[Music]
26 years ago fourteen-year-old boy found
himself in a midst of horrors of war in
Bosnia
that little boy was I amongst the most
striking memories from this time what a
56 days I my mother spent in one of many
infamous concentration camps in this
region now imagine the emotional turmoil
of a 14 year old in such circumstances
with Knights came beatings rapes
killings so I feared the night we all
did but each night as I would lay my
head down through a blanket covered hard
floor to trick fear and get some sleep
I’d hear this angelic voice almost like
a whispering singing this soft sweet
said melody yet comforting that was my
mother singing into my ear soothing my
scared young soul breathing the life
back into my empty lungs since then and
to this day music was always at the core
of everything I am configurating my
identity breathing life into my lungs I
know that music saved my life the same
way it has done many times again ever
since it still does every day now fast
forward 26 years this is Nick Cave
claimed Australian artist poet
songwriter lecture an iconic figure in
alternative rock scene for more than
three decades this photo is from our
shooting of a documentary called one
more time with feeling so what’s special
with this film well it’s the first sign
of life that Nick Cave gave to the
public since the tragic death of his
some who died two years before this only
15 years old
I still remember sitting there at the
movie theater and gasping for breath the
film was nothing close to anything I’ve
ever seen before a contrasting
combination of that vintage film noir
flavor and modern 3d technology provided
this sense of being stuck between a
forever gone past and an eternally
proximate free future betwixt and
between the two worlds camera angles
provided a voyeuristic peep into the
most private chambers of a hard work
artist so the film was a healing ritual
his attempt at attending to those sword
dimensions of his human self that
conventional medicine simply couldn’t
the album end of the world tour that
followed were also part of this run of
rituals all expressions of personal loss
and suffering but at the same time
monuments of the universal humanity
within him now this is a shot short clip
of a show from this very tour I shot it
myself so I apologize for pure video and
audio quality but I really want to share
this with you because something
extraordinary is happening here so let’s
take a look
[Music]
[Applause]
[Music]
[Applause]
this is what sociologist Emile Durkheim
has termed collective effervescence
which refers to when a large number of
people come together and participate in
same action and simultaneously express
and communicate the same sentiment this
show was at Ericsson Globe venue in
Stockholm drawing a crowd maybe eight
nine thousand people not all of them
lost their sounds but the deep
sensibility communicated through the
primal force of art taking place here
made it possible for all of them to
relate in some way to recognize their
own losses in each case loss and also in
each other’s losses to heal through
mirroring their own pain and suffering
in each case pain and suffering and also
in each other’s pain and suffering the
shared sentiment was so thick you could
almost cut through it with a knife
that’s what we medical anthropologists
have referred to as understanding and
bonding in human suffering this
unmistakable gut feeling of mutual
recognition that provides comfort and
relief not by running away from the pain
but by social act of acknowledging it
this is where our private malady is
transformed into a collective concern
that night the crowd wept together as
one about the loss pain and suffering
but these people also celebrated their
humanity gorging in art enhanced mutual
recognition that gave strength and
restored sense of meaning I don’t know
if you could notice but there is no
stage barrier which is always at place
in large rock shows there’s literally
nothing separating Kay from the from the
audience and interesting interesting
thing is that he’s really trying to take
make the most out of this boundlessness
this limitlessness so so he leans onto
the stretched out arms and hands and
allows them to touch and hold him he
disappears into the sea of crowds and
just to come back a few seconds later or
to appear at the other side of the venue
but see what’s he doing there well it
seemed to me that he was persistently
tearing down anything that might hinder
the mutual understanding and bonding
this experience resembled a familiar
feeling that had nearly decade ago when
I did a field work as a medical
anthropologist at a hospital with people
suffering from life-threatening heart
conditions and their life narrative kind
of looked the same as mine I am I was
torn by war day was torn by a condition
a difficult heart condition there is a
tragic moment happening a disruption in
a life narrative that was quite similar
when it it also is something that really
surfaces in e caves
art this this tragic loss is at the core
of what we are viewing here I could
identify with Nick caves loss and was
thereby also able to engage in this
collective understanding and bonding
with the crowd at the show what we all
shared was this crisis brought by
disruption of a life narrative due to
something bad we were all butterflies
caught in a diving bell neither here nor
there with one life forever gone and
other one forever out of reach rewind
back some 40,000 years and get to
another kind of cave the earliest known
examples of art being used to simply
amplify the senses and awareness are the
wall paintings of Ice Age cave dwellers
since its prehistoric use art has
remained both an expression but also a
key nutrient of human culture every
human society has used arts to express
its ideas and to make sense of the world
art educates us inspires us art
beautifies us and it is also the thing
that separates us from other earthly
creatures during the Renaissance
paintings were understood to have
tense effects on health and emotional
balance of viewers even their children
and to make them behave properly in
eighteen eight century BC and back to
music we can read about healing
incantations already in the Odyssey
while on a hunting expedition in his
youth Odysseus was gored by a wild boar
which left the scar on his on his tie
his companions healed his wound and
stopped his bleeding with an incantation
a chant a song all known culture
cultures have used and enjoyed music
music therapeutic characteristics were
not always mentioned it was always there
in 5th century Athens Pythagoras used to
play and sing paeans
which are joyous songs to his disciples
to bring them in a serene mode Plato’s
pupils an opport is used instrumental
music to cure hysterics but however
interesting these historic examples
after often anecdotal and give no valid
proof of the therapeutic feature of Arts
so how about that evidence of Arts worth
I’d like to mention a recent report that
had caught my eye all-party
parliamentary group on arts health and
well-being in UK launched this report
last year it provides an overview and
includes descriptions of a wide range of
artistic and creative activities in
health care as well as in social care
and puts together evidence for the
contribution that arts can make to
people’s lives our flipped for instance
is an arts and prescription initiative
where patients get to take part in
activities led by professional artists
in poetry comics painting and more at
the six months of working with an artist
people had 37% less demand for GP
appointments and their need for hospital
admissions dropped with 27% which gave a
net saving of 216 pounds per patient for
national health services
some tell me your working days are lost
to sick leave among health workers
costing 2.4 billion pounds a year
inclusion of arts information and
professional development of health care
workers improves their own well health
and well-being and also through that
health and well-being of their patients
but your report also makes another
important point and it’s the value of
arts must not be reduced to being cheap
this is very important so it states when
considering the value of Arts in health
and well-being it should be borne in
mind the successful participatory act
projects are of much greater value to
the individuals that take part than the
economic benefits they may represent for
health or other agencies in other words
the difference that arts participation
makes to people’s lives often transcends
economic value so instead of talking
about the value of arts we should be
talking about the impact of for words
which we are doing to today engaging
with arts enable us to get in touch with
our existential cells enhance our own
subjectivity ensure sense of dignity and
self-worth
we are advance of modern neuro imaging
techniques during the past decades we
are now beginning to better understand
what goes on in the brain when we listen
and play music and how the structure and
function of the brain can change as a
result of musical training we didn’t
know this before now we know for sure in
a recent study at Alba University in
Denmark more than 14,000 people
participated and got to answer questions
about the health and their music habits
the researchers saw a clear pattern
between good health and attendance at
live music shows now I met many skeptics
saying the impact of arts and culture on
our health and well-being
is an unexplored field hard to measure
and that there’s just not enough
evidence to support this theory the fact
is that there is an abundance of
scientific evidence and it’s growing as
with
continuously for those generally
interested in impact of arts and culture
on our health it’s easily found the
skeptics skeptics are skeptics because
they’ve been trained to look at things
differently and not measurable kind of
knowledge is also considered a threat to
a good knowledge but we now know that
medical humanities have a lot to bring
to table where it concerns relevance of
arts and culture to health issues all
art forms be it literature performing or
visual arts have this innate ability to
communicate that is to speak off and to
speak to those existential elements of
being human it is in and through arts
that we can give form and substance to
our emotional lives and complex thoughts
in ways compared to which any other
documentation or account comes across as
rather feeble when we come together
across sectors across scientific
disciplines across professions this is
also when we will be breaking new ground
for the ways in which we recognize and
treat people not only as physical and
biological bodies but also as thinking
and feeling subjects and we are already
halfway there right on the verge of the
new paradigm thank you
[Music]
you
[Music]
26 years ago fourteen-year-old boy found
himself in a midst of horrors of war in
Bosnia
that little boy was I amongst the most
striking memories from this time what a
56 days I my mother spent in one of many
infamous concentration camps in this
region now imagine the emotional turmoil
of a 14 year old in such circumstances
with Knights came beatings rapes
killings so I feared the night we all
did but each night as I would lay my
head down through a blanket covered hard
floor to trick fear and get some sleep
I’d hear this angelic voice almost like
a whispering singing this soft sweet
said melody yet comforting that was my
mother singing into my ear soothing my
scared young soul breathing the life
back into my empty lungs since then and
to this day music was always at the core
of everything I am configurating my
identity breathing life into my lungs I
know that music saved my life the same
way it has done many times again ever
since it still does every day now fast
forward 26 years this is Nick Cave
claimed Australian artist poet
songwriter lecture an iconic figure in
alternative rock scene for more than
three decades this photo is from our
shooting of a documentary called one
more time with feeling so what’s special
with this film well it’s the first sign
of life that Nick Cave gave to the
public since the tragic death of his
some who died two years before this only
15 years old
I still remember sitting there at the
movie theater and gasping for breath the
film was nothing close to anything I’ve
ever seen before a contrasting
combination of that vintage film noir
flavor and modern 3d technology provided
this sense of being stuck between a
forever gone past and an eternally
proximate free future betwixt and
between the two worlds camera angles
provided a voyeuristic peep into the
most private chambers of a hard work
artist so the film was a healing ritual
his attempt at attending to those sword
dimensions of his human self that
conventional medicine simply couldn’t
the album end of the world tour that
followed were also part of this run of
rituals all expressions of personal loss
and suffering but at the same time
monuments of the universal humanity
within him now this is a shot short clip
of a show from this very tour I shot it
myself so I apologize for pure video and
audio quality but I really want to share
this with you because something
extraordinary is happening here so let’s
take a look
[Music]
[Applause]
[Music]
[Applause]
this is what sociologist Emile Durkheim
has termed collective effervescence
which refers to when a large number of
people come together and participate in
same action and simultaneously express
and communicate the same sentiment this
show was at Ericsson Globe venue in
Stockholm drawing a crowd maybe eight
nine thousand people not all of them
lost their sounds but the deep
sensibility communicated through the
primal force of art taking place here
made it possible for all of them to
relate in some way to recognize their
own losses in each case loss and also in
each other’s losses to heal through
mirroring their own pain and suffering
in each case pain and suffering and also
in each other’s pain and suffering the
shared sentiment was so thick you could
almost cut through it with a knife
that’s what we medical anthropologists
have referred to as understanding and
bonding in human suffering this
unmistakable gut feeling of mutual
recognition that provides comfort and
relief not by running away from the pain
but by social act of acknowledging it
this is where our private malady is
transformed into a collective concern
that night the crowd wept together as
one about the loss pain and suffering
but these people also celebrated their
humanity gorging in art enhanced mutual
recognition that gave strength and
restored sense of meaning I don’t know
if you could notice but there is no
stage barrier which is always at place
in large rock shows there’s literally
nothing separating Kay from the from the
audience and interesting interesting
thing is that he’s really trying to take
make the most out of this boundlessness
this limitlessness so so he leans onto
the stretched out arms and hands and
allows them to touch and hold him he
disappears into the sea of crowds and
just to come back a few seconds later or
to appear at the other side of the venue
but see what’s he doing there well it
seemed to me that he was persistently
tearing down anything that might hinder
the mutual understanding and bonding
this experience resembled a familiar
feeling that had nearly decade ago when
I did a field work as a medical
anthropologist at a hospital with people
suffering from life-threatening heart
conditions and their life narrative kind
of looked the same as mine I am I was
torn by war day was torn by a condition
a difficult heart condition there is a
tragic moment happening a disruption in
a life narrative that was quite similar
when it it also is something that really
surfaces in e caves
art this this tragic loss is at the core
of what we are viewing here I could
identify with Nick caves loss and was
thereby also able to engage in this
collective understanding and bonding
with the crowd at the show what we all
shared was this crisis brought by
disruption of a life narrative due to
something bad we were all butterflies
caught in a diving bell neither here nor
there with one life forever gone and
other one forever out of reach rewind
back some 40,000 years and get to
another kind of cave the earliest known
examples of art being used to simply
amplify the senses and awareness are the
wall paintings of Ice Age cave dwellers
since its prehistoric use art has
remained both an expression but also a
key nutrient of human culture every
human society has used arts to express
its ideas and to make sense of the world
art educates us inspires us art
beautifies us and it is also the thing
that separates us from other earthly
creatures during the Renaissance
paintings were understood to have
tense effects on health and emotional
balance of viewers even their children
and to make them behave properly in
eighteen eight century BC and back to
music we can read about healing
incantations already in the Odyssey
while on a hunting expedition in his
youth Odysseus was gored by a wild boar
which left the scar on his on his tie
his companions healed his wound and
stopped his bleeding with an incantation
a chant a song all known culture
cultures have used and enjoyed music
music therapeutic characteristics were
not always mentioned it was always there
in 5th century Athens Pythagoras used to
play and sing paeans
which are joyous songs to his disciples
to bring them in a serene mode Plato’s
pupils an opport is used instrumental
music to cure hysterics but however
interesting these historic examples
after often anecdotal and give no valid
proof of the therapeutic feature of Arts
so how about that evidence of Arts worth
I’d like to mention a recent report that
had caught my eye all-party
parliamentary group on arts health and
well-being in UK launched this report
last year it provides an overview and
includes descriptions of a wide range of
artistic and creative activities in
health care as well as in social care
and puts together evidence for the
contribution that arts can make to
people’s lives our flipped for instance
is an arts and prescription initiative
where patients get to take part in
activities led by professional artists
in poetry comics painting and more at
the six months of working with an artist
people had 37% less demand for GP
appointments and their need for hospital
admissions dropped with 27% which gave a
net saving of 216 pounds per patient for
national health services
some tell me your working days are lost
to sick leave among health workers
costing 2.4 billion pounds a year
inclusion of arts information and
professional development of health care
workers improves their own well health
and well-being and also through that
health and well-being of their patients
but your report also makes another
important point and it’s the value of
arts must not be reduced to being cheap
this is very important so it states when
considering the value of Arts in health
and well-being it should be borne in
mind the successful participatory act
projects are of much greater value to
the individuals that take part than the
economic benefits they may represent for
health or other agencies in other words
the difference that arts participation
makes to people’s lives often transcends
economic value so instead of talking
about the value of arts we should be
talking about the impact of for words
which we are doing to today engaging
with arts enable us to get in touch with
our existential cells enhance our own
subjectivity ensure sense of dignity and
self-worth
we are advance of modern neuro imaging
techniques during the past decades we
are now beginning to better understand
what goes on in the brain when we listen
and play music and how the structure and
function of the brain can change as a
result of musical training we didn’t
know this before now we know for sure in
a recent study at Alba University in
Denmark more than 14,000 people
participated and got to answer questions
about the health and their music habits
the researchers saw a clear pattern
between good health and attendance at
live music shows now I met many skeptics
saying the impact of arts and culture on
our health and well-being
is an unexplored field hard to measure
and that there’s just not enough
evidence to support this theory the fact
is that there is an abundance of
scientific evidence and it’s growing as
with
continuously for those generally
interested in impact of arts and culture
on our health it’s easily found the
skeptics skeptics are skeptics because
they’ve been trained to look at things
differently and not measurable kind of
knowledge is also considered a threat to
a good knowledge but we now know that
medical humanities have a lot to bring
to table where it concerns relevance of
arts and culture to health issues all
art forms be it literature performing or
visual arts have this innate ability to
communicate that is to speak off and to
speak to those existential elements of
being human it is in and through arts
that we can give form and substance to
our emotional lives and complex thoughts
in ways compared to which any other
documentation or account comes across as
rather feeble when we come together
across sectors across scientific
disciplines across professions this is
also when we will be breaking new ground
for the ways in which we recognize and
treat people not only as physical and
biological bodies but also as thinking
and feeling subjects and we are already
halfway there right on the verge of the
new paradigm thank you
[Music]
you
[Music]
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