Fig. 3.2: “History” as the total of myriad vectors, Jonas Rüegg 2024.
Visualizing Time
Draw “history.”
Students gather in groups with different disciplinary backgrounds. They spend 5-10 minutes filling a blank paper each with a personal drawing of “history,” without looking at each other’s works. Afterwards, they compare their drawings and explain their choices of subject, framing etc.
The groups discuss what “story” is visible in each of the drawings. Are there any protagonists and antagonists? Is there a beginning and an end? Is it a tragedy or a story of success? When, where and who is “history” in your drawing?
Possible takeaways
This exercise helps give shape to an abstract concept. Participants are forced to make choices where only a small part of the concept’s connotations can be expressed at once, and in means other than the go-to explanations we use in language-based conversations. Drawing can bring out assumptions otherwise hidden behind conventional expressions: who acts in the picture? What are the spatial or graphical relationships between objects and figures? Is there a direction in “history?” And so on.
For advanced audiences, the level of abstraction can be elevated by assigning more abstract topics (draw “time”). Alternatively, the exercise can also be narrowed down to more concrete topics (draw “democracy”).