ARNO STERN — The creator of Play-Of-Painting™

Interviewer: Lila Foteva

Translator: Helena Munin

 

November, 2019

 

- Hello, Mr Arno Stern! First of all, I’d like to thank you for this opportunity to talk about Play-Of-Painting™ and your lifelong work with children.

 

- Arno Stern: You are welcome!

 

- My first question is: did something special happen in your family history that inspired you to go in the direction of the work that you chose — Play-Of-Painting? Tell us more about how it all started, please?

 

- Arno Stern: There is no direct link between what happened to my family and my career. But, concerning my origins: I was born in Kassel, Germany, 1924. And when the NAZI regime began, my father decided to emigrate. So my family’s history starts with an emigration story. We moved to France, where I grew up, so I learned French, in addition to German — my mother tongue. When we arrived there, I was 9 years old and I had to go to school. However, because I couldn’t speak French yet, I was sent to the first grade class — so I was learning the language with the little children. Afterwards I became a very good pupil through all my school years.

My family was living in a small city in Eastern France; however, when war broke out, the German army got close to it as well, so we had to flee to the Southeast — to the Rhône valley. In Valence, my father presented me with the opportunity to choose between business and art school and I chose art school. So I spent a couple of years there. Later on, we had to move again, because of the German invasion.

We managed to emigrate to Switzerland. It has been an exceptionally good fortune that we were able to enter the country, because many other people have been rejected and deported. Once there, we spent 3 years in a labour camp.

At the end of the war, we went back to France. At that time, I could envision myself becoming an artist. Then, friends of my parents offered me to start working as an educator in an orphanage, with children who had no parents or who had lost their parents during the war. I would teach them art — or at least this was the intention of the orphanage’s administration. The children were between 5 and 15 years old and I spent 2 years there, during which I actually have not taught art, I have let the children paint freely, I have let them be happy and excited about their activity, so they could express themselves freely.

This became my main skill, my vocation and this situation, this experience in my life were decisive for my whole future.

Even though the administration of the orphanage wanted me to teach art to the children — like the other teacher, a musician who was teaching them music — very early on, I understood that it was not necessary. So I did something very different with those children.

 

- Tell us more about the Closlieu? How was it born?

 

- Arno Stern: After the adventure in the orphanage, I created a place in Paris, that still exists, a place that is called the Closlieu™ (which literally means the enclosed place). One of its main characteristics is that it allows human beings to experience being in a unique situation, where there are no critics, no prejudice, no evaluations or suggestions from others. There, individuals can be, they can exist and experiment for themselves, expressing what they want to express. In the 1950s, every week there were 150 children coming to the Closlieu to paint. As in the orphanage, usual attendees were children between 5 and 15 years old, and I had to offer them more and more hours to paint. That was also very decisive for my future career.

For example in the children’s home, the headmaster asked me to give children 3 different painting topics. First, they had to paint their face, secondly to paint themselves and their family, and thirdly they were free to paint whatever they wanted. I did try this with the children, but only once, I have never repeated it.

 

When I am asked about the role I am playing in my work, I say that I am a Servant.

This is not very known and is a little bit unusual; however everything in the Play-Of-Painting is something new, which has not been seen before. This represents the singularity of the concept of Play-Of-Painting.

The Closlieu is a very peculiar place, like no other — as it is closed. It is a place where nothing comes in and from which nothing goes out. It is separate from the outside world. It gives safety and cannot be compared to anything else. Therefore, the moments that are experienced in this room are very special moments.

 

-That powerful message brings me to the next question — what positive effect could be observed in children afterwards, after they had been given the chance to do Play-Of-Painting in the Closlieu? And in addition to that, if you also work with adults, do you see the same results and behavioural changes with both children and adults?

 

- Arno Stern: I do not make any difference between adults and children, because for me adults are “big children”, but before I begin an answer about the effects of the Play-Of-Painting experience, I want to describe the Closlieu.

It is a room with 4 walls and in the middle of it is the Palette-Table. The Palette-Table is a table with colour paints and brushes. This is the common instrument for all. So when children are coming in, each of them takes a white sheet of paper that I hang on the wall. After that, the playing begins.

There are 18 different colour paints, 18 water cups, and 3 brushes for each colour. So children grab a brush, dip it into the matching water cup and paint, and then go with the brush to the wall, where their paper is. They are going back-and-forth from their sheet of paper to the Table and this “back-and-forth” represents what Play-Of-Painting is. The key role is in this going away from the individual paper and coming back to the common instrument. Children do not bring anything to this room. Everything is there for them and they just have to take it. The idea is to help children respect their own desires and their own needs.

My role as a Servant in this activity is to get children used to handling the brushes correctly, whether to paint on their sheets of paper or to put them back on the Palette-Table. My aim is for children to be working, immersed in their play, and dedicated to it, using this tool in the unique way of doing it right.

Every sheet of paper is 70-cm. long and 50-cm. wide. They are hanging on the wall, attached with 6 pins. I make sure the sheets are at eye-level for the child. Children put the last pins on the sheets themselves, bringing them from a pin box that is at their disposal on the Palette-Table.

Therefore my role is to help children. If they want to paint something very high on the wall, I give them a stool to climb and reach there. On the contrary, if they need to paint something at a lower level, I give them a cushion, so they can kneel down. In general, my role is to look after each child, so they are all doing well. I am caring about everyone. Also for example, if children wish to paint where there is a pin, they need to say “Pin!” and then I am coming with my knife, which I have in my pocket, and I will take out this pin, so they can paint in this part of the sheet of paper.

 

During a session, I get constantly called: “Arno, pin!” There is a funny story I want to share with you, about that. One day, during a Play-Of-Painting session, a woman who did not speak French was there, and since she had heard so many times during the session this sentence “Arno, punaise !” (Arno, pin!), she thought that my real name was M. Arno Punaise (Mr Arno Pin).

One of the Play-Of-Painting’s rules is that what children have painted will never leave the Closlieu. When children are done with a painting, this painting will be archived in the Closlieu. And every painting that is not finished at the end of a session gets stored in another dedicated folder. At the beginning of the following session, children themselves will take their painting out of this folder and keep on painting. When children are painting for example a road, like a street or a highway, and they need to make it bigger than the sheet of paper, they will go on, on a second sheet of paper. And if this path needs to be even longer, we will add another paper, and another one. The sheets will be added to each other and children will keep on playing during weeks, even sometimes years. This very important phenomenon is called The Expansion.

 

This is how I can show you a painting that is a hundred meters long, to which the child was dedicated during weeks, months and even years. For example: a child wants to paint a person and the paper is not big enough, so we add more sheets of paper, so this painted person can grow up and up to the ceiling, until ultimately it becomes an enormous, gigantic figure. Also, I never ask children what they are painting or why, all these questions that we should never ask children. What is expressed on a piece of paper is never commented on.

This is something essential to the Play-Of-Painting and that is also the big difference between Play-Of-Painting and the arts. For example, when someone is doing an artwork, their desire is for this artwork to be shown and seen by others. In our case, we are talking about something completely different — it is another form of self-expression. Play-Of-Painting is something that has never been done before. We cannot compare Play-Of-Painting to any other method out there.

 

When I began working with children, I thought they would be doing art. Later on, it was clear to me that this was not art. It was something completely different. With this Play-Of-Painting, children produce what I call a Trace, like the trace left by a specific activity. I am convinced that what children trace on their paintings in the Closlieu is not meant to be addressed to someone. Children do not need anyone to look at what they have done. It only is the pure expression of a force coming out of children, with no expectation whatsoever about any observation, or interference, of anyone else.

Later on, I have studied and understood the specific features of this Trace and I have also been able to discover its role. The space I have created is what made it possible to happen and grow.

 

• The first time I became aware of what I later named Formulation is when I realized that this Trace was following a specific pattern, some specific laws. I was then able to identify these laws, and understand the reason why this was so.

 

-Can you please describe what Formulation is for our readers and me?

 

Arno Stern: Yes, I would like to describe this in detail.

The traditional way to think about children’s drawings is to say: children see something and then draw what they have seen. But this is a mistake. It is something else entirely. In the Closlieu, people are given the unusual opportunity to be spontaneous. Therefore, the Traces created in the Play-Of-Painting are free from any intention, they respond to different human necessities. Their origin is common to every human being; it comes from the recordings of what I call the Organic Memory.

I must here point out a significant distinction between memory and remembrance.

In other words, it can be described as the difference between the conscious memories, the events everyone remembers (remembrance) and the subconscious accumulated memories (memory).

 

In order to illustrate this concept, let me ask you a question — “What are the earliest conscious memories that you have of your life?”

 

-I have those memories from the age 3–4, not before. The really vivid and clear memories I have only after the age of 5.

 

- Arno Stern: And do you think it is impossible for you to know what happened before that?

 

-I do think that with methods, based on exploration, such as Mr Stern’s practice, it is possible to eventually go back and connect to some of those memories and experiences. So I do believe we can.

 

- Arno Stern: The origin of this Organic Memory is connected to our genetic program. So yes, you are right, through Formulation, or the Play-Of-Painting practice, it is possible to reconnect and find what we thought was lost. In other words, we can reconnect to our origin, which we currently have no contact with. It is as if you started reading a book on page 20 without knowing what happened before. Therefore, if you do not explore Formulation, you do not know about the origins.

Furthermore, people think they know what children want to express, but they do not. Formulation is like a language, and if you do not know the language, you do not understand the Trace either. Another pitfall when people are not familiar with the language of Formulation is that they can become careless with the Trace and start interpreting it to find meanings that are not and cannot be correct.

For decades, I have trained many people from all over the world to be Play-Of-Painting Servants. The first and most important part of these trainings is to understand Formulation, not in order to experience Formulation, but to understand this phenomenon. Then those trained Play-Of-Painting Servants are skilled to stimulate Formulation, without misunderstanding it.

Until recently, we have always been doing these training courses in groups, through conventional face-to-face learning, but now, because of the current health crisis, we have begun offering them online. I want us to keep on doing so. With this new live online format, we have been able to provide the training course in French, German, with simultaneous translation in Italian, Polish, English, Spanish… My dearest wish, my purpose in life is to make it possible for every human being to experience the Play-Of-Painting

Children must be given the opportunity to express themselves, and for that they need a safe space, without any obstacles.

This is a universal desire, shared by all human beings. We all need to feel protected, safe and uninhibited.

 

- I`m really thankful to you, Mr. Stern, for such detailed explanations of the Formulation process and what exactly happens in a Play-Of-Painting session in the Closlieu, which is so empowering for children and “big children”.

I have only one more additional question, which I think is crucial due to the fact that we live in times when there is a lot of pressure on all of us to perform, demonstrate, prove etc.

This pressure starts at a very early age — in kindergarten, where modern children are expected to learn many foreign languages, they have to attend lots of activities, perform well at everything. So a lot is expected from them — from parents, from school etc.

Hence my question is what would you, Mr Stern, advise on one side to preschool teachers, social workers, etc., how can they provide, through their work with children, a little bit more freedom and autonomy to explore these Trace we have been talking about? And on the other side — what would be your advice to parents, too, on this mission?

 

- Arno Stern: They may read one of the many books I have written, for example.

I also do believe strongly that we have to change our perspective regarding children.

We need to change how we consider children. They are not students who must be taught everything. We have to change our behaviour and we also have to change our way of sharing the world with children. We live with them; they are part of our world, so this is an urgent necessity. Which is why I am saying it again: people must know what Formulation is. When they will know it, they will no longer ask children these age-old questions that create so many obstacles, which are “What is it that you draw?”, “What does it mean?” We need to avoid these questions altogether, because they are causing terrible damage.

I’m not in any way telling you that, for example, when you cross the street you have to be spontaneous and do not need to be reasonable. But what I mean is:

 

Not In Every Moment Do You Have To Be Reasonable.

 

There are moments we can be and express something that is not reasonable, not practical, not planned, not explainable. These moments are very much needed too, so it is very important for everyone to have a space where they can experience these special moments when they do not need to be reasonable.

 

- Wow! That is a great keynote message for ending our interview! I would like to thank you for sharing this massive knowledge with us. I take into my heart many empowering and valuable messages you gave us, so for me it was really opening & enriching — both personally and professionally. So again — thank you for the time and knowledge offered. It is lovely to be touched by it and also share it with many others, who need and are seeking for this powerful information. For me — it is an honour to put this gift out there, so more people get to be blessed by it. We all need it!

 

- Arno Stern: You are welcome! You know, when children leave the Closlieu at the end of a Play-Of-Painting session, they usually say: See you tomorrow, which actually means: See you next time. And this is what I want to say to you and your readers: See you tomorrow!

 

- See you tomorrow, Mr. Stern! ;)

 

Lila Foteva