6/15/09 Report from Tatiane Andrade

Dear Friends,
Some News!

What we’ve tried to do at our latest seminar (where we’ve explored the “Identity and Vision of Brazil” through the lens of Geography and History) is the following:

• characterize the historical building process of the Brazilian people
• reinforce the idea that Brazilians are multiethnic – that we’ve been created through the mixture, the transformation, of different ethnic groups
• reinforce this characteristic of a multicultural population and use it as a point of departure in thinking about our national and international politics
• build up the nation’s self-esteem out of this understanding of “nobodyness” – something which has been done in nations with a similar cultural history

We were 26 participants, including visitors and short-term students, coming from the southern suburbs of Sao Paulo and from Embu Guacu. Also, some of the Brazilians who participated in our work camps continued on with this course.

After the very first discussion time and artistic exercise we already knew each other and felt at home as a group. We drew profiles of our neighbors and later added colored paper and pieces of newspaper, making an individual “piece of art” of the positive and negative frames.

Afterwards we worked inside the house, painting the wooden walls and creating a smaller, enclosed study area within the big, unfinished building. Step by step we will manage to set up the other rooms. Next are the living room and library.

Now we are enthusiastically planning and looking forward to see how this pilot project will develop as the year goes on, with other work camps scheduled for later. We will report back to Aramitan and Credere as progress is made.

Thank you for your support and your interest.

With warm greetings from our team Preparacao Jovem 2009

6/5/09 Report from Jordan Walker and Lachlan Grey

announcing the Mercury in America research tour

What does it mean to be human and free?

To know love and truth

To serve the healthy evolution of humanity?

Mercury in America brings together a unique group of individuals for an epic journey exploring the terrain that lives within us and that we live within. This is a collaborative project and we are looking for others to contribute their questions and capacities for a heightened experience of what a thinking/feeling/doing community looks like in the late summer/early fall of 2009.

Practically, this takes the form of a traveling research project that will cross the country for six weeks (August 30 - October 5) aboard a biodiesel tour bus named "Mercury". We begin on the Pacific Ocean, experience a week in the desert at the Burning Man Arts Festival, explore sacred sites in the southwest and biodynamic farms in the mid-west. Then we head east to take part in an arts and science exhibition and Creating Living Connections, the national conference coinciding with the annual member's meeting of the Anthroposophical Society of North America.

Take a look at our tentative itinerary.

Our mobile laboratory will be staffed by a merry band of socially inspired artists, spiritual scientists, Waldorf teachers, biodynamic farmers, contemporary myth-makers and simple fools.

We would love to have you join us!

We will be attempting spiritual research. Attempting to place our ideals at the center of our time together. We will study the wisdom of the past, experience the broad spectrum awareness of the moment and actively presence a future fast approaching.

If you would like to receive updates about our plans and trip as they progress, respond to us and we'll keep you in the loop. Please pass this email along to whomever it might inspire. Likewise, feel free to put us in touch with people we need to meet and places we need to see. We'd love to hear about your efforts to transform passive consumption into active participation - tell us your stories and we'll tell you ours.

Updated details and more information at:

www.newformsproject.org/mercury-in-america

6/1/09 Report from Tatiane Andrade

Dear friends,

After a very successful first part of our youth program “Preparacao Jovem,” (Youth Preparation Year) containing the two international work camps, we will now initiate the second part beginning with the weekend seminars twice a month plus some study support days during the week.

Our first theme is Identity & Vision of Brazil. We will be working on this for two months and I am exited to do this with other interested young Brazilians of the suburbs of Sao Paulo and Embu Guacu.

There is personal news: I moved with a friend from Sao Paulo to Embu Guacu (close by the project Aramitan) and I am very proud and happy, seeing as this is the first time in my 22 years that I’m able to live on my own and not as before with my mom and other family members. This is not usual here in Brazil. So I feel more and more free to work and have new life experiences.

A big hug and see you!

(Here are some pictures from our last project)

Still without a proper structure we are improvising. Here a lecture with Odilo Guedes, a very busy civil society activist and economist in what will be our future cultural center.

Not just thinking of ourselves – we’re doing our work camps in areas with real need.

In this case we were building a family house. A family of eight lived here without a proper kitchen or any toilet.

Some people on a cultural event called Sarau/open stage, where everybody is invited to offer poems, music, dances...

5/24/09 Report from Luke Fischer

I was invited to contribute poems for the last two Think OutWord conferences. These have been wonderful occasions to share my poetry with the community and receive encouragement for my work. At the conference “Art is Movement” in Spring Valley and NYC, Lachlan Grey brought my poem, “Metamorphosis,” to life in creative speech. Marcus Macauley composed music for the poem which he taught the conference participants to sing. The interweaving of poetry, speech, and song was an enriching and enlivening experience for all.

For the conference “Social Forms to Embody the Future” I was invited to recite a selection of poems, and my poem “Snow” (see below) formed the starting point for a social sculpture. My poetry was very warmly received and many people expressed gratitude for my contribution and asked me to send them the poems. After the conference Laura Summer sent a report to the Social Sculpture USA website run by Rosemary McMullen. Rosemary also published a report on the social sculpture in the Pittsburgh paper, The New People, in which my poem was also published.

There are presently further plans in the works, to collaborate with artists connected to the Think OutWord community.

At the end of June I will be attending a course on Goethean Science at The Nature Institute. While Goethean Science, as a way of perceiving and thinking about nature, is already an inspiration for my poetry, I am sure the time at the Nature Institute will serve to deepen my understanding and perception.

I am seeking various avenues to publish my work. This is a necessary first step before finding a press to publish a book of my poems.

Snow

 

The clouds empty their pockets

of lint,

sending multitudes

of winged-parachutes

spiralling down,

joining hands

in diving-formations,

almost weightless

as air.

 

Aid-bringing

messengers,

radial symmetries, little universes

descending

one upon the other,

white seeds

sewing and laying

new ground.

 

After weeks of news of war

sky sheds its sleep,

a veil

 like forgetting

upon charred clay.

Guiltless

weaving baptismal cloth

and shroud,

unceasingly trustful

in amending possibility

even as it is muddied

and melting…

3/20/09 Report from Annie Sauerland

News from Jordan and the Ayni Aynak film festival. Unfortunately it is not good.

Last week an email was sent out by a Jordanian filmmaker saying that Ayni Aynak and eye-to-I are Israeli organizations and serving the normalization (normalization means: the normalization of the relationship between Israelis and Palestinians before the occupation is ended). He called for Boycott.

Here in Jordan this is a very sensitive issue. Even though the king has a peace agreement with Israel, cultural organizations are trying not to have any contact with Israeli organizations.

The filmmaker isn’t right about us being Israeli. What he found on the eye-to-I website was a former project that happened in 2007 in cooperation with the Kibuzz Harduf in Israel (the "Walk your Talk" conference) Even though eye-to-I took a clear stand against normalization and proved that we are not an Israeli organization the filmmaker continued to threaten us.

As a result our 2 partners in Jordan pulled out of the Ayni Aynak film festival (we found out that the filmmaker arranged several boycotts against projects that one of our partners was doing as the organization that he works with is not friendly with it). Both partner organizations fear to be related in any way to an Israeli project. They would still love to do the project but not now and not with eye-to-I.

For Amna, Alexia and me as the organizers it is a tough time right now. On the one hand we seem to be the victim of an internal dispute between competing film organizations, and on the other hand, the fact that eye-to-I once had a project with Israel is a fundamental problem here.

All of this happened at a stage of the project where posters were printed, participants started to apply, and we finalized arrangements with people from the Jordanian film industry. Now we are trying to find out if we can do the Ayni Aynak film week without eye-to-I and with other partners in the near future.

We will inform you as soon as we have more news.

Best greetings,
Annie

3/25/09 Report from Martina Muller

Dear wonderful Credere Fund people and everyone who donated,

I wanted to thank all of you for the support that I received recently for my “Wall of Light” project! You have no idea how much this means to me! I carry the thoughts and ideas about the project with me continuously, and they have resulted in other ideas already. I think this is only the beginning. I have finished my scale model, I recently got very good technical advise, and I am ready to start the actual project in a week or two. (I will have pictures of my progress for you shortly.) People have come towards me with very helpful ideas. I hope with all my heart that this is going to be something that will be uplifting and transforming for the people who see it. Right now this project serves as a big red thread and as a life line into the future for me. Your support has been invaluable, a true affirmation, and a true blessing.
Thank you, thank you, thank you!

Martina

3/25/09 Report from Tatiane Andrade

Dear Think OutWord team,

About our project:

Things have been very busy over the last months. I have been practically living in Aramitan. Most nights I stay here!

We began the activities of Preparacao Jovem with an international work camp at the beginning of February and it ended last week. It was very enriching for us all and at times we were 55 people taking part in the activities. Now we have started the second work camp with participants mainly from the YIP program (http://www.yip.se) who are doing an internship here. We are together with about 30 Brazilian participants. We are and have been working in the Aramitan building and have put a lot of work in the construction of the volunteer accommodation – a building to host 3 volunteers with a toilet and kitchen. Parallel to this we have been working out in the local community, building a home for a family who live in absolute misery. They have 6 children, the mother is pregnant and they were living in a "home" without a kitchen or toilet. Their lives are now changed and so are the lives of all of us who were able to work on this project.

During the workcamp we have also had lots of times for reflection, and we have had talks from professionals about the history of Brazil, the situation of the youth in Brazil and so on. We have watched movies that are relevant to the current situation of Brazil and have organized cultural events for the community. Many of the young participants from Brazil are now again with us for this second workcamp and the idea is that they will continue during the year with the rest of the activities of Preparacao Jovem. These workcamps give us all the possibility of understanding more about the world and through these knowing more about who we are as individuals...

Of course we also face challenges and questions of how we will continue with the work and these questions make us go further in the work we do!

Many thanks for your support and interest in our work!

Tati