News Archive 2012

14-25 May, 2012

Soul in Nature: Experiencing the Connection
Schumacher College, Dartington, United Kingdom

Teachers: Princess Irene van Lippe Biesterfeld, Satish Kumar, Jonathan Horwitz, Stephan Harding.
Course facilitator: Jan van Boeckel.

Humans are part of nature, but few people in modern society really feel this connection – with the result that the natural world is exploited and abused in ways that would seem incomprehensible to indigenous people who see the earth as their life-giver or mother. Many in the environmental movement believe that the outer challenges of sustainability can only be effectively addressed if we understand and experience our interdependence with the myriad life forms we share this planet with. Sustainability can only be truly sustainable, when we feel and experience nature as our partner. This course provides an opportunity to connect deeply with the natural world using a variety of traditional and transformational practices.

Week 1: May 14 – 18
Inter-being, an all encompassing worldview – Princess Irene van Lippe Biesterfeld and Satish Kumar
During this week, you will work with guided meditations, walks and other exercises in nature which will help you open your heart and senses to interspecies communication. You will walk on your own with an exercise on the subject of the day, and reflect with others on their experiences. Each day will focus on a different realm – stone, plant, animal and human – and what we can learn by getting to know these elements and beings intimately. One day will be spent on the stunning and tranquil surrounds of nearby Dartmoor, experiencing its open moorland and granite tors.
The exact nature of the exercises and meditations will emerge from the interactions with nature and each other. The main object is to help you re-)connect on a deep level with nature and to revalue on a personal level your place in the global ecosystem – Earth.

Teachers:
Irene van Lippe-Biesterfeld, Princess of the Netherlands, has spent her life working as a social educator in Europe, South Africa and the US. For over 24 years she has facilitated transformational processes, working with groups and individuals. This goal now encompasses the vision that all of creation has a right to its own personal space and power. In 2001 she founded the Lippe-Biesterfeld NatureCollege which runs educational and training programmes designed to revive the relationship between humans and nature at all levels of awareness. She has written several books on this subject: ‘Dialogue with Nature’ (1995) was a bestseller in the Netherlands and was translated into five languages, and her latest book is ‘Science, Soul and the Spirit of Nature’. In 2000, she founded the Bergplaas Nature Reserve, a 7000-hectare area of wilderness which hosts retreats, training courses and healing. www.bergplaas.com and www.natuurcollege.nl

Satish Kumar: When he was only nine years old, Satish renounced the world and joined the wandering brotherhood of Jain monks. Dissuaded from his path by an inner voice at the age of 18, he left the monastic order and became a campaigner for land reform, and has been working to turn Gandhi’s vision of a peaceful world into reality ever since. He undertook an 8,000 mile peace pilgrimage, walking from India to America without any money to deliver packets of peace tea to leaders of the four nuclear powers. In 1973, he settled in England, becoming editor of Resurgence magazine – a position he has held ever since. Satish is the guiding spirit behind a number of ecological, spiritual and educational ventures in Britain and was one of the founders of Schumacher College.

Week 2: May 21 – 25
Shamanism, Science and Soul – Jonathan Horwitz and Stephan Harding
The shaman was the first scientist, but unlike many of today’s scientists, shamans engage with both the physical and non-physical aspects of the world they live in. Many important medicines have been discovered by indigenous shamans, where the initial knowledge about a plant’s use came not from scientific analysis, but from a shamanic communication with the plant itself. Hard science studies that which can be measured. Social science accepts that which can be observed. To this the shaman adds that which can be experienced. What they all have in common is that they are interested in finding out more about the planet we live on, and how its inhabitants connect and interact.
During this week, participants will be introduced by Jonathan to some basic shamanic techniques that enable them to directly contact different layers and forms of Nature. Working both inside and out of doors with traditional shamanic practices, participants will learn how to shift their consciousness so they are able to see different aspects of the web of life. The foundation of shamanic practice is animism, and this course will give participants access to the soul and spirit in all living things, to discover another type of knowledge and encourage a more holistic science.
To complement the shamanic work, Stephan will show how scientists today have come to see the Earth as a living, animate being. Together, Jonathan and Stephan will weave these two strands into a journey to the soul of Nature.

Teachers:
Jonathan Horwitz has studied and worked with shamanism since 1972. For eight years he was on the staff of The Foundation for Shamanic Studies, USA. Jonathan has an M.A. in anthropology, and is a shamanic counselor (HMSC). He has taught courses since 1986. He runs the Scandinavian Center for Shamanic Studies, whose activities include practising, teaching, and research into shamanism, as well as shamanic grassroot networking.
This course is for anyone who feels touched by the environmental, ecological, spiritual and economic questions facing us today. The aim is that people will leave knowing how to communicate directly with Nature, feel able to receive its power and knowledge, and look deeper into the interdependence of ecological and spiritual systems.

Stephan Harding is Programme Coordinator of the MSc in Holistic Science and resident Ecologist at Schumacher College teaching on the MSc core modules and as part of several of the short courses at the College. He is a close associate of James Lovelock and an expert in the study of Gaia theory and deep ecology. He is the author of Animate Earth and Grow Small, Think Beautiful: Ideas for a Sustainable World from Schumacher College.

www.schumachercollege.org.uk/courses/soul-in-nature-experiencing-the-connection
www.schumachercollege.org.uk/about/schumacher

1-22 May, 2012

Permaculture Design Course
Island of Statia, Caribbean

Aardwerk is preparing an international PDC course for 2012. The course will be in English and lasts three weeks from 1 May through 21 May 2012 (22 days including arrival and departure days).



We’ve found a great location that will graphically demonstrate the issues of small scale community development and dealing with global changes in climate, economy and ecology. Its remoteness will enable participants to see their own environment through new and refreshed eyes. We’ve also attracted a great team of teachers and support staff with international experience and local knowledge.
The course will cover the standard permaculture curriculum using creative teaching methods and lots of practical field work. Graduates will receive the internationally recognised PDC certificate, your passport to advanced permaculture education, networking and your entry into professional permaculture teaching and design work.

http://aardwerk.org/school/international-pdc-2012
 

20-22 April, 2012

Creation, Creatureliness, and Creativity: The Human Place in the Natural World
Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, USA

THE SOCIETY FOR CONTINENTAL PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGY

Keynote Speakers:
Bruce Foltz (Eckerd College)
Janet Martin Soskice (Cambridge University)
Norman Wirzba (Duke Divinity School)

SCPT's 2012 conference takes today’s ecological crises as its point of departure. We invite theological and philosophical contributions informed by continental traditions such as phenomenology, hermeneutics, eco-feminism, post-structuralism, post-colonial studies, deconstruction, and social and deep ecology that help us understand and implement a sustainable future together. Authors may submit papers that address ecological issues head on, as well as those that tackle philosophical and theological themes that underlie these issues.

The Society for Continental Philosophy and Theology seeks to promote inquiry at the intersection of philosophy and theology. For more information about SCPT, visit www.scptonline.org
 

19-21 March, 2012

ART * EROS * EDUCATION - 4th BaltArt Symposium
Aalto TaiK, Helsinki, Finland

ART * EROS * EDUCATION is the title of the 4th symposium. The words are not separated with any ordinary sign, commas, plusses, or dashes, but a star in order to avoid a premeditated hierarchy, coincidence, sequence or any order between them. The focus is on the dialogical influence between contemporary art and art‐related educational efforts, like curating and mediating art, artification of everyday life, community‐driven art projects, art‐based environmental education, art journalism and political activism in the [dis]guise of art.

Like Plato’s Eros, the child god who was not rich, not beautiful, not wanted but in want of all these, contemporary art is an incubation arena for all kind of wants and wishes that aim at the change through sense‐based methods: we are forced to see, hear, taste, smell and feel.
Ideas and exact explanations, manifests and programs come later, if ever, but the immediate sensory affect already includes the complex context: to become a dialogue, to prepare a platform for discourse, to change ways of making and thinking. Contemporary art is a stance that works for future, activism and change.
In this symposium we propose a discussion on the cultural dialogue that takes the reciprocity of art and education for an interesting and beneficial project towards a future that includes intense responsibility for how the the cultural carriers – people, institutions, texts, artefacts, ideas, images, media – are empowered by today’s incentives.

As key note speakers, among others, will act:
Prof. Gary Peters from York’s St.John University, known for his book on the philosophy of improvisation
Ms. Leslie Johnson, much loved and appreciated former head of Valand Art School in Gothenburg
Ramunas Motiekaitis from the Theatre and Music Academy of Vilnius
Prof. Pia Lindman from The Finnish Academy of Fine Arts, celebrated media artist
Ph.D. Senior lecturer Max Ryynänen from Aalto University, known for his interest in popular visual culture

Open call ”scientific posters” wanted! In the lobby of the venue the selected posters will be on display.
The posters must follow the theme and the spirit of the symposium.

http://aaltoarted.wordpress.com/art-eros-education
 

8-26 March, 2012

Course An Ecology of Mind: Gregory Bateson and the Arts (tk 0277)
Aalto University, Department of Art, School of Art and Design, Helsinki, Finland

Master student level, max 25 students, minimum 8; open to all students of Aalto Schools.
5 ECTS. Students need good to excellent skills in English language. Mondays (14-16 pm, Thursdays and Fridays (10-12 am). Teacher: Jan van Boeckel

Course contents

Bateson's influence is wide (e.g. on Guattari/Deleuze and Lakoff/Johnson). The students will receive a comprehensive introduction to both primary and secondary literature (and film) on Bateson. Specific to this course is a focus on Bateson's view of aesthetics and its relevance to visual studies and art education. Bateson's work was profoundly interdisciplinary and is of relevance to many different fields. At present his work has not been dealt with in a systematic way in any of the courses that i am aware of. The course would be a meeting place of students interested in ecology, philosophy, aesthetics, as well as systems thinking and epistemology.

As preparation to the sessions, participants read the assigned literature from the following books: Gregory Bateson: Steps to an Ecology of Mind, 2000 (ca. 50 pages) Gregory Bateson: Mind and Nature, 2002 (ca. 50 pages) Peter Harries-Jones: A Recursive Vision: Ecological Understanding and Gregory Bateson, 1995 (ca. 50 pages) Optional additional literature: Gregory Bateson and Mary Catherine Bateson: Angels Fear: Towards an Epistemology of the Sacred, 1987 David Lipset: Gregory Bateson: The Legacy of a Scientist, 1982.
The students will acquire basic and key knowledge of the seminal work of philosopher-biologist-anthropologist Gregory Bateson, and his importance for understanding questions pertaining to humans' and ecology/nature/biology. The skills the students develop or deepen are studying a range of literature sources, partaking in group discussions and making a group presentation and presenting a well-articulated academic essay in English.

More information: e-mail: jan.vanboeckel(at)aalto.fi

https://into.aalto.fi/display/enmobility/Aalto+courses

29 February, 2012

Earth Education: Art Education as if the Environment Matters
Location in New York City: Education Center at the Rubin Museum of Art

NAEA Pre-conference
Wednesday, February 29, 2012, 1-6 pm

The purpose of this meeting is to create a gathering of like minded artists, educators, and environmental activists from across the globe, interested in how art education can help us focus on the leading issue of our times: the Earth’s natural environment and how we can live on the Earth sustainably. This pre-conference is structured to allow us to meet each other face to face and to share our work and our practices, and to discuss the possibilities of creating an ongoing formal organization to promote the work of environmental balance and protection through art education.

Location: Education Center at the Rubin Museum of Art
132 W. 17 St. New York City, tel. 212-620-5000, www.rmanyc.org
Room: Raymond G. Chambers Family Seminar Room

Agenda:

1:00 Introductions/Logistics
1:15 Peter London (Keynote Talk)
2:00 Respondents
Virginia Freyermuth, Rhode Island College, Providence RI
Richard Mills, Professor of Art, Long Island University, New York, and
Director, Hackensack River (Restoration) Project
Jane Kunzman, Holistic art educator, Chair, Visual Art Department,
Gill St. Bernard’s School, Gladstone NJ
Ruth Beer, PI on a SSHRC Creation/Research Project "Catch and Release: Mapping stories of geographic and cultural transition"

General audience participation/discussion

2:45 Refreshment break and Posters (poster presenters will not be attendance)
Amy Ruopp, art teacher, Midland MI public schools and Mae DeBruyn,
Science teacher, Midland MI public schools
Andrea Mathieson, Artist, Educator, Environmentalist, Owner/Director,
Raven Essences, Ontario. Canada
Dr. Heather Anderson, Artist, Educator, Environmentalist, author of Art and Eco Awareness: A Teachers Guide to Art and the Natural Environment, Fresno, CA
Erica Hansen, Artist in Residence, The Creative Alliance, Baltimore, MD
Lisa Lipsett, Artist, Educator, Environmentalist, Author, Beauty Muse.
Salt Spring Island, British Columbia, Canada
3:15 Programs and Practicalities:
Florida State University: Tom Anderson, Anniina Suominen Guyas, Kristie Moore, Sunny Spillane.
University of British Columbia: Rita Irwin, Valerie Triggs.
Aalto University Finland, Pirkko Pohjakallio, Jan van Boeckel.
Questions/discussion
5:00 Summary discussion and future plans.
6:00 Adjourn
6-7 Optional wine and cheese reception at the museum

This pre-conference is free of charge thanks to the generosity of the Rubin Museum, but is limited to the first 35 participants who register. Please register by sending an email of intent to Kristie Moore at smilingmavis@hotmail.com

More information

See also: www.eartharteducation.com

1-4 March, 2012

NAEA Convention: Emerging Perspectives - Connecting Teaching, Learning, and Research
New York City, United States

National Art Education Association.The 2012 National Convention
Theme: Emerging Perspectives - Connecting Teaching, Learning, and Research

Two hour session on environmental education through the arts

An international panel of researchers and teachers from the United States, Canada, and Finland connect teaching, learning, and research centered on environmentally aware and ecologically activist art education. The panelists are engaged in global initiatives that aim to promote environmental education at all levels through the arts. Participants include Pirkko Pohjakallio & Jan van Boeckel, Aalto University, Finland; Rita Irwin and Valerie Triggs, University of British Columbia, Canada; Tom Anderson and Anniina Suominen Guyas, Florida State University; and Peter London, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth.
In this session each panelist will discuss his/her research interests and the practical applications of that research for programs and curricula related to environmentally oriented art education. Programs and resources already in place as well as projections for the future will be discussed. Time will be made for audience discussion at the end of the session.

www.arteducators.org

SPEAK OUT SESSION: Environmentally Aware and Ecologically Activist Art Education

DAY: Friday, March 2
LOCATION: Sheraton Metropolitan Ballroom West 2nd Floor

From the NAEA website:

2-3:20pm | Speak Out Session | Panel Discussion hosted by TOM ANDERSON and PETER LONDON
Environmentally Aware and Ecologically Activist Art Education
An international panel of researchers and teachers from the United States, Canada, and Finland connect teaching, learning, and research centered on environmentally aware and ecologically activist art education. The panelists are engaged in global initiatives that aim to promote environmental education at all levels through the arts.
www.peterlondon.us
No ticket required.
www.arteducators.org/news/convention/schedule

25 February, 2012

SURVIVAL OF THE BEAUTIFUL: Scientists and Artists Face Off on the Aesthetics of Evolution
New York, NY, United States

An All-Day Wonder Cabinet Guest-Curated by David Rothenberg, presented by The New York Institute of the Humanities and The New Jersey Institute of Technology

Saturday Feb. 25th, 2012, 10:45 am till 9:30 pm
NYU's Cantor Film Center, 36 East 8th Street, New York, NY

Free and Open to the Public

Why did the peacock’s tail so trouble Charles Darwin? Natural selection could not explain it, so he had to contrive a whole new theory of sexual selection, which posited that certain astonishingly beautiful traits became preferred even when not exactly useful, simply because they appealed to the opposite sex, and specifically so in each case. And yet the parallels in what gets preferred at different levels of life suggest that nature may in fact favor certain kinds of patterns over others. Visually, the symmetrical; colorwise, the contrasting and gaudy; displaywise, the gallant and extreme. Soundwise, the strong contrast between low note and high, between fast rhythm and the long clear tone. For that matter, plenty of beauty in nature would seem to arise for reasons other than mere sexual selection: for example, the mysterious inscriptions on the backs of seashells, or the compounding geometric symmetries of microscopic diatoms, or the live patterns pulsating across the bodies of octopus and squid.

Humans see such things and find them astonishingly beautiful: are we wrong to experience Nature in such terms? Far greater than our grandest edifices and epic tales, Nature itself nevertheless seems entirely without purposeful self-consciousness or self-awareness. Meanwhile, though we ourselves are as nothing compared to it, we still seem possessed of a parallel need to create. So: can we in fact create our way into better understanding of the role of beauty in the vast natural world? David Rothenberg recently published a book on these themes, Survival of the Beautiful (Bloomsbury, 2011, www.survivalofthebeautiful.com), and many of the protagonists he encountered on his quest will join him on stage at the Cantor Film Center to debate the question of whether nature’s beauty is actual, imaginary, useful, excessive, or perhaps even entirely beside the point.

Featured presenters at this all-day Wonder Cabinet will include:

SESSION I
10:45 am - DAVID ROTHENBERG and JARON LANIER offer a musical and conceptual introduction.
11:00 am - GAIL PATRICELLI on building a fembot bowerbird so as to study the way male bowerbirds woo females through elaborate dancing and decorating rituals; drawing on her example, RICHARD PRUM explains why everyone misses the point of sexual selection except him.
12:00 pm - OFER TCHERNICHOVSKI responds to Prum’s claim by way introducing CHRISTINE ROESKE,
a postdoc in his lab, who, veritably haunted by the beauty of the nightingale’s song,
nevertheless tries to subject it to scientific analysis.
12:45 pm - ANNA LINDEMANN, Prum alum turned performance artist, enacts her Theory of Flight.

SESSION II
2:00 pm - PHILIP BALL shows how chemistry and physics might trump biology in their ability to account for formal natural beauty. TYLER VOLK deploys his concept of metapatterns to explain how 3 realms and
13 steps (from quarks to culture) make us who we are.
3:00 pm - We know how Science is regularly said to influence Art, but SUZANNE ANKER explores the flow in the other direction. DAVID SOLDIER and VITALY KOMAR revisit their classic elephant art experiment, asking whether we can learn anything about art by teaching animals to make it.
4:00 pm - Composer DAVID DUNN details his proposal to use music to save the forests of the American West from destruction by pine bark beetles. DAVID ABRAM on how synaesthesia (the blending of the senses) might help us feel our way into the experience of another animal.

SESSION III
5:30 pm - Digital artist SCOTT SNIBBE recounts how he helped turn BJÖRK’s love of science into the Biophilia app.
6:15 pm- BABA BRINKMAN, direct from off-Broadway, performs a special version of The Rap Guide to Evolution.
7:00 pm - JARON LANIER explains why if squid only had childhoods, they would rule the world.
LAURIE ANDERSON evokes some of her journeys along the borderlands of nature and culture.
Closing music by David Rothenberg and Jaron Lanier.

Call for applications: Ars Bioarctica art & science residency in 2012

Ars Bioarctica is long term art&science program by the Finnish Society of Bioart together with the Kilpisjärvi Biological Station.
Since 2010 it is organizing an artist-in-residency program at the Kilpisjärvi Biological Station of the University of Helsinki in the sub-Arctic Lapland. The emphasis of the residency is the Arctic environment and art& science collaboration and is is open for artists and art&science research teams.
The residency takes place in the facilities of the Kilpisjärvi Biological Station. It provides the residents with a combined living and working environment, a basic laboratory, internet connection and sauna.
The Kilpisjärvi Biological Station offers to the visiting artists the same possibilities and infrastructure as its scientists and staff. This includes access to all scientific equipment, laboratory facilities, the library and seminar room as well as the usage of field equipment. A dedicated contact person in Kilpisjärvi will
familiarize residents with the local environment and customs.
The basic costs of a residency period which have to be covered by the applicant include: travel to Finland,
travel within Finland to Kilpisjärvi, and accommodation and provisions at the Station.
Applications have to include the desired residency duration, a work proposal, a working plan with time schedule, the desired residency outcome, a list of necessities for the work to be carried out and the artist's CV. The application deadline is 31st of January 2012.
The evaluation of the applications emphasizes the quality of the proposal, its interaction of art&science, its artistic and or scientific significance, the projects relation to the thematic focus of Ars Bioarctica, and its feasibility to be carried out at the Kilpisjärvi Biological Station in the given time.
For applications or questions please contact Erich Berger: erich.berger@bioartsociety.fi

More info:
http://bioartsociety.fi
www.bioartsociety.fi/residency
www.helsinki.fi/kilpis/english/index.htm