Yearly Archives: 2010

Fossil of the Day for Nov 30th – Day 2 – #COP16

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httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3G-T3S7xf8s

The world famous fossil of the day returns for the UNFCCC COP16 Climate Talks taking place in Cancun, Mexico.

Japan wins the 1st place Fossil of the Day for reasons outlined below:

“When leadership is needed most, the home country of the Kyoto Protocol made a destructive statement in the AWGK plenary yesterday. It factually rejected the second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol by saying Japan will not inscribe its targets under the Kyoto Protocol under any conditions or under any circumstances. Preferring a single treaty approach is one thing, but aggressively denying the future of Kyoto in open plenary is another.”

OneClimate will be broadcasting live from the talks – you can take part here – http://www.oneclimate.net/cancun

via YouTube – Fossil of the Day – Day 2 – Cancun, Mexico COP16 Nov 30th.

David Buckland: The Art of Climate Change

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httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ifhfCnLUZQ

David Buckland is an artist with an international reputation. In 2000 he created and now directs the Cape Farewell project, which brings artists, scientists and educators together to collectively address and raise awareness about climate change. This highly successful artistic intervention has spurred worldwide activity and underlines the power of artistic engagement to stimulate and vision the necessary cultural shift to build a sustainable and exciting society.

In The Art of Climate Change, David explores what happens when artists collaborate with scientists and educators in response to global warming. Cape Farewells highly successful artistic intervention has spurred worldwide activity and underlines the power of artistic engagement to stimulate and envision the necessary cultural shift to build a sustainable society.

Resources:

Twitter: @capefarewell

Facebook Group: Cape Farewell

Cape Farewell: www.capefarewell.com

David Buckland: www.bucklandart.com/

Background:

In October 2009 delegates from across Canada and beyond joined Artscape in Toronto for our third Creative Places + Spaces: The Collaborative City conference. In a packed two-day program inspirational keynote speakers and ground breaking projects made the case for the power of collaboration to solve complex multi dimensional challenges and to fuel innovation. www.creativeplacesandspaces.ca

Over the next few months “The Campaign of Ideas: Video Knowledge Exchange” series will bring you a regular diet of conference highlights focusing on the major themes of the conference and some of the tools for collaboration that were presented.

Respond to Our Current Poll: Visit the Creative Places + Spaces website at www.creativeplacesandspaces.ca and tell us what you think is the most practical and relevant conference learning on the theme of Collaboration Fuels Innovation. The poll is located on the lower right-hand side of the website.

Keep Informed About Creative Places + Spaces:

You can follow us on Twitter @CPandS, use #CPandS″ in your tweets and join in the conversation on Facebook, Flickr and YouTube. The Creative Places + Spaces website will be updated often, so be sure to check back for updates or subscribe to our RSS Feed or Email Updates. www.creativeplacesandspaces.ca

Creative Places + Spaces was presented by Artscape in collaboration with MaRS Discovery District, Martin Prosperity Institute and the City of Toronto: Economic Development, Culture & Tourism.

www.torontoartscape.on.ca

www.marsdd.com

www.martinprosperity.org/

www.toronto.ca/culture/

Think. Create. Collaborate.

FRACKING: Art and Activism Against the Drill

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Courtesy of Jacques del Conte

December 7, 2010 – February 5, 2011
Opening Tuesday, December 7 / 7-9pm

NEW YORK – Exit Art announces Fracking: Art and Activism Against the Drill. Hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) is a means of gas extraction that accesses gas trapped more than a mile below the earth’s surface. This exhibition, a project of SEA (Social Environmental Aesthetics), will expose this process of gas extraction that is contaminating water supplies worldwide. Through documentary videos, photographs, commissioned works, public responses and literature, it will engage the public in dialogue on this issue through public lectures and calls to action and encourage audiences to continue educating themselves and their communities on fracking and its detrimental effects.

Exit Art invited the public to respond to the issue of fracking by submitting a postcard through the mail with original artwork on one side and a written statement on the other. The dozens of responses we received will be on view, forming a collective call to end fracking; postcards will be accepted throughout the run of the exhibition and will be added as they are received.

Organized by Lauren Rosati, Assistant Curator, with Peggy Cyphers, Ruth Hardinger, and Alice Zinnes.

MORE INFORMATION on FRACKING

Hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) is a means of gas extraction that accesses gas trapped more than a mile below the earth’s surface. When a well is fracked, small earthquakes are produced by the pressurized injection of millions of gallons of fresh water combined with sand and chemicals, releasing the gas, as well as toxic chemicals, heavy metals and radioactive materials that contaminate air and water.

The Energy Policy Act of 2005, passed under the guidance of then-Vice President Dick Cheney, exempts fracking from the Safe Drinking Water Act and major provisions of other protective laws, virtually eliminating the gas industry’s liability and E.P.A.’s regulatory oversight. Exemption from the Community Right to Know Law also absolves the gas industry from being required to report the actual chemicals used in the drilling processes—chemicals that can severely contaminate the water supply and cause serious illnesses. A drilling moratorium is in effect in New York State until the D.E.C. issues fracking regulation, potentially paving the way for drilling to commence in New York in 2011.

PUBLIC EVENT

Wednesday, January 12, 2011 / 7-9pm

Fracking and Its Effects: A Panel Discussion

Host: Mark Ruffalo, Actor / Activist
Moderator: Tracy Carluccio, Activist
Panelists: Joe Levine, Lobbyist / Activist; Michael Lebron, Grassroots Organization; Al Appleton, Policy; Michel Boufadel, Civil Engineer; Christy Rupp, Artist; and a representative from “Gasland” to be announced

This panel discussion brings together leading experts and activists on hydraulic fracturing, representing multiple facets of this issue.

Mark Ruffalo is an actor, director, producer and screenwriter. He is also a vocal critic of hydraulic fracturing, having recently appeared on The Rachel Maddow Show to discuss the issue and the 2009 FRAC Act.

Tracy Carluccio is the Deputy Director of the Delaware Riverkeeper Network. She has served on several township boards, inter-municipal steering committees and community organizations related to issues of water and environmental preservation.

Al Appleton is the former Commissioner of NYC’s Environmental Protection Agency and an international expert on water issues. He is also a Senior Fellow at the CUNY Institute for Urban Systems and an international consultant on issues of watershed and water utility management, financing, and land use.

Michel Boufadel is the Professor and Chair of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Temple University and the Director of its Center for Natural Resources Development and Protection. He is one of the nation’s foremost experts on oil spills and the Marcellus Shale natural gas deposits.

Michael Lebron is the key figure behind the collective lawsuits in Dimock, PA and is currently working with citizens of Bradford and Wyoming Counties, PA. He is also a spokesperson for litigants in cases related to hydraulic fracturing.

Joe Levine is the co-founder of NYH20 and Damascus Citizens for Sustainability, a grassroots nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting the Upper Delaware River Basin from the ravages of deep-shale gas extraction and the threat posed by the natural gas industry. Visit http://www.damascuscitizens.org.

Christy Rupp is an artist and activist who has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions internationally since 1977. Her most recent body of work deals with fracking, mountaintop removal and oil drilling in the Amazon.

“Gasland” is a documentary film directed by Josh Fox that focuses on communities affected by natural gas drilling. It was released in 2010 and premiered at the Sundance Film Festival where it won the Special Jury Prize.

ABOUT EXIT ART

Exit Art is an independent vision of contemporary culture. We are prepared toreact immediately to important issues that affect our lives. We do experimental, historical and unique presentations of aesthetic, social, political and environmental issues. We absorb cultural differences that become prototype exhibitions. We are a center for multiple disciplines. Exit Art is a 28-year-old cultural center in New York City founded by Directors Jeanette Ingberman and artist Papo Colo, that has grown from a pioneering alternative art space, into a model artistic center for the 21st century committed to supporting artists whose quality of work reflects the transformations of our culture. Exit Art is internationally recognized for its unmatched spirit of inventiveness and consistent ability to anticipate the newest trends in the culture. With a substantial reputation for curatorial innovation and depth of programming in diverse media, Exit Art is always changing.

ABOUT SEA (Social-Environmental Aesthetics)

SEA is a diverse multimedia exhibition program that addresses social and environmental concerns. It assembles artists, activists, scientists and scholars through presentations of visual art, performances, panels and lecture series that communicate international activities concerning environmental and social activism. It provides a vehicle through which the public can be made aware of socially- and environmentally-engaged work, and a forum for collaboration among artists, scientists, activists, scholars and the public. SEA functions as an initiative where individuals can join together in dialogue about issues that affect our daily lives. Conceived by Exit Art Co-Founder / Artistic Director Papo Colo.

EXHIBITION SUPPORT

General exhibition support provided by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts; Bloomberg LP; Jerome Foundation; Lambent Foundation; Pollock-Krasner Foundation; New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and City Council Speaker Christine C. Quinn; and public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts. We are grateful to Damascus Citizens for Sustainability and Delaware RiverKeeper for their help and expertise in the complex issues of fracking.

eARTh Flash Flood in New Mexico

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The Santa Fe EARTH event, put on by 350.org and the Santa Fe Art Institute, shows how the Santa Fe River could look if there was water running through it. With global warming decreasing snow melt, Santa Fe is running out of water. This river is one of the 10 most endangered in North America. Over a 1,000 people came out and held up blue painted pieces of cardboard or tarps as a satellite passed over.

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGExEIYXK58

To answer the obvious question: no, we don’t think these are going to have an immediate political effect, turn Cancun upside down, cause Jim Inhofe to change his mind. But we do think that they are one key part in the work of building a movement big enough to matter. And I hope you enjoy looking at them—I sure do.We’ve got more allies, of more types, out there than we sometimes remember.

– Bill McKibben

Read McKibben’s guest Blog on this event at Climeprogress.org

#COP16: Posters Depicting Designers’ Messages of Climate Change | Inhabitat

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If a picture is worth a thousand words, there’s a whole lot of talking going on right now at the Eleventh Annual Poster Biennial of Mexico. “Disenyadores por la tierra,” (Designers for the Earth) is an exhibition of poster design down at the COP16 Climate Change Village exploring the theme of the relationship between man and his environment. Click through all of the pictures of these eye-opening posters and visit the site to download them for yourself.

via COP16: Posters Depicting Designers’ Messages of Climate Change | Inhabitat – Green Design Will Save the World.

The Open : __

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wearable architecture, 2010

electronics, custom software, microphone, fresh sod

A sensorial wearable device forcing to smell grass and to hear your own breath. Equipped with fresh sod and headphones, this mask inhibit the visual system while enhancing the olfactory by the proximity with soil.
The device defines also a sensory territory constructed by the rhytm of the breath, which is diffused from the headphones with a 1.5 sec. delay.

The work plays with the Deleuzian notion of “ritornell” (refrain), and about the quality of sound to define a territory. The space defined by the sound of breathing is in a state of costant imbalance between the physical act and its sensory perception and traces an unstable relationship with the intimate environment the garment reproduces.

via The Open : __.

Worldchanging: Bright Green: Thank You for Seven Years of Worldchanging

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Sad news at the start of international talks….

Seven years ago, Alex Steffen and Jamais Cascio started Worldchanging with the intention of providing access to the tools, models and ideas for building a better future. They wanted to push the concept that solutions-based thinking could transform the debates about sustainability and social innovation. With a scrawny little blog, a brilliant crew of fellow travelers and a lot of moxie, an initial group of us set out to change how people think about (and prepare for) the future.

Since then, Worldchanging has published almost 12,000 essays, articles, blog posts and “quick changes.” We’ve put out a bestselling book (which has been translated into French, German and other languages). We’ve had roughly eight million unique readers, and reached tens of millions more with our ideas through talks, interviews in the media and so on. We’ve had a major impact on the debate, introducing a whole bunch of new ideas and moving forward some entirely new discussions. Many Worldchanging writers have become leading voices in important planetary conversations. We’ve coined a number of phrases, not least the idea of bright green environmentalism. We’ve won awards, earned critical acclaim and, if our mail is to be believed, offered some optimism and inspiration to a number of bright, idealistic people.

But all things change, and so it happens with Worldchanging. The organization is taking steps to close its doors and dissolve as a 501c3 nonprofit organization by the end of 2010. It is our goal to see the archive of work here maintained, though the form of that archive is still uncertain.

via Worldchanging: Bright Green: Thank You for Seven Years of Worldchanging.

Day 2 in Cancun – Opening of #COP16 debriefing

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As with the previous COP, the CSPA has been seeking out alternative action around the climate meetings. Moe Beitiks, a CSPA affiliate and writer for Inhabitat.com, is Executive Director Ian Garrett’s traveling companion for the conference and made her way to the Moon Palace today. The CSPA, instead, headed to the Villa Del Cambio Climático or Climate Change Village to see what was happening with the Mexican version of Hopenhagen and meet with the co-director of Artport, Anne-Marie Melster, who is organizing projects here in Cancun.

You may remember Artport from last year’s COP15 and their (Re-) Cycles of Paradise, which has been remounted in Mexico City concurrent to COP16: Through video installations, photography, drawings, sculptures, and interactive interventions, artists such as Kim Abeles (USA), Subhankar Benerjee (Indien/USA), and Charley Case (Belgien) explore links between the destruction of nature and the suffering of women, revealing hidden or unknown aspects of the interrelation of gender and climate change. They will retell the story of a “lost paradise” and the role of women. Gender issues will be scrutinized as part of a process to reverse climate change. “Paradise” is no longer a long-lost ideal world but can be recreated as a contemporary, more sustainable place on earth.

This year, ARTPORT_making waves and partner Cinema Planeta are presenting a rich program of cell phone video contests, art videos, panels with conference participants and artists, and a live art performance with hundreds of children drowning little islands in the midst of a heated climate debate. It is part of the official cultural program of the United Nations Climate Conference in Mexico, COP16, at local cinemas, outdoor screens, public spaces, and conference locations in Cancun, Tulum, and Playa del Carmen.

Moe will have more on that soon, as the information is digested.

The Climate Change Village, like Hopenhagen, was a mixture of public stage, exhibitions on green technologies and cultural showcases. Aboce is a picture of masked dancers in the food stalls. Additionally, there was a temporary structure which held a photo and video installation by photographer Willy Sousa on the the culture of Mexico called Mexico en tus Sentidos which had previously toured to international cities and been a part of the Mexican Pavilion at the recent Shanghai Expo. It was capped with a lovely piece of Mexican Pride/Propoganda focusing on the diverse populations of Mexico interacting with the flag.

We immeadiately scurried over to the main expo hall to catch a screening of Cool Stories I, Artport’s short form, curator film series. It was unfortunately shown on a lo-res led video panel, but the films are worth check out in all of their glory on the Artport website.

Here is an excerpt from one of the included films, Rob Carter‘s Metropolis:

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGF0hauSu34

Later on in the week, the Artport Public performance of La Isla Hundida (The Drowned Island), their collaboration with Spanish artist Javier Velasco, will involve hundreds of school children from Cancun, who will produce an island from a cutout model with a newspaper page during a live performance in a public space in each city. The children will then drown the islands in a large container filled with water. The performances will be videotaped and streamed live.

I may be gone by the time the first one happens, on the 4th, but if you would like to attend, check out their website or our calendar. And, to make your own drowning island, here are a couple informational vidoes:

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JB2s53vq6dw

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzbPwD8Kzzs

After the screening, we grabbed some tacos and climbed into a collectivo van to get back into downtown. One thing I will say is that there is plentiful and convenient transportation for getting around Cancun itself. Many buses, shuttles and collectivos, all really low cost. However, getting to the various sites related to the conferences–which are all fairly remote compared to downtown OR the hotel zone– is a real annoying venture. Official shuttles only go to official places like associated hotels, but not things like the bus station or transit hubs. And then you’re let with taxis, which aren’t expensive per se, but aren’t the lowest cost option.

Once we made it back, we took a dip in the pool and called it a night.

Arcola’s 10:10:10 Success!

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Just yesterday was Arcola’s biggest Green Sunday yet and what a wonderful day it was to host it!  The event was in celebration of the 10:10 campaign A Global Day of Doing and we had plenty of food, free workshops, performances, and people.  Throughout the day we had approximately 400 people attend and participate.  The workshops varied from planting seeds in newspaper pots, creating crafty draught excluders, learning how to be sustainable at home, a free bike maintenance check, and swapping plenty of items like furniture, books, and electronic goods.  These workshops served as a great example as people were able to see the big picture of reduce, reuse, and recycle in its practicality.  We got our message across well with an enthused crowd after our film screening of “No Impact Man” and other performances by various artists throughout the evening at ColourWorks.  Thank you to all of those who attended and we hope you were inspired by the whole event and continue to show your future support and live sustainably.

Check out a blog post made on the 10:10 website about our event! Click here.

Go to Arcola Energy