Notes and exercises from the open research group self-model-making, 2025-2026.
To bring together [exercises] our [works] and [theories]
some colophon?1
contents
A. Self-Models
- T: Braidotti: the isolated Human
- T: Wynter life/death
- E: explorative diagramming
- E: autofiction/autotheory E: Annotating each other’s reflections
- E: compass
B. Self-technology / model-making
[ page with eyes ]
- T: Foucault: subjectivation/self-making
- E: subjectivation galette
- T: Verbeek: mediation
- E: read material companion
- T: modernist tech?? (Vazquez, Hui)
- E: rearrangement
C. Relational Rites
- T: relational being? (Wark, Morton, Ensor, A/Traverso, Preciado)
- E: Starter Pack
- [T: Love]
- E: annotate excerpts
- T: transindividuality
- E: Rites of Passage / coming-of-self
D. [Our projects] - short caption of each project - postcard - radio play - plant overlay
introduction
The caterpillar and the ant
culture of the caterpillar-self: plotted on the mission to become a butterfly.
thinking things are to be solved individually, while collectiveliy running into end times.
caterpillar-mode perpetuates itself in how our feelings and desires are structured - safety in control, not trust - growth/freedom in isolation, not relation - fulfilment in result, not experience
instead, can we run into ant times?
unlearn, unmake, unbecome and learn to access feeling safe, free and fulfilled in relation how to surround, relate, open, and jump in?
we don’t have answers, but we did spend some time with these questions and invite you to join us on our paths.
this workbook starts from the idea that our lives are shaped by the way we think of our Selves, aka our self-model.
And that these ideas are made, shaped and sustained/sedimented by the things around us. We cannot find salvation in trying to retreat from things, but instead that we can develop practices and things that accompany us towards relational self-models.
Let’s take a caterpillar, the caterpillar-self, on its plotted and singular mission to become a butterfly. It eats, sits on a leaf, makes itself a cocoon and goes inside and waits. Maybe, it thinks things can all be solved individually as we collectively run into these crises [which seemingly come at the end.] This caterpillar-self perpetuates itself in how our feelings and desires are structured: we see safety in control over others, not trust; we see freedom and growth in isolation, not relation; we see fulfilment in result, not experience. How can we grow, not through entering our cocoon, how can we [shed] in public and instead, become something that you never imagined before? Can we run into [ant times] instead, can we unlearn, unbecome, and access feeling safe, free and fulfilled in relation? How can we jump in?
We’re not afraid to say that we don’t have answers, yet, from our time spent with these questions. Within the open research group, taking place between Spring 2025 - Spring 2026, we assembled a set of applied exercises under the umbrella of self-modelling. These are exercises in attention to how the self relates to others and the world. Refusing the rigid matrix of sequential developmental stages and the universal progression of the human psyche from simple to complex self, this guide offers a disarming panoply of instructions for you to practice estranging yourself from habits, material affordances, affective techniques, and technologies of care. We gladly invite you to join us in these endeavours, but first.
However enticing it is to say that these techniques are safe, they are not. Beware. Please be careful. Behold the self, and please do not be afraid in letting something go. We are aware that this possibly sounds dramatic, but you must be prepared for what it feels like to [know both everything and nothing about yourself, all at once.] When it might become too much, please look at yourself in the mirror, or look at yourself in the person opposite you, or close your eyes and look at yourself, your eyelids. You can regocnise yourself in these feelings.
alt-preface
towards metabolic self
Within the year-long open research group, we have assembled a set of applied exercises under the umbrella of self-modelling. These are exercises in attention to how the self relates to others and the world. Refusing the rigid matrix of sequential developmental stages and the universal progression of the human psyche from simple to complex self, the guide offers a disarming panoply of instructions for the readers to practice to estrange from and experiment with habits, material affordances, affective techniques, and technologies of care.
However enticing it is to say that these techniques are safe, they are not. Beware. Behold the self. The cybernetic lenses on the self as an enclosed system of feedback and responses provide the safety of equilibrium. The western subjectivity revolves around three sources of self as Charles Taylor outlines: Protestant Christianity, scientific rationalism, and Romantic expressivism. These are broad frameworks that help people understand how to live well. The first moral source is Christian faith, which sees humans as separated from God by sin and needing salvation through labour and grace. The second source comes from reason and science, emphasizing rational thinking and efforts to improve society through experimental evidence based [techniques]. The third is Romanticism, which values creativity and emotion to reconnect with ourselves, nature, and find a genuine, meaningful life.
This triangulation is pervasive and sticky. Beware the technique, behold the self always interpenetrated by the environment, the surrounding milieu. Moving from the coldness of analytical and cybernetic unrealism, we approach the metabolic perspective of self, tracing how the society material and history, is getting under the skin, by way of Hannah Landecker.
exercise
explorative diagramming
Some instructions
smart quote from someone
A. Self-models
What is a self-model that lives in you?
How does it limit you?
What is a self-model you want to inhabit?
concept
self-model?
We could imagine the earth in different ways: as a globe, a planet, a spaceship, for instance (Likavčan). A self-model points at different ways we may understand the self. The template for hopes and fears and dreams.
To understand all human societal orders, you must therefore look for the sociogenic principle. This can be thought of in the same way as physicists’ conception of the anthropic principle: that there must be certain dimensions, physical dimensions and so on, that make human life possible. – Sylvia Wynter
exercise
self-model-diagnosis
If a self-model structures who we see as kin, by shaping our desires and repulsion. Can we find limiting self-model by following desires and repulsion? Of what we perceive as the ‘ill’ and its ‘cure’ (Wynter). What are selves we desire or are repelled by?
- List situations where you feel a meta-feel towards yourself
negative (shame, guilt, embarrassment, cringe, regret) or positive (pride, affirmations) - List situations where you have strong feelings towards others: negative (cringe, anger, bother) and positive (admiration, trust, attraction).
- Find the strongest pattern between both the positive and the negative feels.
- Give words to the self-model that validates or pursues the positive and avoids its shadow.
concept
subjectivation
exercise
self-making galette
Draw this galette on a nice piece of paper
Top-left: the part of the self being made
Top-right: what this part of self aims to do
Bottom-left: how that part of the self should look like
Bottom-right: how the self will work on the self
B. Model-making
work
post poem
Holly
<what is moving away, where are we going, etc> From where do we write from, from where do we post from, to where do we go. Who are we, what does it mean to be me to be us when we close the door. <what is the project, explaining the whole process> <an example, prepared in advance> <examples of the postcards, half completed, to be completed by the reader>
Winter
There’s no way we’re all doing the same thing Never knew this was an option –`
Uit welke ruimte kom je?
Les twee: uit welke ruimte kom je?
Here, languages make space.
Sequences impossible to use as a daily chatter.
Here, they develop into a complicated matter.
Every time we’re inside, we shake hands, wink-wink, we smile, we start
again. The beautiful room is empty.
It’s room 2025, and we are stuck.
We are stuck at full speed. No breaks, wink.
We are talking We are talking We are talking about the room 2025. But we
don’t see it. In fact, a black screen, an undeveloped film of
sorts.
There are not so many colours in this film. black, for sure, white. What
was the colour in the 2025?
Then let’s talk numbers. But there are not yet any numbers apart from
the two, zero, and five. A pattern here.
It’s an escape room. And we are talking about evacuation. As well as we
are talking about evocation. To evacuate, one needs to evoke the secrets
from the room 2025.
Evoking the secret and resolving the mystery help us avoid repeating the
things from the room 2025.
Who knows, Will this evacuation be to room 2026 or to the other room?
Who knows that?
Zero answers. Five questions. one - Does it makes two of us? two - Who
knows? three - Where were we? four - Who are we? five - How will
we?
It’s me, the secretary of room 2025, who knows.
It is secretary taking care of things in the blacked out space, myself
talking with you, the escapists.
We are talking about inspecting the room’s secrets to escape it. We need
a new language for this interior design-speak. The colours are nothing
central but special for the escape room design.
The colours themself are made of other colours. They come in different
genres of being seen and heard.
[RED speaks only in the past tenses, asking and answering questions
like:] Where were we?
RED: we ____ here
[BLUE speaks only in the future tenses, asking and answering questions
like:] How will we?
BLUE: we will be in the room 2026 soon.
[GREEN speaks only in the present tenses, asking and answering questions
like:] Who are we?
GREEN: What difference does a change of room make to who we are?
RED: It was always better there, where we were?
BLUE: _____
RED:
GREEN:___
It’s dark in the room 2025 and we are preparing to set it on fire. Small
match is not matching with the dim setup.
What will be set on fire?
RED: Was it the colour red itself?
Navigate us, expose, where are you sitting in the room 2025? How that
corner is furnished?
[taking turns, depending on the screen.]
BLUE: ______
GREEN: ______ RED: ______
We are inspecting the heating and then the lighting situation. What do
you expect? Consider the heat beyond tempreature and humidity. Weather
sucks in that room anyway. Weather change so quickly. How beautiful it
is in every weather?
FOLLOW the colours on the screen:
What happens with the internal atmospheres?
FOLLOW the colours, for each you will have 20 seconds to speak, or make
sounds or show some gesture.
GREEN: ______
BLUE: ______
RED: ______
Suppose the room is monopolised, what is that monopoly of the room 2025.
We are talking about something wiring the whole economy and the whole
ecology, including the contaminated collective unconsciousness, what
drives the desires and artificializes them ex nihilo?
FOLLOW the colours, for each you will have 20 seconds to speak, or make
sounds or show some gesture.
BLUE: ______
GREEN: ______
RED: ______
We are inspecting the ceiling and examining floor, the floors, suppose
bar for is low enough to stop falling and the ground is too shaky for
the equlibrium. We are talking about going tectonic, we are in the room
2025 and we are subterranean. We are talking about the bar being too low
for the extraterrestrial.
Inspecting the Walls, do we consider these walls to evaporate themself?
It’s behinf the walls there is a dream of the 2025, was it a nightmare
or a daydream, between an erotic reverie or hypnotic deja vu?
FOLLOW the colours: for each, you will have 20 seconds to speak, make
sounds, or show a gesture, answering the question: what happened to the
walls and behind them?
BLUE: ______
GREEN: ______
RED: ______
So, what’s up with the ceiling? Are there aliens too? We are talking
about interstellar comet has just passes by us in the room 2025. The
ostensibly called aliens did not make ay contact. Another unfulfilled
promise that aliens could save us. We are talking about the missed
opportunity to eventify cosmic events and make it glow. Make it glitter.
Consider the monster of the year, the monster of the year, the personal
monster, or what was repressed in the world we know?
Considerinng Light, isnt’ it too dark in here? The lack of what
illuminates the room 2025? Assume the lack, the luck, the lust of the
year. Choose yours and choose wisely. Imagine the movement in the room
of the year, is it the upstream or downstream rush, a thrust?
FOLLOW the colours: for each, you will have 20 seconds to speak, make
sounds, or show a gesture, answering the question: what’s that
light?
BLUE: ______
GREEN: ______
RED: ______
Consider our task is to exit the room 2025, and enter the new room.
archetypes of loving authority
From where to speak with intensity?
I was just busy when a thing commands my attention. Shoot me. Remember me. Keep me close.
A guide, showing me a path.
Why else do I make photos of them then to seek their help.
In how to say sorry, explain, love, hold, lead. To be accountable. [smth
in this direction but leaning in more heavily]
The creature
Wants to believe.