The House of the Jaguar: Shamans meet scientists

(Poster abstract for the Towards a Science of Consciousness Conference)

The House of the Jaguar: Shamans meet scientists

Preserving knowledge of Ayahuasca, medicinal botany and its indigenous use.

Stephen Whitmarsh, Jan-Frank Gerards

The therapeutic and spiritual potential of Ayahuasca (yagé or yajé) has become recognized in popular culture resulting in an increasing number of Ayahuasca retreats are organized all over the world. Ironically, the knowledge of its use held by indigenous cultures, as well as knowledge of other medicinal plants and practices, faces increasing ecological, political, economic and legal challenges. While western science is slowly turning its head towards the staggering wealth of clinical and scientific questions that these practices raise, its indigenous knowledge is disappearing.

Since ten years the Dutch organisation “Kleinschalige Ontwikkelingsprojecten” (SKOP) is working together with the Columbian organisation Nabi Nuhue on a project to preserve knowledge of medicinal plants and indigeous healing practices. Nabi Nuhue is led by Kajuyali Tsamani. For the last 30 years he has been an apprentice of elder shamans of several tribes where he gained knowledge that was under threat of disappearing because either the tribes themselves where disappearing or because within those tribes there was no interest anymore in becoming an apprentice of the shaman.

In the south of Columbia project Nabi Nunhue owns about ten acres of land with a large botanic garden of medicinal herbs, fruit trees and crops. Six acres are natural preserve. In a moloca (ceremonial hut) cultural and shamanic exchanges take place between representors of tribes from Columbia, neighbouring countries and the US, such as the Kogi, Huitoto, Kofan, Camenza, Guambiano, Sikuani (all Columbia), Inbaya (Ecuador) and Lakota (US). People from the region, as well as people from all over the world, have come to Nabi Nunhua for healing and knowledge of traditional practices and its culture. Visitors are inspired by the use of Ayahuasca and other medicinal plants, indigenous traditions, art and alternative uses of energy, natural material and biological agriculture. The project has helped several shamans and tribes in preserving, stimulating and revisiting traditional medicine.

This poster will discuss future plans preserving and spreading knowledge of Ayahuasca, medicinal plants and indigenous healing practices. This will also be the first announcement of a symposium that will be hosted at the Nabi Nuhue where we will organize a multidisciplinary meeting between indigenous shamans and western scientists. Potential topics, speakers and attendance will be discussed.

Kajuyali Tsamani (left) with Kogi

The neuroscience of Vipasanna meditation: why and how?

(Abstract for the Towards a Science of Consciousness Conference)

Stephen Whitmarsh, Mark Leegsma

The premise of the Towards a Science of Consciousness Conference is that a unified science of such a kind doesn't yet exist. We agree, more or less tacitly, that there is no agreement, and we desire rather than possess a paradigm. In particular, a definition of the target phenomenon that is both unequivocal and satisfying appears to be lacking. Yet, scientists of consciousness usually proceed as if such a definition were already available. In good pragmatic fashion, we assume a priori that consciousness is an object and exists in an observer-independent way; presumably all the scientist of consciousness has to do is select the full-fledged phenomenon and find out how it works. With consciousness, however, it doesn't work that way. We will argue, on the contrary, that consciousness is emphatically a question for us and that, against pragmatism, no science of consciousness may ignore this given before it starts empirically investigating its 'nature' or its neurological correlates. Instead, we will turn the questioning of consciousness and its very existence into our main point of departure as well as a phenomenon for neuroscientific investigation. So, instead of continuing the current flaw in the science of consciousness - assuming a priori that consciousness is an object - we suggest the only viable a priori is ignorance.

Investigating our relation to a lack of knowledge is the key endeavour in Vipassana meditation. Therefore, a neuroscience of Vipassana meditation will in effect be impossible when - courtesy of any assumptions and a priori definitions introduced - the very phenomenon it investigates (ignorance) is ignored. The issue seems further confounded from the fact that meditation resists definition in a similar way as any a priori definition sabotages its phenomenological questioning. Taken from four years of confronting such issues of ignorance in my PhD on the neuroscience of Vipasanna medition, I will give examples of failure to define and operationalize Vipassana meditation. Along the way it became apparent that the neuroscientist has to become a meditator as well. This resulted in neuroscientific studies of Vipassana meditation using electrocorticography and magnetocorticography that elucidate some of its neural mechanisms and that have resulted in its 'real-life' application in online brain-computer interfacing.

No sleep 'til 日本

"The more industrialized and technological areas of human agglomeration become, the more indispensable it is to find an antidote to survive in the anthill. The hectic pace of urban life, albeit immortalized in the poetry of Baudelaire, would not prosper if it dispensed with the “playful” dimension. When the space of the game also begins to demand rights of citizenship and social well-being, the obstacles hindering the execution of projects are of a different nature. The possibility of carrying out a work plan in the public sphere lies beyond the competence of art. For this reason, we must analyze the figure of the architect who guides the utopia of art to the common spaces without denying them the full force of their reality."

LISETTE LAGNADO - Shifts in the Dérive: Experiences, Journeys, Morphologies 


Background
OuUnPo is a research group made up of artists, curators and researchers who together look at the boundaries of performance by appropriating and stretching the language of workshops, seminars and meetings. The group travels to different cities and investigates a given problem. The members of the group change at each meeting. We interact extensively with local institutions and creators at every location. We have previously collaborated with Tate Britain, in London; MACRO in Rome; Serralves in Porto and Deste Foundation in Athens to mention some of the most well known. We are usually 10-15 creators who travel to each meeting. Meetings have been held in Athens, Belgrade, Amsterdam-Nijmegen, Paris, Skopje, Stockholm-Norrköping, Porto and London.

Field of Research
OuUnPo will examine if they can a facilitate a more meaningful understanding of a series of existing contemporary art exhibition by interacting with groups of visitors. The OuUnPo group will also examine whether visits to other sites in the urban space together with the audiences. We do so with the aim of creating links between the visitors' everyday life experiences and the works of art on display.

Work methods
OuUnPo is preparing a meeting in Japan in spring 2013. Since the group’s modus operandi is mobility, we will focus on temporary and mobile architecture in the urban spaces in the visited Japanes cities. The group will look for traces of human action that highlight and affect architecture without necessarily being part of it. We are particularly interested in the playfulness of artistic invention in Japanese culture and its ability to come up with dynamic solutions to difficult problems.

The project is going to operate on two interconnected levels:



1. The group is going to carry out investigations in the urban landscape of the visited cities. We take the starting point in the Japanese cityscape and carry out performances, sound-interventions and smaller installational activities. These will be private, public or sometimes for a smaller invited group.



2. OuUnPo will also make interventions in existing exhibitions and collections. We offer to museums to activate the temporary exhibitions and permanent collections with creative guided tours, walks, performances, sound-interventions, readings and lectures. These can also take place at a given place in the city in order to in order to highlight a given aspect of the exhibition or collection. In other words, we become a kind of fleeting architecture –that highlight and affect the exhibition without necessarily being part of it.


The London-based design group Åbäke and Marcus Pettersson who have already carried investigation into temporary architecture in Tokyo are specially invited for the event. We are also looking forward to collaborate with inspiring people and groups like Momus, Neko Lobby and Creative Hub 131 to mention a few. Negotiations with more collaborative partners are under way. So keep your eyes peeled for further updates.

Ouunpo goes اَلْجُمْهُورِيَّة اَللُّبْنَانِيَّة

In late 2012 Ouunpo will hold a meeting in Beirut, Lebanon. OuUnPo is an international exercise in democracy and self-organisation. It has no rules, no hierarchy, no permanent members or written program. These are negotiated and renegotiated by the members for each session. It is a research network made up of artists, curators and scientists who meets at regular intervals to interact and to investigate a given problem. It often does so in places of crises (Athens, Porto) or where historical conflicts (Belgrade/Skopje) marks the political and human landscape. This strategy is devised to instigate and retain a meaningful discussion about democratic processes.

In the wake of the last years’ events, the network feels that it needs to move beyond its European birthplace and to investigate what can be learned from events of the Arab Spring and how these can be reintegrated into Nordic democratic and artistic processes. OuUnPo has therefore taken the first steps to develop its ties with artists, curators, scientists and institutions in Lebanon. These will be develop during the year and activities will lead up to a week-long work session in Beirut in December 2012. We will use the urban landscape as a starting point and investigate the traces of past and present political and activist history in the city and how these are integrated into everyday life.

Following the outbreak of the so-called Arab Spring in Egypt and Tunisia in 2011, the whole Middle East area has been invested in a renewed propulsion towards democracy and collective participation. In a time when European representative democracy has been facing the turbulence caused by a global financial power, it is important that cultural agents from all European countries start to actively contribute to investigate and renovate the notion of democracy. Lying on the shore of the Mediterranean, Beirut is a city whose past and recent history is intertwined with international geopolitical interests. Due to her strategical position in the heart of the Mediterranean, Beirut has always been an attractive pole for ancient empires and populations, as the unearthed layers of Phoenician, Hellenistic, Roman, Byzantine, Arab, Crusader and Ottoman remains testimony. The city offers a complex and multi-layered urban tissue that acts as a proxy for the exercise of collective memory. Today's Beirut is in fact also the result of the wounds caused by decades of war and destruction since the Lebanese civil war (1975-1990) and the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah War. In the present days, Beirut still plays a central role in the ongoing redefinition of "democratic regime". Its geographical and cultural vicinity to Syria pushed us to directly question the position of the artist -or more in general the cultural agent- within a certain political horizon. As a transnational, non- hierarchical European network of artists, curators, scientists and scholars we will cope with the uncomfortable question of taking responsibility and assuming a position towards the development of a cultural policy between the formal European Union and the Middle-East area. The OuUnPo project will be an occasion to confront international artists and academics with the city of Beirut, its past and present, its institutions, museums, architecture and communities, in order to foster dialogue on the local history of cultural encounters.

The project is going to operate on two interconnected levels:

1. OuUnPo will make interventions in museums their exhibitions and collections. The goal is to activate the temporary exhibitions and permanent collections with creative guided tours, walks, performances, sound-interventions, readings and lectures. These can also take place at a given place in the city in order to emphasize a give aspect of the exhibition or collection. The latter is carried out to create a link between the everyday lives of the citizens and the displayed artwork –to highlight and affect the exhibition without necessarily being part of it.

2. The group is going to carry out investigations in the urban landscape of Beirut. We take the starting point in the Lebanese cityscape and carry out performances, sound-interventions and smaller installational activities. These will be private, public or sometimes for a smaller invited group.

Publication Launch:

The International workshop will offer an occasion to officially launch the first OuUnPo publication at the Batroun Projects. The long-lasting activities of OuUnPo have been collected and edited in a book designed by Åbäke in London and published by Dent-de-Leone. The book documents in an artistic manner the development of the specific OuUnPo working methods with focus on how they have been implemented to stimulate new outlooks on democracy, self-empowerment and new ways of collaborating transnationally. The book is characterized by a trans-disciplinary approach dealing with issues of contemporary culture, with particular attention to new concepts between visual art, performance, cultural identity, sociology and critical studies.

The events will be organised by Fatos Üstek and Sara Giannini in collaboration with Rayya Badran and Ghalya Saadawi. Confermed partners in Beirut are Batroun Projects and Ashkal Alwan.

For the the meeting in Beirut, OuUnPo will join forces with the international research project "GAM – Global Art and the Museum". GAM is a research program initiated by Hans Belting and Peter Weibel at the ZKM – Centre for Art and Media Karslruhe in 2006. Its aim is to spark a debate on how the globalization process changes the art scene and to undertake a critical review of the development 20 years after its onset. In light of the undiscussed and year-long expertise in the field of global contemporary art, and especially in relation to art institutions, the GAM research team led by Andrea Buddensieg and Hans Belting will be acting as advisory board concerning the issues of inter-cultural dialogue and exchange in the visual arts. Following the week-long events in Beirut, the GAM project will invite some of the participants for a public event in February 2013. During the conference, both OuUnPo members and temporary guests will share their experiences and activities in Beirut with the GAM team and the general public. The presentations will serve as a moment for speculation and confront on the Beirut meeting, but most important as a source for a more general debate on the notions of democracy and art in nowdays Europe.

Mirror Neurons, Embodied Simulations and the Aesthetic Experience

"The implications of the discovery of mirroring mechanisms and embodied simulation for empathetic responses to images in general, and to works of visual art in particular, have not yet been assessed. Here, we address this issue and we challenge the primacy of cognition in responses to art. We propose that a crucial element of esthetic response consists of the activation of embodied mechanisms encompassing the simulation of actions, emotions and corporeal sensation, and that these mechanisms are UNIVERSAL. This basic level of reaction to images is essential to understanding the effectiveness both of everyday images and of works of art.
HISTORICAL, CULTURAL and other CONTEXTUAL factors do not preclude the importance of considering the neural processes that arise in the empathetic understanding of visual artworks".
(Vittorio Gallese, David Freedberg. Whole document here: http://www.unipr.it/arpa/mirror/pubs/pdffiles/Gallese/Freedberg-Gallese%202007.pdf)


What if the artwork goes far beyond aesthesia? What if an art practice becomes a PROJECT (the "anti-aesthetics" for Hal Foster) which re-processes existing documents and information? Are in this case historical, cultural and contextual factors so irrelevant?

Visit The Atlas Group's archives and their work on lebanese history:
http://www.theatlasgroup.org/

Consciousness Conference coming up!

http://consciousness.arizona.edu/

Who will join me?