AREA #9: Peripheral Vision + ART WORK: – A Discussion with Nicolas Lampert & Dan S. Wang on “Activist Art in the Era of Economic Crisis”

from Ian Garrett | March 17, 2010 | No Comments | Print | Email

Artist/writers Nicolas Lampert & Dan S. Wang, collaborators on the indie publications AREA #9: Peripheral Vision and Art Work, invite you to a presentation and discussion on the state of activist art practice in this era of economic crisis and how to enlarge the collaboration between activists and artists.

Art Work is a free, nationally distributed paper produced by the art group Temporary Services. The group had hoped to spark a national conversation about the state of labor, creative exchange, and strategies for survival, from the perspective of artists and cultural workers struggling in the precarious economy. It has taken off, with events in Pittsburgh, Grand Rapids, Iowa City, Chicago, Houston, Bloomington-Normal, New York, and now Madison.

AREA is a semi-annual publication by and for activist artists, researchers, and educators produced in Chicago. In AREA #9: Peripheral Vision focuses on those spaces and regions, populations and ideas frequently considered marginal in relation to the major urban centers, but which those centers depend upon for sustenance, self-definition and “sense of place” whether it be Madison, Milwaukee, or Chicago.

Nioclas Lampert is an artist, writer, activist, and a member of the Just Seeds graphic arts collective. The collective was awarded the Grand Prize at the 28th Biennial of Graphic Arts in Ljubljana in 2009. His individual work has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art (New York), MassMoCA (North Adams, Mass.), and the Priebe Gallery of UW-Oshkosh. He teaches printmaking and socially-engaged art strategies at UW-Milwaukee. Nicolas interviewed the Wisconsin artist Susan Simensky Bietila for AREA #9. He contributed an article titled “Organize! What the Artists’ Union of the 1930s Can Teach Us Today” for Art Work.

Agitprop by Nicolas Lampert

Dan S. Wang is a printer, writer, and activist. He was a co-founder of the experimental cultural space Mess Hall. His cultural criticism and writings on political art have been widely published and he’s lectured at the Contemporary Museum (Baltimore), the Kansas City Art Institute, and the Depot (Vienna). He lives in Madison and teaches printmaking at Columbia College Chicago. He was the co-editor of AREA #9 and wrote an analytical article about Just Seeds for Art Work.

So stop in for some creative talk, collaborative schemes, and a free paper!

Rainbow Cooperative

Reposted from Art Work : Archive : Event: Rainbow Cooperative, Madison, WI, March 30.

APInews: NCCA’s Civic Engagement & Gardening Symposium

from Ian Garrett | March 17, 2010 | No Comments | Print | Email

The National Center for Creative Aging is expanding its frontier to the garden with “Creativity Matters: Civic Engagement and Gardening Symposium,” April 12-14, 2010, in Washington, D.C. Events begin with “Generating Community: How Does Our Garden Grow? Intergenerational Program Development,” a training by Susan Perlstein, founder of NCCA and Elders Share the Arts, at IONA Senior Services, recently named a “Center for Excellence in Dementia Care” by the Alzheimer’s Foundation of America. Day 2 is a full-day workshop at the United States Botanic Gardens, located at the foot of the U.S. Capitol, with keynotes and breakout sessions with garden experts. Day 3 focuses on civic engagement and community involvement as participants visit and work at the Common Good City Farm and other D.C. gardens. It's all sponsored by the MetLife Foundation.

via APInews: NCCA’s Civic Engagement & Gardening Symposium.

Theater on the green: Staging eco-minded productions in SD – SignOnSanDiego.com

from Ian Garrett | March 17, 2010 | No Comments | Print | Email

A great article ont he inspiring work being done by Mo-olelo Performing Arts down in San Diego…

Green is the shade of the heroine’s skin in the massive Broadway hit “Wicked.” Green is also the color of the currency “Wicked” continues to haul in — some $1.3 million a week, more than six years after the show’s New York premiere.

But green also has come to mean something more than cold cash to the people behind that showbiz phenom and other hot-ticket Broadway shows. And at least a bit of the credit can go to a San Diego theater whose $168,000 yearly budget doesn’t match what “Wicked” makes in a day.

Mo’olelo Performing Arts Company puts on just two productions a year, each focusing on a specific social issue, from gun violence to racism to brain injury. Besides rolling out a wide array of educational efforts with every show, the community-minded company also has embraced the idea of reducing live theater’s environmental impact in general, devoting special attention to how sets are designed and discarded.

Read the full article here: Theater on the green: Staging eco-minded productions in SD – SignOnSanDiego.com.

Sustainability and Contemporary Art Symposium Budapest

from Ian Garrett | March 17, 2010 | No Comments | Print | Email

Sustainability and Contemporary Art: Art, Post-Fordism and Eco-CritiqueInternational Symposium

EU Budapest 19-20 March 2010

Ralo Mayer, Multi-Plex Fictions

The 2010 Symposium on Sustainability and Contemporary Art brings together artists, philosophers, environmental scientists and activists to explore the conundrum of capitalism’s remarkable ability to absorb criticism and adapt to new circumstances. According to post-Fordist theory, in the wake of the social upheaval of May 1968 capitalism was able to recuperate radical desires for freedom, creativity and personal liberation through the adoption of the principles of flexibility, horizontality and autonomy, and the shift from industrialism to immaterial labour.

Today, the energy and idealism of the environmental movement is arguably in a similar danger of being transformed into the motor of a green capitalist resurgence that threatens to rescue neo-liberal globalisation from the economic downturn. This symposium asks whether environmentalism is in fact now facing its own ‘post-Fordist moment’, in which the language and values of ecology are at risk of being turned into an ideology of bureaucratic control and a technocratic justification for sustainable growth. It also raises the question of whether the environmental movement has anything to learn from the strategies of resistance proposed by the theorists of immaterial labour and the exploration of these issues by contemporary artists.

In the wake of the debacle of the Copenhagen Climate Summit, the question arises whether there might be more to ecological crisis than mitigating the threat posed by climate change to the current global economic system, and whether the danger posed by the depletion of natural resources and the destruction of bio-diversity deserves to be a greater priority. The symposium will try to locate a sense of eco-criticality in the approaches of contemporary artists, and also consider the implications of an ecologically-nuanced, post-Fordist critique for the international art world.

The symposium on Art, Post-Fordism and Ecological Critique is the fifth in an annual series of events organised at Central European University by Maja and Reuben Fowkes of Translocal.org, the Department of Environmental Science and Policy, and the Centre for Arts and Culture at CEU. This year’s programme will include an afternoon of presentations and critical conversations in the main auditorium of Central European University on Friday 19 March, and a workshop event with symposium participants on the following day.

A small number of additional places are available for the workshop upon application.

Confirmed speakers include: Stephen Wright (art theorist, Paris), Igor Stokfiszewski(curator/critic/playwright, Warsaw), Branka Cvjeticanin (multimedia artist, Zagreb) and Ralo Mayer (artist, Vienna).

via Sustainability and Contemporary Art Symposium Budapest.

Furtherfield.org: The Zero Dollar Laptop

from RSA Arts & Ecology | March 16, 2010 | No Comments | Print | Email

Nice to see Bruce Sterling picking up on the excellent media arts collective furtherfield.org’s Zero Dollar Laptop project.

Working with clients from St Mungo’s homeless charity, they’re helping people break up old laptops and build new ones, adding free opensource software to help them build new computers for themselves entirely free of charge.

It’s a great project. To paraphrase the fishing rod homily, teach a man to use Microsoft Word and they’ll be able to write their own CV. Teach him tobuild his own laptop from scratch and, who knows, I’ll probably be sending him my CV in years to come.

Donate your own laptop to the project

Find out more about The Zero Dollar Laptop project

Furtherfield and Feral Trade Cafe on Arts & Ecology

Furtherield on not flying for art

Go to RSA Arts & Ecology

CSPA Quarterly Now Available! #COP15

from Miranda Wright | March 16, 2010 | No Comments | Print | Email

Our Winter issue, featuring eco-policy and representations during the COP15 Summit in Copenhagen, is now available!  Keep an eye out for our next call for participation!

Weimar Art and Sustainability Summer School « Sustainability and Contemporary Art

from Ian Garrett | March 15, 2010 | No Comments | Print | Email

Learn about the Beuysian school of art and sustainability on this progressive summer course.

via Weimar Art and Sustainability Summer School « Sustainability and Contemporary Art.

Artist Pete Dungey Turns Potholes Into Guerrilla Gardens | Inhabitat

from Ian Garrett | March 14, 2010 | No Comments | Print | Email

Some years ago a councilwoman of Davis, California protested the repaving of several historic alleyways in her neighborhood, claiming that new asphalt would destroy the ‘mellow’ ambience of the roads. What resulted was a media frenzy that eventually declared the Davis public servant as a kook for suggesting that even potholes had protected rights. However, one person is certainly on the same side of the councilwoman. Pete Dungey, an artist and graphic design student at the University of Brighton, came up with a colorful solution to the international pothole problem: teeny-tiny guerrilla gardens!

City Repair claims that painting intersections with large, colorful symbols slows traffic and makes neighborhoods safer and more livable. While it’s unclear whether pockets of pansies will make for the same, more road-conscious drivers, the aesthetic impact is undeniable.

But even with all this whimsy, we must admit that beyond the problem of cars, these pothole gardens face the same challenges as other guerrilla gardens: they require maintenance by someone – and gathering water to spaces lacking irrigation is already hard enough without dodging traffic!

Still, the sight of flowers in the middle of a road is surely smile-inducing, and Dungey’s work reminds us of all the life and levity outside of our cars.

via Artist Pete Dungey Turns Potholes Into Guerrilla Gardens | Inhabitat.

World Water Day LA at Natural HIstory Museum

from CSPA | March 14, 2010 | No Comments | Print | Email

This Sunday at the Natural History Museum in Los Angeles you will find a day long program of water and sustainability education. It is a non plastic event (however they are providing paper cups – which someone will need to talk with them about). I’m sure it will be a good turnout. It is always fun to go to events like these and educate the educators on how it could be even more GREEN.

Don’t miss the Water Justice Forum at 1:30pm where speakers will discuss water challenges for Los Angeles from the Southern California Watershed Alliance, Arroyos and Foothills Conservancy, Los Angeles & San Gabriel Rivers Watershed Council, and Urban Semillas.

Go to EcoLOGIC LA

Squatting for Sustainability

from Green Theater Initiative | March 10, 2010 | No Comments | Print | Email

Reprinted from Seattle Metblogs: “Sustainable Theatre at SU” by Zee Grega, March 4, 2010

Seattle University’s greenSquat program in a new way of producing theater – two or more productions share a stage – the second production “squats” on the set and production design of the first, reducing materials used, and reducing the environmental impact of the shows, which can often be substantial.

The first greenSquat production is a new play called WRITER 1272, a comedy by local playwright Vincent Delaney about plagiarism, ghost writing, and the complex conditions of college admissions. WRITER 1272 is “squatting” on SU’s recent staging of Island of Slaves, reusing the set, production materials and even posters from the previous play to create an eco-friendly production. Any added materials are themselves found, recycled, or repurposed – nothing new. greenSquat creator Steve Galatro says says, “Theatre is wasteful. In terms of time, money, energy, and physical resources, we have not yet done our best as a theatre community to embrace the trend of sustainability that is now present all around us. In greenSquat, we are challenging students to examine their responsibility as eco-conscious artists: examining the wide array of materials that make a production and imagining their potential to make another production entirely.”

SU hopes that greenSquat will inspire other theater artists to reduce their environmental impact as well and has partnered with a number of local businesses to promote the idea and will offer raffles and green product giveaways at all shows.

WRITER 1272 runs through March 13 at SU’s Lee Center for the Arts; tickets are available at the door or in advance through the box office which is open Wednesday through Saturday from 1:30 to 6:00 pm; call 206.296.2244 for ticket details.

Go to the Green Theater Initiative

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