Loss Of Biodiversity

Wings of desire: why birds captivate us from The Guardian

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Swallows nesting in Knossos Palace, Crete. Photo Chris Fremantle

Swallows nesting in Knossos Palace, Crete. Photo Chris Fremantle

Our behaviour is causing a mass extinction on the planet and birds are one of the many lifeforms suffering.  Mark Cocker’s new book and the cover article, Wings of desire: why birds captivate us, in this week’s Guardian Review  explores the relationship between humans and birds in practical, cultural and spiritual terms.  It clearly articulates thousands of reasons beyond the loss of biodiversity for us to make more space for birds in our lives.

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.
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Internaturalism

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Collective exhibition, 8 May – 29 September 2013, and international symposium, 8 May, at PAV (Via Giordano Bruno 31, Torino, Italy)

On Tuesday, 7 May 2013, at 6.30 pm, the PAV will open the collective exhibition Internaturalism, curated by Claudio Cravero. The exhibition aims to investigate some of the research and practice of the branch of contemporary art generally known as “ecological art” or “Bioart”, demonstrating the links and connections to current ecological debates. The works of art on show in Internaturalismassume an essential role as vehicles of social understanding of the world around us, and succeed in constructing concrete meaning from often abstract issues related to the environment and ecological drift (from loss of biodiversity to pollution and global warming). Emerging from the works of the sixteen artists in the exhibition are visions and narratives of nature that coincide with the concept of “internaturalism”, namely the capacity to imagine a hybrid between the different meanings of nature, understood not only as the common good of humanity but of all living beings.

The exhibition

Among the works on display is Perpetual Amazonia, an environmental video installation by Lucy + Jorge Orta. Commissioned in 2010 by the Natural History Museum in London, it is the narration through images and prose of an expedition undertaken in the Peruvian rainforest. The study of nature is also explored from an ethological point of view in the work of Henrik Håkansson, through a video-documentary that examines the behaviour of insects and birds. Addressing similar themes are 108, Luana Perilli’s living installation that consists of a domestic scene featuring everyday objects and a colony of ants; Colombaia mobile (Mobile Pigeon Coop) by Filippo Leonardi, a housing structure that connects two spaces through the use of carrier pigeons and, finally, Laurent Le Deuff’s sculpture in the park which is based on the underground tunnels drawn by moles. The relationship between man and nature with regard to the common cellular and organic matrix that combines living beings and the environment is also explored in the exhibition, for example in the interactive installation Bio-acqua by Piero Gilardi or in the biological processes analyzed in a mining cave by Andrea Caretto and Raffaella Spagna. Through Brigitte de Malau’s ritual performance and the work on seeds waste by Norma Jeane, Internaturalism also explores the land and the nutritional habits connected to it. Last but not least, some of the works in the exhibition intend to trigger an awareness of the typical behaviour of the homo consumer, actions aimed at the commodification of nature and of the profits related to so-called bio trade (as in the work New Alliances by CAE|Critical Art Ensemble and in the light installation Shelf-life by Uli Westphal). A series of cultural reflections on the theme of language completes the exhibition. In this regard, the results of the workshop Segni d’incontro (Signs of meeting) conducted by Nja Mahdaoui and Agostino Ferrari are presented, as well as Mixture of Plants by Gabriella Ciancimino. Ciancimino’s work is installed in the courtyard and consists of a sound apparatus through which a conversation between the artist and Christian Berg, scientific head of the Botanical Gardens of Graz, is heard.

As part of the exhibition, the Educational and Training department of the PAV, curated by Orietta Brombin, will host Rerum Naturae, a programme on the role of man in relation to natural phenomena; Cultivating Signs which addresses the issues of exchange and relationships andDelicatessen, or edible matter as an artistic medium. In terms of training for adult audiences, onFriday, 31 May, Saturday 1 June and Sunday 2 June, Andrea Caretto and Raffaella Spagna will lead Workshop_33 / Back and Forward_Colonization_02, a collective and immersive activity based on housing and work as methods to explore a place.

The Symposium

On Wednesday 8 May, from 10 Am to 6 Pm, at the Casa del Teatro Ragazzi, the PAV will host a symposium entitled Internaturalism, dedicated to debates around the theme of nature. The conference will analyse the theme of nature from multiple perspectives (aesthetic, ethical, anthropological and artistic). For more details about the symposium: click here to download the PDF file.

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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Mark Dion at Museum Het Domein

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museum-het-domeinThe Macabre Treasury

January 20–May 5, 2013 – Museum Het Domein – Sittard, Netherlands

“Increasingly, my work has become macabre and laced with dusky pessimism. Early on I believed that ecological calamity could be averted by awareness. If people knew about issues like the loss of biodiversity or global warming, they would act so as to halt the problem. (…) Now, I just don’t believe that it will all work out. Not that there will be a single great catastrophe, but rather the world will slowly become less biological diverse, more impoverished, an uglier, less remarkable place to live. (…) Ozone holes, burning rainforests, ecological wars, species extinction, landfill landscapes will become fantastic theatre, a spectacle of ecosystem collapse. (…) Coming soon—the planet earth becoming a crummier place, and like numerous other rude spectators, it’s hard for me to keep my mouth closed during the show.”
–Mark Dion, unpublished manuscript, 2001

Macabre Treasury an exhibition by the American artist Mark Dion, internationally acclaimed to be a prominent contemporary artist, is Dion´s first solo museum exhibition in the Netherlands since fifteen years. He is playing a pioneering role with his work, which focuses on ecological issues and our perception of nature. Dion’s work examines the ways in which dominant ideologies and public institutions like museums shape our understanding of history, the ways we accumulate knowledge, and how we regard the natural world. Appropriating archaeological and other scientific methods of collecting, ordering, and exhibiting objects, Dion creates works that question the distinctions between “objective” (“rational”) scientific methods and “subjective” (“irrational”) influences. The artist’s spectacular and often fantastical curiosity cabinets, modeled on Wunderkabinetts of the sixteenth century, are notable for their atypical orderings of objects and specimens. By locating the roots of environmental politics and public policy in the construction of knowledge about nature, Mark Dion questions the authoritative role of the scientific voice in contemporary society.

For The Macabre Treasury, Dion will transform Museum Het Domein’s contemporary art wing into a giant Wunderkabinett. The exhibition will be divided into various departments of a fictional museum. Dion’s macabre treasure chamber will thus include amongst others Departments of Zoology and Archeology, a Bureau of Museums and the Culture of Collections, a Hunting Salon, aCinematheque and a Cabinet of Mystery. As part of the exhibition of his own work, the artist will present a selection of objects from Museum Het Domein’s historical collection and from other local museums and archives. The objects vary from local archeological findings to an eleventh-century tree-trunk coffin with a female skeleton. As is the case with all of Dion’s presentations, the exhibition in Het Domein can be considered an attempt to restore something of our earlier notion of the universal museum with its hybrid combinations of different disciplines and fields of knowledge. Newly inciting the curiosity of the museum-goer is just as essential. The artist once proclaimed that museums should be restored to their roles as “powder kegs of the imagination.”

For more information and visuals, visit the museums homepage.

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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