A nice way of creating attention in the public are flashmob performances. I blogged about the Ode to Joy in Sabadell, Spain, and for the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam.

Here is a “shopera” performance in a London grocery store, where one afternoon five secret opera singers disguised as casual shoppers and store staff presented the Italian classic Funiculì, Funiculà in the food aisles. Enjoy this mixture of culture and marketing.

Photo (c) from the video

Beginning of December, the windows of a fashion store on Zurich’s Bahnhofstrasse attracted the attention of the passers-by: Between the perfect display dummies, you could see figures with scoliosis or brittle bone disease modelling the latest fashions. One with shortened limbs; the other with a malformed spine.

The campaign has been devised for the International Day of Persons with Disabilities by Pro Infirmis, an organisation for the disabled. Entitled “Because who is perfect? Get closer.”, it war designed to provoke reflection on the acceptance of people with disabilities. Director Alain Gsponer has captured the campaign as a short film. An impressive sensitization for the inclusion of people with disabilities. And a great response – up to now the video generated over 9.3 million views.

Picture from the video (c) Pro Infirmis

A Canadian friend sent me the link to a touching video about “Touching Strangers“:

“Since 2007, photographer Richard Renaldi has worked on a series of photographs for which he asks complete strangers to physically interact while posing together for a portrait. Working on the street with a large format 8-by-10 view camera, Renaldi encounters his subjects in towns and cities all over the United States.

Renaldi’s objective was to introduce an unpredictable variable into a traditional photographic formula, and to create spontaneous and fleeting relationships between complete strangers. The portraits are extremely difficult to make, involving complex negotiations with the participants that push them past comfort levels, into a physical intimacy normally reserved for loved ones or friends. Touching Strangers creates intimate and ephemeral relationships that exist only for the moment of the photograph. The images are beautiful and strange, crossing out of the zones of safe physical intimacy with strangers and into deep emotional landscapes never photographed before.

In Spring 2014, Aperture Foundation will publish Touching Strangers as a photobook, including new photographs from Renaldi’s shoots this summer in Albuquerque, Chicago, New York City, and Southern California.” An interview with Richard Renaldi. Here is another video about his project. You find more about Renaldi’s work on his website or on his blog.

Pics from the video “Touching Strangers”, (c) Richard Renaldi

I came across a beautiful infographics by John Nelson about the annual pulse of vegetation and land ice – an impressive visualisation of the heartbeat of our Mother Earth. Click on this link and then on the picture to see the pulse of the earth moving (it might take a moment to load).

To create this pulsating image John took 12 NASA images showing Earth at each of the twelve months: “This animation shows an oddly mesmerizing dance of snow and life, from the vantage of the North Pole.”

There is also a version showing different parts of the globe in one image.

The “pulsating earth” reminded me of a beautiful Greenpeace-video about “Mother Earth – She’s alive…“.

Breathing Earth – polar view (c) John Nelson)

Breathing Earth – multiple views (c) John Nelson)

John has created a number of interesting infographics. A very impressive one is the graphics about “Earthquakes since 1898“: “With a heaping pile of data from NCEDC.org, every recorded earthquake with a magnitude of 4 or higher was spattered onto this map.” So you see the places where you stand a bigger chance that the ground under your feed is shaking…

“Earthquakes since 1898” (c) John Nelson)

With winter solstice, the esoteric Christmas festival, we just entered into the month of Capricorn, where the northern journey of the sun starts again.

For several weeks, I meditated on the symbolism of Capricorn but no complete picture came up. There was just an idea but I thought that the complex symbolism cannot be depicted in an appealing way. However, the impulse for the painting continued. And during the work on the picture it slowly manifested. Its symbolism is not easy to be understood by a Westerner. In short: The earth is lifted up from matter to spirit.

At the bottom you see the head of Varaha, the incarnation of Lord Vishnu as the White Boar. The Puranic lore describes how he lifts up the earth from out of the depth into manifestation, and from matter to spirit. Varaha is particularly worshipped in Capricorn.

This month is the dawn of the solar year and also the dawn of the great time cycle of our creation called a Manvantara. The earth is depicted as floating on the surface of the waters of space; it is supported by Varaha and surrounded by a huge etheric lotus flower, the symbol of unfoldment. Behind, there is a great sunrise, and from beyond the sun a dragon rising. On its back you see Varuna, depicted as a five years old boy with four arms. As they move through space the trident in Varunas hands, representing Neptune, is creating lines of force, which are the guiding lines for the Aquarian age. The white dragon, the vehicle of Varuna, is called Makara in the Vedic scriptures, meaning Capricorn.

4 September 2013, A 5, pencils and photo work

Here are two nice short videos – one about an encounter with Dr. Masaru Emoto’s water molecule experiments (the power of positive thinking) on a subway station, the other a commercial from BBC One about “What a Wonderful World” – impressive pics of the beauty of nature. Enjoy.

Pic from the video about Masaru Emoto’s water molecule experiments (c)

Pic from the BBC One What a Wonderful World (c)

I tonight received the link to a most touching documentary, The Animal Communicator. It is about psychic animal communication and portrays the work of Anna Breytenbach, a South African-based professional animal communicator. She has dedicated her life to what she calls interspecies communication. “She sends detailed messages to animals through pictures and thoughts. She then receives messages of remarkable clarity back from the animals. Anna can feel the scars hidden under a monkeys fur, she can understand the detailed story that is causing a birds trauma, she transforms a deadly snarling leopard into a relaxed content cat – the whole animal kingdom comes alive in a way never seen before – wild birds land on her shoulders, fish gather around her when she swims, and wild unfamiliar baboons lie on her body as if she is one of their own” (from the presentation of the documantary on the site of the film festival Culture Unplugged, the video has been removed from there, it is now available on YouTube).

Tracing animals is a very ancient tradition used by indigenous people for hunting. The movie presents interview with animal tracers describing their work.

You can find more about Anna’s work on her website Animalspirit.org. There she also gives links to other The movie cannot be framed here in the blog, so just follow the link. The film (52 min) is very well done and changes the understanding not only of animals but of our relation to creation. See the film until the end – the last story with the black leopard is very impressive.

There is also a short YouTube presentation of Anna, see below. Or here.

Anna Breytenbach, the Animal Communicator, pic from the documentary (c)

A traumatised wild black leopard who totally changed his behaviour after communicating with Anna, pic from the documentary (c)

Anna Breytenbach introducing her work.

Whenever you have tried to silence your mind you will have realised that it keeps on moving. Only when you move on to the next higher plane of pure energy, the thoughts slowly vanish. The same, when you try to fight any disturbing outer influences such as noise you will notice that your fight is in vain – or better that the disturbance is inside and not coming from outside.

In his computer animated short “The Fly“, Hanjin Song, a graduate from a school of art and design in Florida gave an excellent illustration of this principle of meditation: A samurai is seeking inner peace by trying to rid himself of the distraction by a fly. However, he discovers that the flies multiply and seem to be coming at him harder and faster. Only when he starts accepting the disturbance ends and he really turns inward. Well done!

The fly on the cheek of the samurai – picture (c) from the short.

The two hours before dawn are considered to be most propitious for deep contemplation, where the awareness can easily link to the subtle planes. At this time nature prepares the new day and we can receive plenty of vital energy. In the annual cycle, Sagittarius is said to be the “two hours before dawn” and very beneficial for the spiritual aspirants.

For the painting I took a photo of a pre-dawn sky taken from an airplane I fused two photos of wooden and ceramic statues of Buddha. I placed the figure into the centre of the structure of a double pyramid surrounded by a circle. It is the symbol of transformation, a diamond enabling protection of the meditator, of a group, a nation or even the globe. It is also called a temple, from where positive energies spread out and help to reorganise the subtle matter. The diamond stands for the four cardinal points of the day and of the year, the Midheaven (MC; Medium Coeli) and the Nadir (IC, Imum Coeli).

In the centre I placed the lotus of the heart centre surrounded by golden light. The lotus is formed by different layers of radiant light. I took a photo of prismatic reflections on the walls of my home office and constructed the central column from the base centre to the head and beyond. Around and above the head you see an aura of vital energies in different shades of violet penetrating the space.

You can find more new images on my website.

3 August 2013, pencils and photo work

Three days ago I was surprised to receive an e-mail with a headline “News from India”. It was sent via the e-mail address of the site of my paintings but it came from a former business partner of my past job at Swiss Red Cross which I have left just a year ago. I wondered how he found my e-mail address for I didn’t have it at the time of leaving the job.

Memories came up when I read the e-mail: 9 years ago I started to build up a media asset management solution for Swiss Red Cross and chose Picturepark, for it offered the best facilities. Furthermore Bruno Jehle, the founder and CEO – the person who now wrote me the e-mail – gave us a very good free support for developing the concept and structure. Soon we discovered that both of us had a love for India with a long-time background. Since his youth, he had been committed to social development activities in India initiated by himself.

I hadn’t heard from him for years when this e-mail arrived, where he sent to some friends a link to a newspaper article in the Deccan Chronicle reporting about the digitization of centuries-old negatives of ancient buildings, tombs and caves in Hyderabad, Bidar and Adilabad, which were in possession of the Department of Archeology and Museums for more than 100 years. Some members of his Indian team, of the bj institute, with its seat in Switzerland (whose founder and CEO he is) and a branch in Secunderabad / Hyderabad had realised this project after a 5 years formation.

I congratulated him for facilitating this valuable project, and he answered that for over 30 years they are now active in Andhra Pradesh, India. At first by committing to fight leprosy and tuberculosis and building up tree nurseries (he had told me before that with the help of mango farms they created a living for a larger number of families; here an aerial view by Google). He mentioned that this place is near Naidupeta, where Sri Mynampati Narasimham was born. (I wondered how he knew about Sri Mynampati Narasimham, Master MN, but then thought, he might have further searched via my links and come to the page about Master MN on the Good-Will site.) They now have reduced their commitment in this area since it is now running by family enterprises. In his e-mail he mentioned that since his 18th year, he had repeatedly met people from the Theosophical movement and that his inspiration for these tree nurseries had to do with the garden of the Theosophical Society (in Adyar).

He further mentioned a second project near Annavaram, West Godavari, the RISDT (Rural India Self Development Trust).
I googled the place and found out that I had just been in Annavaram during my last visit to India last January, when we travelled with Dr. Kumar and the group from Rajahmundry back to Visakhapatnam, and visited a temple there.

The RISDT is a fascinating good-will activity: It is a non-profit public health and development organization serving the most marginalized communities of East Godavari district. It promotes sustainable solutions for public health and human development needs of the marginalized communities and ” envisions a society in which the most marginalized communities have access to their entitlements and opportunities to realize their full potential.” One of the activities grown out of RISDT is Kalpavruksha (Sanskrit for wish-fulfilling tree), an association supporting social, health and agricultural projects in India by organising donations.

All this has grown out of the commitment of Bruno Jehle, who from out of a journey through South India 30 years ago has developed, together with Indian friends, these substantial medical and social care activities.

This e-mail encounter made me ponder upon the strange links of destiny and perceiving a need and focusing on it persistently to create a solution. It is similar with the work of the seed of a tree and of the sprout in the heart of man.

A huge banyan tree forest in the garden of the Theosophical Society, Adyar

Aerial view of the tree nursery project, photo (c) Google.