Article Archives  >  November, 2009

Creating a positive relationship between humanity and the environment has never been in the hearts of as many of the world’s diverse peoples as it is today. They are not simply concerned with living in a certain geographic location, but with living with a connection to nature. This spirit of expressing human diversity and embracing nature can be seen in the projects of Himalayan Consensus, and their ability to facilitate the teaching to traditional wisdom in culturally meaningful contexts.

Xin Dong Cheng Space For Contemporary Art cordially invites you to attend the opening of: "Searching for Shangri-la: Journey to Himalayan Consensus": An installation art interactive experience through Tibet into tomorrow. Solo Multimedia Exhibition: Laurence Brahm’s fusion medium experiment of photographs, journals, diaries and films, documenting 7 years of expeditions that led to the founding of Himalayan Consensus. What is Himalayan Consensus? Come to our opening and find out!

A lot has already been said and written about how the meeting of the Group of Twenty (G-20) leaders in Pittsburgh marks a fundamental shift in the balance of global economic power. In the coming years, as India and China flex muscle and get more voting power as part of the much-vaunted process of IMF reform, the more interesting challenge will be what these two countries can contribute to the ideology of the Washington twins that, for all their inevitable mistakes, have given the world a rigorous frame of reference. Will Brahm's new paradigm the Himalayan Consensus - that seeks a middle way between extremes - help Asia's two emerging powers - India and China - in their many differences manage the world economy?

In the event of April 2009 meeting of the Group of 20, while protesters stormed the barricades, some smashing bank windows and attacking police, the world leaders worked to devise a trillion-dollar stimulus package for the battered global economy. But for American international activist Laurence J. Brahm, the best action they could have taken would have been to pull the plug on the whole system. "People worldwide have had enough of the Washington Consensus, with its combined neoliberal economics and neoconservative politics," he writes in "The Anti-Globalization Breakfast Club." Instead, Brahm argues that "our world [must] move from its current era of violence driven by greed, shortsightedness and frustration, into a new era of peace, respect for the environment and human dignity."