Yearly Archives: 2012

WEAD Magazine

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This post comes to you from Cultura21

The 5th issue of WEAD Magazine is out, and it’s about enviromental/ecological artists responses to “the atomic legacy” – this issue is edited by Susan Leibovitz Steinman. It brings perspectives from Japan, Chernobyl, New Mexico, and US areas threatened by aging nuclear plants in Florida, California and Washington. (WEAD stands for: Women Environmental Artists Directory.)

The online magazine is accessible for free at: http://weadartists.org/atomic-art

Cultura21 is a transversal, translocal network, constituted of an international level grounded in several Cultura21 organizations around the world.

Cultura21′s international network, launched in April 2007, offers the online and offline platform for exchanges and mutual learning among its members.

The activities of Cultura21 at the international level are coordinated by a team representing the different Cultura21 organizations worldwide, and currently constituted of:

– Sacha Kagan (based in Lüneburg, Germany) and Rana Öztürk (based in Berlin, Germany)
– Oleg Koefoed and Kajsa Paludan (both based in Copenhagen, Denmark)
– Hans Dieleman (based in Mexico-City, Mexico)
– Francesca Cozzolino and David Knaute (both based in Paris, France)

Cultura21 is not only an informal network. Its strength and vitality relies upon the activities of several organizations around the world which are sharing the vision and mission of Cultura21

Go to Cultura21

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Betsy Damon’s Water Rules-Life

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This post comes to you from Cultura21

Eco-artist Betsy Damon’s work Water Rules-Life will be exhibited as part of Feminist and…, organized by Guest Curator Hilary Robinson at the Mattress Factory Art Museumin Pittsburgh (USA). This exhibition, open from September 7th 2012 to May 26th 2013, aims to “show that feminism is not a single-issue set of politics but rather a multi-vocal, multi-generational and multi-cultural evolution of thinking and practices.”

Damon’s installation is “seeking lost rivers in Pittsburgh”, investigating water mismanagement by the city, and echoing a community mobilization effort in the neighborhood of  Larimer that involved rainwater harvesting.

Museum website

Cultura21 is a transversal, translocal network, constituted of an international level grounded in several Cultura21 organizations around the world.

Cultura21′s international network, launched in April 2007, offers the online and offline platform for exchanges and mutual learning among its members.

The activities of Cultura21 at the international level are coordinated by a team representing the different Cultura21 organizations worldwide, and currently constituted of:

– Sacha Kagan (based in Lüneburg, Germany) and Rana Öztürk (based in Berlin, Germany)
– Oleg Koefoed and Kajsa Paludan (both based in Copenhagen, Denmark)
– Hans Dieleman (based in Mexico-City, Mexico)
– Francesca Cozzolino and David Knaute (both based in Paris, France)

Cultura21 is not only an informal network. Its strength and vitality relies upon the activities of several organizations around the world which are sharing the vision and mission of Cultura21

Go to Cultura21

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Leviathan and the Sensory Ethnography Lab

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This post comes to you from Cultura21

Leviathan, a documentary film about fishing ships in the Northern Atlantic, by Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Véréna Paravel, won the international critics’ prize at the Locarno Film Festival. I could see it, thanks to Mark Peranson and Bettina Steinbrügge, and indeed, I pass you on the recommendation to go and see this work, which achieves “an immersive cinematic experience […] with small, waterproof digital cameras that were variously tethered to the fishermen, tossed in with their dead or dying catch and plunged into the roiling ocean” as described in a New York Times article (click here to read).

Castaing-Taylor’s approach to filming, which is inspired by life’s unpredictability, is also at the core of the “Sensory Ethnography Lab” at Harvard University, which “supports innovative combinations of aesthetics and ethnography that deploy original media practices to explore the bodily praxis and affective fabric of human and animal existence, and the aesthetics and ontology of the natural world. Harnessing perspectives drawn from the arts, the human sciences, and the humanities, works produced in the SEL encourage attention to the many dimensions of life and the world that m

Cultura21 is a transversal, translocal network, constituted of an international level grounded in several Cultura21 organizations around the world.

Cultura21′s international network, launched in April 2007, offers the online and offline platform for exchanges and mutual learning among its members.

The activities of Cultura21 at the international level are coordinated by a team representing the different Cultura21 organizations worldwide, and currently constituted of:

– Sacha Kagan (based in Lüneburg, Germany) and Rana Öztürk (based in Berlin, Germany)
– Oleg Koefoed and Kajsa Paludan (both based in Copenhagen, Denmark)
– Hans Dieleman (based in Mexico-City, Mexico)
– Francesca Cozzolino and David Knaute (both based in Paris, France)

Cultura21 is not only an informal network. Its strength and vitality relies upon the activities of several organizations around the world which are sharing the vision and mission of Cultura21

Go to Cultura21

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MICRONATION/MACRONATION Democratizing the Energy

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This post comes to you from EcoArtScotland

How can a social cultural organisation take on issues that are creating social unrest? Earlier this year Indonesia experienced demonstrations and clashes between protesters and police over proposed price hikes in fuel.  Indonesia, like most of the rest of the world, is highly dependent on fossil fuels.  Whilst the immediate crisis was averted by a the Government withdrawing the price hike, the challenge remains.

HONF (House for Natural Fiber) in Yogyakarta, Indonesia has responded to the energy crisis and the results are presented at the Langgeng Art Foundation.  The project draws on local knowledge of plants as well as ways to use new media and technology.  They have framed the project as follows:

The presentation—as a sustainable design prototype—consists of 3 core components: a) Installation of a fermentation/distillation machine to process hay (raw material) into ethanol (alternative energy to substitute fossil fuel); b) Satellite data grabber: to obtain data related to agricultural production (weather, climate, seasons); c) Super-Computer: to process data (weather, seasons as well as ethanol production capacity), which is also capable of predicting when Indonesia can reach energy and food independence if this MICRONATION/MACRONATION sustainable project design were to be implemented as a public strategy and policy to achieve the condition of energy and food independence in Indonesia.

This presentation is a good opportunity for us to reassess basic performative premises of various practices combining science, technology and arts. HONF’s project—as with their previous projects—actually blurs the boundaries that have thus far been setting apart science, technology and arts. They combine all three, which to us brings home the question: where is the boundary between aesthetic experience and function? What possibilities could the relationship among science, technology and arts bring when confronted to actual problems in today’s communities?

ecoartscotland is a resource focused on art and ecology for artists, curators, critics, commissioners as well as scientists and policy makers. It includes ecoartscotland papers, a mix of discussions of works by artists and critical theoretical texts, and serves as a curatorial platform.

It has been established by Chris Fremantle, producer and research associate with On The Edge Research, Gray’s School of Art, The Robert Gordon University. Fremantle is a member of a number of international networks of artists, curators and others focused on art and ecology.
Go to EcoArtScotland

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2nd African Creative Economy Conference

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The Arterial Network is holding its second “African Creative Economy Conference” on November 14 -16 2012 in Dakar, Senegal.

According to its organisers: “The aims of the conference are to provide practical analysis and reflective overview of the current status of African creative economy. This should help consolidate emergent African expertise in this area while providing critical thought necessary in navigating the unfolding realities the sector is faced with.

The 2012 Creative Economy conference is a rare opportunity that will mark the coming together of powerful debate from across the continent, live and rich provocation from pioneering international practitioners and thinkers, and the unprecedented collaboration of arts institutions from 40 African countries to shape dialogue and a shared experience.

Its main objective is to assess and share research done to date on the African creative economy in order to inform advocacy strategies in support of the African creative sector, rigorously interrogate the available research on cultural themes, provide a platform for African professionals to share their insights on the African Creative economy aspects and to identify areas of further research, links, opportunities and potential relationships.It offers to researchers, artists, civil society, donors and cultural workers from Africa the opportunity to network, get practical analysis and reflection of the African creative economy from an African perspectives and realities.The African Creative Economy Conference 2012 offers two parallel programmes – one specifically exploring up-to-date researches, experiences and debates, the other is a series of practical know how exchange trainings and workshops. The closing gala dinner will be featuring performances from renowned African artists’ members of Arterial Network.”

Conference program and registration on this website

Cultura21 is a transversal, translocal network, constituted of an international level grounded in several Cultura21 organizations around the world.

Cultura21′s international network, launched in April 2007, offers the online and offline platform for exchanges and mutual learning among its members.

The activities of Cultura21 at the international level are coordinated by a team representing the different Cultura21 organizations worldwide, and currently constituted of:

– Sacha Kagan (based in Lüneburg, Germany) and Rana Öztürk (based in Berlin, Germany)
– Oleg Koefoed and Kajsa Paludan (both based in Copenhagen, Denmark)
– Hans Dieleman (based in Mexico-City, Mexico)
– Francesca Cozzolino and David Knaute (both based in Paris, France)

Cultura21 is not only an informal network. Its strength and vitality relies upon the activities of several organizations around the world which are sharing the vision and mission of Cultura21

Go to Cultura21

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stagereads features Caridad Svich

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photo: stagereads, Fishing in the Gulf of Mexico

This post comes to you from Ashden Directory

Kellie Gutman writes:

A new website, stagereads, is publishing plays by emerging playwrights, which are e-readable on mobile devices. They are available by subscription, with a 155 discount for those subscribing before 15 September.  The first featured playwright is Caridad Svich and her recent play The Way of Water.

Svich received the 2012 OBIE Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre.  The Way of Water has been traveling since 3 April, 2012, and has had readings in fifty cities in the United States as well as in the UK and beyond.  The play, written after the Deepwater Horizon BP oil spill, tells the story of two fishermen in the Gulf of Mexico, who have to deal with the after effects of the spill. The introduction to the play is written by Henry Godinez, Resident Artistic Associate at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago.

He writes in his final paragraph:

Many a great play has been written about corporate negligence and devastating catastrophes, but what makes The Way of Water so compelling is the way it exposes the after effects of such sensational evens in the most real of human terms.

 

“ashdenizen blog and twitter are consistently among the best sources for information and reflection on developments in the field of arts and climate change in the UK” (2020 Network)

ashdenizen is edited by Robert Butler, and is the blog associated with the Ashden Directory, a website focusing on environment and performance.
The Ashden Directory is edited by Robert Butler and Wallace Heim, with associate editor Kellie Gutman. The Directory includes features, interviews, news, a timeline and a database of ecologically – themed productions since 1893 in the United Kingdom. Our own projects include ‘New Metaphors for Sustainability’, ‘Flowers Onstage’ and ‘Six ways to look at climate change and theatre’.

The Directory has been live since 2000.

Go to The Ashden Directory

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Extreme Weather

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This post comes to you from EcoArtScotland

Six years ago Professor John Schellnhuber (who had recently been appointed as Chief Government Adviser on Climate and Related Issues by the German Chancellor) talked at the RSA Art and Ecology Conference (2006) about the challenges in modelling the interactions between different critical points in global environmental systems – gulf streams, sea ice, glaciers and snow on mountains, desertification, etc.  He was addressing complexity, not looking at one thing in isolation.

The recent article, Extreme Weather, in the National Geographic explores the increasing extreme weather – flooding, storms, tornadoes, drought and fire.  The article offers an interesting analogy: climate change has a similar effect to steriods – you don’t know whether the steriods enable the batter to score this home run in particular, but you do know that they increase the overall likelihood of scoring more home runs than someone not on steriods.  So the point is not to ask whether climate change caused this storm or that heatwave, but rather to recognise that it is affecting frequency and intensity.

All analogies (and metaphors) have to be used carefully - steriods as a metaphor for ’enhancing’ and making more powerful is probably not the worst, but the other medicalised metaphor is ‘cancer’ which engenders a particular sort of fear – see Susan Sontag’s Illness as Metaphor.

We are still learning about complex adaptive systems.  Understanding that things are connected and that there are unintended consquences is only a small step along the road.

ecoartscotland is a resource focused on art and ecology for artists, curators, critics, commissioners as well as scientists and policy makers. It includes ecoartscotland papers, a mix of discussions of works by artists and critical theoretical texts, and serves as a curatorial platform.

It has been established by Chris Fremantle, producer and research associate with On The Edge Research, Gray’s School of Art, The Robert Gordon University. Fremantle is a member of a number of international networks of artists, curators and others focused on art and ecology.
Go to EcoArtScotland

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Jonathan Jones faces the empty museum

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Guardian art critic Jonathan Jones on the sixth extinction:
“Human activity endangers entire species, yet human culture is profoundly rooted in nature. The loss of a species is also a loss of the images, stories, symbols and wonders that we live by – to call it a cultural loss may sound too cerebral: what we lose when we lose animals is the very meaning of life…The range of animals and plants threatened by the sixth extinction is such that it menaces the foundations of culture as well as the diversity of nature. We are part of nature and it has always fed our imaginations. We face the bare walls of an empty museum, a gallery of the dead.”

 

“ashdenizen blog and twitter are consistently among the best sources for information and reflection on developments in the field of arts and climate change in the UK” (2020 Network)

ashdenizen is edited by Robert Butler, and is the blog associated with the Ashden Directory, a website focusing on environment and performance.
The Ashden Directory is edited by Robert Butler and Wallace Heim, with associate editor Kellie Gutman. The Directory includes features, interviews, news, a timeline and a database of ecologically – themed productions since 1893 in the United Kingdom. Our own projects include ‘New Metaphors for Sustainability’, ‘Flowers Onstage’ and ‘Six ways to look at climate change and theatre’.

The Directory has been live since 2000.

Go to The Ashden Directory

Powered by WPeMatico