Beyond Bohm 2024, Part 1 – Thought as a System

Matthew Capowski works in the field of child protection, with a background in psychology. He is  a lifelong student of Ayurveda. As a teenager he encountered a book that contained interviews with David Bohm, and would go on to become a serious student of Bohm’s work pertaining to the problems of humanity.  This would lead him to found the David Bohm Society in 2012, both to ensure preservation of Bohm’s invaluable legacy and to attempt to realize some of Bohm’s proposals by creating living examples. 

Melissa K. Nelson is an ecologist and Indigenous scholar-activist. She earned her Ph.D. in ecology at the University of California, Davis. Formerly a professor of American Indian Studies at San Francisco State University, she now teaches at Arizona State University in the School of Sustainability, Global Futures Laboratory. From 1993 to 2021, she served as the founding executive director and CEO of the Cultural Conservancy. She now serves as their president emerita. Melissa is the Bundle Holder for the Native American Academy. She is a contributor and co-editor of Traditional Ecological Knowledge: Learning from Indigenous Practices for Environmental Sustainability, published by Cambridge University Press in 2018. She is also a contributor and the editor of Original Instructions: Indigenous Teachings for a Sustainable Future (2008). She is Anishinaabe/Métis/Norwegian and a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians.

Igor Topilsky is an active participant in poetic arts, music and theatre, and has spent numerous years working with David Bohm’s dialogue proposals. He has been serving on the board of directors for the David Bohm Society since 2015. 

Aja Bulla Zamastil is an architectural and landscape architectural designer, public artist, and educator. As a Lecturer in the Landscape Architecture and Urbanism graduate program at the University of Southern California, she leads design studios that address adapting our constructed world to shifting natural and socio-cultural forces. As the Creative Director at Watershed Progressive, she is responsible for managing and designing landscape projects and educational programs throughout California. These projects explore how we can transform monolithic systems into resilient ecological cycles that re-enchant everyday experience and promote alternative cultural practices.

Aja is a contributor to Holoflux: Codex – Form/Movement/Vision inspired by David Bohm (Pari Publishing 2022). She is a founding member of the Pari Holoflux experiments, and was formerly a student at the Oak Grove School in Ojai, California, and Brockwood Park in England.