Past activities

2019

Building Bridges through Music
14 - 27 October 2019

This event is a unique musical encounter & collaboration, bringing musicians from different backgrounds and genres together. Six accomplished musicians from diverse traditions will be staying together for 14 days as residential artists at the Centro Incontri Umani in Ascona. They will be rehearsing, sharing their compositions, exploring and creating new stories and sounds, before performing together for the audience at different venues in Switzerland and Italy.

This year the musicians are Sara Käser (Switzerland - cello), Matthias Loibner (Austria - hurdy-gurdy), Gaurav Mazumdar (India - sitar), Paolo Rosetti Murittu (Italy - frame drums), Arezoo Rezvani (Iran - santur) and Olena Yeremenko (Ukraine - Nyckelharpa).

This project is run through the Foundation Centro Incontri Umani, Director Angela Hobart. The musical leader is Gaurav Mazumdar and the organizer is Johannes Rühl.

Concerts:
Wednesday, 23 October 2019, 8:00 pm, Chiesa Loco, Valle Onsernone
Friday, 25 October 2019, 8:00 pm, E-Werk, Freiburg, D
Saturday, 26 October 2019, 8:30 pm, Teatro Sociale, Bellinzona

2018

Building Bridges through Music
15 - 29 October 2018

This event is a unique musical encounter & collaboration, bringing musicians from different backgrounds and genres together. Six accomplished musicians from diverse traditions will be staying together for 14 days as residential artists at the Centro Incontri Umani in Ascona. They will be rehearsing, sharing their compositions, exploring and creating new stories and sounds, before performing together for the audience at different venues in Switzerland and Italy.

This year the musicians are Sara Käser (Switzerland - cello), Matthias Loibner (Austria - hurdy-gurdy), Gaurav Mazumdar (India - sitar), Paolo Rosetti Murittu (Italy - frame drums), Arezoo Rezvani (Iran - santur) and Olena Yeremenko (Ukraine - Nyckelharpa).

This project is run through the Foundation Centro Incontri Umani, Director Angela Hobart. The musical leader is Gaurav Mazumdar and the organizer is Johannes Rühl. We are grateful for the support given by the the Südkulturfonds.

Concerts:
Saturday, 27 October 2018, 5:00 pm, Chiesa Loco, Valle Onsernone
Sunday, 28 October 2018, 11:00 pm, Moods, Zürich
Sunday, 28 October 2018, 7:00 pm, Bird's Eye, Basel

4th European Forum on Culture, Rights, and Health - Health and Well-being: Innovations in Practice
13-15 August 2018

An international symposium focusing on well-being in the contexts of health, migration and public policy

Programme (click) 

Meditation Retreat: Exploring Contemplative Practices - with Father Francis Tiso
20-22 July 2018

The focus of the retreat at the Centro Incontri Umami Ascona is on the meaning of 'contemplative practice'. It entails weaving together teachings from Tibet, China and India that are also echoed in the Abrahamic traditions. The approach is grounded in practices that in Christian monasticism are called 'recollection' and in Buddhism shamatha and vipasyana.

Structured sessions will be run by Father Tiso, author of The Rainbow Body and Resurrection.

Workshop flyer (click) 

Modes of Writing a Life: Place, Migration and the Interplay of Narrative and Analysi
16-18 July 2018

A workshop exploring different modes, spoken, written and through images, of narrating a life in part or whole. Held jointly with the Body, Health and Religion Group (BAHAR), Cardiff University.

participants included Santi Rozario, Betina Hermes, Geoffrey Samuel, Giles Clark, Judith Pickering, Cheryl Moskowitz, Francis Tiso, Angela Hobart and Maya Hobart.

Workshop details (click) 

Dimensions of Sufism: A series of presentations by Thierry Zarcone exploring differing aspects of Sufi spirituality
14 July, 16-19 July, 28 July 2018

14 July - 'Chamanisme, Animisme et Soufism en Asie Centrale ex-Sovietique et Chinoise', 5 pm in Suisse Sala Balint, Monte Verita.

Flyer (click) 

16-19 July - 'Dances, Music and Spirituality in Sufism', Centro Incontri Umani (via Signor in Croce, Ascona).

Flyer (click) 

28 July - 'Islam, Soufism et Bouddhisme sur les Routes de la Soie', 5 pm in Suisse Sala Balint, Monte Verita.

Flyer (click) 

2017

Building Bridges through Music
17 - 30 October 2017

This event is a unique musical encounter & collaboration, bringing musicians from different backgrounds and genres together. Six accomplished musicians from diverse traditions will be staying together for 13 days as residential artists at the Centro Incontri Umani in Ascona. They will be rehearsing, sharing their compositions, exploring and creating new stories and sounds, before performing together for the audience at different venues in Switzerland and Italy.

The musicians are Helena Rüegg (Switzerland - bandoneon), Gaurav Mazumdar (India - sitar), Basel Rajoub (Syria - saxophone), Papa Dieye (Senegal - percussion, kora), Sarah Lauret (France - cello), Ngô Hông Quang (Vietnam - traditional instruments from Vietnam)

This project is run through the Foundation Centro Incontri Umani, Director Angela Hobart. The musical leader is Gaurav Mazumdar and the organizer is Johannes Rühl.

Concerts:
Friday, 27 October 2017, 8:30 pm, Kulturpark, Zürich
Saturday, 28 October 2017, 8:45 pm, Teatro Sociale, Bellinzona. CH
Sunday, 29 October 2017, 9:30 pm, La Scighera, Milano, IT

Exploring Tibetan and Western Approaches to the Mind and Consciousness
21 - 23 July 2017

This workshop brought together researchers and practitioners of Tibetan and Western medicine and religion to explore diverse perspectives on the mind, consciousness and mental health across different disciplines. Discussions were aimed at exploring commonalities and differences between the systems, taking in topics including neuroscientific and psychodynamic understandings of Tibetan Buddhist practices, and Western psychotherapeutic and Tibetan perspectives on the mind and mental health.

Convenors: Prof Angela Hobart; Prof Geoffrey Samuel; Dr Susannah Deane. Jointly organized by the Centro Incontri Umani and the Body, Health and Religion Research Group, Cardiff University.

Workshop programme (click) 

2016

Building Bridges through Music
19 - 30 October 2016

This event is a unique musical encounter & collaboration, bringing musicians from different backgrounds and genres together. Seven accomplished musicians from diverse traditions will be staying together for 10 days as residential artists at the Centro Incontri Umani in Ascona. They will be rehearsing, sharing their compositions, exploring and creating new stories and sounds, before performing together for the audience at different venues in Switzerland and Germany.

The musicians are Alireza Mortazavi (Iran - santur/dulcimer), Helena Rüegg (Switzerland - bandoneon), Gaurav Mazumdar (India - sitar), Bahur Ghazi (Syria - oud), Papa Dieye (Senegal - percussion, Kora), Sarah Lauret (France - cello), Ngô Hông Quang (Vietnam - traditional instruments from Vietnam)

This project is run through the Foundation Centro Incontri Umani, Director Angela Hobart. The musical leader is Gaurav Mazumdar and the organizer is Johannes Rühl. We are grateful for the support given by the Stanley Thomas Johnson Stiftung and the Südkulturfonds.

Concerts:
Thursday, 27 October 2016, 7:30 pm, Kulturpark, Zürich
Friday, 28 October 2016, 8:30 pm, Teatro Dimitri, Verscio
Saturday, 29 October 2016, 8:45 pm, Teatro Sociale, Bellinzona
Sunday, 30 October 2016, 8:00 pm, E-werk, Freiburg

International Conference - Techniques of Spiritual Experience: West and East
27 - 29 May 2016

The purpose of this conference is to critically examine the mental and physical  techniques performed by ascetics or mystics belonging to different religions, cultural areas, and historical periods. Concomitantly the conference seeks to discuss the  spiritual experiences that are allegedly associated with these practices.

Varied techniques will be scrutinized, for example, Kabbalistic meditation and visualization methods, Heychastic prayer and breath control, Sufi dhikr, or Buddhist and Tantric dhyana and visualization practices. Account will be taken of the physical postures and activities (breathing techniques, movements and postures, dance, music, etc.) which often accompany the practices.

A Balinese shadow play will be performed at the Dimitri Teatro in the village Verscio in association with the conference. The puppeteer is a consecrated priest in his community.

Convened by: J.P Brach, A. Hobart and T. Zarcone.

conference programme 

Workshop - Egalitarianism: Forms, Processes, Comparisons
8 - 15 March 2016

A workshop for researchers of the ERC-funded research project "Egalitarianism: Forms, Processes, Comparisons", hosted by Prof. Angela Hobart (Centro Incontri Umani) and convened by Prof. Bruce Kapferer (University of Bergen)

The concept of Egalitarianism is extraordinarily broad, as is the no less nebulous ideal of equality, having virtually ontological value in modern Euro-American thought, increasingly so globally. While Egalitarianism is conventionally associated with Equality and its opposite Inequality, this project takes Egalitarianism as an expansive term including going beyond these relatively more reductive terms.

The project as a whole is lead by Prof. Kapferer and is hosted by the University of Bergen and has received funding from the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no. 340673

www.egalitarianism.no

draft programme 

After the workshop by Prof. Angela Hobart 

Workshop experience by Marina Gold, University of Zurich 

Images of the workshop by Rolf Scott 

Lecture - The Virgin of Cancuc and Subcomandante Marcos
8pm, 11 March 2016 - Sala Balint, Monte Verità, Ascona

As part of the ERC-funded research project "Egalitarianism: Forms, Processes, Comparisons", Dr Alessandro Zagato (University of Bergen) will present 'The Virgin of Cancuc and Subcomandante Marcos A parallelism between symbolic constructions in past and current indigenous rebellions in Chiapas'

There is free entry to the public.

The project has received funding from the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no. 340673

abstract and images 

11 Settembre 2015:Paesaggi e Interiorità: un viaggio intermediale Concerto 'son et lumière'. Ying Li e Curt Cacioppo.

2015

Building Bridges through Music - In The Search Of Light
23 - 25 October 2015

Seven accomplished musicians from diverse traditions will be working together as residential artists at the Centro Incontri Umani, Ascona, and will be playing separately in small events, before performing together for the public at Teatro Sociale, Bellinzona (23rd October) and Teatro Dimitri, Verscio (25th October) . There will be also one hour broadcast on radio DRS about the individual musicians and their meeting in Ascona.

The musicians are Sola Akingbola (Nigeria/UK - percussion), Sarah Lauret (France - Cello), Gaurav Mazumdar (India - sitar), Sardor Mirzakhojaev (Uzbekistan - dutar, rubab, tanbur), Kuntal Roy (India - tabla), Ngô Hông Quang (Vietnam - Dàn Nhi, Dan Bao), Helena Rüegg (Switzerland - Bandoneon)

The programme has benefitted from the kind support of the SüdKulturFonds, financed by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC).

Concerts:
Friday, 23 October 2015, 1:30 pm Teatro Sociale Bellinzona (educational project for the secondary school in Bellinzona)
Friday, 23 October 2015, 8:45 pm Teatro Sociale Bellinzona
Sunday, 25 October 2015, 6:00 pm Teatro/Fondazione Dimitri Verscio

11 Settembre 2015:Paesaggi e Interiorità: un viaggio intermediale Concerto 'son et lumière'. Ying Li e Curt Cacioppo.

Venerdì 11 settembre - ore 20:30 Sala Gioia - Monte Verità - Ascona :
Esposizione di dipinti di paesaggi ticinesi con improvvisazioni musicali e video con musiche originali

details 

5-10 September 2015: Understanding Gender Inequality Actions in the Pacific: Ethnographic Case-Studies & Policy Options. Organised by Dr Tony Crook & Prof. Angela Hobart

This workshop will bring together participants in an ethnographic pilot research project taking a new look at gender inequality in the Pacific. Project members include anthropologists, gender and development specialists, legal scholars and a film-maker who are conducting studies in all three regions of the Pacific - Melanesia (Fiji, PNG, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu), Micronesia (FSM, Kiribati, Marshall Islands and Palau) and Polynesia (Samoa and Tuvalu), alongside Pacific men and women's involvements in globalisation mobility in certain fishing ports in the region. This workshop aims to both enrich our understanding of the social actions involved in gender inequality - discrimination, violence, exploitation, representation - and to inform appropriate and effective future policy actions.

The hope of the workshop is to understand the social relations and actions and changing value systems that enable and constrain gender inequality, through vernacular terms and local exegesis so as to capture, foreground and privilege Pacific people's own analyses of incidents and issues. By drawing together, discussing and analysing the findings from across the region, and by drawing out significant points and working principles, the workshop hopes to reimagine how researchers and policy-makers can support local peoples in their own efforts to negotiate and resolve social issues in a home-grown manner. The workshop programme will involve opportunities for public participation and presentation.

Link to films relating to the workshop

2014

European Forum on Culture and Health
21-23 November 2014 - Centro Incontri Umani, Ascona

Convened by the UCL Science, Medicine and Society Network together with the Centro Incontri Umani Ascona, and supported by UCL Grand Challenge of Intercultural Interaction, this output of the UCL-Lancet Commission on Culture and Health will host an international conversation on how to approach the systematic neglect of culture in local and global health politics and provision. The forum will bring together WHO Europe and experts from across disciplines to address new challenges in well-being, and think through ways to approach novel calls for research to better understand the complex needs and voices of people around the world in the search for well-being.

Bursaries will be provided for the participation of up to ten Masters students.

Building Bridges through Music
26 September - 5 October 2014

Five accomplished musicians from diverse traditions will be working together as residential artists at the Centro Inctri Umani, Ascona, and will be playing separetely in small events, before performing together for the public at Teatro San Materno, Ascona (2 October), the Chiesa Evangelica Riformate, Lugano (4 October) and Teatro Sociale, Bellinzona (5 October). There will also be a number of broadcasts on RSI, DRS and other outlets. The musicians are Sola Akingbola (Nigeria/UK - percussion); Walter Fähndrich (Switzerland - viola); Gaurav Mazumdar (India - sitar), Sardor Mirzakhojaev (Uzbekistan - dutar, rubab, tanbur) and Kuntal Roy (India - tabla).

The programme has benefitted from the kind support of the Stanley Thomas Johnson Stiftung.

details 

Meditation Retreat with Ajahn Khemasiri, Ven. Monk of Dhammapala Monastery, Kandersteg, Switzerland
15-17 August 2014 - Centro Incontri Umani, Ascona

The Territory of Freedom - Buddhist Contemplation on Life without Conflict

Exercises of practical meditation embedded in the framework of Buddhist essential teachings. The Seminars are in English language with informal Italian translation.

details in English 

details in Italian 

2013

GRENZEN:Setzen - achten - öffnen
8-12 May 2013 - Hotel La Perla, Ascona

Vorträge und Gespräche mit Dr. Markus Erni, Dr. Alfred Gugolz, und Alessandro Gugolz.

Informationen: Dr. Alfred Gugolz, email: al.gugolz@bluewin.ch - Tel. 071 761 12 30

Book Publication - Shamanism and Islam: Sufism, Healing Rituals and Spirits in the Muslim World, edited by Thierry Zarcone and Angela Hobart
28 February 2013

The figure of the shaman has always been a prominent motif within the Islamic world, particularly in relation to the mystical domain of Sufism. Here, Thierry Zarcone and Angela Hobart offer a vigorous and authoritative exploration of the link between Islam and shamanism in contemporary Muslim culture, examining how the old practice of shamanism was combined with elements of Sufism in order to adapt to wider Islamic society. Shamanism and Islam thus surveys shamanic practices in Central Asia, the Middle East, North Africa and the Balkans, to show how the Muslim shaman, like his Siberian counterpart, cultivated personal relations with spirits to help individuals through healing and divination. It explores the complexities and variety of rituals, involving music, dance and, in some regions, epic and bardic poetry, demonstrating the close links between shamanism and the various arts of the Islamic world. This is the first in-depth exploration of 'Islamized shamanism', and is a valuable contribution to the field of Islamic Studies, Religion, Anthropology, and an understanding of the Middle East more widely.

Thierry Zarcone is Senior Researcher at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in Paris, based at the Ecole Practique des Hautes Etudes, Paris. He has held visiting professorships at Kyoto and Fribourg, Switzerland, and is an expert on Islamic Studies and the history of systems of thought in the Turko-Iranian region.

Angela Hobart is Executive Director of Centro Incontri Umani (CIU), Switzerland, Honorary Research Fellow in Anthropology at University College London, Honorary Reader at Goldsmiths College, University of London, Visiting Professor in Social Anthropology at the Swiss Italian University, Lugano and Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute, London

Published by I.B. Tauris.

Hardback, ISBN 978-1-848856-02-8, £59.50 (GBP)

click for 30% discount offer! 

2012

Opera recital by Gianluca Paganelli and Saffron Jones
20:30, 23 August 2012 - Chiesa di Sant' Antonio - Arcegno

Performing a medley of works by Vivaldi, Händel, Verdi, Puccini, Bizet, Mussorgsky, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov and others. Free entry.

details 

Visualising Crises: An Anthropological Film Programme
30 July - 3 August 2012 - Monte Verità, Ascona

A Visual Anthropology Workshop held by the Centro Incontri Umani Foundation in co-operation with the Göttingen International Ethnographic Film Festival (www.gieff.de). Included in the programme is a public screening of Koukan Kourcia, The Cry of the Turtle-dove, directed by: Sani Elhadj Magori, Niger, 2011.

programme 

Koukan Kourcia, The Cry of the Turtle-dove 

30 June 2012: Book Publication - Contesting the State: The Dynamics of Resistance and Control, edited by Angela Hobart and Bruce Kapferer

The state is frequently conceived as a universal, although one apparently extraordinarily difficult to define. It often appears in academic discourse and, especially, in the popular imagination as an abstraction, usually nebulous, grasped as pervasive - a spectre to be feared. In this book, distinguished scholars from around the world take issue with this purported universality, exploring alternative imaginings of the state, of power and of global processes at the margins.

Taking an anthropological perspective based in diverse ethnographic contexts marginal to Europe and North America, if not beyond their controlling influence in globalizing realities, this volume reveals different complexes of power, as well as processes that are external to power and often against it (contra Foucault, and as Pierre Clastres has famously argued).

The authors stress not only the different structures of institutional power, but also the persistence or transmutation of local kinds of power and their relevant cosmologies into contemporary globalized settings. They find innovative kinds of modernity, reconfigurations that have effects that cannot be reduced to over-generalized and often intensely Eurocentric concepts of power and the kinds of subjectivities realized by them. In this, the volume opens up the diversity of experiences of the state and offers new directions for its study.

CONTENTS: Acknowledgements; Contributors; Introduction: Forces in the production of the state - Bruce Kapferer and Christopher C. Taylor; Chapter 1: The phenomenology of a stateless society: Non-dualism, identity and hierarchical anarchy among the Nuer - T.M.S. Evens; Chapter 2: Society against the tyrant: Power, violence and the poetics of an Amazonian egalitarianism - Joanna Overing; Chapter 3: Tribalism and power in Iraq: Saddam Hussein' s 'house' - Hosham Dawod; Chapter 4: An altered state?: Continuity, change and cosmology in Rwandan notions of the state - Christopher C. Taylor; Chapter 5: Post-war realities in Sri Lanka: From the crime of war to the crime of peace in Sri Lanka? - Bruce Kapferer and Roshan de Silva Wijeyeratne; Chapter 6: The Hindu epics, theatre and the Indonesian state: Violence and cosmic regeneration - a Balinese perspective - Angela Hobart; Chapter 7: The death of divine kingship in Nepal: Nepal's move from autocratic monarchy to fragile republican state - Bal Gopal Shrestha; Chapter 8: Expectations of the state: An exile returns to his country - Laurie Kain Hart; Chapter 9: Diametric to concentric dualism: Cosmopolitan intellectuals and the re-configuration of the state - Jonathan Friedman; Index.

Angela Hobart is Director of the Centro Incontri Umani, Ascona, Switzerland, and a Research Fellow, Medical Anthropology Department, University College London, UK.

Bruce Kapferer is Professor in the Department of Social Anthropology at Bergen University, Norway, Adjunct Professor at James Cook University, Australia and Honorary Professor at University College London, UK.

Published by Sean Kingston Publishing in association with the Centro Incontri Umani.

Hardback, ISBN 978-1-907774-13-3, £59.99 (GBP), $119.99 (USD)

click for 20% discount offer! 

Culture and Health: What is Human Wellbeing?
15-16 June 2012 - Monte Verità, Ascona

A wide-ranging, interdisciplinary discussion on the cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary understanding of human wellbeing, addressing in particular the following questions: Have our existing disciplinary borders actually inhibited us from rethinking the shifting frameworks within which human health is understood? How might we benefit from comparing notions of human wellbeing that get generated in diverse cultural and disciplinary traditions? Are there specific arenas in which cultures and disciplines exhibit such shifts? Can what we learn from examining such diversity be brought to bear on our understanding of how wellbeing is socially constructed as 'health'? In what ways might we become more responsive to new and emerging social needs in the area of human wellbeing? Are there, as it were 'bottom-up' innovations that more structured institutions are slow to respond to and might respond to more affectively if they were better understood?

Convenors: David Napier and Angela Hobart

programme 

Symbolic Expressions: Jung, Dada and the Art of Wellbeing - Prof. Sonu Shamdasani
15 June 2012, 20:30 - Monte Verità, Ascona

This talk situates Jung's pictorial work in his Red Book, Liber Novus. It reconstructs the intersection between figures of the Dada movement in Zurich and Jung's circle, and the proximities and distances between their concerns and his work, as well with his critique of modern art. It charts the increasing interest of psychiatrists and psychologists in the psychology and pathology of creativity. It shows how through his formulation of the mandala, Jung conceived what could be termed an art of well-being.

announcement 

2011

Pilgrimages and Sanctuaries: Art, Music and Rituals
11-12 November 2011 - Monte Verità, Ascona

A conference exploring the relation of art and music to religious pilgrimages in several areas of the world. The focus will be on the pilgrimage dynamic, rather than on the saints or deities thus venerated, as well as on the historical, anthropological, aesthetic and symbolical dimensions of the creative configurations associated with the pilgrimage complex. Convenors: Thierry Zarcone, Pedram Khosronejad and Angela Hobart.

announcement 

programme 

Swiss Postgraduate Seminars - Myth and Ritual
7-9 October 2011 - Monte Verità, Ascona

A module of the Swiss Postgraduate Programme in Anthropology organized by Prof. Heinz Käufeler (University of Zurich) and Angela Hobart (Director, Centro Incontri Umani), and with contributinos from Hideko Mitsui (University of Tokyo/Cambridge) and Bal Gopal Shrestha (Oxford University). Open to all.

schedule 

synopsis 

list of participating students and their theses 

Visual Anthropology Workshop: Film Screening (free entry)
2-5 August 2011, 6.30 p.m. - Monte Verità, Ascona

The last mountain farmers of Prugiasco (Mon), Bunong's birth practices between tradition and change (Tue), The Storyteller (Fri). Convened by the Centro Inconti Umani in collaboration with the Göttingen International Ethnographic Film Festival.

details 

The Moral Borders of Self and Other: Migration, Reconcilition and Human Well-being
3-4 June 2011, 8.30 p.m. - Monte Verità, Ascona

An international conference engaging with the humanity and morality of migration. Convened by David Napier and Angela Hobart.

details 

Middle Eastern Music Concert
Khyam Allami performs 'Resonance/Dissonance'
4 June 2011, 8.30 p.m. - Sala Balint, Monte Verità, Ascona

At this special concert, Khyam will present his debut album, Resonance/Dissonance, in it's entirety, accompanied by percussionist Vasilis Sarikis.

details 

2010

Pilgrimage and Sanctuaries: Film Screening
13 November 2010 - Monte Verità, Ascona

A public screening of three films: 'The Sanctuary of the Seven Sleepers in the Silk Road', 'The Pilgrimage to the Seven Regraga in Morocco' and 'The Red Sufi'.

details 

Pilgrimage and Sanctuaries: Ambiguity in Context
11 - 13 November 2010 - Monte Verità, Ascona

A conference exploring the theme of pilgrimages and 'ambiguous' sanctuaries, from a wide range of locations, in which different belief systems are entwined, assimilated or superimposed on one another. Convenors: Thierry Zarcone, Pedram Khosronejad and Angela Hobart.

details 

Coping with Global Changes: An Anthropological Film Programme
2 - 5 August 2010 - Monte Verità, Ascona

On the occasion of the Visual Anthropology Workshop, the Centro Incontri Umani Foundation presents five documentaries in co-operation with the Göttingen International Ethnographic Film Festival (www.gieff.de).

details 

Retreat Seminars - The Healing Power of Love and Awareness
27 March - 1 May 2010 - Monte Verità, Ascona

Organized by Lama Geshe Gedun Tharchin (accomplished Tibetan meditation master, spiritual director of Lamrim Institute, Rome) and Angela Hobart (Executive Director of the Centro Inconti Umani, Anthropologist and Psychodynamic Therapist).

details 

Indian Classical Music Concert - 'Basant', The Colour of Spring
6 April 2010, 20:30 - Sala Balint, Monte Verità Ascona

The name Basant is from Sanskrit vasant meaning 'spring', and it is a very old raga dating from the 8th century, performed in slow and medium-fast tempos. This raga is a symbol of Love (spiritual and human). In India it used to be considered that when Lord Krishna and Goddes Radhika were mating and dancing with joy it was appropriate to perform to celebrate this holy situation.

details

2009

12-13 June 2009:
Seminar - Death and Revitalising Rituals
A module of the Swiss Postgraduate Programme in Anthropology (3rd cycle, 2007-9) Key Issues in Social Anthropology, organized by Angela Hobart, Pedram Khosronejad and Fondazione Centro Incontri Umani.

Three further interlinked workshops are planned over 2010-11 on the theme of Pilgrimages and Sanctuaries: 'Funerals', 'The Arts' and 'Ambiguity'. To be organized by Angela Hobart, Thierry Zarcone and Fondazione Centro Incontri Umani.

details

8-10 May 2009:
Ethnographies of Doubt
A workshop organized by Dr Mathijs Pelkmans and Fondazione Centro Incontri Umani.

details

27 January 2009:
Shiva Nataraja: The Cosmic Dancer in Poetry, Song and Dance
A performance featuring Saskia Kersenboom and Amrita Lahiri and her ensemble. Organized in collaboration with the Rietberg Museum, Zurich.

details

2008

10 - 11 May:
Retreat Seminar, seminario pratico
Il seminario è in lingua italiana e inglese con traduzione

Gedun Tharchin Geshe Lharampa, Lama buddista tibetano, Istituto Lam Rim, Roma
Dr Angela Hobart, London University, social anthropology

details

21 - 23 November:
Shamanism and Healing Rituals in Contemporary Islam and Sufism
A conference seeking to examine the association of Islam (Sufism) and shamanism in the contemporary Muslim world, in particular within the context of shamanic healing rituals.

Convened by Thierry Zarcone (CNRS, Paris)

details

With a performance of Sufi dance by Turna Semahï

details

2007

8 - 10 June, Monte Verità, Ascona:
Workshop "Women, Rituals and Ceremonies in the Contemporary Muslim Communities and Islamic World"
Dr. Pedram Khosronejad - Junior research Fellow, St.Antony’s College, University of Oxford

9 June, Teatro del Gatto, Ascona:
SAMÂ, Sufi Dance Performance : Ava Farhang, dancer - Amidi Fard Mostafa, percussion

2005

24  June:
Conference: "Inuit (Eskimo) Names as Selves: Complexities of Individuality and Belonging"
Dr. Jean Briggs, Newfoundland (Canada).

25 June:
Conference: "Living without the dead: the radical rejection of ancestors and parents in two traditional societies" - Dr. Piers Vitebsky, Cambridge.

1 June - 23 October:
Stay-study at the house of Centro Incontri Umani, Ascona of Dr. Bal Gopal Shrestha, Research School CNWS, University of Leiden, Neederland.

June, July and August:
Invitation for a stay-study for two students and two professors of Haverford College, USA, at the house of Centro Incontri Umani, Ascona.

10 - 14 October, Monte Verità, Ascona:
Workshop "The Interface between Ritual, Theater and Film", international meeting. 

2004

9 January, Monte Verità, Ascona:
Conference: "Symbolism of Water and Agriculture in Bali" - Dr. Angela Hobart.

24 April, Teatro del gatto, Ascona:
Concert of Indian music:"Music for Peace" - Gaurav Mazumdar (sitar), Bishnupriya (chant), Sarah Lauret (cello), Debasish Mukherjee (tabla), Gilda Sebastian (vina).

June, July and August:
Invitation for a stay-study for two students and one assistant professor of Haverford College, USA, at the house of Centro Incontri Umani, Ascona.

2003

8 - 11 May, Monte Verità, Ascona:
"State, Ancient and Modern", international meeting and public conferences.

8 May, Monte Verità, Ascona:
Concert: "From Bagdad to Cordoba" , Jamal Ouassini Trio.

2002

3 - 5 May, Monte Verità, Ascona:
Workshop "Ritual and Performance", international meeting. 

2001

March: 
Financial support to the children’s choir Coro Calicantus who represented Switzerland to the International Choir Festival of Vancouver, Canada. 

26 - 29 April, Monte Verità, Ascona:
International Meeting of science and art: "Performance Genres & Comparative Aesthetics".

24 September, Sala RSI, Lugano and 27 September, Teatro del gatto, Ascona:
SIDDHARTHA, indian traditional music and dance inspired from the work of Hermann Hesse; conception, music and performance, Gaurav Mazumdar; choreography, Crishna & Camilita-Madhurang. With the collaboration of Hermann Hesse Museum, Montagnola, Switzerland. 

4 - 7 October, Monte Verità, Ascona:
Collaboration and financial support to the meeting "Pangea 2001: points of turns, to the research of a living ethics". 
Participation with a lecture: “Ethics and values in an intercultural context: psycho-social issues of healing experiences in London”, Aileen Alleyne, Sally Wolfe, psychodynamic therapists and Dr. Angela Hobart, anthropologist.

2000

29 March - 2 April, Centro Incontri Umani Ascona :
Buddhism Seminar (Meditation and lecture), with Marcel Geisser, Buddhist Meditation Centre, Haus Tao, Wolfhalden - Switzerland.

3 June, Monte Verità, Ascona:
Concert-performance of the guitar-player Javier Echecopar and of the dancer Milagros  Esquivel.

1999

27 March, Sala Sopracenerina, Locarno in the program of the "Settimane musicali di Locarno 1999":
Alexander Baillie, violoncello and Dominic Harlan, piano.

28 March, Sala Sopracenerina, Locarno:
Music concert for children: Alexander Baillie violoncello, Dominic Harlan piano and Coro Calicantus, children Choir.

21 - 24 October, Monte Verità, Ascona:
Financial support of the meeting "Pangea 99 - Mind/Body, research of a global vision of human beeing".

21 October, Palazzo dei Congressi, Muralto:
Concert of indian music with traditional indian dance: Music/Dance for Body, Mind and Spirit, Gaurav Mazumdar (sitar); Tapan Bhattacharya (tabla); Camilita Budhu & Crishna Budhu (dance).

1998

29 August, Teatro San Materno, Ascona:
Nutag Musical evocation from mongolian landscape; Jeff Higley & Michael Ormiston, musicians and english artists, show traditional instruments of Mongolia, particularly the Khöömii, the armonical chant.

31 October, Teatro San Materno, Ascona:
Celebration of indian classical music and dance, music e indian dance with Gaurav Mazumdar, sitar Vineet Vyas, tabla Camilita and Crishna Budhu, dance.

1997

23 - 26 October, Monte Verità Ascona:
Financial support of the meeting "Pangea 97 - Nature and Symbol; research of resources for a development of the conscience".

13 - 15 November, Collegio Papio and Teatro San Materno, Ascona:
International meeting  "Power in Art".

since 1993 and each year

25 April - 2 May 1993, Hotel La Perla Ascona:
Studien und Ferienwoche der Besinnung-Begegnung-Bildung: Unterwegs auf gewohnten und ungewohnten Pfaden, organised by Pfarrer Dr. Alfred und Rosalinda Gugolz.

Further

Participation to the organization of the theatre "La Sirena d’Irlanda" of Michel Poletti (Antonin Artaud Theatre, Switzerland) and several financial supports for the theatre-shows like: "Il ritorno" and "Il viaggio di Mirnah" and one to the Teatro del Gatto, Ascona.