Participant: Graziele Lautenschlaeger
Format: Presentation and Conversation
Themes: recursion, praxis

As a multi-skilled cultural agent at SESC – the Social Service of Commerce – I believe that Second-order Cybernetics could be used to find solutions to better understand and enhance the effectiveness of our everyday work. SESC is a Brazilian private institution, created by the enterprise of commerce and services, it is a non profit organization with national scope. SESC’s actions are the result of solid cultural and educational projects which have promoted innovation and social transformation since its creation in 1946. Although it has been recognized for its efficiency in cultural action, the cultural agents of the institution deal with the sense of lack of permanence of their actions.

Considering Second-order Cybernetics principles – like recursion and the inclusion of subjectivity in the analysis process – I propose a review of our work flow, towards humanitarian and sustainable gain. For a sustainable approach to cultural action within the institution’s rules we ought to start exercising self criticism. Through the analysis of the role-shifting process we are used to working with within SESC, in a kind of second-order acting, the proposal is to check what changes over time from one circumstance to the next.

As a pilot analysis, I compare how cultural action is conducted in both the micro universe of a SESC unit, and the macro organization of a bigger event, involving all the SESC’s units in the city of Sao Paulo, like the Mostra SESC de Artes. Mostra SESC de Artes is an annual event organized by the institution, which combines actions in different forms of artistic expressions in order to promote and disseminate Contemporary Art trends. We would like to figure out how we can build a structure to preserve potential and successful thoughts, projects, processes and knowledge – toward an ecology of ideas.