Yearly Archives: 2009

Eliasson on TED

This quote from Olafur Eliasson put me in mind of the New York Waterpod project I mentioned last week.  “Water,” says Olafur Eliasson in the excellent TED Talk he did last month, “has the ability to make the city negotiable.” In a talk calledPlaying with space and light, he was discussing his Green River project, in which he dyes the water of rivers flowing through a city a bright, startling,  green, cajoling citizens to notice the flows and eddies around which their cities grew up, and asking them to reconsider their relationship to water. (Just in case you’re alarmed, the green is  non-toxic).

Eliasson is that rare thing, an artist who is beautifully articulate not only in his work, but in what he says about his work. He talks about how his art is about changing people’s relationship with what they see, and about with how a piece of work allows the viewer to renegotiate his or her position in relation to what they see. This, he says, means that art has a role in democratising the space that art exists in:

What the potential is, obviously, is to move the border between who’s the author and who’s the receiver, who’s the consumer and who has the responsibility for what one sees. I think there is a socialising dimension in moving that border; who decides what reality is. […] What consequences does it have when I take a step? Does it matter if I am in the world or not? Does it matter whether the actions I take filters into a sense of responsibility? Is art about that? And i would say yes, it is obviously about that. It is obviously about not just decorating the world and making it even better or even worse, if you ask me…  it is obviously about taking responsibility.

Tucked away in the talk is the notion that this kind of art embodies not just a political position, but a unique one:

Art addresses great things about parliamentric ideas – democracy, public space, being together, being individual,… How do we create an idea which is both tolerant to individuality and also to collectivity without polarising the two into opposites?  Of course the political agenda in the world has been very obsessed with polarising the two against each other in different, very normative ideas, and I would claim that art and culture – and this is why art and culture are so incredibly interesting in the times we are living in now – has proven that one can create a kind of space which is both sensitive to individuality and to collectivity.

At the very least this seems to be a nice distillation of the intentions of much of the best contemporary art…

Photo: Green river by Olafur Elliason, Moss, Norway, 1998

Go to RSA Arts & Ecology

Philly Fringe: Off the Grid

Excerpt from centraljersey.com: “Off the Grid, on the Fringe” by Ilene Dube, August 26, 2009

Lucidity Suitcase Intercontinental, the creators of The MeLTING Bridge, Flamingo/Winnebago,¡El Conquistador!, and Red-Eye To Havre De Grace & Lost Soles, present a new theater festival to be powered entirely by renewable energy. Titled Off The Grid, the festival will take place concurrent with the Philadelphia Live Arts Festival & Philly Fringe and will feature three world premiere theater works and a hybrid performance concert. Off The Grid will be powered by solar panels, a wind turbine and bicycles and will take place in the heart of Old City, Philadelphia, at the Painted Bride’s new studios at 230 Vine St. The festival was conceived by Thaddeus Phillips and Tatiana Mallarino, co-artistic directors of Lucidity Suitcase Intercontinental.

The program includes new work from Lucidity Suitcase Intercontinental, New York based Magician Steve Cuiffo, Miro Dance Theater and a concert by the Mural & the Mint. Each work will be powered by a different renewable source — the only thing these artists promise to be plugging into is creativity.

Mr. Phillips, co-organizer of the festival within a festival, says “After creating two works that dealt with current environmental problems — Flamingo/Winnebago and The Melting Bridge — we wanted to create a work that explores solutions to those problems. We thought we would try something that has never been done before: create a visual theater work without plugging into the power grid. Realizing that it could be virtually impossible, we took it to the next level and decided to make a whole festival of it, and challenge other artists to create work “Off the Grid,” to make and perform multimedia pieces using only sustainable energy.”

Performances will rotate on a nightly basis. Mr. Phillips will perform in Microworld(s) Part 1, a world premiere and solo theater work set in Tokyo and played within a 3-foot-by-3-foot-by-8-feet white box. The play is about a man named Milo who is fascinated by Nikola Tesla, the comedian Bill Hicks and Fumio, his rubber duckie. Milo does not see the need to leave the self-contained world he lives in until he loses everything. This live action piece claims to be the first theater work constructed only out of recycled materials and special low-energy LED lighting.

Digital Effects will be powered by solar panels, Generate. Degenerate. will be powered by bicycle and the Mural & the Mint will be powered by solar, bike and “weza.”

Tickets cost $15

For more information, visit offthegridfest.org

ShareThis

Go to the Green Theater Initiative