear in the same way and are deciphered in different ways, because they depend on the conjuncture and the implications of each encounter. It is a mistake to confuse the meaning of the sign with the "being" or "object" that it establishes, considering the secret of the sign to be in the object or in the subject.

By expecting that the objects and subjects reveal us the enigmas we aspire to, we become frustrated because they do not meet our expectations. This attitude prevents us from experiencing and strongly surrending to other signs. That is why certain encounters escape us because of our tendency to opt for the ease of recognitions.

Recognition does not require effort, the work is one of association and acknowledgement, because it always reunites with the habitual and familiar. In addition to joining the subject or the corresponding object, it also connects with current and universal values instituted, thus becoming a redundant operation. The thought, however, is violated, it depends on the circumstances of the instant and on what triggers the thinking. It is open to the unusual, the intolerable, the extraordinary.

Fortuitous encounters deal with unpredictability, the unknown, what cannot be anticipated, causing estrangement. It is precisely this surprising, uncertain and oscillating encounter that assures the urgency of what is thought. When we are at the mercy of the unexpected in an encounter, we distance ourselves from the ordinary reality and cognitive reference that causes us security, and this eventful atmosphere assures the necessity of what we think.

The bewilderment of being affected by different intercessors (some person, situations and things) takes us off the ground, but invites us to travel in unpredictable ways. These experiences, in some situations, arrive suddenly and end up dragging us, providing a vast array of possibilities. Thought is freed from its lethargy when, in an encounter, the intercessors lead to invention.

Deleuze (2010) reveals that “the creation is the intercessors. Without them there is no work. They can be people... but also things, plants, even animals... Fictitious or real, animate or inanimate” (p. 160). Vasconcellos (2006), departing from studies in Deleuze, expresses that “the intercessor is any encounter that causes the thought to leave its natural immobility, its stupor. Without the intercessors there is no creation. Without them there is no thought” (p.7).

Thus, we became interested in researching how the encounter with some intercessors, especially with the filmic images, takes place in educational experiences. Deleuze (2010) mentions that

in cinema, images are signs... The cinema creates its own signs, whose classification belongs to it, but once they are created they burst in another place, and the world opposes to “make cinema” [emphasis in the original]. (p. 87)

By inviting the filmic image to be one of our intercessors, we have the intention of forcing the thought to think other things, opposing a naturalized, homogenized and sententious image that the thought is accustomed to think. Because cinema is a thinking matter, it can impel the creation of thoughts, propitiating the act in the presented world and the fiction of other possibilities.

Therefore, the filmic images or the filmic signs, in research, come to be seen as provocations that impel the contestation of thinking habits which are still rooted and solidified in us. Transposing this lethargic state of thought requires shaking and breaking in, it implies giving up totalizing and absolute certainties, putting ourselves before the extraordinary and the unthinkable.

However, it is worth mentioning that "it is necessary to produce its own intercessors" (Deleuze, 2010, p. 160), since who chooses the intercessors are us, the choice is always singular. Even if we offer different intercessors for our students, we do not know if they will be chosen and welcomed as such. They can make sense to some students and make no sense to others.

It was with this in mind that we call film intercession the encounters with films that affected us during the research, because they instigated us to think and problematize the educational experience. We cannot guarantee that the same thing happened to those involved in the process, for the field of confluences in which each person was entangled was different. Each person selected their own intercessors, what really made sense and contaminated them. Or, perhaps, they just attended the meeting, not feeling affected to the point of making them.

We believe that the possibility is only to provide opportunities for our students to meet, without the expectation of what may actually happen to them. Those were just seeds thrown to the ground, which may or may not germinate... And in this planting, we may be surprised by what can flourish "within" all of this.

We produce and are produced within a multiplicity, even though sometimes this is not so visible. In our case, the echoes of the filmic intercessions incited us to think teaching, throwing us into a problematizing landscape. However, it does not mean that the cinema has more potential for dialoguing with educational experiences than other intercessors. This was, in fact, one of many choices. It could have been the modernist paintings, for example, but it was not.

Based on the ideas above, we seek to investigate how, in educational experiences, the encounter with the filmic image happens, and what is produced from it. We do not mean the image itself, but the relationship that is established between the images and the implications of the circumstantial scenario of each encounter.

The image is relation, therefore one cannot think the image individually, because it is alliance. It is in the entanglement of the bonds produced with the filmic image that perhaps we are to be incited and infected by signs in this powerful field of confluences in which we are entangled.

Hence, the challenge of this writing is to bring some issues to the agenda, so that we come to think about what has the capacity to affect and disturb us in a filmic intercession, making us rethink our teaching experience, which has the power to provoke vibrations, amplifying the intensity of what is experienced and allowing other resonances to be invented.

The research “within” the educational experiences

According to Van Manen (2003), the investigation of an educational experience seeks to give attention to the “empirical field of experience lived on a daily basis” (p. 9). The investigator's day-to-day experiences become the corpus of research, offering a fruitful material for thinking Education. It is a research that allows everyone to present what they have built from their own experience, whether in the academic (as a teacher, student or researcher) or personal environment.

This is a study in which the experiences with the individuals, the fomented problematizations, the narratives developed, the relation with the visual and textual materials and what it was possible to produce with all this are taken into account. It is in this intense field that multiple voices are crossed, knowledge is shared and other scenes for education are inaugurated.

When we watch for encounters, we become "a sensitive observer of the subtleties of everyday life" (Van Manen, 2003, p. 47). The challenge may lie in resting our gaze on each of the encounters, so that we can put ourselves in a position to learn from them, allowing ourselves to be inundated by occurrences that we do not know, cause us fear, challenge us to think differently, and dissolve our certainties and dogmas. This is the price of living intensely what is lived...

The research of an educational experience brings to the discussion the capacity to visualize and to think the possible landscapes that we can compose with the common incidents, with the smallest thing, with what is sometimes ignored and discarded in our daily life. This delayed landing causes us to come in contact with the forces that urge us to perpetuate what we do, putting us face to face with our hindrances and limitations.

Investigating our own educational experience allows us to think about our role in the pedagogical field, paying attention to the resonances propagated in each of our meetings and impelling to rethink the relationship with ourselves and among all those involved in the educational process.

The endless shades of resonance

According to Conle (2000 cited by Creus, Montané & Sancho, 2011), the notion of resonance is seen as "a process that advances inquiry, producing more and more stories" (p.55). The resonances propagated in the encounters have the property to dissipate, to disperse, enlarging the field of action. This vibratory propagation produces echoes that allow different relationships with other elements, repercussions of other compositions beyond expectations.

When we work collectively and share impressions and experiences, we can produce vibrations of greater amplitude. The repercussions of one resonate with others and expand, mix with other echoes and end up producing other things, contributing for other meanings to happen in our encounters.

Narrative overlaps contribute to the research process, for the echoes in a meeting begin to resonate with other possibilities beyond the ordinary. With this, different themes are activated, triggering other relationships and problematizations. Creus et al. (2011) define resonance as a "strategy for making identifications and non-identifications to emerge, to establish a process of dialogue in which critical situations allow us to deepen the understanding of different feelings and points of view" (p. 68).

Resonant frequencies vary because the oscillatory movement is due to the intensity we use in our encounters and the vibrational energy we give to certain situations. We may or may not increase the duration and intensity of something lived, causing the waves to expand, retract or neutralize. Intensity refers to how much we allow ourselves to affect, oscillate, and vary, letting the vibrational waves of encounters touch us in full.

Guerra Neto (2001) states that "for a resonance to be made, two dimensions or two principles, which are attraction and affinity, are essential" (p. 71). We think that resonance happens even in encounters where there is no affinity, and approximation, relationship or sympathy are not present. It is not only in identifications, but also in strangeness that resonances can affect us with greater power. The incompatibility may resonate with greater intensity, destabilizing our certainties and inciting us to think of other possibilities.

We observe that Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari operated with the concept of resonance in their works, especially when they establish relationships and dialogue with all the concepts worked, because each concept ends up resonating in the other. We also perceive that they have the property of moving other vibrations in the same concept, although contradictory, because, through the connection of other elements with the previously developed concept, other arrangements are composed, and other resonances are spread. They offer us, on each page, new inquiries, different textures, and material for thinking about life itself. As Deleuze (2010) notes,

resonance is not based on patches that would have been given by partial objects, neither it totalizes patches that would have come from another place. It extracts its own patches and make them resonate according to its specific purpose, but it does not totalize them for it is always a “wrestling”, a “fight” or a “combat”. [emphasis in the original] What is produced by the process of resonance, in the machine of making resonating is the essence of singular, the superior point of view in relation to the two movements that resonate, in rupture with the associative chain between one another. (p. 144)

The different resonances move the exercise of thought, for "thinking becomes an exposition to forces at random, something that occurs in the interval, in between, in spacing" (Levy, 2011, p. 128). Being on the lookout for encounters in the educational experience, being aware of the resonances propagated, can lead to thinking different issues, expanding the possibilities for life and inventing other ways of existing.

By thinking in such way, we used in this research a filmic intercession of our educational experience that happened in the first semester of 2013 and was shared with the scholars of the Supervised Teaching Practice III and IV subjects of the Graduate Course in Visual Arts at Federal University of Santa Maria (UFSM). It seems interesting to us to take a closer look at this experience, for the resonances echoed in this encounter continue to provoke us, challenging us to think and invent others.

Our goal was to throw light into what was possible to think and produce from this encounter, worrying that these experiences were not only a reflexive support, but that they could be thought of as triggers for restlessness. For doing so, besides the film image, two more intercessors were involved in our research, mobilizing us to think the educational experience: the narratives of the scholars involved in the research and the concepts of the theorists used, especially the French philosophers Gilles Deleuze’s and Félix Guattari’s.

The academics’ narratives in relation to the encounter were thought as a boost for problematizations, and the concepts had the intention of tensioning when operated along with the filmic intercession, the academics’ narratives, and also in tune with the displacement and the production of our own thought.

It is in this entanglement of relationships that the inventive power to think other ways to teaching can happen and resonate, putting us in contact with the extraordinary, with the unthinkable, for, at the moment when thought is broken in and provoked, habits of thought are opposed and forced out of their apathetic and indifferent state.

In this direction, we opted for the narrative perspective, with the purpose of attending the researches' wishes, allowing the establishment of "experience as a discussion agenda or as a focus of research" (Oliveira, 2011, 178).

When we study the narratives of others, we pass through worlds that we do not know, because different thoughts and impressions are intertwined. This multiplicity contributes to new compositions being triggered, enabling other meaning productions.

The importance of narratives lies in what they make us think and the other connections they challenge us to make. Therefore, it is possible to say that, by making the choice for a narrative investigation, we are also taking into account the crossing and the sharing, since both the collaborators and the investigator are involved in this process.

The resonance of the filmic intercession...

When we look at filmic intercession as a driver to make us think about teaching, or, perhaps, the unthinkable of teaching, we set forth an encounter that occurred when we shared educational experiences with three academics from the Supervised Teaching Practice III and four academics from the Supervised Teaching Practice IV.

This intercession, in particular, challenged us to seek some concepts to account for the demands that the film and the academics’ narratives elicited, impelling us to look more closely at the studies on cinema, especially in the works Movement-image (1983) and Time-image (1990) by Gilles Deleuze.

This statement reaffirms the implication of theory and practice, because, due to the urgency of the moment, we now feel the need to seek concepts to understand what is happening in the investigation, for the theory studied makes our look more attentive and point to certain things that would perhaps be imperceptible if there was no call for theory. Theory and practice are being intensively updated throughout the research.

We chose to explore a film that distanced itself from the school experiences, because we believe that other signs could be imbricated, triggering the thought to establish other relationships with teaching. The choice of the film The White Balloon (1995), produced in Iran directed by Jafar Panahi and screenplay by Abbas Kiarostami, came from the intention of exploring filmic images that gave rise to differences and non-similarities, giving up the relations of recognition and association. The filmic images that urge us to leave the comfortable position of recognition in which we often find ourselves, which bother us with the gaps and voids produced in the scene, that touch us to the point of triggering "sheets of past" (Deleuze, 1990) and that instigate us to update these sheets in the present are the ones that lead us to have foreign, unusual sensations and experiences.

The film The White Balloon, an 85-minute feature film, tells the story of a girl named Razieh, who during the New Year festivities in Persia insists her mother give her a beautiful gold and fat goldfish. As the family was going through financial difficulties, the little girl's mother denied her request. The brother, seeing the sadness of his sister, decides to intercede with his mother, convincing her to give the money so she could buy the much desired fish. Razieh leaves the house with the money in hand in search of her goldfish and from that moment happens to live a great adventure in her way up to the store. What could be a simple route becomes a course full of stops, obstacles, frustrations, challenges and overruns.

Besides the film, we tried to provide another element in this encounter, exploring the intersection of a new intercessor, Jorge Larrosa's book Pedagogia profana (2010). We sought through this to dialogue with different signs and to produce singular unfoldings, aiming at the composition of unusual arrangements. The purpose was that the concepts and signs implied in the book had the role of tensors, inciting us to think the teaching through a greater range of perspectives.

This was possible because, during the semester, the group agreed to study a chapter of Pedagogia Profana every week. When we asked to watch the film, we had already worked with the whole book, which contributed significantly in the dialogue between film, book and teaching.

In view of this, we launched the following question: what resonances are possible to be crossed and invented, from the encounter with the film The White balloon, with the concepts worked in the book Profane Pedagogy and with teaching?

The crossing of these three elements was intense, reverberating powerful problematizations, as it will be shown later. However, we could also detect how difficult it is to move the different elements involved in a multiplicity. It is still a challenge to move "rhizomatically" (Deleuze & Guattari, 1995), because we have introjected a structured and tree-like view, "first this", "then that". The challenge is to be amazed by the alliances and compositions that the possible implicated elements suggest and stress, allowing them to escape, to overflow, and to break through these connections.

Below, we explore some academics’ narratives about the encounter with the film The white balloon, the book Pedagogia Profana and teaching, which seem to form echoes, inciting us to think and produce dialogues with certain concepts. To this end, some points of force have been activated and problematized: “When the sheets of past are evoked”, “The problematization of truths”, “Between house and goldfish the world exists”, “Traveling among chapters and pages”, “What does silence have to tell us?” and “The silent movement of the image”.

When the sheets of past are evoked

When watching ‘The White Balloon’ I’m played by a thousand thoughts. I close my eyes and I can still feel the five reais closed in my hand. Such a simple task, which was to buy bread at the supermarket on the next block, could be a gigantic adventure when you were 6 and neighbors who approached you halfway to attack you. Sometimes I would return home without bread or money, but with silence.

I’m also thrown into Morocco, year 2011, when I was in a lawless land, among snakes, illusionists and a suffering people, who had in tourists their source of income. It was only in that country that I had such a cultural shock, which was when my perceptions turned upside down, the frightened tourist look was the same as the lost child with her aquarium, among Muslims, Islam, Africa, and desert. (Academic 01 Supervised Teaching Practice IV)

Thinking is not a natural faculty, for it results from forces that invade and occupy thought, seizing it. These forces make the thought come out of its natural stupor, forcing it to detach itself from its usual lethargy. The film The White Balloon made this possible, as it propelled Academic 01, from the Supervised Teaching Practice IV, to think about his own life.

In the narrative of this same scholar, we observe the innumerable relations that can be raised in a filmic intercession. “An event, even brief, instantaneous, continues” (Deleuze, 2010, p. 203). The encounter with the film made this prolongation possible, because its filmic signs produced echoes and propagated to the point that the sheets of past were evoked.

A conducting thread was invented, which began to weave different relations, communicating transversally within the different layers of the past. According to Deleuze (1990), events “are constantly being relocated as they belong to this or that sheet of past, to this or that continuum of age, all coexisting” (p. 146).

Time means the coexistence of all the sheets or layers of past. The sheets of past are pure memories and cannot be confused with the memory-images. However, it is "from the sheets of past that the memory-images are born" (Machado, 2010, p. 278) and become possible.

Pelbart (2010) points out that Deleuze sees time as a multiplicity, a gigantic ontological veneer, a plan of virtual coexistence. In this plan, “time does not ‘pass’ [emphasis in the original], but conserves itself like virtuality available in all of its points for diverse updates and according to the most unusual connections” (p. 186).

In this ontological veneer, “each sheet of past has its distribution, its fragmentation, its bright points, its nebulae, in short, an age” (Deleuze, 1990, p. 150). That is why an image of the present can trigger the bright points of a layer of past in a fraction of a second, for they coexist, making possible the memory-images. In the statement “I can still feel the five reais closed in my hand” it is possible to observe the sheet that was preserved in time and that only needed to be driven to surface, because “it is no longer the future and the past that subvert the existing present, it is the instant that converts the present into the insistent future and past” (Deleuze, 2011, p. 170).

The intensity of time is evidenced in this passage, because it unfolds in a non-linear, non-chronological time, since the virtual regions of past can be evoked according to the circumstances of the moment. Deleuze (1990) explains that the installation in a sheet of past can lead to two situations: “either I find there the point I was looking for, which will, therefore, be updated in a memory-image.... Or I do not discover the point, because it is in another sheet that is inaccessible to me, it belongs to another age” (p. 150). The quote from Deleuze suggests that sheets of past will not always be triggered, because this depends on the interference of certain factors: accessibility or cloudiness of each layer.

Thus, in finding what one wishes, affection and relationship with this layer of past are renewed, prolonging updated sensations to the present. This stretch to the present allows for the mixing of other elements, the variation and the invention of other ways of living.

Pelbart (2010) highights that

it is not a past to be discovered, but to invent according to the folding to which it will be subjected and which will situate it in an unsuspected bundle of relations. [emphasis in the original] We would say that time, as an open raw material, is like a mass to be incessantly molded, or modulated, stretched, kneaded, compressed, fluidized, densified, superimposed, divided, distended, etc. The time released from the present, the updated present, the movement, the succession, means that this mass becomes available to a procedural plurality that does not cease to make it vary. (pp. 19-20)

The fluidity and flexibility of time allow a moving, distended flow of uncertain forces, and in this agitation and coexistence of times we have a possibility of producing and producing ourselves, of varying, of inventing others of ourselves. Transverse communication with sheets of past does not have the intention to seek in these layers the nature of what we are today, but what we can invent with these sheets from the present. It is not about being a six-year-old boy, a tourist in 2011, a child with an aquarium or an academic from the Supervised Teaching Practice. We are a multiplicity, a veneer, so we can be the academic who is a child, a tourist, an illusionist, a snake, a desert, a white balloon.

The problematization of truths

The experience of a common reading we went through happened as Larrosa describes: “(...) as one of the possible games of teaching and learning” (2010, p. 139). Our reading was the same, but the interpretations of each person were multiple, the concepts and the truths were questioned.

(Academic 01 Supervised Teaching Practice III)

Deleuze (2010) comments that “we always have the truths we deserve, according to the procedures of knowing..., the mechanisms of power, the processes of subjectivation or individuation available” (p. 149). Therefore, in recognizing that truth is embedded in power and interest games, true and untrue discourses may have been produced at one time.

Gilles Deleuze (1990) emphasizes that “time has always challenged the notion of truth. It does not mean that the truth varies according to time. It is not mere empirical content, it is form or rather the pure force of time that generates crisis in truth” (p. 159). The notion of truth is shaken by a nonlinear, non-evolutionary, non-totalizing time thought, for if certain events have not taken place in time because they have arrived late or have been neglected, denied, and discarded, it would have been possible to question whether true pasts coexist in the present moment. This leads us to recognize that history could have been written quite differently.

For us to think about this, perhaps “falsification” is an issue to be explored in educational experiences. The “power of false” degrades the truth because it stresses and makes one think the coexistence of pasts which are not necessarily true, since it allows the presence of different alternatives, of other possibilities. For Deleuze (2010), “the power of the false is time in person, not because the contents of time are variable, but because the form of time as becoming brings into question every formal model of truth” (p. 89).

Literature and Cinema also move at every moment in the power of the false, in which permanent truths are questioned, enabling the problematization of truth as a “model”. In this plot “the falsifier cannot be reduced to a mere copier, nor to a liar, for what is false is not only the copy, but the model” (Deleuze, 1990, p. 178).

In educational experiences, the dialogue with the power of the false in the filmic intercessions makes possible the questioning of what is given as truth. Due to falsifying narratives flee from the system of judgment and arbitration, those involved are more comfortable in thinking about other alternatives, other possibilities, and other ways of living. Truth does not need to be known or recognized, nor even repeated, it must be provoked and produced, reminding at all times that it is and will always be provisional.

Nietzsche differentiates the will for truth and the will for power. The will for truth is based on the conviction of a preexisting truth, while the will for power is based on the absence of this world: therefore, it is necessary to invent it. In the will for power, power “is the power to affect and to be affected, the relation of one force to another” (Deleuze, 1990, p. 170).

In addition to affecting and being affected, the will for power also consists in engendering fables and inventing worlds where any possibility of judgment is nullified. Establishing relations between the will for power and the powers of the false in educational experiences makes it possible to think of other paths that may have not yet been pursued with the intention of strengthening other constructions of meanings for education and teaching.

“Between house and goldfish the world exists”

She might as well settle for skinny golden fish, but no, she had to get out of the comfort of home to fetch that fish, chubby and golden as a trophy, but between house and fish there is the world, and the world is also homework, those which we learn and do not forget, even if she had suffered to finish it.

(Academic 01 Supervised Teaching Practice IV)

Strange how the goldfish seems bigger, chubbier, depending only on the angle we observe it. Or what we wanted so much becomes almost nothing due to everything we have experienced throughout the process, and that achievement is frustrated due to the enormous expectations that we place in the future. As Larrosa puts it, the training process is a journey where anything can happen, “where you do not know where you are going, not even if you are going to get somewhere.”

(Académic 02 Supervised Teaching Practice IV)

Deleuze (2010) points out that “it is not the beginnings or the ends that count, but what lies in between” (p. 205), because it is in “between” that things happen and that thoughts grow and gain speed. It is necessary to take into account that “between home and fish the world exists, and the world is also homework”. Learning takes place not at the origin of the world, nor at the end of the world, but in the worlds. It is in “between” that crossings and connections start to happen.

The “between” can arise at any point, since it has an off centered nature. It does not derive from a unit and it is not directed to one, it overflows, that is why it can connect with any other point. “It is like the deviations of a movement that occupies space as a whirlwind, with the possibility of arising at any point" (Deleuze, 2010, p. 205).

In educational experiences, we waste energy as we worry about the point of arrival to which all students, after a journey, must arrive. Everything we experience along the process is sometimes disregarded, stifled or denied. The girl in the movie had a goal, to buy the goldfish. More important, however, were the experiences she gained during the process: “between the house and the fish” many encounters took place, with tempting, challenging, and unusual propositions. And it was precisely this “world” that most reverberated learning.

When watching the film, anguish has been taking hold of us, we asked ourselves several times: why hasn’t she gone directly to buy the goldfish? Why so many stops? Why does she disperse so much? When we come into contact with these feelings, we realize how much the arrival at the point of destination and the fulfillment of the goals still preponderated in our lives, becoming more important than the process. This statement does not mean that we have to disregard our goals and plans, but with them we can also be on the search for what happens to us in the middle of the journey, living intensely what the encounters with people, situations and things can provide us with.

“The process of formation is a journey, in which anything can happen”, because it deals with the uncontrollable, with the unpredictable. When we proposed that academics in the Supervised Teaching Practice III and IV disciplines watch the film The White Balloon and relate to the issues raised in the book Pedagogia Profana (2010) and educational experiences, our intention was for these signs to encourage them to think about teaching.

However, we were only launching invitations, possibilities of encounters, approximations with signs, because we were not sure that this addressing would reach its recipient, that the invitation would be accepted and that the meetings and relationships would happen. Thinking may or may not happen, since it depends on the contingencies of an encounter, on the forces involved, on how much we are allowed to be violated by the unthought of the thought.

This uncertainty is what drives us to continue teaching, it is this unknown and challenging space that incites us to bet on education. Gallo (2003) suggests that it is precisely there where one recognizes “the beauty of the educational process: we act without ever knowing what will be the result of our actions” (p. 103). When we go through an unfamiliar space is when we feel alive, active, because we are not only representing the scenes that we rehearsed and reproducing the speeches that we decorated, but we are living intensely each encounter.

To be contaminated by the surprises of the journey, by the sensations that are offered to us, by what happens in the “between” of the world, can allow us to live every day in a renewed way. And perhaps in this crossing, we will find other goldfish, more colorful and interesting.

“Traveling among chapters and pages”

This semester was certainly atypical. Initially it would be the simplest, it would not have much to be questioned, because I was in the course conclusion phase, but it was not so. With the proposal of Larrosa's book Pedagogia Profana, we have been able to travel several times between the chapters and pages of our own history, making what was already set as decided to take new directions

(Academic 02 Supervised Teaching Practice IV)

Pelbart (2010) explains that “one always seeks the origin or the end of a life in a cartographic vice, but the middle is disdained, which is where one reaches the greatest speed. This middle is precisely where the most different times communicate and intersect.” (p. 113). The velocities do not go from a past to a future, they are always in the middle, in “between”.

The reading and study of Jorge Larrosa's book Pedagogia profana in the disciplines of Supervised Teaching Practice III and IV allowed us to “travel between the chapters and pages of our own history” because, as we were allowed to go through unexpected flows of forces, different inflections and intersections could be proposed. As we allow ourselves to be affected by what happens in “between”, different possibilities have opened up, inciting us to experience unimaginable routes.

This course sometimes becomes painful, for certainties begin to collapse, and insecurity becomes present. To be affected by the storms of the route means to take the best of this event. It is not direct confrontation, since this could cause destruction, but rather to harness strength and intensity in “between” the winds. Maybe taking advantage of only one spot in a gust of wind is enough to encourage us to think about our own lives and take us on a new path.

“What does silence have to tell us?”

Since I was a child, I am a big fan of silence, I think I could communicate better with my eyes than with my mouth. It seemed that verbalizing took away the charm of things, the noise of speech never matched very well the contemplation of the gaze. Larrosa talks about silence in a way he had not yet thought about, the silence necessary to create a distance from ourselves, that opening of the mouth without sound that connects us with the world through other senses, or even with new experiences.

(Academic 01 Supervised Teaching Practice IV)

In the book Conversations, Deleuze (2010) states that “the problem is no longer to make people express themselves, but to give them vacuoles of solitude and silence from which they would have something to say” (p. 166). Silence, in this sense, can be related to a tensioned attention in returning to oneself, it is a moment of listening and retreat, so that we can see the world and ourselves in a renewed way (Larrosa, 2010).

Sometimes when we read a book, poetry, watch a landscape or a scene from a film, listening and meditation are present and we feel the intensity of that silence. Perhaps in this silence we find things we did not know, a whirlwind of sensations never before experienced, silenced cries, words not yet uttered. And maybe at this moment we have something to say, something unusual. That is why silence can be seen as power, because it is through it that we can gain speed.

Also, silence can have intensity “to create a distance from ourselves”, a distance that is sometimes necessary. By “opening our mouths without sound”, we make connections “with the world through other senses”. How often, when watching a movie, do we feel our heart beat, a shiver, tears streaming down our cheeks? Anyway, our body starts to have surprising reactions, giving us the impression that all our senses are connected with the world. Sometimes we need silence to pay attention to all those feelings and experiences that surround us. These feelings drive us to think other things and perhaps to be otherwise.

But what has silence to do with educational experiences? Why bring this concept in this writing?

We have thought about the exercise of silence in educational experiences, on the effort to listen to our students, on the challenge of being silent among statements that are moving towards issues with which we do not agree and on the effort to silence so that other points of view come to exist. But what we are trying to bring to the discussion at this moment is another perspective on silence, the awkward silence, the one that causes us to talk about anything, only not to feel that awkward moment. In certain situations, we trample the thinking of our students because of the silence that causes anguish and inconvenience.

Once we were watching a talk by Professor Raimundo Martins at UFSM, when he asked the public for some considerations about the video that had played, and “that silence” was present. A few seconds, which seemed more like long minutes, passed and nothing – no comment. He settled himself in the chair and calmly remarked, “you and I have all afternoon to state our considerations, you do not need to hurry, for I know you need this silence to think! ²”.

His speech has moved, because we thought of the times when we did not give our students the opportunity to think, because of the anguish that silence caused us. There have been many times when we have responded to the questions that we ourselves had thrown only to not make room for “silence”. Therefore, our challenge has been to think of silence as something intense, powerful, from which you gain speed to think other things. It is about seeing silence as a “return to oneself” as a “detachment from ourselves”, as a moment of tension in which things happen; so that, from all this, we have “something to say”.

“The silent movement of the image”

At the end of the film nothing seems to make sense, nothing... For a child to leave home is already venturing, even if it has air of tragedy, going through snakes, smugglers and whales. The search for the goldfish seems arduous, but if there were analogies or metaphors, I lost them, and that white balloon is still incognito.

(Academic 01 Supervised Teaching Practice IV)

This statement instigates us to think of the silent movement of the image, for the image of the balloon had the power to resonate, spreading itself to infinity. At the end of the film, the spectator was provided with spaces and gaps so that they could make their conjectures about what might have happened, widening the range of possibilities.

The concern to present images in which everything is shown and explained makes us think about our need to direct and normalize our eyes. The urge to present images with closed interpretations and conclusions may inhibit the creation of other possibilities.

Silent images can be powerful for triggering thinking, because they provide the silence necessary for us to hear. It is in this sense that, in the shocking silence at the end of the film, we can hear ourselves. A sense of perplexity also enveloped us and we began to question: what happened? Razieh was able to buy her so longed fish? What is the meaning of the white balloon in the last scene? A hiatus comes at the end of the movie, and this seems to upset us. Because it presents an uncertain end, without a "closure", without an "end point", this causes a nuisance and shakes us.

Paradoxically, these same feelings of discomfort capture us and make us think of educational experiences, moving us to problematize issues that we had not previously perceived.

Why this feeling, where everything needs closure? Why do we have to leave everything so tied, with no spaces for other endings, or rather, other "between" and possibilities? Why in educational experiences do we need to explain and carry out everything? Why do we need to "close" our classes as if they need a conclusion? Couldn’t we leave problems, instead of closing them with answers?

Possible developments

In this filmic intercession, there have been unusual dialogues with teaching, since several signs have become involved and imbricated, giving space for other questions. The emergency conditions involved in the meeting became responsible for the problematizations promoted and also for the alliances and the inventive arrangements.

The film The White Balloon was not really about teaching, but it was a trigger to think about it. In addition, at that meeting, academics were also encouraged to juxtapose another element to dialogue with the film and teaching: Jorge Larrosa's book Pedagogia Profana (2010), contributing significantly to a greater number of connections.

When working with the film image, the book and teaching, the intention was to incite the group to think possible unfoldings that did not resemble the same, that were not replaced by the metaphor and did not trigger similar movements, falling into a prolongation of what already exists. The challenge was to think of provisional and replaceable possibilities, always in the process of being, becoming.

To do so, while exploring some fields of force, we seek to focus on the problematization and the establishment of other dialogues with the images, on the design of other landscapes and possibilities from, with and beyond them. Investing in the relation with the images, without the concern to correspond, equate, interpret and reproduce, becomes a daily effort, for as Deleuze (1990) explains:

we do not perceive the whole thing or image, we always perceive less, we perceive only what we are interested in perceiving, or rather what we are interested in perceiving due to our economic interests, ideological beliefs, psychological demands. Therefore, we commonly perceive only clichés. (p. 31)

Converting “sensorimotor” dispositions into “pure optical and sound” dispositions³ (Deleuze, 1990) requires the creation of different ways of understanding, bringing to the debate the cliché images that make us repeat the same and the metaphors that produce images consistent with what already exists.

Perhaps the greatest challenge lies in problematizing these images that are familiar to us and give us security, trying to bring to the discussion a new image of thought, or rather a thought without image. Pelbart (2010) argues that “a thought without an image is one that does not obey a previous image of thought, that is, to a previous Model that guides and shapes, which would determine in advance what it means to think” (pp. 28-29).

By allowing itself to be violated by the signs that the dialogue between filmic intercession and teaching provokes, different relations and a spread of possibilities are offered in ever wider circuits. The dissipated resonances can be seen as “singular adventures of thought to which the multiple existence of cinema gave life” (Rancière, 2012, p. 17) and have the property of renewing itself at each new encounter, since the relations and problematizations raised in relation to teaching are inexhaustible.

After all: some questions continue to resonate...

Both the scholars involved in this investigation and we have developed some impressions in this filmic intercession, although many elements are no longer perceived and/or explored. In this sense, it is important to emphasize that to cover all the problematizations raised in the encounter is and will always be impracticable, because something will always remain to be written, to be said and to be seen.

Rilke (2013) also emphasizes that “things are far from being as tangible and veritable as one might have been led to believe; most events are inexpressible and occur in a space in which no word has ever trod” (p. 12). What we experienced in the encounters is shown, in certain situations, in the plane of the unspeakable, because it is of the order of the event.

Even if we return to the filmic intercession, seeking to exhaust all possibilities, it will always be a continuous and inexhaustible movement. Even because at each visitation the irreversible character of an encounter emerges, for the field of confluences will be distinct and it will no longer be about the same individual that events will perform.

This allows us to think that the intercession investigated will always be in the process of happening, it will always be an invitation for other narratives and images to approach or leave the scene, so that different dialogues and crossings can be realized and singular problematizations can be unleashed.

Teaching would be exactly that. A continuous process, in constant renewal with the experienced. That is, an opportunity to reinvent ourselves at every event. A favorable circumstance towards which we let ourselves be contaminated and affected, potentializing our ability to act

• 2
  Excerpt retrieved from the lecture “Teoria em Ato: reflexões sobre uma narrativa”, performed in november 2013, at Federal University of Santa Maria. Professor Raimundo Martins is a researcher at the Graduate Program in Arts and Visual Culture at Federal University of Goias.
• 3
  For better comprehension, it is worthy to differentiate the “sensorimotor” dispositions from “pure optical and sound” dispositions. In the book The time-image,Deleuze (1990) offers this difference in a clear way: in the first, we “associate to the thing many other things that are alike it in the same plane to the extent that all promote similar movements”; and, in the second, they “always promote the thing to an essential singularity and describe the endless, referring endlessly to other descriptions” (p. 61). The descriptions allow us to explore the images’ inexhaustible hues and facets, which get attached to something, lingering as to investigate other perspectives on the same thing.
• 1
  English version: Anelise Scotti Scherer - [e-mail].

References

• Creus, A., Montané, A., & Sancho, J. M. (2011). Reconstrucción del proceso de una investigación autobiográfica en educación superior. In F. Hernández, & M. Rifà (Orgs.), Investigación autobiográfica y cambio social (pp. 49-72). Barcelona: Octaedro.
• Deleuze, G. (1983). Cinema 1-A imagem-movimento (S. Senra, Trad.). São Paulo: Brasiliense.
• Deleuze, G. (1990). Cinema 2-A imagem-tempo (E. de A. Ribeiro, Trad.). São Paulo: Brasiliense.
• Deleuze, G. (2006). Proust e os signos (A. Piquet & R. Machado, Trads., 2a ed.). Rio de Janeiro: Forense Universitária.
• Deleuze, G. (2010). Conversações (P. P. Pelbart, Trad., 2a ed.). São Paulo: Editora 34.
• Deleuze, G. (2011). Lógica do sentido (L. R. S. Fortes, Trad., 5a ed.). São Paulo: Perspectiva.
• Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1995). Mil platôs: capitalismo e esquizofrenia (Vol. 1, A. Guerra & C. P. Costa, Trads.). Rio de Janeiro: Editora 34.
• Gallo, S. (2003). Deleuze & a Educação Belo Horizonte: Autêntica.
• Guerra Neto, A. (2001). Comemoração e ressonância. In D. Lins (Coord.), Nietzsche e Deleuze: pensamento nômade (pp. 63-80). Rio de Janeiro: Relume Dumará; Fortaleza, CE: Secretaria da Cultura e Desporto do Estado.
• Larrosa, J. (2010). Pedagogia profana: danças, piruetas mascaradas (A.Veiga-Neto, Trad., 5a ed.). Belo Horizonte: Autêntica.
• Levy, T. (2011). A experiência do fora: Blanchot, Foucault e Deleuze Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira.
• Machado, R. (2010). Deleuze, a arte e a filosofia (2a ed.). Rio de Janeiro: Jorge Zahar.
• Oliveira, M. O. de. (2011. Por uma abordagem narrativa e autobiográfica: os diários de aula como foco de investigação. In R. Martins, & I. Tourinho (Orgs.), Educação da cultura visual: conceitos e contextos (pp.175-190). Santa Maria: Editora da UFSM.
• Pelbart, P. P. (2010). O tempo não reconciliado Imagens de tempo em Deleuze São Paulo: Perspectiva.
• Rancière, J. (2012). As distâncias do cinema (E. dos S. Abreu, Trad.). Rio de Janeiro: Contraponto.
• Rilke, R. M. (2013). Cartas a um jovem poeta e A canção de amor e de morte do porta-estandarte Cristóvão Rilke (P. Rónai & C. Meireles, Trads., 4a ed.). São Paulo: Globo.
• Van Manen, M. (2003). Investigación educativa y experiencia vivida Barcelona: Idea books.
• Vasconcellos, J. (2006). Deleuze e o cinema Rio de Janeiro: Moderna.

References

• Panahi, J. (Dir.). (1995). O balão branco Irã. Recuperado em 30 de maio de 2013, de https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3k7sKDZTtk
  » https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3k7sKDZTtk

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  04 July 2019
• Date of issue
  2019

History

• Received
  23 May 2017
• Reviewed
  31 Oct 2017
• Accepted
  12 Jan 2018