Author Archives: Benjamin Smith

Ben was the intern of Cultura21 from July to September 2011. He studied Environmental Sciences at the Leuphana University of Lueneburg, Germany.

“MIT japan 3/11 initiative”

November 14th, 2011 MIT (USA) “In the aftermath of the disaster suffered in Japan, MIT launched the MIT Japan 3/11 Initiative, a multi-year collaborative project focused on disaster-resilient planning, design and reconstruction. Back from the first MIT Japan 3/11 workshop which took place this summer, Shun Kanda and Jim Wescoat will discuss the process and [...]

“Ploughshares from Swords – Social Sculpture and Cultural Agency”

November 07th, 2011 MIT (USA) “How does creative activism contribute to society? How do we moderate crises through individual and collective art practice? How do we reconcile the arts, activism, and pedagogy? Stella McGregor, Founder and Director of Urbano Project, will share her experience of working with inner city youth and introduce projects such as [...]

“99 Is Not 100 – Documenting the Transformative Power of Art, or the Art of Transformative Documentary”

October 31st, 2011 Sloan Fellow, MIT (USA) “How do we observe or quantify the impact of an artistic intervention or the impact of a documentary film? Lucy Walker will be reflecting on the experience of making and showing the film Waste Land, a documentary about artist Vik Muniz’s collaboration with the self-designated recyclables materials pickers [...]

“Enabling Emergent Voices And Expression Through Technology”

October 17th, 2011 MIT Media Lab, USA “Moore’s law and the Internet have dramatically reduced the cost of producing and distributing information. This has greatly lowered the cost of collaboration and has empowered a qualitatively different “public” to think, express, and act without, or in spite of, central authority. These changes and advances in technology [...]

“In The Meantime”

October 3rd, 2011 “The New School” (USA) “In 1992 Jack Persekian founded Anadiel Gallery, the first and only independent gallery for Palestinian artists in Jerusalem. Persekian later founded the Al-Ma’mal Foundation to continue the gallery’s mission and to further promote, instigate, and disseminate the production of art in Palestine. In his talk, Persekian will share [...]

International Conference on Degrowth in the Americas

Montreal, Quebec, Canada May 14th-20th, 2012 “This conference will focus on the particular situations and dynamics of the Americas. What does degrowth mean for our Hemisphere with its rich geographical, cultural, social and economic diversity? How can degrowth models apply to different contexts from the Arctic to Tierra del Fuego? What does degrowth mean for [...]

Techno-Ecologies

November 3rd – December 11th, 2011, Riga and Liepaja “Techno-Ecologies is the theme of this year’s Art+Communication festival, the 13th edition of which will take place in Riga from November 3 – 6, 2011, featuring conference (November 4–5) and exhibition (November 4 – December 11) as well as broad programme of performances, screenings, public lectures [...]

Who draws the line?

September, 24th – 30th, 2011 Lecce (Apulia, Italy) “Who draws the line?” is the title of the first solo exhibition in Italy by the Turkish artist Devrim Kadirbeyoglu, co-produced by Archiviazioni and Ramdom Association. The exhibition was born as an inner necessity of the artist to represent and communicate the human, financial and social extent [...]

Confluence 2011 – Festival of Indigenous Storytellers

30th of September – 2nd of October, 2011 Fire Flies Ashram, Bangalore/India The “Confluence” invites you to a 3-day event on storytelling, where storytellers from various tribal communities of India will be sharing some of their disappearing myths, legends and stories with a view to build a collective that supports the need for their preservation. [...]

PICNIC Festival 2011

September 14th-16th, Amsterdam “PICNIC Festival is an annual three-day event that blurs the lines between creativity, science, technology and business to explore new solutions in the spirit of co- creation. This year’s theme is Urban Futures, with a focus on sustainability, infrastructure, society, design and media. PICNIC Festival 2011 takes place from 14 to 16 [...]

Sensory Worlds: Environment, Value and the Multi-Sensory

7th-9th December, 2011; Edinburgh „What contribution can sensorially-engaged Humanities make to environmental thinking and action?“ The conference „Sensory Worlds“ wants to examine the multi-sensory and will reflect upon the historical, contemporary and possible future relations between the senses (from balance to taste to the haptic and beyond). It aims to allow generously for both formal [...]

film “An Ecology of Mind”

New York City, Monday, September 12th, 6:30 PM American Museum of Natural History panel discussion after screening ‘The major problems in the world are the result of the difference between the way nature works and the way people think.’, this is one of the most famous sayings of Gregory Bateson (*1904 +1980), the well-known anthropologist, [...]

Cultural Events in Bangalore

The Bangalore-based collective “Maraa” invites you, as a parallel to the “Walls Between People” photo exhibition that opens on September 9th, to a series of three interesting events in Bangalore (India). Movement and Stillness – a theatre workshop on walls, conflict and trust. Please join us for a three hours theatre workshop on the themes [...]

Amplify Action

“The exhibition “Amplify Action: Sustainability through the Arts”, is a collaborative project of the Pratt Center for Community Development, Pratt Institute’s Initiative for Arts, Community and Social Change (IACSC), and the Bedford-Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation. The project is a part of the Arts Implementation Fund of the Pratt Center, recently established through a generous grant from [...]