MELD is a new initiative based in Greece which understands the arts to be part of the means to address Climate Change because the arts can be a collaborative catalyst as well as a catalyst of social change, a catalyst for economic growth and also a marketing tool.

On the other hand you might also be interested in Brett Bloom’s (of Temporary Services) article Radical Space for Art in a Time of Forced Privatization and Market Dominance which focuses on how not to be part of the ‘art world,’ but to find new means now, resisting the corporatisation of art.

These two are perhaps at opposite extremes of the range of practices addressing socio-economic environmental issues.  Didn’t Einstein say “We can’t solve the problems using the same thinking we used when we created them.”

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

The Canadian Youth Delegation auctions off everything from our future, to the forests, air, water, and pollution credits to draw attention to the environmental issues facing Canada at COP 16

via YouTube – Canadian Youth Delegation Market Action.

This year, we’re taking the convergence to the road.  We’ll be converging in two cities, and in between, on an all-inclusive weekend getaway!  Exploring human impact on the Earth, and Art’s impact on human impact, we’ll discuss environmental justice, urban nature, and what it means to be an artist who brings environmental issues to the public.

MISS THE REGISTRATION DEADLINE?

Join us for our Sunday afternoon session in San Francisco, featuring Amy Balkin, Patricia Watts, Laura Parker, and Nik Bertulis.  Curated by Moe Beitiks.  You can also check out our “a la carte” events.  Book your own ticket and meet us there!

Held at the Hyatt at Fisherman’s Wharf:

555 North Point Street

San Francisco, California 94133

Sunday, September 5th.  1pm-5pm.

Seating is limited.  Reserve your space at

http://cspaconvergence.eventbrite.com/

AGENDA

Saturday, September 4 LOS ANGELES  TO SAN FRANCISCO

• 10am Depart Los Angeles.  Carpool/Caravan will feature the Invisible 5 Audio Tour and select stops.
• 5pm Arrive San Francisco
• 6pm Dinner Break
• 7pm Shotgun Players: Solar Powered Theater Discussion
• 8pm Performance: Living Together at Shotgun Players

Sunday September 5 SAN FRANCISCO

• 8am Nature Tour
• 12pm Lunch Break
• 1pm Afternoon Sessions featuring Patricia Watts/EcoArtSpace, Amy Balkin, Laura Parker, and Nik Bertulis.  Curated by Moe Beitiks
• 6pm Art Walk & Dinner

Monday, September 6 SAN FRANCISCO TO LOS ANGELES

• 8am Depart for guided highway tour down the 101.  We’ll be following the Urban Ranger’s Field Guide to the American Road Trip.
• 6pm Arrive Los Angeles

Here in New York City we have commercial theater, experimental theater, really bad theater…but who knew we also have green theater, too!?

9Thirty Theatre Company is one of New York City’s first eco theater companies, and we happen to think they’re pretty darn neat. By having the environment serve as a character, theme, or the plot of their shows, 9Thirty seeks to raise awareness and take action on pressing environmental issues.

On Sunday, July 25, the theater company with a heart of gold will present THE BIRDS” TO SAVE BIRDS — a benefit reading of “The Brown Pelican” by George Sklar. The event will raise money for both 9Thirty and Tri-State Birds – a non-profit organization dedicated to saving and rehabilitating birds in the Gulf of Mexico.

“After the oil spill I found myself feeling helpless about what I could do to make a difference,” says artistic director Jeff Burroughs. “As of June 1st 658 birds, 279 turtles, and 36 mammals have been found dead. So I created an avenue to DO something! I contacted Tri-State Bird Rescue to put together a benefit.”

Besides the reading, the benefit will also feature organic food and drinks, a good old fashion raffle, and coupons for special discounts on future productions.

Sound super cool? Stop by 9TTC.org to get more information and purchase your tickets!

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We invite you to either come to the exhibition benefit at Exit Art this month or spread the word to your friends in New York who can attend. It is an affordable adventure, one that is supporting important work to help provide a platform for artists addressing environmental issues in the visual arts.

Please join us in celebrating 10 years of programming!

Go to the What Matters Most? benefit blog to get updated information HERE.

Go to EcoArtSpace

The programme will be funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and will receive £450,000 over three years.

After the Mayor’s Theatre Plan was announced last year, many large-scale theatres signed up to reduce their carbon emissions by 65% by 2025, but the smaller theatres did not have the budget to participate. With this grant, smaller venues will be able to apply for help to address environmental issues associated with climate change, and to reduce their energy use and to achieve Display Energy Certificates (DECs).

The Trust will be inviting theatres to apply, and details will be advertised in the coming months.

For more information, contact Suzanne McDougall
suzanne.mcdougall@theatrestrust.org.uk

On 14 September 2009 at Plasa 09 The Theatres Trust will announce a new three year programme to provide specialist theatre environmental advice and undertake free DEC assessments with 48 small scale theatres in London.

One year on from the launch of the Mayor of London’s ‘Green Theatre: Taking Action on Climate Change‘ initiative at Plasa 08, The Theatres Trust will announce it is to receive GBP450,000 over the next three years from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) in London to deliver the ECOVENUE advisory programme.

Mhora Samuel, Director of The Theatres Trust said “When the Mayor of London’s Green Theatre Plan was launched last year to help theatres in London achieve reductions in carbon emissions by 60% by 2025, commercial and subsidised theatres in London were quick to sign up. We recognised that smaller theatres with less resources would find it harder to participate, and so made an application for funding to the LDA at the beginning of 2009 to help address the gap. I’m delighted that we can announce the ERDF award at Plasa 09 and help more London theatres to address environmental issues associated with climate change and reduce their energy use.”

The ECOVENUE project provides each participating theatre with a free theatre-specific Environmental Audit, and free Display Energy Certificates in 2010 and 2011. A DEC is a publicly displayed certificate that informs the public about the energy use of a building. This free environmental improvement advice will be delivered by a new Theatre Building Services Adviser to be employed by the Trust.

The Trust will be inviting 48 theatres to apply to participate in the project, which will run until spring 2012. Application details will be advertised over the following months.

Pictures accompanying this release are available through the PA Photowire. They can be downloaded from http://www.pa-mediapoint.press.net or viewed at http://www.mediapoint.press.net or http://www.prnewswire.co.uk.

Go to the Green Theater Initiative

On 14 September 2009 at Plasa 09 The Theatres Trust will announce a new three year programme to provide specialist theatre environmental advice and undertake free DEC assessments with 48 small scale theatres in London.

One year on from the launch of the Mayor of London’s ‘Green Theatre: Taking Action on Climate Change‘ initiative at Plasa 08, The Theatres Trust will announce it is to receive GBP450,000 over the next three years from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) in London to deliver the ECOVENUE advisory programme.

Mhora Samuel, Director of The Theatres Trust said “When the Mayor of London’s Green Theatre Plan was launched last year to help theatres in London achieve reductions in carbon emissions by 60% by 2025, commercial and subsidised theatres in London were quick to sign up. We recognised that smaller theatres with less resources would find it harder to participate, and so made an application for funding to the LDA at the beginning of 2009 to help address the gap. I’m delighted that we can announce the ERDF award at Plasa 09 and help more London theatres to address environmental issues associated with climate change and reduce their energy use.”

The ECOVENUE project provides each participating theatre with a free theatre-specific Environmental Audit, and free Display Energy Certificates in 2010 and 2011. A DEC is a publicly displayed certificate that informs the public about the energy use of a building. This free environmental improvement advice will be delivered by a new Theatre Building Services Adviser to be employed by the Trust.

The Trust will be inviting 48 theatres to apply to participate in the project, which will run until spring 2012. Application details will be advertised over the following months.

Pictures accompanying this release are available through the PA Photowire. They can be downloaded from http://www.pa-mediapoint.press.net or viewed at http://www.mediapoint.press.net or http://www.prnewswire.co.uk.

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Go to RSA Arts & Ecology

Go to RSA Arts & Ecology

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.

Go to RSA Arts & Ecology

Go to www.oneandother.co.uk and press the “Register your interest” button.

It’s interesting to see that Antony Gormley’s Fourth Plinth project is rapidly becoming a lobbying prospect. The idea of using the plinth as a site for contemporary art was initiated by the RSA , no mean feat as it turned out and we learned a lot about the complexity and the ambiguities of the word “public” with respect to both public space and public art.

William Shaw will shortly be interviewing Bob & Roberta Smith for the website. His idea for the Plinth was shown at the National Gallery last year – very much referencing environmental issues, as does his current work at TATE’s Altermodern exhibition. I went round this yesterday. Bob is having a weekly conversation with the show’s curator Nicholas Bourriard and then makes a new work replacing the previous week’s piece. This latest work addresses climate change and as ever his work debunks – it puts the public into art with no affectation and no patronising – with a directness that is exhilarating.

Go to RSA Arts & Ecology

People think there must be a use for art in issues around the environment – and we believe there is – but quite often they misconstrue what that use is.

Yes. Artists never use the word “use”. What Kant says about art is it’s purposiveness without a purpose. And it is a response to the world in any number of interesting different ways because all the artists are looking at it slightly differently. So there is a fundamental problem for me, and I think for the RSA too, and for the Arts Council, about asking artists to make things that have a utility, that are issue-based, in the jargon. You’ll get people like Cornelia Parker saying “as an individual I am very moved by the politics and the ethics

Cold Dark Matter: An Exploded View, Cornelia Parker 1991

of environmental issues, but I can’t do that in my art.” It’s not how it works. Because the arts are much more complex and do not have a particular purpose.

Obviously there will be some artworks that have a particular purpose, and interestingly the attitude to nature that we hold enshrined because of Romanticism, means that we are now aware that nature is no longer the nature that it was. Romanticism came about in response to the industrialisation of the countryside. Now we know nature is no longer the sublime, the transcendent, the beautiful, the God-given. It is tainted. It is sad. It is ending.

You can’t say, “Hail to thee, blithe spirit!” any more like Shelley did, without being aware that the lark is in decline. If you read the Shelley again you read it with this new awareness and you bring this awareness to it.

Is there a problem then with a project like Arts & Ecology – or is there only a problem if you think about it in terms of “use”?

Oh, subtle question. I mean, you could say, arts and sport, or arts and economics, couldn’t you? And arts and anything? In fact my book Art and Science is part of a series of books that are art and anything… Art and Medicine, Art and Sex, and in a way you’re just making an interpretive selection. “Ok, let’s look towards all the art that looks at the environment, and look at environmental issues.” Which is different from being an agenda given to artists. Of course, how can you not make art about the environment? Nobody’s isolated.

So Arts & Ecology, or Art and Science, gives you a pair of critical glasses through which to look?

Yes. Yes it does.

Go to RSA Arts & Ecology

We fully support Dot Eco LLC in its efforts to secure the .eco top level domain through the ICANN application process and look forward to working with Dot Eco LLC to promote .eco. This is a truly exciting opportunity for the environmental movement and for the internet as a whole.

Exciting? Really? Really?

Like Matthias Merkel Hess, who occasionally wrings his hands with regret at calling his admirable site, Eco Art Blog, I inwardly cringe at the word. Here at Arts & Ecology we are always pleased that we never fell for the single-syllable option, keeping the subtler, more powerful term “ecology”, with its implicit sense of connectedness. Why having it as a suffix creates anything more than an internet ghetto, I don’t understand.

Anyway, to the point. Meaghan O’Neill, the woman behind Treehugger.com and Planetgreen.com is perkily bullish about the future of green blogs in general, writing in an article in last week’s Guardian. In an age in which conventional media are shedding staff as fast as they can, she believes that blogs can and should take over the role of reporting on environmental issues:

Anecdotally speaking, the audience for green content appears to still be growing, even as budgets for green media outlets are cut.

If you look at what she says with web2.0 spectacles on, things look rosy. Green bloggers have formed a community which educates and reinvigorates itself. As Abi Silvester of hippyshopper.com says in a comment on O’Neill’s article:

One element of blogging that’s particularly relevant here is that as bloggers we treat the issues as a basis for dialogue rather than presenting them as facts in the way that mainstream media tends to do… I do understand why some are uncomfortable with the idea of unqualified bloggers spurious scientific “facts”on the environment or any other topic, but so is any blogger worth his or her salt. In my experience, the blogs that gain credibility and respect are those that don’t set themselves up as “experts” but as interested parties that want to get involved and explore solutions creatively. There’s really no better place to do that than online at the moment.

Which is why green blogs are failing to change minds. Web2.0 is a great thing. But it’s not an end in itself. .

O’Neill says her faith that growing green audiences is “anecdotal”. Silvester too is a fan of the anectotal: “In my experience, the blogs that gain crediblity are those that don’t set themselves up as ‘experts’,” she says .

We don’t really have to prove ourselves right because we have the moral highground. A community that talks hihg-mindedly to itself is of value, but not when faced by an opposing community of sceptics which is, frankly, making all the running. In fact, as the barbed comments below O’Neill’s article show, climate deniers retain a much more powerful voice on the internet given their relatively small numbers, and green bloggers don’t appear to be able to do anything to dent that. Last month, to the horror of green bloggers everywhere, the climate-sceptic blog wattsupwiththat.com was nominated Best Science Blog of 2008 by the Best Blog Awards, to the delight of denier-trolls everhwhere.

The thing is, if blogs are going to replace the mainstream media, they must start assuming their authority. And that means finding more ways to do old-fashioned research and reporting – what the old mainstream media regarded as its central role. Moral highground is cheap. A reputation for accuracy is much harder to come by. That’s happening, but still so slowly.

The web is, as we are so often told, only 5,000 days old.

Go to RSA Arts & Ecology Blog