Leonardo Call for Papers

A Colloquium on Art/Science/Spirituality Reconnections Within Emerging Planetary Cultures

Host: 1st Melilla Festival for the 5 Cultures, Melilla, Spain
Colloquium Dates : 18-20 July 2004
Deadline for Proposals : Feb 29 2004

Leonardo is pleased to announce a collaboration with the City of Melilla and the Al Andalus Foundation, for a colloquium on the reconnection of art, science, and spirituality. This intercultural dialogue is offered as one contribution towards cultural developments within the new planetary context.

Modern cosmology and physics emphasize the interdependence of complex systems on scales from the microscopic to the macroscopic. Contemporary genetics reveal the underlying shared genetic identity not only of all human beings, but the genetic relatedness of all life on earth. Current scientific discoveries reconnect science to a number of philosophical and spiritual traditions. These reconnections offer the promise of the development of new philosophical and value systems appropriate to new emerging linked planetary cultures.

Artists and Scientists have been at the forefront of the use of these new systems to build life-enhancing cultural developments in linked planetary contexts.

This colloquium, with 20 participating artists, scientists and philosophers, (see http://www.olats.org for a list of participants) is intended to be a listening post, an opportunity for inter-cultural dialogue and a specific step towards magnifying and amplifying new, emerging, planetary cultural practice.

The choice of the City of Melilla as the host for this colloquium is not an accident. Melilla has a millennial history of multi-cultural, multi-lingual synergy and dialogue within the Mediterranean context. The city offers itself as a podium to communicate outcomes of this first colloquium: to make real the opportunities for the reconnection of art, science and spirituality for the building of new 21st century planetary cultures.

Call for Posters
Leonardo is issuing a call for posters for the colloquium from artists, scientists, engineers and philosophers.

A poster presentation lasts at maximum 5 minutes. Posters will be also displayed during 3 days in the colloquium public spaces. If you can't attend the Colloquium in person, you may send a VHS cassette which could be displayed during 5 minutes.

There is no funding available for participation in the symposium but there is no registration fee and there are reduced hotel rates and travel on Iberia. If you are interested in presenting a poster, please contact the following email address: julien_knebusch@yahoo.com.fr and submit an abstract (500 words maximum). You are encouraged to submit also website addresses where any texts on your work might be found.

We are seeking presentations that present specific scientific and artistic projects, and make visible the cultural/philosophical/religious situations that set a priori conditions and constraints on approaches and specific work.

The official languages of the colloquium will be English and Spanish, with simultaneous translation also into French.

Examples of topics:

- Planetary cultures as new creation of worlds
- Planetary consciousnesses: towards spiritual developments
- Experiences of networks (collaboration, artistic and scientific work, community building) in different cultural contexts
- Scientific discoveries and artistic work which cast new light on humans as inhabitants of a single planet

Partial Funding for this Leonardo project has been provided by the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations and UNESCO DIGIARTS.

For Further Information: http://www.olats.org click on Melilla button.

Email poster proposals to: julien_knebusch@yahoo.fr (500 words and URL).

To attend: http://www.melillafestival.org/




Updated 1 June 2004.