[themecolor]Contents and Themes:[/themecolor]

1. Language of symbols and signs

This course will explore the way symbols and signs transport condensed information; a practice that has been around for thousands of years. Symbols and signs unconsciously influence all of us and personal signs and symbols provide concrete information about our wants, needs, and thoughts. The course’s objective is for participants to find expression of their own signs and realize their coherence with collective symbols, which enables viewing signs and symbols as expressions of different eras, cultures, and societies.

2. Facial expression, gesture, and body language

This course transports the importance of bodily expression in better understanding the self and others. The premise is for participants to find their own personal expression in collaboration with the group’s collective expression. Participants are asked to create their own, non-verbal language of facial expressions and gestures; thus activating a different dimension of communication. This heightens creativity, sensibility, and perception of visible (body) signs while at the same time, develops a better understanding of different means of communication and sharpens perception. This has direct applications, for example, in language instruction whereby instructors can use pointed gestures and facial expressions to supplement verbal language and thus facilitate learning.

3. Picture language

Pictures or series of pictures tell stories and communicate various contents. If transported by media such as photographs or movies, picture language can have a documentary character. With media such as painting, collage, or graphics, it can be symbolic or abstract. In this course, participants learn to express ideas via visual media. The necessary background for learning to create a picture comes from image formation and artwork. Participants will lean how and why to use color, graphic aspects, and perspective and explore what focus means to the viewer. The aim of this course is for participants to create their own picture language.

4. Art photography

Art is not reserved for a select few, it is for everyone. The very deep, creative impulse and expression found in all people is located beyond the directives of art galleries, schools, and academies. Photography is a special media for self expression. It can be used to document real situations or as a documentary instrument, or can even be used in the way a painter uses a brush. This course focuses on personal perspective, the visual interpretation of situations, and using the camera to make black and white or color images to translate your own view into deliberate pictures.

5. Female spiritual aspects

This is a workshop about female spiritual aspects of goddess images in matrilineal cultures taught in cooperation with Gudrun Binder (psychologist and career coach). Lost images will be reanimated for contemporary women, for example, Salome, the priestess of Ishtar. Through ancient symbols, pictures, fantasies, ritual dancing and storytelling (one of the oldest female means of creating herstory), participants reintegrate powerful female aspects into their consciousness. To recapture what we lost is to gain the power we need for the present and the future!