{Sample / Laminaria digitata by Deborah Wing-Sproul}These are beautiful: knitted strands of seaweed and rolled up kelp balls by Deborah Wing-Sproul. Part of an ongoing work since 2004, this investigation into North Atlantic tidal culture takes the form of objects (such as those pictured here) and performances. More at deborahwingsproul.com.
Â
{Raw/Laminaria digitata by Deborah Wing-Sproul}Caleb Klaces makes a point in his review of Marcel Theroux’s new novel, Far North, on the main RSA Arts & Ecology website: the moment when Theroux starts to try and create a plausible scientific scenario for the catastrophic future in which his novel is set is the point where you start going, “Umm. Really?â€
It takes a great writer to be able to incorporate research into a novel. Theroux opts to include a character explaining how we got into this mess:
The planet had heated up. They turned off smokestacks and stopped flying. Some, like my [Makepeace’s] parents, altered the way they lived. Factories were shut down […] As it turned out, the smoke from all the furnaces had been working like a sunshade, keeping the world a few degrees cooler than it would have been otherwise. He said that in trying to do the right thing, we had sawed off the branch we were sitting on. The droughts and storms that came in the years after put in motion all the things that followed.
See? It’s not really quite like that, is it?
Read the review here.
{IHME Project 2009: Antony Gormley, Clay and the Collective Body. Ninth day of the clay work. Photo: Kai Widell.}Antony Gormley has turned an indoor sports arena in Finland into a giant collective artwork. Starting with a massive cube of raw clay, the exhibition is now on display after 10 days of sculpture making by the general public.
This has been done before (i.e., Damián Ortega’s Clay Mountain), but the scale and level of interactivity makes this really interesting. Plus, is it still winter in Finland? Anyway, probably pretty nice to be inside a sports arena, turning clay into a whimsical fantasy land of public art.
Be sure to check out the day-by-day photo diary at ihmeproductions.fi. Here’s how it all started:
Here’s a bit more info about the project, if you are curious:
Clay and the Collective Body will feature a huge clay cube that will be both a challenge and a shared bodily experience. Designed specifically for Helsinki and realised for the first time here, Gormley’s work brings together Mass, Space and Energy in a response to the aims of the Pro Arte Foundation Finland: to ask questions about who make art, how art can be made and who it can be for.
The Clay and the Collective Body project will start with a clay cube the size of a small house (4 x 4 x 4 m) and weighing 100,000 kilograms, housed in a well-lit, humidified pneumatic building. In the first phase of the project (from 22 to 24 March), the public will be able to view the constructed cube. In the second phase (from 25 March to 3 April), the public will have an opportunity to work on and with the clay and to use it to make objects of any kind, big or small, alone or with others.
Anyone who’s subscribed to the RSA Arts & Ecology site newsletter will have already had this info, but for those who are not, Arts & Ecology in conjunction with Bash Creations are initiating Respond! as a way of highlighting events thorughout the UK – across all art forms – that deal with ecological issues. By networking us all together the idea is we can create that bigger splash. To wit:
Respond! will celebrate and showcase the achievements and commitment of the arts in addressing environmental issues. Our aim is to engage and inspire arts audiences through discussion and response to the events, exhibitions, talks, projects and activity happening in June.
Visit here to find out more.
April 8, 2009, is the last day of the 14th Annual Exhibition of Art by Michigan Prisoners, this year showing works addressing the global climate crisis. The show, presented annually by the Prison Creative Arts Project PCAP, opened March 24 at the Duderstadt Center Gallery, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Curated by UM Professors Buzz Alexander, Janie Paul and Jason Wright, it shows 300 works by 200 artists from 40 prisons. Events included a keynote speech by Chicago Citizen of the Year William Ayers, a panel discussion on women and children inside prison, a speak-out by Detroit youth, an artists talkback, a conversation about Michigan Parole and Commutation Board practices, a film about art inside Jackson Prison and release of the first annual Literary Review of Writing by Michigan Prisoners. “Acts of Art,” a PBS documentary about PCAP, was broadcast across Michigan in March and April.
via APInews: Michigan Prisoners Address Climate Crisis .
Guest blogger Caleb Klaces writes: In Everything that rises: a book of convergences, Lawrence Weschler compares graphic imagery used in Communist-controlled Poland’s Solidarity movement with later social justice movements in the US. He argues that the image of an angry crowd facing directly forwards was instrumental in really bringing people together in both cases. In his view, the image was more powerfully drawn in Poland than the US because the movement itself had more vitality.
The image I remember from the ultimately unsuccessful anti-war in Iraq protests in London is of Tony Blair with a tea cup on his head: “Make tea not warâ€. The British anti-nuclear movement has long had the circular peace sign, and the Greenpeace dove and rainbow.
The peace sign was still the face-paint of choice at last week’s protests in London around the G20. The symbol has arguably lost some of its import by being employed in support of such a broad spectrum of causes. But I haven’t seen a powerful new image or symbol from the Climate Camp and Put People First protests that the discontented could own and rally around.
Has anyone else located a semiotic centre? If not, what could it be?
Caleb Klaces edits the poetry website likestarlings.com; his review of Far North is on the RSA Arts & Ecology website.