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This forum has been generated to serve as a new platform for students to encourage a continuous dialogue amongst themselves, with a strong emphasis on foreign students who for the simple reason of studying abroad share many similar experiences. The goal is that through such correspondence they will help one another to a better understanding of the experiences of others while simultaneously provoking deeper observation of their own. It is a continuation of the goals of the Société Imaginaire to find like-minded people and give them an immediate contact with one another. The result of a long standing dialogue should prove to help bring these students closer together no matter if they are studying continents apart or are simply regions away. All discussions are open and encouraged. Being formatted in this way, the individual student has the possibility of reading all remarks posted by others to which he may further develop the themes evoked. Furthermore, this activity should help to simultaneously broaden the experiences of the individual while at the same time limit the distances between his counterparts as is possible by the recognition of similarities. It is hoped that through this sharing of information we can help to close the gaps that insistently seem to divide people, students, all over the world and provide a new source of overcoming cultural barriers that are often experienced and bar the person from deeper interaction.
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Introduction to the Forum on Helmets for Peace
This forum, as a place for the opportunity to correspond with one another and follow under the guise of the goal for cross cultural communication that the Société Imaginaire promotes, is open to the general public while being specifically directed to members of the armed forces around the world. This should be a new platform open to all to share their experiences and observations no matter where they are stationed in the world. These statements then can begin various correspondences with other individuals whose result should then illuminate in a most unique way their various positions. The armed forces around the world are more or less beginning to play the same game. Their role has changed drastically from their former historical purposes. Therefore there can be found many similarities between soldiers serving various nations and it is our goal that through this forum they can come to share these experiences with one another and thereby begin to come to a more solid understanding of themselves and others. Below are a few statements from some initiators of this idea and they help to provoke further responses which you can find here in the list of contributions.
To overcome borders: soldiers should be involved!
Hans-Peter von Kirchbach Former Commander in Chief of the Bundeswehr
At the beginning is the vision
People are different. Their cultures are different. Their habits are different. Their religions are different. Their languages are different. Differences separate people, making it difficult for living together. Rivers separate people, sometimes states from states. Borders separate states from states and people from people.
People of different cultures can live together. People of different habits can live together. People of different religions can live together. People from one side and the other of a river can live together. People from one side and the other of borders can live together. Borders are surmountable. Rivers can be spanned via bridges. Bridges can bring people together. Beyond differences, bridges between state and man can be constructed. Beyond the differences in people there is humanity. Art can build bridges between people.
Visions can become true
People make art. They paint, sketch, sculpt, photograph, and print. They compare their works, participate in contests and are motivated through the positive from the critic. They work all over the world. German or Polish, Czech or American, Latin American or Asian. They work impartially from their race, employment, or class - men and women, director and employee, officers and soldiers, masters and apprentices, boss and secretary, doctor and nurse. They build bridges with their art, symbolic or real. They build bridges among each other and to each other, spanning and surmounting their differences. People span their borders from both sides through collective artwork. There is always many who constantly come to this place, working under the best guidance from world renown artists, comparing and sharing their works, finding and exercising a universal language; art, the artistic work, living in their creations. Regardless of any differences they live as a part of humanity together. What they achieve and experience changes them and their lives. They take their experiences with them and change their environment. They build bridges from man to man, state to state, culture to culture, and religion to religion. This is no unrealistic statement but is actually in reality proven and lived.
Soldiers as part of the net of the Société Imaginaire
Soldiers can be part of this net that connects people of different cultures. Numerous soldiers share the mentioned visions, and they contribute visions of their own. Soldiers of the Bundeswehr have participated in the visible implementation of this idea. On the Oder and the Neisse rivers they have, guided by Batuz, symbolically and visibly overcome those rivers by their artistically designed helmets.
The range of tasks for the Bundeswehr has changed. Fighting for human rights even outside Germany has become central. Providing support for the creation and reformation of public life is often part of that task. When called to action in great catastrophes, the soldiers of the Bundeswehr have gained the respect of the people in Germany and far beyond. Soldiers of the Bundeswehr always discharge their duties within an international setting. They operate within a framework of alliances and beyond that they are interconnected with the armed forces of many countries in partnership for peace.
Continuation
I consider it important that soldiers of the Bundeswehr and from many other nations participate in the continued implementation of this idea. It is planned to create a new great art work from the helmets of various armies. The helmets are meant to be connected to certain persons identified by (their profiles created by their artistic representation of the border). At the same time this envisioned art work is to be used to initiate a world-wide communication. This is made possible by the new world-wide means of communication. This is a logical, ambitious, but realistically workable continuation of the Oder-Neisse project. The name Batuz is guarantee for the artistic quality. The Société Imaginaire acquires a new symbol that makes its ideas visible. Thus, art does not only speak to all people, illustrates that borders can be overcome, but art also leads to direct world-wide communication of people beyond all borders. I wish the project its well earned success and advise strongly to participate.
Lieutenant General Angel Bertolotti Neuman (Former Commander of the Army of the Eastern Republic of Uruguay)
Uruguay, as a relatively small player in the worldwide concert, is very small indeed compared to the giants who surround it. Uruguay needs initiatives like those of the Batuz Foundation and the Société Imaginaire in order to widen its borders and overcome its national territorial limits in order to develop its potential political, social, economic, diplomatic, artistic and cultural capacities.
This idea of integration is inherent in our formation as a nation. It is captured by our grand forefather José Artigas in his conception of the Great Federal State, joining the United Provinces of RÃo de la Plata, and it persists even after his military defeat and exile. So it is that this principle of global solidarity is, as our representative in MINUTASH, the Second Commander of the United Nations forces, General Raúl Gloodoftskyin his speech on the occasion of the celebration of 182 years of our Independence, the 25th of last August, before authorities and attendant troops: “ Perhaps for these reasons Uruguay replied so quickly to the call for help and cooperation by the United Nations, being today first among the contingents of troops in the world as a percentage of its population, and without a doubt, the South American country that has lent more troops than any other to the United Nations since the end of the Cold War.
The effort to visualize and shape the “World without Borders†of Maestro Batuz is more current than ever. In distant regions, for us Uruguayans, where the disunion of the USSR, that too of the Balkans, the independence of new African countries, the problems of limits, are only a few of the challenges for a permanent effort to extend art as a form of peacemaking and solution: it is indispensable work. We in South America live as well with problems with our brothers at nearby borders who are in fact united to us in history. Is this an environmental, social, economic or political problem? What’s it all about?
Interaction without dogmas and without borders, the interaction with and for art, conceived of by Batuz, is an invaluable contribution to better understanding among peoples. It is a principle for resolving problems.
Let us make every effort, within and outside of the Société Imaginaire. Thank you for your tenacious and intelligent message, Maestro Batuz. Thank you for spreading your warmth and militant efforts for peace on all continents