Seeds of Change - Heiner Benking's Blog - quergeist.info
Welcome to the NewsLog or Blog of Heiner Benking. A kaleidoscope of insights and impulses collected first in the DaZiBao (Rio) process Seeds of Change Viewsletter of the Club of Budapest since 1995, continually updated ever since. Now available for broader distribution and comments in this blog - enjoy, and come again !
I mentioned in my little "pitch" from the floor:
Civil Liberties in the Digital Age - Writers Against Mass Surveillance Civil Liberties in the Digital Age - Writers Against Mass Surveillance We had a lot of exchange afterwards during the rest of the "symposion" with a lot of wine. I mentioned the origins of symposia here: ****** enjoy !
22 Apr 2014 @ 16:22
I am despreate heraring the news the last days: Auto China 2014
For example: Voice of America - Chinese premier meets German vice chancellor [link] Chinese Premier Li Keqiang met with visiting German Vice Chancellor and Minister for Economic Affairs and Energy Sigmar Gabriel here on ...
Leading automakers are gathering in Beijing for the kickoff of China’s biggest car show, but lacklustre growth and environmental restrictions in the world’s largest car market have thrown uncertainty into the mix. More than 1,100 vehicles are being showcased at the auto show, which opens to the public on April 21.
Read more: [link] only check these pictures !! [link]
I am desperate, China urges to make a difference, as we did 22 year ago in Beijing, with a lot of UN Stateplanners. I was there to attend and to paricipate in in the ISCU-CODATA before this very crucial gathering of concerned planners who where asked and heard by "highest polical levels". I will get the programme in the BEIJING HOTEL and pictures -- just come back !
The person who incvited such high-callibre "concerned planners" was HUALIN GUO, head of the BEijing Business and Technology Transfer Center. He late visited me in the Acadamy of Sciences Guesthouse, we were friends, but trhe tracks got lost, as he could not come to Robert Jungks 80th birthday cwelebrations we tried to organize in GRAZ - See ÖKO-CITY GRAZ 1993.
This is so long ago - and so much was lost during the last 20 years. I just came across Dennis Meadow's we did not learn anything the last 30 years, but who is wondering why ! and making a difference that matters?
But lets get why I am getting so "mad" !!
China was providing all resources and possibilities for such a BUSINESS and TECHNOLOGY Transfer Center to negotiate and help the transfer solutions in the fields of Buildiungs, Transportation, Distribution and Supply (of not only waste and drinking water) - what a mandate !!
Hualin Guo - in my eyes - did not make it ! Why ?? He had as his task and mandate to look for long view, big picture
Two years later I did - then after Rio '92 - a keynote on "COMMON FRAMES OF REFERENCES" who is ready for this and open our "horizons"! ??
The year before I presented "OUR VIEW OF LIFE IS TOO FLAT" in Turku at the WFSF.
But who is into alternatives and alterantives and WHO cares about the context?
10 Apr 2014 @ 07:56
With the Foundations Week - Berlin has a annual unique event - a gargantuan effort to present the work of foundations and involve the people. The title this week is "Vom Leben in der Stadt" - "About Urban Life"
TO MAKE ENGAGEMENT VISIBLE. Check the programm with hundreds of events of high calibre. As there is no English website, you might to use auto-translate to focus on any issue of interest: [link]
I can not report but one unique event in the Swiss Embassy [link] and there a unique Foundation, the Paul Schatz Foundation to support Future Technologies caught my interest. [link] - check also: [link]
Learning about the oloid, as a man-made object, a device, a harmonious man-object, was quite a surprise for me. We call such a form "Handschmeichler" - but maybe it is also a "Mind-Schmeichler" - see the images, imagine the form and where it could "matter". I was reminded of surprise solutions, not just foot-prints, but handprints and mindprints [link] and so many new more applications for fabrication of surprises, an example or "inventing" news and transforming them into practical solutions.
As yoju know, I was deep into infographics **** and 3d (flatlands-deeplands 3d-9d) and how to create, invent and design, this topic is very very important even thrilling for me, see also: Gestaltung Mind Architectures 1997 *****
So to learn about the Oloid at the Swizz Foundations meeting in the Swiss Embassy was the highlight of these 10 days.
Behind is an artefact created by Schatz which has implications in the field of ARTS, DESIGN, TECHNOLOGY, and if you look deeper into ENWIRONMENT, AESTHETICS, even AWARENESS and CONSCIOUSNESS.
I see only one English publication, THE STUDY OF RYTHMS AND TECHNOLOGY. It is hard to find words for new concepts. So for example they had to create the world eevertible - not or enfolding / infolding ! - for the German word: "Umstülpung". I cite a litle from it or maybe make a picture of that para. *****
The Subtitle of the book is: THE EVERTIBLE CUBE - POLYSOMATIC FORM-FINDING [link] - this is the "bible" : Paul Schatz Architektur und Umstülpung - Studien zum organisch-dynamischen Raumbewusstsein. buy it ! its a deal! (but in German) As I was much into "langaging" or translation challenges, see spatial versus spacial and other such subtle differences, So I believe you like the Translation note about Evertible and Enfolding
For me it is also an example of CRAFTSMANSHIP and CREATIVITY or even CREATION of something new, unexpected and useful and LAST NOT LEAST how to use 3-dimensional Gestaltung und ANSCHAUUNG. Using such bigbeuphoric words, I can not resist to lead to and essay called: Show or Schau? and this piece for the Jean Gebser Society in 2001. Worldly Expressions of the Integral - Concreteness in Integral WorldsMore >
5 Apr 2014 @ 08:11
this is a very special report of events only available in German. One is an event and fair of a very special Special Interests Group (SIG) the other a strategy and search event of a political party searching for its identity, visions, and actions in times of change....
Today is the third day of the fair and congress: Living Together. It is about: rehabilitation -care - mobility. Miteineander Leben [link] I covered the UN Convention on Inclusion and other central societal challenges in this blog, but this gathering is different, unique, down to earth and real. What means exclusion and how can people with wide ranges of handicaps can survive and live together. What a theme and challenge !
Me, I am on service on the booth at an association called ALS-mobil e.V. and having done events facilotstion for patients in coma at Intense Care Hospitals bringing together patients, doctors, sisters, family, priests and others in OPEN SPACE environments, searching ways to communicate and develop more understanding and compassion Link ***** You see I am not an observer and facilitator on the matter but was also asked to support an ALS patient, Angela Jansen, I have learned to know about only 10 years ago. Heard that Steven HAWKINGS has ALS, but had no clue what that means for individuals, families, communities, society.
Angela is founding chair of ALS-mobil and as we did some support and events for that non-profit over the years. We did before this non-profit was founded a virtual keynote in 2006, Angela in her bed in Berlin deliveting a key-note in Turin for an international conference called COGAIN, where system to communicate with your eyes typing !! on the screen - patients who can only focus with their eyes, unable to move any muscle or breath !
Steve Hawkins an the painter Immendorf have ALS, but how widely such civilizational deseases is wider spreading, but invisible - not in the public eye....
Patients are even looked-in !
See this recent event where Birnbaumer received a ptize for mind/brain interfaces, and see this brain-painting "Live Art Exhibition" See Angelas presentation in Rostock last year ***** and the coverage by National and French and Austrian Television in the News. ****
Unfortunately the website of ALS-mobil is down, but as my journalistic collegue in Open-Forum as part of Positive Nett-Works e.V. is a friend of Angela and Board Member and fo-founder which did over the years the communication, and parts of many events and media presentations.
See her websites with many articles in many print media, some in English: [link]
Green Storytelling and the Green Party' legacy (in Germany for 20+ years)
The search for a Green Story is a challenging undertaking. I asked from the floor twice: what else do we need additional to Stories and Images, do we need Maps and Models, Frames ... *****
or is after the Icon after Story the next PlasticWord... ****
How to create lasting and tangible visions that matter and become real and serving ! common goals.
The Workshop on democratic approaches was most interestging - one break-out session since years I attended from the beginning to the end ! I was happy to be around.
Check the report by BÖll and come back as this was really a thrilling and deep event with very interesting participants !
heck the video stream and the full programme and come back for more at: [link] and the opening/introduction by Ralph Fücks [link]
I really wonder if finding or inventing/creating a new story, or new images and icons is enough! That we need to create and use shared maps, models and frames, embody them and immerse into them, learn to negotiate the old and new terrains. ADD Wisdom of the Brahmins....
3 Apr 2014 @ 11:04
EU and African leaders from 80 states are meeting in Brussels. Under the theme "Investing in People, Prosperity and Peace", participants will discuss topics including peace, security, investment, climate change and migration. [link] - this was Africa-EU Summit news in television this morning.
For me it is like a deja-vue, I checked the news channells yesterday to what is the difference to the last Africa Summit here in Berlin, and how does this compares with where we were 20+ years ago with "FUTURES (AFRICA) BEYOND POVERTY" [link] in Nairobi with the World Futures Studies Federation (WFSF). [link] That conference was prepared at the WFSF 1993 in Turku: XIII World Conference of World Futures Studies Federation, COHERENCE AND CHAOS IN OUR UNCOMMON FUTURES - Visions, Means, Actions - see: [link] This effort has been one of my critical step in my earlier professional life, so I remember it like yesterday. Maybe I should start a new life of "real-stories teller" . We had Bishop Tutu and the Gandhi Society and really the right people there to make a difference, Finland and The netherlands were the forward looking and funding partners, so maybe should review what was at the agenda those days, and where we are now. What was the progress?
Maybe very, very little happened - so we should check why !
Yesterday was also FUTURES in CHINA on the agenda for me. Development as we discussed in 1992 in Beijing, when the Beijing UN conference on development took place and stateplanners around the United Nations discussed pathes for development,
Hualin Guo Beijing Business and Technology transfer Center installed by the Chines Governement were exactly disccing what we discussed 22 years ago: Transportation, insfrastructure, Building insulation, Townplanning and Energy, Water, sectors. Again when we look at how China "developed" since then, how the environmental "condition" of the "Problematique" changed since then, then we might have a better clue on what might be the challenges we are facing today in Africa.
So who is in charge and interested in GLOBAL ISSUES? [link] and will we form a GLOBAL INTEREST GROUP? [link] ***** add ( deep concern in times of so dangerous trends of over-simplification, over-claims, and undercomplex approaches https://www.academia.edu/1818805/Overview_and_Orientation_or_Overclaims_and_Oversimplifications_ Revisit also our group-think and clan-think, covered in this blog below: [link] and read there about link think and spread think !!
With the Mercator Institute for China Studies [link], Wuppertal Institut wupperinst.org and moderated by E3G, Third Generation Environmentalism and a s a guest of the Mercator Foundation. www.stiftung-mercator.de A very very special top level policy and development gathering ! check it out !!
one afterthought:
A lot of pain and worrying on my side, are denting or aggravating trends? Do we just use fashionable terms like today "sustainability" or "foot-print", or are we ready for a mind-change?? I invite to revisit some work on footprints, handprints, and mindprints at my MINDPRINT.tv website.
1 Apr 2014 @ 13:14
http://annalindhstiftung.blogspot.de/ last year is finally released. See the flyer (PDF) [link] from last years and the new, just released video:
See the Film about our COMMON ACTION: Mittelmeert vor Ort- Gelebte Vielfalt and impressions of what me mean with our dialogues, conversations and encouters can be found here: Please also check the music and its theme about TALK versus CONVERSATION. more can be found at our [link] It is from the Entrepreneurship Summit 2010. This is the original at VIMEO: [link] Last years Entrepreneurship Summit Open-Space and Magic Roundtable with the Pitchers around Speed Dating is still pending - ask and come back.
We did a few video shots about the challengees of migration and exclusion, studies projects with our rafts and boats to form floats and islands (with PNW) and did a "Salon". [link] Well check the Sites and come again !
See the COMMON ACTION programme and below the report from last November at "quergeist": [link]
This is the BLOG of the German network: [link] and the new Site of the Foundation in Alexandria: [link]
3 Mar 2014 @ 15:33
"Sould for Europe" was founded here in the Allianz Foundation at the Brandenburg Gate 10 years ago. We heard that Europe had a Soul but it got lost in the last maybe 40 years. Check Wikipedia: [link] check the programm, stream and tweets !! and start also with: Stiftung Zukunft Berlin, Cities for Europe, and Sould of Europe UK focussing on Peace: [link]
“A Soul for Europe” and its Cultural Coalition for a Citizens’ Europe prepared the Berlin Conference 2014. Highlights of this busy period included the Amsterdam Conversation, Brussels Conversations, a meeting with three MEPs from our Advisory Board Parliamentarian Working Group at the European Parliament, and finally President of the European Parliament Martin Schulz announcing the conference which is co-produced with the EP. »more: [link] #BC2014 @SoulforEurope
Follow the Berlin Conference 2014 live, Published on 2nd March 2014 by A Soul for Europe, Follow the Berlin Conference 2014 live on 3 March 2014 from 9 a.m.
This service is provided by our media partner ALEX TV. »more goto: [link]
We have Wim Wenders here, who just did in "Cathedrals of Culture" see Berlinale below.http://www.newciv.org/nl/newslog.php/_v396/__show_article/_a000396-000260.htm
2 Mar 2014 @ 06:39
Thrilling last 24hrs around Future Day. Future Day. Jerry Glenn announced this only about 3 days ago, a joint effort of 6 Future Societies to make Journey around the globe, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIsrZfRIuLs - or see the APF announcement: Same like we did in the Global Learn Day in the 90ies with CISCO and later TALKING COMMUNITIES. 24 one hour sessions in a row with the sun at high noon!!
So I was all ears, and eyes and have dropped everything. Just getting up after hours in the cockpit and remembering what links I had promised to some of the participants, and why I had really joined !!
So what we did was a google hangout "on the fly". As you know it is all recorded and maybe later well documented, so only here my duty to open doors and crash gates where necessary .
enjoy later these YouTube recordings and come back when the documentation is on the Millennium Project website.
I have done recently a time-line of virtual conferencing exercises, maybe milestones !? of this very recent possibilities - I come exercises around e-learning and e-communication from 1981-today. Timeline.
In 2010 in Geneva at the Global Youth Conference (GYC-2010)[link] I had presented also about Dialogue and Deliberation ways and means, Structured Dialogic Design and how Issues, or Challenges, Problems should be seen in their deep connections, and so the next year this was the central issue for the Rio+20 preparatgions and recommendation (GYC-2011) The youth was excited to learn about History, Embodiment and Multi-track Diplomacy and Peacemaking, how through deliberations and influence voting we can jointly find hidden meanings and drivers. The title was: A DEMOCRATIC APPROACH TO SUSTAINABLE FUTURES and the DIGITAL PETERS (synchronoptical worldhistory):
Interestingly by collegue and "brother" Reynaldo had the same idea, maybe even earlier (serendipity - or it was too obvious for people knowing the Millennium Project) to adress like we proposed and worked with Youth in Eastern Europe to structure the MDGs to also do it for the 20 years collection of Challenges to Humanity, or as we discuss it now in the ECOSOC OWG process to check the connections between the SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals). Check the slides as below.
As so many issues have been raised during the 24hrs and I always have adding in the chat links to pages in this blog on issues like SMART DATA, Wisdom of the People, Earth Day and Rober Mueller, Tagore and Einstein, WFSF, 9d and cognitive panorama, augmented realities and jusion, metaphors and interface design (Anthony Judge) [link], maps, models, sign systems, supesigns and superstructures, [link], Ekistics and General Planning and the EcoCube called Pointers to Possibilities (Anthony Judge) [link], flutes, jam sessions, merging, morphing, schemas, orders and fusion (workshop on: Computation for Metaphors, Analogy and Agents (1998) in Aizu [link] ....
I recommed to check yourself some of the entries at Quergeist (not Weltgeist or Zeitgeist): [link] or wait for the Millennium Project GFIS[link] and https://themp.org/ docu comming soon.
Well as you know I argue for GLocal Challenges (WIKIPEDIA - Hitory of the Concept [link] - but such is life... Words are always in the way, and meaning gets lost between the words and the lines when out of context. So let us remember T.S. Eliot: "make words solid..."
Meanwhile maybe check the new publication: "Connecting Dots and Space ..." and these two books about tackling the Problematique and the mentioned Strategic Articulation by Reynaldo, Bethnia et.al. New Books: Strategic Articulations ... and Democratic Approach ... and A SOCIAL SYSTEMS APPROACH FOR GLOBAL PROBLEMS or start here: Big Smart Data - Small, Smart, Wise Information, Knowledge, and Wisdom ? or see the original OAC, Chania slides of our presentation with Christakis and Laouris from the Future Worlds Center: [link] Slides as in the figure below.
I now have to check for our ANNA LINDH SALON brunch - every first Sunday every month, so when planning to come to Berlin do not forget that Sunday.... Here an example and the website: [link]More >
12 Feb 2014 @ 21:25
great issues, maybe jumping too short?? - or hurray - finally we are comming to "grips" and commons and community? Concretely !!!? or just using another "plastic word" in vaporware?
One BERLINALE SPECIAL caught my interest: Cathedrals of Culture it is about the "Soul of Buildings". later we will check the positions, perspectives, and embodiment.
Top producers, directors and in-betweeners like Wim Wenders and Robert Redford. Have a look ! This is one, but a very special highlights of the Berlinale, a very Special - even Spacial (3D) production ! (do don confuse with spatial :)
Cathedrals of Culture - Kathedralen der Kultur
Here the official intro:
'If buildings could talk, what would they say about us?' Cathedrals of Culture offers six startling responses to this question. This 3D film project about the soul of buildings allows six iconic and very different buildings to speak for themselves, examining human life from the unblinking perspective of a manmade structure. Six acclaimed filmmakers bring their own visual style and artistic approach to the project. Buildings, they show us, are material manifestations of human thought and action: the Berlin Philharmonic, an icon of modernity; the National Library of Russia, a kingdom of thoughts; Halden Prison, the world’s most humane prison; the Salk Institute, a scientific monastery on the California coast; the Oslo Opera House, a futuristic symbiosis of art and life; and the Centre Pompidou, a modern culture machine. Cathedrals of Culture explores how each of these landmarks reflects our culture and guards our collective memory.
DIRECTORs: Wim Wenders, Michael Glawogger, Michael Madsen, Robert Redford, Margreth Olin, Karim Aïnouz
This 3-dimensional "immersion" into places and perspectives, being able to "resonnate" with impression we will not be able to perceive even when going there. So it is an extra and augmented reality [link] & [link] and we are getting closer to what creativity and imagination is like, getting to and into what is not there (yet!?).
and further down, the other highlight today is about the Cognitive "I" in the Einstein Forum in Potsdam: I, Darwin, free Monkey, Pondering about a Philosophy of Evolution: „Ich, Darwin, freier Affe“. Überlegungen zur Philosophie der Evolution. A lecture by Hans Werner Ingensiep, Professor für Philosophie, Zentrum für Medizinische Biologie, Universität Duisburg-Essen, [link]
Getting back to the Berlinale and Philharmony and the presentation of outstanding architectures and how they create community and performance, a body and "soul".
I am "touched" - all sennses - as my fatherly friend, protector, boss, for 20+years was the right had of Sharoun, his name: Alfred Schinz [link]
This day is about the cental issues in my Life, how to create and support comuntity, but not only in homes, buildings, compounds, but towns and regions, the scales, but not neglecting, but integrating scales!! and finding identity and creating a cradle for community. This has much to do with Doxiadis EKISTIC GRIDS [link] and and
Today I am "touched" as we need to go beyond the local - ego scale and add !! - NOT AS AN ALTERNATTIVE to the local and ego "I" - a broader mutti-scale and multi-modal perspective.
The lecture at EINSTEIN by Ingensiepen opened extra views ! We even talked later about PAUL and GRAZIA FEYERABEND - strange encoutners - maybe only Berlin can set the stage for such a full and deep, "mindful" events.
I will later dive into this linkage and how it "drives" me. How my mind-architectures and dialogue, community building and peace-making have a common direction for me. During teh film I immediately thought about how to not only build buildings, but villages and towns. Can there be a community "spirit"?, talking like in the film where the building is speaking and story-telling ! One example for me is the story of Manu, which I mentioned in many articles and essays: https://www.google.de/search?q=Manu+%22Heiner+Benking%22+harun&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:de:official&client=firefox-a&gfe_rd=cr&ei=b3j8UrXcKsmK8QfymoGIAg Google helps me to remember this contribution: [link]
We need to gtalk about Positions, Perspectives, Signs, Superstructures and Supersigns, Models and Frames - a good start is this book by Ingensiep: The cultured Monkey/Ape: [link] and we will need to talk about Emergences, Models, Signs, Community Building and Peace Making...
here some links to get started:
Me, We, You, Others,... Models: [link] Super Signs/Structures: [link] more later....
This is Heiner Benking's News Log, a private-public diary presenting events, symposia and happenings in Berlin and elsewhere - my farings, foci, issues and concerns.
PLEASE CONSIDER THIS PERSONAL BLOG an ARTISTIC and PERFORMATIVE MEDIA INTERVENTION !
The Log links to my work and interests and presents issues and special concern of maybe a very small group of "concerned, engaged generalist" - a Global Interest Group (GIG). This needs to be seen in contrast to the ubiquitous Specialized Interest Groups (SIGs), the "scientific" approach to organize subject areas and specialization and standardization and harmonization! of means, nomenclatures, and modes of thinking. My favorite stories in the WHOLENESS SEMINAR include:
BELA BANATHY: "GENESIS
OF GENERAL SYSTEMS THEORY" and "IVAN HAVEL: Longing for Unified Knowledge" where a "specialist" runs into the founding session of the early foundations General Systems, mumbling "this is not my field" or where Ivan M. Havel expresses his search for other kinds of knowledge.
As a starter I also recommend to check my MINDPRINT site, where we add the need for HANDPRINTS and MINDPRINTS, as FOOTPRINTS are good to visualize and communicate numbers, densities or consumption per area, but are not sufficient to negotiate and "harmonize" across domains and communicate gains in different cultures, technologies, times,... in short: incompatible but relevant information and our work on dialog, peace, policy-making, and multi-modal, faceted issues and consequences.
What am I? This is a "well-packed" question for which I have not the or a single answer. Some called me an in-betweener, go-getter, facilitator, hub, marvel-hero, trim-tab, bricoleur, bricoleers??? - career designeer, .... Some even "hank" which I disliked or Story which I liked very much !!
I have no single answer as I feel we need to walk the talk and sing and dance Life ! in spectra and fields in multiple embodied spaces.
To nebulous an answer? I am sorry but I do not go for overclaims and oversimplifications, under-complex and over-simplistic approaches with clan-think mindsets about real issues in clear contexts!
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22 Apr 2014 @ 16:22
10 Apr 2014 @ 07:56
5 Apr 2014 @ 08:11
3 Apr 2014 @ 11:04
1 Apr 2014 @ 13:14
3 Mar 2014 @ 15:33
2 Mar 2014 @ 06:39
12 Feb 2014 @ 21:25