the Little
The Little Octopus School is a roaming1, wandering2, and locomotive3 learning ecosystem4 for radical play and improvisation.
WHO:
The Little Octopus School is stewarded by the seven-year old version of Kameelah Janan Rasheed.
WHY THE SCHOOL:
The school is a rehearsal for other possibilities. The possibilities of an interspecies pedagogy5. The possibilities of a liberatory learning experience rooted in curiosity. The possibilities of play as a radical gesture.
We center play as an alternative to extractive or competitive knowledge production.
Our offerings are not routine.
We move at the cadence of a feral curiosity6 as we build and unbuild our “primitive hypertext”7.
Some months, we will have many offerings and other months we may have none. We encourage everyone to explore their relationship to urgency, routine, and certainty. The school is organized around a desire to recapture leisure time8 and curiosity.
We design and facilitate:
Classes
We believe that each class requires a different spatial context, and we align the course with its environment. We are curious about Loris Malaguzzi Reggio Emilia method and the assertion of the environment is a “third teacher” 9 .
Instead of a brick-and-mortar building, we collaborate with institutions to host in-person gatherings. We also host learning experiences virtually because we consider the browser an interface with hidden and visible pedagogies.
Publications
Scratch Disks Full is a publishing project for those with leaky sensory gating10, sprawling interests, kinetic brains (and spirits), and “too many ideas.”
Under the imprint Scratch Disks Full, we publish the excess, dirty data, spillage, noise, leftovers, and unfulfilled.
We publish:
...
and more yet to be determined
Scratch Disks Full asks, in the spirit of Sankofa11:
A scratch disk is a hard disk used as a workspace to store data temporarily. In applications like Adobe Photoshop, the scratch disk is used to hold the data being edited. When an error reads “... the scratch disks are full.” it means there is not enough space on the drive to perform the upcoming task. The users need to find space elsewhere or end the process; they are left holding the excess energy of an unfulfilled action.
Scratch Disks Full is a publishing project producing readers, workbooks, and lo-fi playthings exploring the excess of an exhibition, piece of writing, lecture, performance, or even other publication.
By excess, we do not mean process work leading up to a final work; we literally mean the embodied experiences you could not give yourself over to due to spiritual unreadiness, the sentences you had to blunt because there was not enough time for further editing; the feral idea that blossomed during a performance and began to shape you as much as you shaped it.
Happenings
Instead of a brick-and-mortar building, we collaborate with institutions to host in-person gatherings. We also host learning experiences virtually because we consider the browser an interface with hidden and visible pedagogies.
We believe that each class requires a different spatial context, and we align the course with its environment. We are curious about Reggio Emilia's assertion of the environment as a “third teacher” and are invested in learning as a contingent process.