Beauty, Landscape and Nature. Gugga Jóhannesdóttir on The Living Process with Greg Madison. E36

Gugga was introduced to Focusing by philosophers at The University of Helsinki. She is a part of the Embodied Critical Thinking and Freedom to Think projects and teaches Focusing and Thinking at the Edge to academics and artists. Gugga came to philosophy after years of being a musician and photographer. Her love of nature made environmental aesthetics and landscape studies an area of philosophy that felt applicable to how she understands the world. In this episode Gugga discusses her interest in the concept of beauty and how it is often narrowed down to something superficial but she redefines beauty as something at the core of being human, an experience that allows us to sense our connection to the world. For Gugga the subtle everyday experiences of beauty can be profound, offering a glimpse of our deep connection to the world. We discussed the meaning of landscape as an interaction between the person and the land and how to be a tourist so that our relation to places is not superficial, taking selfies, but deeper and aesthetic. Guðbjörg (Gugga) Rannveig Jóhannesdóttir is an associate professor at Iceland University of the Arts' department of art education. Environmental philosophy, environmental ethics, phenomenology and aesthetics, and the study of beauty and sensuous knowledge are at the centre of her work. She is a expert group member of the Icelandic government's Masterplan for nature protection and she is an active member of the Embodied Critical Thinking research team and the Freedom to Make Sense research project. She has training in Thinking at the edge and is a certified Focusing trainer. In her teaching at the IUA she has been developing ways to integrate ECT methods into research practices in art and education.  Gugga on The Living Process:https://youtu.be/E6WrG8SfP8wA link to one of Gugga's chapters: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-41344-5_7A video of Gugga's workshop to a group of artists: https://vimeo.com/1053356564The Living Process - all episodes and podcast links: https://www.londonfocusing.com/the-living-process/TLP YouTube video channel: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLC0TgN6iVu3n9d9q2l43z1xBMYY3p9FQL