Life Art

Screenings of An Ecology of Mind

Screenings with Nora Bateson of her film An Ecology of Mind, a portrait of her father, Gregory Bateson
London, Manchester, Bradford, Bristol, Dartington, Glasgow, Edinburgh

15 – 27 February 2012

“Tell me a story” … of life, art and science, of systems and survival

 Gregory Bateson’s way of thinking – seeing the world as relationships, connections and patterns – continues to influence and provoke new thinking about human social life, about ecology, technology, art, design and health. Nora Bateson, Gregory’s youngest daughter, introduces Bateson’s ideas to new audiences in her film An Ecology of Mind, using the metaphor of a relationship between father and daughter, and footage of Bateson’s talks.

Each screening, too, hosts a discussion between Nora and a wide range of people working in depth with Gregory Bateson’s ideas: artists, architects, organisation theorists, action researchers, ecological activists, mental health practitioners, scientists, urban designers, cyberneticians.

These screenings and discussions show a way of thinking that crosses fields of knowledge and experience, one that can lead out of the ecological crisis and towards a more sound way of living.

News items could feature all or any one of the following angles: culture and science, cities and ecology, biology and communication, family health and systemic therapies, technologies and religion.

Nora Bateson is available for interview; please contact Wallace Heim, as above.

Gregory Bateson, British-American anthropologist, biologist, systems thinker (1904 – 1980),  invited people to look at a thing – an earthworm, a number sequence, a tree, a definition of addiction, anything at all – by seeing the interdependencies that connect them and the processes beneath the structures. He believed, “The major problems in the world are the result of the difference between the way nature works and the way people think.”

Tour dates:

15 & 16 Feb – Manchester

17 Feb – Glasgow

20 Feb – Bradford

21 Feb – Bristol

22 Feb – Dartington

23 & 24 Feb – Edinburgh

27 February – London

UK Press:

Interview with Nora Bateson by Rachel Freeman on The Ecologist online:

http://www.theecologist.org/how_to_make_a_difference/culture_change/1198372/an_ecology_of_mind_film_interprets_a_life_of_unconventional_thought.html

“For me, watching Nora Bateson’s film was overwhelming. Her biggest achievement is in explaining abstract concepts in a clear way. Until now, Batesons’ work has been largely inaccessible outside the academic community. With this film, this is bound to change”

Jan van Boeckel, Resurgence, Jan-Feb 2012

Gobal Press:

“The double bind that we now face is this: on the one hand, we want to preserve our natural environment; on the other, everything we do to grow our economy and preserve our standard of living disrupts the natural environment and our relationships with it. Nora, like her father, suggests that we must raise our consciousness and learn to think in new ways to escape our pathology of wrong thinking…Nora Bateson presents viewers not only with an intellectually challenging and inspiring work of art, but also with a glimpse of evanescent hope.”

Marilyn Wedge, Huffington Post, 13 October 2011

“Gregory Bateson taught us how to stop having the most fundamental old ideas: the static, separating, reductionist fictions that dis-integrate an integrated world. Nora Bateson’s beautiful portrait of her father’s key insights is a stunningly effective antidote for a new generation that now needs his wisdom more than ever.”

Amory B. Lovins, Chairman and Chief Scientist, Rocky Mountain Institute

An Ecology of Mind is a spell-binding, lyrical, and very important film…”

Rex Weyler – Co-Founder, Greenpeace International

Awards for the film:

  • Gold for Best Documentary, Spokane International Film Festival, 2011
  • Audience Award Winner, Best Documentary, Santa Cruz Film Festival, 2011
  • Winner, Media Ecology Association, John Culkin Award for Outstanding Praxis, 2011

Art, Ecology and Citizen Power

Tomorrow, the Dutch artist Marjolijn Dijkman arrives in the UK to begin her residency atClare Cottage in Helpston, near Peterborough. Her stay marks a shift in focus for Arts & Ecology, towards exploring how the arts may engage people locally with environmental change and sustainability. As part of this, Marjolijn has been invited to stay at the home of the local romantic poet John Clare who died in 1864, so is no longer living there. The cottage was refurbished last year and Marjolijn intends to explore contemporary ideas about ‘place’ with people in the surrounding villages and the city of Peterborough, which is where the RSA Citizen Power project is located.
Wandering Through the Future (installation) by Marjolijn Dijkman, 2007. Commissioned by Sharjah Biennial 8: ‘STILL LIFE, Art, Ecology and the politics of Change’. Photo by Lateefa Maktoum

Go to RSA Arts & Ecology

Art, religion and shock

Paul Fryer’s Peita, installed in a cathedral in the French town of Gap has been raising a few eyebrows among church goers. It  shows Christ Electocuted, arms semaphored, looking much like a victim of Abu Ghraib. Parishoners have protested, say repoorts. The statue has been robustly defended by the Cathedral’s Bishop Jean-Michel di Falco;

“The scandal is not where one believes it to be. I wanted the provoked shock to make us once again conscious of the scandal of someone being nailed to a cross. “Usually, one does not feel any real emotions in front of something really scandalous: the Crucifixion. If Jesus had been sentenced today, he would have to reckon with the electric chair or other barbaric methods of execution. Scandalous is therefore not Jesus in the electric chair, but the indifference to his crucifixion.”

Enterprisingly, Paul Fryer’s local paper the Waltham Forest Guardian jumped at the chance of a local angle: “LEYTON: Christ Sculpture Provokes Fury”. But to be fair, it also snagged an interview with the artist in which he expresses gratitude for di Falco’s defense.

Mr Fryer said he was pleased to have the support of the bishop, because his intention behind the piece, which is no larger than a small child and is made of waxwork and human hair, was to evoke pity for someone being persecuted by another.

Mr Fryer said: “The meaning is open to interpretation. But the original meaning of the Latin word Pieta is pity. To take pity is a crucial part of living, human beings taken pity others.

“Today people might be electrocuted or given the lethal injection, but it is all the same thing, someone ending another person’s life.

Art 21 | Blog ran a thread recently called What’s So Shocking About Contemporary Art which wondered if art could shock any more. Clearly it can, but I doubt if it did in this case, whatever the papers say. This isn’t exactly Piss Christ; it’s a work that blurs the line between the historically sacred and the contemporaneously secular, and doesn’t contain much that could possibly shock the modern European’s sense of religion, however devout. The shocking part, as the Bishop points out, is that the electric chair is still at use in the modern world. I wonder if any of the good citzens of Gap were actually shocked by Paul Fryer’s work. I somehow doubt it. This looks much like a French slow news day story.

Photo by Sjoren ten Kate

Go to RSA Arts & Ecology