Different Ways

Open Call 2012: Christiania Researcher in Residence (CRIR)

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The urban Freetown of Christiania exists since forty years now on the disused military base in central Copenhagen. After a long struggle with the Danish state an agreement was reached, after which part of the area has to be bought from the Danish state.
For further information see www.christianiafolkeaktie.dk

Christiania allows experiments with environmental and social ecologies, of loving and learning from mistakes and with the creation of different ways of living together. Almost a thousand people live in Christiania by now. Above that it is visited by millions of guests from all over the world, making it one of Denmark’s top cultural attractions.

The Christiania Researcher in Residence (CRIR) will continue till December 2012, with possibility for prolongation. CRIR offers residency from 1 to 4 weeks for artists and academic researchers with a specific interest in Christiania as an important field of study.

The CRIR projects aim is to involve artists, researchers and academics in an open, critical and reflective dialog around the free town Christiania in Copenhagen. Further a new creative and critical thinking should be generated. Christiania offers a research field of local organization, alternative architecture, lifestyle, culture, sustainable environments, quality of life, democracy and innovation and could generate important knowledge that may inspire a new  thinking of urbanity.

For 2012 applications dealing with the current situation in Christiania are encouraged, but all applications regarding to Christiania are welcomed.

Applications should be sent to: emmerikw [at] tiscali [dot] dk

For more information on the residency an application details see www.crir.net

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

Call for Papers: Affective Landscapes

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This post comes to you from Cultura21
May 25th – 26th 2012 Derby, UK

This conference seeks exciting disciplinary and transdisciplinary proposals from scholars working in fields such as cultural studies, literary studies, cultural politics/history, creative writing, film and media studies, Area Studies, photography, fine art, interested in examining the different ways in which human beings respond and relate to, as well as debate and interact with landscape.

The conference organizers are particularly interested in proposals examining the following:

• psychogeography
• critical regionalism
• cultural politics on identity and landscape
• national identity
• suburbia
• edgelands
• the rural / urban
• responses to landscape by creative practitioners (writers / photographers
/ artists / filmmakers)
• phenomenology
• the body in landscape
• Ecocriticism
• landscapes of trauma and memory
• theories of affect and landscape

Please send proposals of not more than 250 words by 16 December 2011 to Dr. Christine Berberich at christine [dot] berberich [at] port [dot] ac [dot] uk

Reposted from http://www.derby.ac.uk/affectivelandscapes Further details about the conference, the venue, travel, accommodation, registration etc can be found there too

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

Thinking about the “use” of art at times like these

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Some while ago I did an interview with Siân Ede, Director of Arts at the Gulbenkian Foundation. This week I finally got around to transcribing it and posting it up on the main arts and ecology website. She was particularly smart when it came to addressing the objectives of the RSA Arts & Ecology website here:

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

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