Surfatial (pronounced like palatial) is a space to perform personally experienced sequences of knowledge and talk about these to others. Somewhere in this process learning emerges. We prototype formats of conversation that allow the emergence of knowledge.

In its first year (2014-15), Surfatial organised a season of six web based study groups. Each study group was a set of sessions on Google Hangout on Air. Each study group was developed on a talk-show format and had an anchor and invited guests. Discussions were possible across the board, between the anchor, the guests and the participants.

The distinguishing feature of Surfatial's study groups was the applied model and framework of knowledge. The guests and the moderator were only sharing elements gained and validated through a personal process. The development of arguments in the sessions of each group offered an experience that did not rely on an external narrative for its validation. Every strand of the narrative bore a consistent internal logic.

We are currently seeding a platform for the sharing and dissemination of alternate pedagogies and self-woven visions of the world. This desire responds to academia's hangover with the past and its inability to instil processes and incubate practices that can help students in a continual production of content. Academia, as we see it, does not deal with the substance and gravity of the present moment.

Surfatial was an individual effort from 2014-15 and a collective effort from 2015-17. Presently it is exploring different structural formats.

Surfatial is neither dead nor alive. It is always at home, devising its next play. Surfatial comprises of three roles - Surface, Mirror and Perspective

Surfatial designs formats of conversations that allow the emergence of knowledge. In 2014-15 we organised web-based study-groups that were broadcasted live on youtube.

Our past study groups:

• Perspective Studies (July 2014): Recordings
• Refractive Surfaces (September 2014): Recordings
• Surrogate Surfaces (December 2014): Recordings
• Infective Studies (March 2015): Recordings
• Excavating Texts (May 2015): Recordings
• Is Your Signal Weak Or Strong (July 2015): Recordings
• Someday We Shall Talk (July 2015): Recordings
• Inviting Weakness (July 2015): Recordings

How do we document the process of our learning? If we chronicle our ways of learning, if we identify the surfaces that are available and ready to reveal themselves constantly, then we must record them. Else what function do we provide to the many lost and wandering who wonder if there is anything at all out there?

We care for the lost and wandering because often we are lost too. Overtime we find our way out of a maze, the maze does not remain a maze. It becomes another location with a map. Getting lost is not easy, it is difficult. We have to constantly search for new locations that are entirely unknown to us. We want to know that which we acknowledge is unknown.

A picture, sound or a few words, each can be surfaces for interaction and subsequent study. We only commit to offer something of use, we do not insist that you use it. But if you do, your world will become a little bit more surfatial. Flat, approachable and real.

We periodically publish documents that offer a distilled version of what we otherwise develop at this Museum. These documents are meant for being applied to ongoing narrative, processes and personal journeys. While we do not offer any guarantees, we actually do. Each tenet in the documents we offer is a matter of living practice for us. We do not engage with theory, we synthesise theory by looking at ourselves.

Documents have versions and editions. We keep reading our texts again and again and we make varied meaning from them in order to re-align them, position them differently and dis-regard the context they emerged from.

We publish because we feel we need to add to the ongoing flow of material. What exists does not reflect us. We need to not just offer ourselves, but we also need to offer a tentative reflection of ourself in order to be available for narrative extrapolation.

What we hear travels through air to somehow reach our ears. The air is also throbbing with the vibrations of our presence. When we hear each other in close proximity, we become involved. This involvement is necessary for any philosophical questioning to be performed.

Phil-K is a platform for such sounds to emerge and find resonance. We work on these tracks as a means of developing a parallel system of pedagogic material. So when you cannot read because there is too much you have read already, you can hear us and have a probing conversation with yourself.

It is not entirely clear if sound came first or the word, and for us the ambiguous position of that fact works. We do not try to let either take precedence, we do not try to let sound drift into ambient comfort that soothes us back to sleep. We had a hard time waking up and we desire to remain awakened.