Monthly Archives: January 2009

When the levee breaks…

I think that one should really try to engage experimentation and making examples and models. This way I think you can challenge all kinds of systems, politically and economically. If you don’t make examples then the machine just keeps running and being happy and self-fulfilled. And that is what one should challenge, always.

    Bjornstjerne Christiansen – interviewed by RSA Arts & Ecology
Superflex’s first solo show in the UK opened at South London Gallery last night, the film Flooded McDonalds [still above]. Read the full interview with Bjorn here.

Go to RSA Arts & Ecology Blog

Pole to pole: making art in the Antarctic and the Arctic

The artist Neville Gabie is currently in the Anarctic with the British Antarctic Survey as artist-in-residence at the Halley Reseach station on the Brunt ice shelf. He’ll be there for four months and each week he’s recording a video blog of his life there, One Minute Week.

Temperatures there on a typical summer day – and it is summer right now – are abalmy -10 degrees. Much of the BAS’s scientific work involves trying to figure out how the Antarctic works as a regulator of global climate. As the ice freezes during an Antarctic winter, vast amounts of denser salty water “rejected” by the ice  drift to the bottom of the oceans. This movement helps create the ocean currents that carry heat around the globe. The BAS also assess whether man-made climate change is having a direct impact there. The BAS’s measured views on that are here.

Anyway, this is Neville’s latest posting:

Getting ready for station-Z [Halley] from Ali Roche on Vimeo.

Neville’s artwork is based around the idea of flying kites in the Antarctic. “Flying kites in the Antarctic,” he says, “even in the summer months, is the antithesis of our expectations. Not only are the weather and wind conditions hostile, but the very idea of ‘recreation’ in the Antarctic seems contrary to the seriousness of the work undertaken there.”

I’ve just posted a video interview with RIBA President Sunand Prasad on the main website. Where Neville is planning to fly kites in the Antarctic, Sunand attempted to fly balloons in the Arctic, the other end of the earth, during last year’s Cape Farewell expedition. His description of trying to launch balloons in the wild, harsh katabatic Arctic winds suggests that Neville’s enterprise isn’t going to be a summer picnic.

 

Go to RSA Arts & Ecology Blog

Eat chips, drink beer, save trash: One L.A. guy’s almost zero-waste year | green LA girl

Think hardcore environmentalism requires living like a monk? Not if you ask Dave Chameides, a steadicam operator living in L.A. who collected all his trash for a year and blogged about the project. Dave created less trash in all of 2008 than an average American family throws out in a week. And more impressively, he achieved this eco-feat while drinking beer and eating potato chips.

“I didn’t want to change the way that I was living my life,” Dave says. “If I wanted to drink beer, I wasn’t going to say, well, I can’t find a way to drink beer without creating packaging, so therefore I’m not going to. Instead, what I’m going to do is look at the packaging in beer and pick the most ‘eco-friendly’ way to do it.”

via Eat chips, drink beer, save trash: One L.A. guy’s almost zero-waste year | green LA girl.

Environmental Working Group Study Shines Light on Best and Worst CFLs : TreeHugger

Want to make the switch to energy efficient, long-lasting Compact Fluorescent Lamps CFLs but dont know which brand is best for you and the environment? The Environmental Working Group has the answers youre looking for.

The EWG just released a study listing the top earth-friendly CFLs on the market. Lighten Up in 09 features the top brands and where to buy them, what to do when a bulb breaks CFLs contain mercury, and annual savings on energy and utility expenses. Seven bulbs with the lowest mercury content and the best longevity—lasting 8,000 to 15,000 hours the EnergyStar standard is 6,000 hours—got top honors in the study. The cream of the crop?

via Environmental Working Group Study Shines Light on Best and Worst CFLs : TreeHugger.

Apollo Expands Its Green Initiative

From Lighting & Sound America Online, November 11, 2008:

As a continuation of its green initiative, Apollo Design Technology Inc announced at the recent LDI exhibition in Las Vegas its complete process switch to laser technology for all gobo production. Starting with steel gobos in 2007, laser technology is now being used to produce Apollo glass gobos. The change from chemical etching to laser technology eliminates thousands of gallons of hazardous waste annually, the company says.

“Working with laser technology for the past three years has been amazing,” states company founder and president Joel Nichols. “The image consistency lasers provide will catch the user’s attention. The additional benefits to the environment and workplace safety that this technology provides make this change a win-win for everyone. With a transition to more eco-friendly packaging also in the works, we are extremely pleased to be delivering all of our gobos in a cleaner, safer way.”

Other links:

A short video on Apollo’s website detailing the new laser technology and its benefits

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Planning for a Sustainable Future: American Theater Company

Joining the growing ranks of American theaters that are constructing new green buildings, the American Theater Company of Chicago announced late last year the launch of a $4 million capital campaign to build an entirely new, three-story, eco-friendly theater in the Logan Square area. Recent figures estimate that buildings account for 20 to 30% of all of the energy consumed in the U.S., in the form of heating, cooling, lighting, and general electrical usage. Green buildings, depending on the technologies used in them, can do a great deal to lower that figure, while also creating a healthier environment for patrons and staff, lowering energy costs, and inspiring surrounding communities.

PJ Paparelli, the newly-appointed artistic director who had just finished a four-year stint as the artistic director of Alaska’s Perseverance Theatre in Juneau, took up the challenge of ATC’s new building with enthusiasm, believing it to be a perfect expression of the theater’s mission. Board VP Macie Huwiler has taken the lead in planning and implementation. GTI had a chance to speak with both recently.

Gideon Banner: How did the idea for a green building come about?

PJ Paparelli: Our plan for a green building was created before I arrived here as artistic director in November. Our board of directors, with the previous artistic director, sat down and said, “We’re looking for a new facility.” All kinds of things were discussed, but one of our board members, Wyllys Mann, who’s from a long-standing real estate company here in Chicago, had pushed the idea of looking at green construction, and emphasized that there were a lot of opportunities for grants and other similar resources.

Macie Huwiler: I have been working all along with Kevin Kelly, one of our founding members, who has some experience in the construction area and is really excited about this project. He’s the one who originally brought up the idea. It’s a hot topic in Chicago right now, because Mayor Daley has really pushed to green the city; but three years ago, when we first conceived of this project, it wasn’t nearly as prevalent as it is now. Everyone in the organization embraced the idea pretty much immediately.

PJ: The main reason why we decided to do it was really about our mission statement, which addresses the question, “What does it mean to be an American?” That permeates the organization – our work, outreach programs, our board, everything we do. Looking at building a building, we want to be responsible Americans, and so we really wanted to deal with the environmental issue head on. That’s the big, exciting, passionate motor that was the genesis of the idea.

MH: ATC was founded almost 25 years ago by an actor, a playwright, a designer, and a director as an interdisciplinary theater. Also, we were founded because they wanted a place where their blue-collar families could come and see theater and not be intimidated; we never intended to be a fancy downtown theater where you had to come and dress up and drink champagne; it was intended to be a theater for the people, where you could come in your jeans and drink a beer and be comfortable.

As we’ve expanded over the 25 years, we’ve gotten to a place where we embrace all cultures, and we feel that being green and saving the environment is a really important thing right now. One of the things we can contribute to society, besides just creating art, is to educate people about this. The new building will not only have a ton of green features, but all of them will be highlighted. So when you walk into the lobby, there’ll be a little picture saying, “This is what geothermal heat is, and this is how it works.” We’re talking about putting in recycled insulation, and our architect is talking about putting a little plexiglass window into the wall, so that you can see it in action.

GB: How do you anticipate your audience responding to a new green building? Are you looking to lead with this, or do you think it’s already something your audience is concerned about?

PJ: It is a big deal for us, and our audience recognizes the issue already when asked about it. I think we’re the only theater in the nation aiming for a LEED gold certification (at least we were a year ago), so we do feel like leaders in that sense.

[LEED stands for “Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design”, and is a set of standards (bronze, silver, gold, and platinum) administered by the U.S. Green Building Council that are awarded based on a point system. Points are awarded for each element of the building – anything from solar panels to proximity to public transportation — that contributes to its overall sustainability.]

But it’s not only the building itself, but also the location we chose. We chose to build in Logan Square, a part of town that’s gentrifying quickly but has a very rich and diverse community, heavily Hispanic and African-American. People were nevertheless shocked that we chose something so far “off-Loop”. The big theaters in Chicago are downtown within the Loop, and we’ve always been one of the largest off-Loop theaters. But our theater is very connected to the working class; we were originally called the American Blues Theater, as in “blue-collar”. That blue-collar has changed in Chicago, from the Polish working-class roll-up-your-sleeves population – we’re in a warehouse now, we actually love that aesthetic, and that new building will reflect that – to a more heavily Latino population. It’s important to us to continue to represent that part of America, both through the diversification of our programs and our location. We’re moving to a part of town that represents the rich diversity of America. Chicago has been called a very segregated theater town, as well as being a racially segregated town. We’re working very hard to break that mold, partly by creating a very diverse of ensemble of actors.

So the choice to go green is a part of that; it’s not arbitrary. It’s a symbol of our commitment to being responsible Americans. I think we’ll become leaders in Chicago.

GB: Have you personally had a concern for the environment for some time, or did it emerge when you joined the ATC staff?

PJ: No, I’ve had that concern for some time. When I was in Alaska, I could directly see the effects of global warming on the glacier near Juneau, literally seeing it shrink over the four years I was there. And being in such a beautiful place, and seeing its effects on that environment, had a great effect on me. When Perseverance was building its new space, we even had to put in air conditioning because the summers were getting so much hotter. Al Gore’s film also had a great effect on me, and we’re playing An Inconvenient Truth on screens in the lobby at ATC.

MH: My other thought is that we’ll get some kind of interactive kiosk which will serve a dual purpose: it’ll announce upcoming shows and talk about the green features of the building and the technologies involved. Every person who comes into the theater is going to be hit in the face with some green awareness.

We’ll work this into the children’s outreach programs as well. We’ll have a studio space where those programs are conducted, so every kid who comes into the building will get a tour and learn about geothermal heat, recycled rubber tiling, recycled glass tiling, low-flow sinks, green roofs, rain barrels, and so on, and then they’ll sit down and write a play or whathaveyou.

GB: Will green concerns become part of the plays that they write, i.e. joint artistic/environmental education?

MH: We’ve talked about that, but we haven’t made a definitive decision. We’re still a few years away from being in the building, so as we’re getting closer, we’ll flesh it out.

GB: Was your board gung-ho about this from the beginning? Did you have to do any persuading?

MH: No, there was no persuading whatsoever. We walked into the room and said, “This is the idea we have. What do you think of it?” And they said, “Great!” There were a few questions as to cost, and we said, “Well, it probably will increase our costs a little bit.” But the price of building green has come down significantly, even in the two years since we started discussing this. And it continues to come down. But yes, there will be costs. Obviously it will be more expensive to install a geothermal heat system. But it will pay for itself in seven years, and then your energy costs are a third of what they would otherwise be, as the model from our mechanical engineer showed. So it’s well worth it in the long run.

GB: Several other theaters have built new green buildings, some LEED-certified. Did you look at all their models – how they found funding, or what technology they incorporated?

MH: Yes, we did: to the Balzer Theater in Atlanta, and Portland Center Stage. We did in fact talk to them, and ask about their fundraising and the elements of their buildings.

It’s a journey. We started out not knowing a whole heck of a lot about what we were doing, but we started making inquiries immediately. We luckily found an architectural firm, Hartshorne and Plunkard, that’s currently doing a lot of green work in Chicago, and they’re very knowledgeable. They’re very experienced in theater design, so we didn’t have to use an outside consultant for that, but we did end up getting a green consultant.

We talked to a woman in Nevada, Jan McAdams [her website, “Funding Green Buildings”, is viewable here] who specializes in grantwriting for green buildings, and she was a goldmine of information. She spent two years conducting seminars all over the U.S. on the subject, and we contacted her at the tail end of that, just before she was about to quit. We actually sent a board member down to Florida to attend her last seminar and get all the information. So we talked to a lot of different people.

GB: Were they pretty open to speaking with you?

MH: Completely. Everyone that we have spoken to – unanimously – has been very excited about this project, and more than willing to share information and help in any way they could. Interestingly enough, by the time we talked to them, most of what they told us we were already working on, and that was by virtue of our architect and our green consultant.

GB: How has the funding come through? I saw that you have some funding from the Kresge Foundation, and that you’ll be located in a special economic zone.

MH: We’re still in the early stages of fundraising. We’re applying for TIF funds from the city of Chicago, which are set aside for certain neighborhoods in which they want to encourage economic development, and Logan Square is one of those districts.

We also have a planning grant from Kresge and one from the Illinois Clean Energy Community Foundation.

GB: Is there a pre-existing building on the site now, or will you be building from the ground up?

MH: No, it’s an empty lot.

GB: How does the geothermal heating work?

MH: It’s a really interesting technology. They drill a well, anywhere from 200 to 400 feet deep, and they put a U-shaped pipe down all the way to the bottom, and there’s a fan that forces air through the tube and back up. What happens is when you get below the frost line, which in Chicago is closer to the 400-foot mark, the temperature of the Earth is very constant; it stays at 50 degrees, more or less. So then when you pump that air back up, it’s already at 50 degrees. In the summer, that’s your air-conditioning; nothing else is needed. In the winter, there’s a device called a heat exchanger that slightly warms it up to 68 degrees (or whatever temperature you want), and that’s your heat.

But it’s all done without oil or gas, it’s all done with electricity, so it’s cleaner, it reduces your carbon footprint, and it reduces your energy costs by about two-thirds. It drastically reduces your air conditioning costs, because all you have to use is fans.

We’re also going to have some solar thermal collectors that will provide hot water in the building, and we’ll have a green roof, which acts as natural insulation for the building so that you lose significantly less energy from the building.

GB: It reduces stormwater runoff as well, which must be a big issue in Chicago, since everything runs straight into the lake.

MH: Yes, absolutely.

Almost all of the materials in the building will be recycled, everything from floor tiles to wall tiles, recycled carpet. We’ll be using non-VOC paint. All of the plumbing fixtures will be low-flow, to save water. All of the light fixtures, with the exception of theater lights, will be fluorescent or LED.

The insulation will be made from recycled materials, but we haven’t decided on a type yet. There are multiple choices, one of which is leftover denim from a blue-jean factory. Ideally we’ll use that, but we have to sort through some cost considerations before choosing. The other option is some sort of spray-on foam that is sprayed into the walls.

GB: Did you look into LEDs for stage lighting?

MH: We did. I have to say this with a strong caveat, because we might change our minds, depending on the timing of construction: they’re considerably more expensive. In many theaters, you have your standard lights but you may go out to rent extra lights that fill the specific needs of that show. What we found is that, first of all, the general cost of the system for LED lights – the board, the grid, and the individual light fixtures — is really expensive, almost more than double the cost; and secondly, if you need to rent extra lights, you can’t really do that, because they’re not prevalent enough.

We think that’s going to change, and we think it’s going to change pretty fast. The cost of LEDs is projected to come down pretty significantly in the next few years because of demand. We don’t really have a timeline for the building yet; but when the time comes that we’re ready to move in, if the cost has come down significantly enough, we’ll use them.

GB: You’re aiming for a LEED gold accreditation. Was that a mark you wanted to hit and then you decided what technologies to use in order to hit that, or was it that certain technologies were cost-feasible and they added up to a gold standard?

MH: More the latter. We weren’t really sure where we were going in the beginning. We just wanted to work through what was pragmatic and practical, what we could afford, and as we went along, we discovered that there were more and more green features that wouldn’t cost us an arm and a leg, so we incorporated them. When we started adding up our points, we realized that we could hit the gold standard.

LEED is a hard standard to meet, but if you’ve worked with any government entity, you know that you have to be very methodical, you have to follow procedure, you have to be very careful with your paperwork. But it’s not that much harder to do; it just requires a lot of extra painstaking detail work.

GB: Are there things that ATC is already doing to go green before you break ground on the new building?

MH: Yes. We’ve made a very concerted effort to recycle and to encourage our patrons to recycle. There isn’t much more that we can do in the space that we’re in; it doesn’t lend itself to that, and it’s a rental space.

GB: Are you saving money by recycling?

PJ: Yeah. We made a commitment to saving paper, and we almost cut the cost in half. We have a huge stack of used paper right here that we use for printing other documents. When it comes to printing scripts, printing on both sides has saved us a lot of paper.

GB: How has your staff responded to the idea of the new building?

MH: They love it. The great thing about having a green consultant is that when we finally move into the building, he’ll do a daylong workshop with the staff. He’ll go through all of the building’s green components, how to maintain and use them, how to talk about them. So that, going forward, everyone in the building will be on the same page.

We’ll also have bike racks and a shower for people who bike to work. So we’ll really be promoting a green way of living.

PJ: We’ve had some staff members who are very vocal about biking to work. We’re constantly addressing the question of how we create an example that we want other people to follow; it’s something we’re very aware of, and I’m not just saying that to be dramatic.

GB: Was audience travel a part of the planning process as well?

MH: Yes; we’ll be directly across from the L stop, and near the commuter rail. Being near those stops earns us LEED points, as well.

We also may have – this hasn’t been finalized – one designated parking spot in front of the building only for hybrid cars.

We’ve also tried to tackle one difficult problem: I had a conversation with Kevin Kelly and our green consultant a few months ago about the possibility of creating, I don’t know, a giant recycling center for theaters in Chicago, a warehouse somewhere where everyone could stow their old sets, costumes, and so on. Except for the major theaters here like the Goodman and the Steppenwolf, most of us are working on shoestring budgets, so we don’t have a ton of space; we have no storage space. So every time you do a show, you strike the set and it all gets thrown out, except for the elements the rented.

So the idea would be to have a central clearinghouse where all of this stuff could go. If everyone chipped in, maybe we could afford a storage space. And then when you’re doing another show, you can go down and pick out what you want and paint it and reuse it.

If we got that going, it might serve as a model for other cities. Have you heard mention of this anywhere?

GB: Not really. I do know of a woman here in New York, Janet Clancy, who on an ad hoc basis will recycle elements of sets. At Fashion Week here in New York, they throw away huge amounts of material, and she’ll show up and take it and place it at local arts centers. After Rent closed, she tried to find homes for their set pieces.

I asked her if we could scale it up and standardize it, perhaps make some money off of it. Part of her argument is that when a show closes down, they have to pay huge costs simply to cart away their set pieces. So this would be a way to cut down on disposal costs, and perhaps they would pay a small amount of money for her time. But she’s too busy to try and scale it up.

It seems as though it requires a recreation of the model. You have to have designers building things in such a way that they can be easily disassembled.

MH: We talked about that here. A lot of our set pieces are not only nailed or screwed but glued, because they don’t want them falling apart in the middle of a show. But when I was talking to the guys, they said they thought it was doable: if you knew going in that you wanted to be able to disassemble, you could plan for that.

I’m sure it’s the same thing in every city. Everyone in the theater world is so busy; everyone’s so busy just trying to keep their heads above water to get the next show up.

GB: It might take one devoted person in one city willing to set it all up, to figure out how it works, to deal with the pitfalls. And then other cities could emulate that model.

MH: It seems like not only would you be saving the environment, but you could be saving money as well. You pick a warehouse; you’ll have to have a truck. People could take stuff at no cost, saving them a lot of money.

GB: Perhaps it would be good if people had to pay a small amount for the materials. Say, Steppenwolf could sell their pieces to the warehouse, and the warehouse could then turn around and sell them at a higher price to other theaters, who then would be saving money by not buying virgin materials. So everybody would benefit in the process, but the model could sustain itself.

MH: And that way you could pay for rental of the warehouse and the truck as well.

GB: I’ve spoken with Bob Usdin of Showman Fabricators, one of the big scene shops in New York. I know that he’s committed to using recycled materials or to recycling elements of sets. He has a pretty keen eye to constructing things that can be disassembled quickly, easily, and in a reusable manner.

I wonder if a good place for this discussion might be at a major conference, where everyone in the room can throw out ideas to figure this out.

MH: It’s a very intriguing idea, and we’ve been kicking it around in our heads, but we just don’t have the manpower to take it up.

[We encourage readers to write back to join in this discussion about materials recycling – ideas for a new model, people they know that have undertaken such efforts, other industries that recycle and share in a similar fashion. GTI will be posting an article in the near future about individuals who have already taken up this challenge, including Janet Clancy and Eva Radke of FilmBiz Recycling.]

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January 11: Greening the Arts Panel at APAP Conference, NYC

The Initiative just got word of a “Greening the Arts” panel relating at this year’s Association of Performing Arts Presenters conference in New York City, being held at the New York Hilton at 1335 6th Avenue, this Sunday, January 11th, from 9:30 to 11:30.  The panel features five speakers from the UK, Canada, France, and Belgium with experience and expertise in greening the performing arts venues, and is moderated by Brian Allenby of Reverb. Information from the British Council’s website and the APAP website follows below:

Greening the Performing Arts: Here and Abroad

Featured Speaker:
Ben Todd, Executive Director, Arcola Theatre (London)

Facilitator:
Brian Allenby, Manager of Operations and Education, Reverb

Discussants:
John Hartley, Arts and Ecology Strategy Officer, Arts Council England; Marc Bamuthi Joseph, Artist; Neil Woodger, Acoustician, ARUP

In what ways does the presenting field benefit from engaging in the greening movement? Who are the leaders and what have they learned from integrating environmental initiatives in performing arts programming and presenting? This session features the work of individuals and organizations, both in the United States and United Kingdom that have demonstrated the effective integration of greening policies and outcomes in performing arts initiatives.

The British Council brings a distinguished group of international experts in the emerging field of arts & environment to New York as part of the Association of Performing Arts Presenters annual conference.        
With unique experience managing environmental reporting and performance, arts professionals from the UK, Canada and Europe can meet with you to explore the hows and whys of sustainability in the performing arts industry.

 EVENTS        

These free events are open only to registered attendees of the Arts Presenters membership conference in January 2009. See the conference website for full details on these and other sessions.
 Greening the Performing Arts: Here and Abroad
Sunday, January 11, 2009
9:30 AM – 11:30 AM
An APAP Professional Development session - see details in MyPlanner on the conference website.        

In what ways does the presenting field benefit from engaging in the greening movement? Who are the leaders and what have they learned from integrating environmental initiatives in performing arts programming and presenting? This session features the work of individuals and organizations, in the United States, Canada and the UK, that have demonstrated the effective integration of greening policies and outcomes in performing arts initiatives.

 TREETOP SESSIONS

Is your venue, festival, consultancy, production house or service body keen to engage with the most important global issues of the day?

Thinking about environmental sustainability in your business operations and public programs can help you demonstrate your responsibility in a new way to the audiences, partners and cultural communities you serve.

Join us at the Arts Presenters membership conference in 2009 for a series of ‘green consultation’ sessions: intimate Q&As with international colleagues about how they approach environmental issues in their arts work. Feel free to bring specific questions or problems you’d like ideas on how to solve.  

Even if you’re at the very beginning of thinking about environmental challenges and how to tackle them, this is a great opportunity to learn about both immediate and long-term practical solutions.

Email us to sign up for one of the consultation slots below – please include your name, title, organization, contact email and telephone in your message. All consults are held at the British Council Booth 309 in the Rhinelander Gallery of the Hilton, unless otherwise indicated. See bottom of page for participant biographies:

CHRISTOPHER CRIMES
Director, Le Domaine d’O

Christopher Crimes was born in England and moved to France in 1974, becoming a French citizen in 1979. Initially trained as a language teacher, he originally worked for a national resources center for the French Education Service. In 1982 he became Administrative Director of La Maison de la Culture in Le Havre (now known as Le Volcan). In the following years Christopher served as a manager and director for several major theaters and arts venues in France including La Filatureand Le Quai, which he opened as Director in 2007.

As of January 2009 Christopher will be Director of Le Domaine d’O in Montpellier, a historical site devoted to cultural events, and will focus on projects around arts and the environment including the influences of sustainable development.

GUY GYPENS
Artistic Director, Kaaitheater

Guy Gypens served as financial director of the Belgian dance companyRosas for many years and was involved in the founding of P.A.R.T.S., the dance school of the influential European choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker.  He now serves as co-artistic director of the Kaaitheater in Brussels.  

The Kaaitheater was established in 1977, originally as a biennial international festival. Since 1987 its work has extended to full seasons; the Kaaitheater presents theater, dance and concerts, with a special emphasis on innovative work and productions/co-productions with national and international artists.

JOHN HARTLEY
Arts and Ecology Strategy Officer, Arts Council England

John Hartley is Arts Council England’s Arts and Ecology Strategy Officer, supporting the development of practice and infrastructure in the face of changing contexts. John led on developing ACE’s self-assessment toolkit to help arts organizations implement effective energy management programs. Implementation of the program can reduce energy usage and carbon emissions, potentially reducing energy costs by up to 20% 

John also works on the Arts Council’s Arts and Ecology partnership with RSA, is on the GLA steering group for Greening London’s Theatres and the DCMS Climate Change Project.  Previously John has worked in the visual arts, architecture and interdisciplinary arts teams of the Arts Council’s National Office developing, among other things, ‘Art in Industry Placements’, through action research with industrial partners across the UK, India, the Americas and Asia. He is also a practicing artist, directs a collaborative experimental music group and has co-written a book published by Transworld.

NATHALIE HEBERT
Programming Agent – Circus Arts, la TOHU

Following a number of years’ experience in the circus arts – as an aerialist, choreographer and producer – Nathalie co-founded the Davaï Project, an agency specialising in circus and the production of circus-cabaret. After her retirement from the stage she worked with Cirque Éloize and the Cirque du Soleil in Montreal, developing a particular interest in outreach programmes and audience development. 

She joined la TOHU in 2007, enthusiastically taking on the challenge of programming circus arts and developing an audience for contemporary circus within an organisation which places a strong emphasis on the environment and the community.

A non-profit organization founded by En Piste (the Canada national association of circus arts), the National Circus School and Cirque du Soleil, la TOHU is a circus arts training, creation, production and performance center. La TOHU’s mission not only involves making arts and culture readily available to local audiences, but also informing and raising environmental concern among its visitors.  The organization is located in the Saint-Michel Environmental Complex, the largest urban landfill in North America, and actively participates in environmental activities to renew and revitalize the site. 

BEN TODD
Executive Director, Arcola Theatre

Ben Todd brings scientific expertise to his role as Executive Director of London’s Arcola Theatre. He completed his PhD on the Modelling of Solid Oxide Fuel Cells for Power Generation at Cambridge University Engineering Department. He has worked in R&D, technical and strategy consulting on both commercial and government projects. As well as managing Arcola Theatre, Ben works as a technology broker for theLow Carbon and Fuel Cell Knowledge Transfer Network run by the UK Technology Strategy Board.

Arcola Theatre aims to become the world’s first carbon neutral theatre venue and to create the first center for new energy technology in the arts. The theatre intends to install biomass heating, solar panels, fuel cells and state-of-the-art energy saving technologies throughout the building alongside a dedicated work space for arts and science professionals to collaborate.

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Neuroscience and change

Matt Grist who writes the RSA Social Brain blog put up this post before the weekend:

Neuroscience
is expanding massively. There is much fear that this will somehow
herald a new social determinism, an anti-progressive agenda where
people are marked out as winners and losers by the kind of brains they
possess. The comparison case is genetics (although obviously
neuroscience is not separate from genetics). After the genome
was mapped, all sorts of anti-progressive implications floated around
for a while – refusing life insurance to people with ‘bad’ genetic
profiles and so on.

Does neuroscience have anti-progressive implications? I’m going to argue in as far as the facts are so far in, no, not at all – quite the opposite.

Matt is pulling together a lot of research that suggests the brain is much more than just a hard-wired piece of computing equipment. New science says it has has much more plasticisty than was assumed, firstly in the negative sense – that poor environmental conditions, in the meaning of poor well-being – restrict the creation of neural pathways, but also more positively in the sense that our brains don’t appear to simply compute decisions in our own self-interest but also act on emotional stimuli. In other words cultural factors can play a part in how our brains come to a decision on how to act. The idea beloved of those who see humanity as a race of cliff-bound lemmings, who can’t stop the urge to relentlessly over-consume because this is hard-wired in us is, perhaps, looking more dubious…

Go to RSA Arts & Ecology Blog

Hunting the American Experience

{Opening Day 1938, 2009, Mixed media, oil on canvas, by Donnie Molls}

Donnie Molls has a series of paintings based on hunting photos currently on display at Carl Berg in LA. I caught the opening of this and despite the overly crowded room, I found these quite captivating.

Culled from his family’s photo collection, they reflect his upbringing and say something about us, the animals we choose to hunt and the role images play in constructing our personal and collective history.

Here’s a bit from the gallery website:

By choosing not to contemporize the image and reinterpret them with current social and moral values he creates works that force the viewer to acknowledge a shared human history of man’s relationship to nature. 

{Fred’s Elk, 2009, Mixed media, oil on canvas, by Donnie Molls}

Also worth checking out if you head to Carl Berg are the time-lapse photos of John Mullin.

> More at carlberggallery.com
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Repent! Repent!

{An installation view of Moniqe Prieto at ACME, Los Angeles, 2009}

Moniqe Prieto’s show A Boatfull of Spaniards Sing opened this past Saturday at ACME in Los Angeles. I thought it was a great show, especially the Repent! Repent! diptych in the above image.

For the past few years, I’ve looked at and thought about Prieto’s wonky block-letter paintings. Maybe I just enjoy reading some words in paintings, but the colors, words and oblique imagery do it for me. So I was surprised in talking with a few friends making the gallery rounds that night who said they aren’t into it. I guess we’ll just have to agree to disagree—I’m a fan.

Oh and if you do go, don’t miss the canvas/acrylic rock (or is it an iceberg?) by Lisa Williamson in the sort-of project room at ACME.

> More images at acmelosangeles.com
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