Transformation Through Story

Creativity in adults is highly valued in our society. Personal creativity contributes to inventiveness, innovation, social and cultural change as well as political development and economic progression. The creator is an innovator, a problem solver, an entrepreneur, an artist. Creative people have rapid and effective responses that help them to achieve their life goals and allow them to enjoy the journey. Creativity is both a skill set and a unique and individual character structure that is developed throughout childhood and fine-tuned in adolescence and adulthood. Education has a key role to play in its development. Positive creativity inspiring experiences at every stage of the educational journey are needed. This is especially true in early childhood. Educators who rise to the creativity challenge will be well rewarded in rich teaching experiences and the joy of seeing children reach their creative potential in supportive and integrated learning communities.

Benyshek, D.  (2013).  A historical and critical overview of the artist as shaman and recent research. In A. Czyżewski  &  E.E. Djaltchinova-Malets (Eds.), Shamanhood and its arts. Budapest, Hungary: Bibliotheca Shamanistica, Akademia Kiado, and The Polish Institute of the World Art Studies, Warsaw.

Abstract: A historical overview follows the association of artists with shamans through myth, archaeology, anthropology, philosophy, iconography, art history, psychology, and studies of creativity, primarily through the lens of the West. Forms of proto-art, such as the Woman of Willendorf, might represent entheogenmorphic female shamans.

A theoretical model of contemporary artists as shamans is presented.  Several traditional shamanic artists served as socially recognized shamans, spiritual practitioners who voluntarily controlled their attention to obtain information presented as forms of art. Shamanlike artists fulfilled many properties of shamanism, possibly earning implicit social designation when audiences receive psychological, social, spiritual, or physiological benefits from art.
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Preface
Throughout all of Europe we find examples of folk-belief assigning special qualities to the seventh-born son or daughter of a family. At times these attributes were positive, at times negative. However, they always had a magical aura about them (Bloch [1924] 1983). For the most part, these beliefs have been written off as superstitious residue from times past and as a result little attention has been paid to documenting the concrete social practices associated with them. An exception to this tendency is the work of Marc Bloch, who in 1924, called attention to the supernatural powers attributed to the seventh son and at times, to the seventh daughter, born after an uninterrupted series of the same sex, remarking that seventh-born children were credited with a “particular supernatural power” (Bloch [1924] 1983: 293, 296). Writing in 1924, Bloch observed that “La croyance sous cette forme a été et est sans doute encore très largement répandue dans l’Europe occidentale et centrale: on l’a signalée en Allemagne, en Biscaye, en Catalogne, dans presque toute la France, dans les Pays-Bas, en Angleterre, en Escosse, en Irlande […]”  (Bloch [1924] 1983: 294-295).

Specifically, Bloch noted that from at least the 16th century onwards, children born into a seventh position in their family supposedly had the power to heal by touch. Such extraordinary people, often deemed sorcerers, even devils, were also referred to by a variety of expressions such as mahr (German) or murawa (Polish) and consequently they had the ambivalent privilege of tapping into powers that were inaccessible to normal humans. Specifically, they were viewed as having healing and divinatory powers, which could entail shape-shifting (Vaz da Silva 2003). That is, those individuals were endowed with the ability to take the form of an animal. From the point of view of modern Western thought this belief causes the dividing line between humans and animals to become blurred. Nonetheless, that blurring or fusion of two natures would be in accordance with the cosmology of native peoples in other parts of the world, especially contemporary hunter-gatherers, where such animistic beliefs also prevail (Bird-David 1999; Brightman 2002; Ingold 2000; Willerslev 2007).

It is quite clear that the qualities assigned to the seventh-son or daughter harken back to an earlier animistic mindset, notions of nonhuman personhood and social practices that in turn connect back to shamanic modes of healing. At the same time, as noted in the earlier chapters of this study, the fused nature of the Bear Son, the half-human, half-bear being known as Hamalau “Fourteen” in Basque, reflects a similar blurring of the Western human-animal divide and related cultural conceptualizations.

And as Bertolotti has demonstrated in his detailed and extraordinarily well researched study Carnevale di Massa 1950 (1992), European versions of the Bear Son folktales, e.g., Giovanni l’Orso, may well reproduce much earlier beliefs, more in consonance with the cosmovision of hunter-gatherers who inhabited these zones in times past. More concretely, the fact that the figure of Hamalau is grounded in the belief that humans descended from bears allows us to consider the significance and symbolism of this character’s own genesis: he is born of a human female, but his father is a bear. In this sense, he is a double-natured intermediary occupying the ontological ground between humans and bears.

In this article, we provide an in-depth organizational analysis of the World Indigenous Nations Higher Education Consortium (WINHEC) through its global strategies in achieving nation building and self-determination for indigenized higher education efforts. We identify four theories from the literature used by WINHEC in its operations, and propose two new theories to fit our evaluation of the Consortium—Indigenous Creativity Theory and Indigenous Cultural Creativity Theory. Social cartography, archival analysis, and discourse analysis are used to identify the indigenous, paradigms, and practices of the Consortium. Employing a strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and challenges (SWOC) approach, we examine WINHEC’s organizational contributions, effectiveness, unique aspects, and challenges of indigenous engagement and governance in the membership nations’ locations. The findings suggest that both indigenous and non-indigenous peoples play an important and symbiotic role essential for the furthering of indigenous higher education worldwide.

Keywords: indigenous paradigm, indigenous higher education, WINHEC

Toutes les sociétés sont préoccupées du sel, soit sous une forme physique, soit sous une forme symbolique. L'absence de sel est également signifiante. Cependant, jusqu'à présent, aucune quête systématique de ce condiment et de ses avatars en Asie du Sud-Est, autant continentale qu'insulaire, n'avait été entreprise. C'est le propos du présent ouvrage, fruit d'une coopération de recherche de l'ECASE (Ethnologie comparative de l'Asie du Sud-Est, UPR 298 du Centre national de la recherche scientifique français) à laquelle ont participé des chercheurs thaïlandais, chinois, hollandais, français, anglais et canadiens. Ce regard à la fois éloigné et détaillé sur de nombreuses sociétés d'Asie du Sud-Est prend en compte non seulement ce qu'il est coutume d'appeler "sel", c'est-à-dire les cristaux de sodium ou de potassium, mais également les saumures et salaisons. Celles-ci s'avèrent aussi importantes – et parfois plus – que le sel dans nombre des espaces sociaux évoqués. L'interdisciplinarité a été volontairement favorisée dans l'approche de ce volume : ethnologie, linguistique, histoire, technologie, biologie, agronomie, confrontent points de vue et niveaux de lecture complémentaires dans le but d'une appréhension globale de la place tenue par le sel en Asie du Sud-Est ; étude qui emporte bien au-delà du goût ou de la seule physiologie pour atteindre à un système symbolique complexe, celui des substances, dont le sel n'est qu'un élément.

Die Kulturveranstaltung „Körperkonzepte“ verbindet aktuelle wissenschaftliche Forschung mit kritischen Stimmen der jungen aktivistischen Kunst sowie mit Konzepten feministischer Kulturpolitik. Körperkonzepte sind in zahlreichen aktuellen gesellschaftlichen Diskursen präsent, wo sie teilweise stark polarisieren: Seien es Schönheitsideale, prekäre Körper im Kontext von Migration und Gewalt oder Versuche, mit den Einschränkungen durch körperbezogene Normen zu brechen, wie es der Zugang der „Body Positivity“ vorschlägt.
Die Veranstaltung ist eine Kooperation des Research Center for the History of Transformations (RECET), der Forschungsplattform „Transformations and Eastern Europe“, des Instituts für Slawistik und des Instituts für Zeitgeschichte und vernetzt damit mehrere Forschungseinrichtungen der Universität Wien.
Den Hauptteil machen die Vorträge von renommierten Wissenschaftler*innen aus Bosnien und Herzegowina, Deutschland, Polen, Russland, Tschechien und Österreich aus, die ihre Forschungen zu historischen und aktuellen Umbrüchen in literarischen und kulturellen Verhandlungen von Körperkonzepten mit uns teilen werden. Diese Diskussion soll unter enger Bezugnahme auf gesellschaftliche Debatten erfolgen. Elisabeth Lechner gibt einen Impulsvortrag zu „Body Positivity“, mit dem wir kulturelle Tendenzen in den slawischen (Literatur-)Traditionen gezielt an politische westliche Körperdiskurse rückbinden wollen. Jenseits kognitiver Debatten soll die Ambivalenz von Körpern unmittelbar erfahrbar gemacht werden. In einer Improperformance nähert sich Pamina Milewska, Artistin und Forscherin am Mozarteum Salzburg, dem konkreten Erleben von Körpern durch Tanz und Klang. Körper sei Gegenwart, so ihre proklamatorische Botschaft. Mit Körpern, Identität und Vergänglichkeit beschäftigt sich, dazu komplementär, das fragile Objekt-Triptychon „Körperhüllen“ der Künstlerin Monika Eliette Jandl, das während der gesamten Veranstaltung ausgestellt wird. Die Künstlerin Gerlinde Radler ergänzt diese Ansätze durch Thematisierung der konkreten politischen Dimension von Körpern. Im experimentellen Kurzfilm „Justitia“, der sich mit Ungleichheit und Willkür der Justiz in patriarchalen Machtkulturen auseinandersetzt, werden Körper als konkrete Angriffsfläche sichtbar. Präsentiert im „Theater unterm Rock“ liegt dem Beitrag zudem eine performative körperliche Dimension zugrunde.
Durch die Verschränkung von exzellenter Wissenschaft mit Kunst und Aktivismus werden gezielte Synergien zwischen diesen unterschiedlichen Erkenntnisbereichen hergestellt. Die interdisziplinäre Veranstaltung ist für ein breites Publikum gedacht, soll diesem die wissenschaftlichen Ansätze unserer Forschung vermitteln und somit eine Verwertung von Wissen ermöglichen.

Finanziert von Forschungsplattform “Transformations and Eastern Europe”, Universität Wien – Campus Aktuell, RECET – Research Center for the History of Transformations, FWF – Der Wissenschaftsfonds, ÖFG – Österreichische Forschungsgemeinschaft, Stadt Wien

Konzept und Organisation: Magdalena Baran-Szołtys, Ingeborg Jandl
Veranstaltungsort: Alte Kapelle, Campus der Universität
Datum: 09.-11.06.2022

Short story about a young Holy Knight who lost his only Father.  He must now save the world from it's own darkness. This darkness manifested as an entity who now blocks the life from flowing from the light beyond the sky, into the throat of the world via a certain mountain..

Recorrienso una serie de mitos indígenas americanos, se retoman algunas nociones no eurocéntricas del significado de trabajo y de creación artística. Nociones que sobreviven gracias a la resistencia y el sincretismo de pueblos indígenas y mestizos. A partir de esos mitos y ritos. La definición del concepto de trabajo se mece entre diversas nociones que en occidente se valoran desde la cosmología racionalista, científica, patitalista, cartesiana y pragmática.

Vision
A well trained multi-skilled, self-employed, and self-sustained rural young men and women who move to cities for higher education. 

Mission
Train and equip young undergraduate and graduate men and women from rural communities with multiple business and career development skills while they are pursuing advanced studies in urban centers.

Goal
To train young undergraduate and graduate women and men in practical community organizing for social transformation, business skills, time management and enterprise development for sustainable independent livelihoods during and after their studies.

Prototypical shamanic artists are socially designated spiritual practitioners who voluntarily regulate their attention to obtain information generally unavailable to their communities. The information is then transformed into art that provides psychological, social, or spiritual benefits to art audiences and individual audience members.

DOWNLOAD LINK: http://amzn.to/1Br35z4

More often than not, life presents us with seemingly insurmountable challenges. You try hard, but they seem to grow bigger and bigger. What do you do when you apparently have all cards stacked against you in the game of life?

The good news: there is a very simple time-tested solution to this age-old complex problem

Read Every Moment is a New Beginning to:

Realize how little things can make a big positive difference in your life

Grow your respect and appreciation for even the tiniest

Understand how you can always choose to be happy if you want to

Be in the present and leave behind your past

Overcome negative thoughts through positive meditation


Written in the form of a contemporary self-improvement parable with colorful pictures, this short book is a motivational guide to positive thinking and cultivating an attitude of gratitude amidst life's toughest struggles.

Meet Alissa, a typical, young working woman who is suddenly overwhelmed with real-life challenges one after another to the point of threatening her very existence.

Read this book to find out what happens to her.

Apply the simple principles contained in this book and experience a new beginning in your life right this moment!

DOWNLOAD LINK: http://amzn.to/1Br35z4

Until Galileo said that the book of nature is written in the language of mathematics, human knowledge was considered to be something that was stored and captured by words . Today it is  an assumption of both scientific and popular common sense that science provides knowledge about the world because it uses mathematical formulae to make predictions about the future. However, an understanding of neurocomputational algorithms can justify the claim that there is genuine knowledge which utilizes these algorithms without analyzing them or rationally understanding them. This is why it is possible for us to learn from stories and metaphors, even without learning algorithms.

Scenario Sounds/Personae Mimickings OR Voices From The Piano  Part I.
Texts and audio including color scores to perform.
The libretto and visual script to perform the opera are instructed by following abstract visual directives reflecting tonal pitches, voice inflections, and imitating accents extracted from various dialects. Colors and line strokes direct the eyes along scanning paths for reading texts and the arrangement of chromatic sequences also phrase and guide the tempo of the piano score.
Visual scores, text, and audio 1978-79 Nina Yankowitz with Introduction by Joyce Kozloff
Special edition Opera of 30--book of six 8 1/2 " x 11" silkscreen prints hand signed by artist with audio cassette. Signed painting on paper included.
Street Editions1981, Reprint with CD ©2007 NY Art Projects LLC.
Limited edition Opera of 220--book of six 8 1/2 " x 11" silkscreen prints hand signed by artist with audio cassette, Street Editions1981, Reprint CD ©2007 NY Art Projects LLC.
Franklin Furnace Archive at Museum of Modern Art DADABASE, New York City.
Performances of "Personae Mimickings” and “Scenario Sounds” publications include:
2011 Exhibited at The Museum of Modern Art, Kiev, Russia
1981 12th International Sound Poetry Festival at Washington Square Church, New York City
1981 Leah Levy Gallery, San Francisco Ca.
1981 The Avante Garde Festival, "Sound Tapes" New York
1980 Anthology, "Text-Sound Texts", William Morrow, Inc., New York
1978 New Wilderness Letter, J. Rothenberg, "Notes from the Ground", Vol.1, No.5
1979 Anthology, R. Kostelanetz, "Scenario Series", Critical Assembling
1979 "Voices of the Eye" by Nina Yankowitz, published by Stefanotti Gallery NYC
Scenarios: Scripts to Perform Performance Art, Collected Writings
Anthology of theatrical/performative scripts and documents conceived as of as a companion to Breakthrough Fictioneers and Essaying Essays. Compiled and edited by Richard Kostelantz. Assembling Press, Richard Kostelanetz1980

This is a proposal for teaching and leading class discussions of Great Books and Great Ideas, which draws on our own teaching experience and our discussions with other passionately dedicated teachers. Our basic objective is to encourage students to develop a passionate lifelong love for learning and disciplined, critical intellectual inquiry through the creative process of friendly respectful dialogue and exploration of the essential relational nature of reality and humane values that are universal valid in the sense of being affirmed by compassionate, good-willed, psychologically healthy people, great books, and great ideas across diverse cultures, social backgrounds, and historical contexts. This emphasis on universal, life-affirming, wholesome, truths and values includes but is not negated by serious attention to the contextual aspects of human existence, encompassing vast diversity of multicultural, historical, epistemological, and experiential perspectives.

The dragon is one of the most ubiquitous of images — from its appearance in the dreams of individuals to the legendary works of men like J R R Tolkien — it is known across the world but never viewed in the same way. This article takes a Jungian psychoanalytic approach to the dragon as symbol, and juxtaposes two distinct perspectives on the dragon, that of the ancient Greeks (the mythic dragons Typhon and Python in particular) and the Zulu people of South Africa (with special attention given to the place of the python as a possible “dragon” in the practice of divination), in an effort to better understand the creature’s significance to these two cultures and to the world at large.

In this paper, I would like to show how Nándor Pogány’s Hungarian fairytale Argyilus and the Fairy Ilona, contains the largest amount of references to Finno-Ugric mythology than any of the other tales in his work Magyar Fairy Tales from Old Hungarian Legends. The strong Finno-Ugric mythological references in the fairytale can be substantiated by the following publications: for example, Géza Róheim’s Hungarian and Vogul Mythology, Mihály Hoppál and Juha Pentikäinen’s Uralic Mythology and Folklore, and Arnold Ipolyi’s Magyar Mythologia. Each portrays different elements of Finno-Ugric mythology which is clearly and continuously illustrated throughout the fairytale.

The beliefs of Finno-Ugric peoples in Russia, Hungarian mythology, and the Árpád influence make this tale unique. Each is important in its own right but when applied to the fairy tale, the story is changed from a children’s bedtime story to one which leaves this writer asking, “Why is there an abundance of Finno-Ugric mythology in this one particular story?” and two, “What makes an adult concept understandable and accessible for children?”

The Finno-Ugric mythology alluded to in Argyilus and the Fairy Ilona is a direct account of a day in the life of a Siberian shaman, and how central a role he plays to Siberian peoples. When specific elements of his role are retold, they are described in such a way so they will appeal to children, though unbeknownst to them at the time.

Argyilus and the Fairy Ilona is comprised of many distinctive elements: the Finno-Ugric mythology, Hungarian mythology, and the Árpád influence. When viewed independently of one another each adds invaluable color to the story. Though intertwined within the fairy tale, one may see how the different elements of each retain their individuality. In the above sources one may find elements of what these individualities are, see how they are preserved in the story, and see how each example, in its own way, plays a defining role over the course of the fairy tale.