About
A long apprenticeship in being wrong
Exploring Eurasia through landscape and lived experience.
Noam Backner is a writer, educator, field researcher and expedition leader based in Yunnan, southwest China. Trained in Chinese and Iranian history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, he has contributed to ethnographic research on Central Asian medical traditions and spent years exploring China, Tibet, Southeast Asia and Central Asia.
His work brings together cultural history, religion, landscape, food and agriculture, trade and migration, and contemporary life. He designs and leads experiential journeys, field seminars and educational programs for international students, travelers and learning communities, using places as classrooms and direct encounter as a way of understanding cultures and ourselves.
His particular interest is in the connections between places and people: how landscapes, roads, markets, religions and everyday practices carry histories forward.
The places behind the work
Cities, caves, pastures and passes that appear in the writing and in the journeys. Select a marker to read what the place is doing here.
What I teach, in seven steps
The same sequence underlies the essays, the seminars and the courses.
01
Encounter
Arrive somewhere that does not explain itself.
02
Observe
Look for longer than a photograph requires.
03
Question
Ask what would have to be true for this to make sense.
04
Investigate
Test the question against people, texts and terrain.
05
Create
Make something another person could use.
06
Reflect
Return to the first impression and see what was wrong.
07
Grow
Carry the method to the next unfamiliar thing.
If any of this is useful to you, the writing is the place to start.