  31 May 2013 @ 19:18, by Heiner Benking
I went last night again to the Anthropocene event in the HKW ! [link]
HKW Wissensclub #3
THE BLUE PLANET – THE HISTORY OF AN IMAGE - CONVERSATION WITH ANSELM FRANKE
FRI 31.05.2013 | 17:00 h
What happened when humankind saw planet earth for the first time? What effects do iconic images such as the blue planet or the atomic mushroom cloud over Hiroshima have on our perceptions? How did it come about that romantic tradition and belief in progress shared a symbiosis in the California of the 1970s?
But before, let us go to my entry from the opening of the HKW "Anthropocene" Series: 2 month ago:
The WHOLE EARTH - a great story, a déjà-vu?, or a lot of missing pieces?? [link]
For me such sessions are a nightmare: I had Anselm Franke already introducing the exhibition - so too much for me and I was not in the mood to discuss with them. So here I try to put out at least some of my concerns and thoughts.
Bright, intelligent people,... all gathering around such hip newly created themes. Themes like Media Theory, and now even Anthropocene. But are we balking up the wrong tree!? Are these „theories“ not only a way to ignore and avoid, creating fancy new ideas?
Anyway in the exhibition I miss a lot of the real, tangible life, so the exhibition is for me not a picture of the spirit in the early 70ies in Berkeley and THE CITY ! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haight-Ashbury I personally have quite different memories of my time around Haight-Ashbury, and we should check our agendas and mindsets, I come back to our collective group-think and mindbugs later.
So maybe all I write below is my fault and my anger, but I feel it is the times for it in "In Times that are Changing"...
I was around when we finally had the first colour pictures of Planet Earth and shared them widely .... I was with John McConnell and the EARTH SOCIETY FOUNDATION and the Earth Day, we looked into the first banners and flags of Planet Earth, we saw colour prints fading, and we discussed the images and icons for "Mother Earth".
EARTH DAY !? EQUINOX ? maybe check these earlier post about my covering the "Anthropocene":
April 27 in the HKW': The WHOLE EARTH - a great story, a déjà-vu?, or a lot of missing pieces?? [link]
or a selected special event of many EARTH DAY - PEACE BELL celebration over the years: [link] for more see the extended documentaions and action of Franz Nahrada in Vienna around EARTH DAY EQUINOX: [link] Details or [link]
I feel hurt and mad tonight, some media theorists, try to move from symbols to images, from signs to icons, but have no clue about the times, and no idea about how to bring the mess together, have no unifying vision, are not "in charge" or able to identify "own and others and aliens field" have no unifying vision, and so only can make [link] sexy for the media, but helpful?, and try to explain times when they might have been in Kindergarten, maybe...
Nobody looked into how to integrate cultural expressions and sign systems, they all make up fancy theories, but what for?
The title ? There is no "Outside"? any more ? Did they had their first joint ?
Are we still - 40 years later - believing in dichotomies of inside/outside = good/bad ? black/white ? north/south?
So what is this Anthropocene about ? A backslash that we now create a geological time - where Humans leave a print on the Planet !? I wonder maybe 20k years are too short an episode to take notice of in millions of years. Are we enlarging ourselves again - we who create geologic and earth layers prints !? How mad and vain can we be? Doing Geo-Engineering and having at the same time no idea to communicate, master, keep in-check the impacts we create, their proportions and consequences ...my concern for 40 years so leave it aside for a moment.
The curators are in their time and maybe ahead of the public view, but do they know what they are presenting and projecting? It is fashionable now to speak about the ANTHROPOCENE, but where are we and how can we overcome such sterile and flat images?
I will later insert some work on supersigns and superstructures/models [link] with youth when we presented: "Our View os Life is too flat ! [link] - but ooops this was presented 20 years ago.. So are we learning and acting into shared and intentional directions ! ? See Blog from yesterday !!
Back to where they think it all began:
I was again - 25 years later - in the late 90ies at Haight-Ashbury, visiting with Ervin Laszlo our hero at those day Lawrence Ferlinghetti from the CityLights bookshop. A family reunion.... But who knows such names these days...
TO BE CLEAR:
I am a strong believer in imagery and imagination, but but we also need to understand that models, maybe even as „icons“ are more deep and toughing ! I am notg speking here about your smiley icon, but the deep embodied artefact, like an ICON in the orthodox church !! - we need to build on that !!! and not on “icons” in computer-worlds to dig deeper and go from “Show to Schau !” [link]
Regarding seeing such images first and awe and mindset change it brings the work of Noemi Smolik might be of interest. See Icons and Modern Times - Ikonen der Moderene and From the Icon to pictures without objects - Von der Ikone zum Gegenstandslosen Bild: der Maler Vasilij Kandinskij
I had the chance to meet Edgar Mitchel, "Rusty" Schweikart and many others. And I am a fan of NANCY ROOF who did all these astronauts/cosmonauts events at the United Nations: Nancy Roof has been a speaker at several UN conferences and workshops, initiated the Earth Day celebration in the General Assembly with astronauts … See: Integral City: Evolutionary Intelligences for the Human Hive and maybe Kosmos Journal [link]
They went through a transformation, some even became really deeply spiritual with awe after the gaze. I always share Ivan Illich's "Guarding the Eye in the Age of Show" and the "Ethics of the Gaze" which he shared with me from his computer when he was with us in Ulm in 1997 or so.
Back to these Pictures. Astronauts have seen a deep, living most beautiful Jewel in from of black velvet uncountable stars. They saw something fragile and incredible beautiful. I can only think about flying over the riffs in the RED SEA in Arabia, or diving and snorkelling for years - but I believe there is no comparison possible. It all has its own scales, proportions, consequences, and is touching differently and is vulnerable also in quite different ways. So this is only for a me a "bridge" to get similar subsuming and resonating.
We need to abstain from such silly over simplifications and making over claims [link]
A picture is more than 10.000 words I know and have written so here [link]
But for Mother Earth we have no words !! And pictures have their colours fading, and even our memories fade, specially when other senses have been involved. Concepts without percepts are empty, percepts without concepts are blind. Check Kant ***
So here we are again with Sensemaking and Sensibility (Otto Schärli / Kückelhaus Gebser meanwhile check: [link] and JEAN GEBSER: Concreteness in Integral Worlds [link]
Please see in the field of alternative education (Schärli, Benking 1998). A Concrete Motto. In his synoptic table column 17, Gebser is searching for a Motto for the ...
I will need to add here more on mind bugs and mind boggling **** see more on John Warfield !! [link] and the DENKEREI [link] as I feel this what is to be studied. How we do not make always the same mistakes, use the wrong terms, categories, scales, media, senses, intelligences,... very much in the sense of this recent piece on: Collecting, Framing, Negotiating, and Connecting: Dots, Signs, Models, Repositories, Spaces, and Minds https://sites.google.com/site/21stcenturyagora/home/connecting_dots_and_-spaces
It is really getting late ... and maybe ? but I feel it is right and I should "write-up"....
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