Artists

RSA sets up Arts for COP15 network

RSA sets up Arts for COP15 network

The RSA Arts & Ecology Centre has set up the web-based network, Arts For COP15, for artists and arts professionals who are producing work in the run up to and during the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December 09.

It is designed as a site to

  • publicise arts events that relate to COP15
  • Share knowledge and resources with other artists and arts professionals
  • discuss how arts strategy around climate and social change can evolve
  • research into the range and success of these projects
  • use arts to increase the noise around COP15
  • encourage artists and arts professionals who are producing work that is about the environment over the next few months to consider using the event as a way of discussing COP15 with their audiences.
For more information, contact Wiliam Shaw, webeditor at the RSA Art & Ecology Centre.

www.arts4cop15.org
www.rsaartsandecology.org.uk

The Berlin Wall and other falling dominos


Upright Figure No 7, 1970, Berlin, by my uncle René Graetz

I grew up in a world in which East was East and West was West. People operated in separate realities that seemed absolute, even if they were only four decades old.

I had an aunt and uncle – both artists – and cousins living in East Berlin. When we visited them it felt like another world. In some ways it was.

This week we remember the fall of the Berlin wall. In space of two months between now and the New Year a world suddenly changed. The entire Eastern Bloc fell apart as the Eastern economy crumbled and the popular desire for change ripped the old accommodations to shreds.

Though both my uncle and aunt had been famous artists in the East, friends and collaborators of Brecht’s, the world they existed in was swept aside. Their considerable reputations vanished overnight as the communist East was absorbed into the free West. Not only was the cultural structure that supported their work suddenly swept aside, the work itself seemed suddenly old-fashioned and irrelevant in the new paradigm. The fundamentals changed within the blink of an eye.

We are living in a world of old assumptions that are about to be knocked apart. Today’sGuardian leads on the remarkable story that a whistleblower in the International Energy Agency claims that the IEA has been fudging its figures to keep oil prices low. The facts of the story aren’t what are remarkable. Scientists have been discussing peak oil for years; what is signficant is that the IEA, who for years have been producing figures which make little sense, is finally starting to show signs of cracking. Supplies, say the whistleblower, will struggle to meet a low target 90 – 95 million barrels of oil a day in the next few years. “We have already entered the ‘peak oil’ zone,” says the source.

The Transition Town movement has for years asked serious questions about how we will live in the post-peak oil world. It is an optimistic viewpoint, looking to the positives of what a new era can bring. Of course it has remained largely a fringe movement, its policies given a lukewarm welcome by the administration but almost entirely ignored. In Britain we still have no serious plan to make the most of the coming paradigm shift.

Rising oil prices will mean massive changes in our culture and society. We are used to imagining ourselves only as part of the triumphant West. We were, until recently at least, theend of history. What if right now we’re more like the old East whose fall was said to create history’s end? If oil prices rise as fast as may predict, like the fall of the Berlin wall, they will catch everyone by surprise and sweep much of what we know aside unless we start getting our heads round what’s about to happen.

We will look back, like the marooned men of the old regime and wonder how come we didn’t see that coming.

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[noplaceprojects] | Call to artists

noplaceprojects | OPEN CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS:
BeLonging


Following on from the success of RePlace at Ada Street Gallery in June 2009,[noplaceprojects*] invites participants working in lens based media [moving and still images] to engage with the theme of BeLonging.

While the context of BeLonging should be urban and global, an engagement with being and place is critical. Regardless of origin, we are interested in exploring issues that a person or a community could face when choosing to live in a city.

[noplaceprojects*] are looking at a February 2010 opening.

Deadline for submission is Monday, November 30th 2009. 

Final selection of six to eight participants by mid December 2009.

Venue TBA (East London). 

To express interest please email, with supporting visuals and biog to:

Liz Helman

liz.helman@dsl.pipex.com

+

Mischa Haller

mischa@mischaphoto.com

[noplaceprojects*]

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#Trafigura art prize to be announced November 3

It is a struggle for artists to get paid, but surely  no artist in their right mind would want to accept a prize from a company with a reputation like Trafigura’s. That would be, ah,  toxic to any emerging artist’s career, don’t you think?:

Young Masters will also officially launch an Art Prize which will be continued by the Trafigura Foundation each year.  The Art Prize, totaling £4,000, will be awarded to the most talented artist as judged by a panel of highly respected arts professionals.  Young Masters is curated by Constance Slaughter and Beth Colocci and is supported by corporate sponsors Trafigura, AXA and Brakes Group.

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Wooloo.org | Call to artists

wooloo.org | PARTICIPATE OR DIE
Call to artists and curators

Deadline October 1 2009

NEW LIFE COPENHAGEN
Wooloo.org is organizing the people of Copenhagen to open their homes to 5.000 environmental activists during the United Nations (UN) Climate Change Conference in Denmark this December.

Utilizing this large-scale human meeting as its exhibition platform, the NEW LIFE COPENHAGEN festival invites artists and curators to submit work proposals.

New Life Happenings. Propose a happening or event for the thousands of NEW LIFE COPENHAGEN hosts and guests during the UN Conference. Your concept should involve collective action and will be implemented alongside works by artist groups Superflex (DK), Signa (DK/A) and Raketa (SE) among others.

To learn more about NEW LIFE COPENHAGEN and to apply for participation, go to:http://www.wooloo.org/festival


PARTICIPATE OR DIE
From December 7th to 18th, 2009, representatives from 192 nations will gather in Denmark for the UN Climate Change Conference to reach an agreement on a new global climate treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol. In addition to the large number of official UN delegates, thousands of activists and Non-Governmental Organizations are bound for the conference which has been called: “Humanity’s last chance to combat a climate problem that is now all but overwhelming.” (Tim Flannery, Scientist and environmental activist).

However, there will not be enough hotel space to accommodate most of these visitors, as all hotels in Copenhagen and the surrounding area (including Sweden) have already been booked for the official delegates. Furthermore, even if they were available, many visitors from all over the world would not be able to afford them anyway.

In order to help solve this substantial problem, NEW LIFE COPENHAGEN is running a volunteer-based campaign to get private Danish homes to open their door to the thousands of visitors. Through street campaigns and collaborations with local organizations, NEW LIFE COPENHAGEN aims to reach this goal by November.

ANOTHER WORLD IS POSSIBLE?
At the end of Al Gore’s film “An Inconvenient Truth”, Gore lists ten simple life rules to combat global warming. These include using less hot water, recycling more, etc. While Wooloo.org supports this sustainable thinking, we also believe that the real problem will not be solved by asking individuals to modify their behavior but only through addressing the wrongs of a global economic system that thrives on exploiting natural resources and people.

Seen in this way, the climate crisis is not just a threat but also an opportunity: The opportunity to create transnational commitment around radical re-thinkings of a destructive system. The first step to create such change, is to develop alternatives to the current system and our existing cultural codes.

That is our mission with NEW LIFE COPENHAGEN.

By asking artists to develop happenings and reflections for a new life – and then request that thousands of participants implement them – Wooloo.org aims beyond the traditional art exhibition to become an active organizer of experiments in civic engagement and social empowerment.


PEOPLE BEHIND
NEW LIFE COPENHAGEN is organized by the artists-run community Wooloo.org.

Founded in 2002, Wooloo.org is today used by more than 13.000 artists from over 140 countries. Wooloo.org projects have been presented in such places as: Artists Space (USA), White Box (USA), Basel Kunsthalle (Switzerland) and the Third Guangzhou Triennial (China).

For more information, see http://www.wooloo.org and http://www.wooloo.org/festival

For further questions about NEW LIFE COPENHAGEN or Wooloo.org, please contact Martin Rosengaard; email: contact@wooloo.org / phone: +45 6171 6101, Wooloo.org, Pastursvej 46, DK-1778 Copenhagen V.

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RSA sets up Arts for COP15 network

The RSA Arts & Ecology Centre has set up the web-based network, Arts For COP15, for artists and arts professionals who are producing work in the run up to and during the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December 09.

It is designed as a site to

  • publicise arts events that relate to COP15
  • Share knowledge and resources with other artists and arts professionals
  • discuss how arts strategy around climate and social change can evolve
  • research into the range and success of these projects
  • use arts to increase the noise around COP15
  • encourage artists and arts professionals who are producing work that is about the environment over the next few months to consider using the event as a way of discussing COP15 with their audiences.
For more information, contact Wiliam Shaw, webeditor at the RSA Art & Ecology Centre.

www.arts4cop15.orgwww.rsaartsandecology.org.uk

What is Arts for COP15?

Here’s some information that is being sent out to explain the aims of Arts For COP15.

Please pass it around if you can.

You may not be involved in anything that’s directly relevant, but maybe someone on your networks is.

—————————————————————————-

Arts for COP15 is a web-based network of artists and arts professionals who are producing work in the run up to and during the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December 09.
It is a place to:

  • Publicise arts events that relate to COP15 both on the site, and through the networks of other artists and organisations
  • Avoid duplicating work where possible
  • Share knowledge and resources with other artists and arts professionals
  • Discuss how arts strategy around climate and social change can evolve
  • Discuss how effective we are in passing messages on to our audiences
  • Research into the range and success of these projects
  • Find COP15-related material to pass on to audiences
  • Use arts to increase the noise around COP15
  • Encourage artists and arts professionals who are producing work that is about the environment over the next few months to consider using the event as a way of discussing COP15 with their audiences

Please go to www.arts4cop15.org and create your own profile.

If you would like to find out more about Arts For COP15 please emailwilliam.shaw@rsa.org.uk. Arts For COP15 is an open network created by the RSA Arts & Ecology Centre. The RSA Arts & Ecology Centre is an RSA initiative in partnership with Arts Council England.

For further information about the RSA Arts & Ecology Centre go to:www.rsaartsandecology.org.uk.

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Six degrees: Mark Lynas’s book visualised in new magazine

ecomag

EcoLabs, a network of designers and artists who are looking to create what they call “ecological literacy” has an excellent new magazine out EcoMag, which puts their ideas into practice. It’s available via as a low res download or as an online purchase for £10.

It leads off with a feature in which six artists visualise Mark Lynas’s Six Degrees. For anyone who hasn’t read it Six Degrees is about six different climate warming scenarios, each marked by a single degree increase in the earth’s temperature. This is Jody Barton’s rendition of Five Degrees. The accompanying text reads:

With five degrees of global warming, an entirely new planet is coming into being- one largely unrecognisable from the Earth we know today… Humans are herded into shrinking zones of habitability by the twin crises of drought and flood.

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Artists giving up flying is “self-righteous silliness”

The final poem in Dialogue between the body and the soul cycle by Melanie Challenger and John Kinsella is published today on the RSA Arts & Ecology Centre website. Alongside it there’s a web page of responses by other artists, writers and critics to the question of whether flying is …

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A response | Should we travel for art?

Melanie Challenger and John Kinsella’s poem series Dialogue between the body and the soul concludes with a discussion about whether artists should give up air travel for art. Contributations from Mark Lynas, Ruth Catlow, Plane Stupid, Amy Balkin, Chris Bodle, Nicholas Lezard and others.

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