Three Streams of Activity:
Research, Education, and Culture
RESEARCH
Research projects and dissemination of knowledge are in keeping with the multiple perspectives approach that is used in our research projects, the findings of this research will be accessible to people both within and outside academic circles. Since the academic world is increasingly specialized and restricted by structural constraints, the International Bateson Institute supports experimental research modes whereby scholars and other professionals are brought together in order to combine and contrast understandings of complex phenomena.
EDUCATION
Every year, the International Bateson Institute offers 40-50 lectures and seminars to private and corporate organizations. Curricula for high schools and university programs have been and continue to be developed. Articles and books for educational use also continue to be developed. The IBI also organizes seminars, workshops and curricula for specific contexts and for the general public.
CULTURE
The IBI facilitates public engagement through film, exhibitions, publications, and web broadcasts of hot topic conversations. In addition, Warm Data Labs are offered to the public in locations around the world.
Here are a few examples of research projects in store for the IBI:
AN ECOLOGY OF FOOD
What is food? Food is agriculture, economy, culture, conversation, ancestral recipes, weavers of tables cloths, traditions of seasons, the perfect onion, and a child’s berry stained chin… Food is poetry, medicine, friendship, time, poison, economy. Ask the question “What is food?”– and the answer is not: “The stuff on my plate.” The answer is that food is about relationships. These relationships are formed between generations that sow seeds together, between man and nature, between the family members who eat together, it is in the conversations, in the heritage of the basket weaver who makes the baskets that are used to take food to neighbouring villages for market. It is in the relationships between towns… economically, socially, and so forth. Seeds used in ceremony, represent long-term linkages between people, nature, cycles, and attitudes toward the future.
In conjunction with therapist Mauro Mariotti, expert on childhood and adolescent eating disorders this exciting project widens the scope of information and therapeutic possibilities. We will address the many aspects of food to see larger patterns of interaction.
Outcomes and Artifacts: Publications, exhibition, workshops, therapies, agricultural research, economic pathways.
HOW SYSTEMS GET UNSTUCK
One of the International Bateson Institute’s inaugural research projects examined the question of how to interact with stuck systems. Crises in energy, economics, medicine, education etc can all be seen as “stuck” in patterns. Co-dependent systems require co-evolution. How can we shift these patterns of stuckness?
This research started with a unique center for rehabilitation of paralysis. Specializing in the recovery of stroke victims among others, this successful rehabilitation practice is based on a different epistemology than that of other medical models. Inspired by the work of Carlo Perfetti and incorporating cybernetic and theoretical insights including those of Gregory Bateson and Francisco Varela, this practice eschews the use of technologies based on a mechanical model of muscle function. Instead, rehabilitation is seen as a mental process of interactivity involving meaning, emotion, and context.
Outcomes & Artifacts: The research we inaugurate here is to be a model for new methods in transdisciplinary qualitative research. We also believe that researchers may find the rehabilitation that occurs at the Villa Miari to be both a “model of, and model for” processes of change that resonate in a variety of contexts, allowing them to refine ideas with surprisingly wide and unexpected implications. publication, exhibitor, education.
“Interesting phenomena occur when two or more rhythmic patterns are combined, and these phenomena illustrate very aptly the enrichment of information that occurs when one description is combined with another.”
~ Gregory Bateson