Learning to Sense by

_{When speaking of a positive learning experience, I will not talk about how I gain a certain knowledge, I want to talk in a more general way. I was a student of arts management and planning in the college, but I could not understand what contemporary is until I took a placement in the Vitamin Creative Space in Guangzhou, China. This unforgettable experience influenced me in terms of my view of art, the way of thinking and how to put our big idea in a art space, which can help me a lot in my afterward life and study.}

_{I had been one of the eight students of the Study Programme in Vitamin Creative Space for one year and a half. Before talking about what I have learnt, I would like to introduce this creative space and our Study Programme briefly. Actually, we worked in the Mirrored Garden, which is a branch of the Vitamin Creative Space. This garden includes an art shop, two art galleries, a farm yard and a kitchen. In our Study Programme, we had a regular reading club with the owner of the space, whose name is Zhang Wei, every two weeks. Every of us had our own working part according to our interests. For me, I was a member of the kitchen group, and what we usually do is to do kitchen experiment and make archives. At the beginning, I thought it might be weird that we have a kitchen and a farm yard in a contemporary art space, since farming, making food and eating seem to completely irrelevant to art. However, I realized that the kitchen is designed to help us to train our perception and having sensitivity to this world is a base of creating art works.}

_{After I did several kitchen experiments and wrote the archives of them, I gradually realized that the transition from plants in the ground to delicious meals is quite interesting ——we change the form of these purely natural things into meals by using artificial ways. Learning to feel the taste of food made by us is important, because we can notice flaws and improve it. This is also related to Zhang’s artistic idea, she said we are not robot, so we need to have our own reflection and use our wise to make things better. Her thoughts also oppose a trend that human being might be replaced by artificial intelligence. This experiential learning (Heron and Reason, 2001) strongly impressed me because it let me know the importance of sensitivity to the surroundings, and what contemporary art can do is to use artistic ways to make our voice when facing some general issues——maybe we can not change the world, but we can influence small number of people at least.}

_{I started to understand what contemporary art is through this internship. Contemporary art should pay attention to a more general human’s living standard, instead of solely focus on one’s own experiences and emotions, because what art should do is to convey some ideas that can resonate with audiences. In addition, I think the Vitamin Creative Space well embodied the ideas of the organizer. These ideas present by many details in this space, it gives me an inspiration that if I have my own art or cultural organization, I need to put my mind on how to expressing my idea. I leant these by practicing a lot and listening to Zhang’s patient teaching, but the most important thing is I learnt perception, which gives me chance to find the charm of good contemporary art, and will help me to train my insight to find more unexpected things in the future.}

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