Strands

Collaboration: Improving the Model

This post comes to you from EcoArtScotland

Steep Trail image

Steep Trail Conference - Collaboration : Improving the Model

12 June 2013
9.30-4.00
Brunton Theatre, Ladywell Way, Musselburgh, EH21 6AA

The event is free but places must be booked. To book your place email admin@edinburghsculpture.org or call Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop on 0131 551 4490.

The nature of collaboration, particularly cross-disciplinary, is examined with a view to asking how current models of collaboration function, and ways in which they could be improved.

This day-long conference is being organised as part of Steep Trail, an international project set up by Polarcap, Fife Contemporary Art & Craft and Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop, to explore the legacy of John Muir and his continuing relevance to current environmental and cultural debate in the 21st century with a keynote speech by Dr Iain Biggs of the University of the West of England and chaired by Ben Twist of Creative Carbon Scotland.

The project has developed through several strands, art/eco labs were established along the East coast of Scotland which brought together artists, scientists and environmental activists to follow John Muir’s example of physical and intellectual exploration through walking and talking. Participants met over two days to discuss their work within the contexts of climate change, public dissemination and social impact. Talks about the project have allowed other organisations within and outside of Scotland to use this model, and artist exchanges and exhibitions set up between China and Scotland in 2012 have widened the context of the discussion.

Using themes identified from these activities, the conference seeks to bring together strands of shared concerns between artists, scientists and writers including conservation, sustainability, climate change and the role of contemporary art in helping to foster effective dialogues.

Ben Twist (Chair): Carbon and Arts Management Consultant, Creative Carbon Scotland

Dr Iain Biggs: Director PLaCE, University of the West of England

Prof David Munro: Historical geographer, author of ‘Scotland: An Encyclopedia of Places and Landscape’

Mary Modeen, artist and Senior Lecturer in Fine art and Art and Philosophy at the University of Dundee. Convener PLaCE, Scotland

Claudia Zeiske, Director Deveron Arts,

Rania Ho, artist in Beijing, Co-founder of Arrow Factory, Partner at Kupa Studios, Steep Trail exchange artist to Scotland

Graeme Todd, artist, co-founder of Polarcap and Steep Trail exchange artist to China

Dr Alexandra Wortley, Royal Botanic Gardens and Hamer Dodds, artist, cross disciplinary practitioners

Chris Fremantle, producer, researcher, writer cultural historian,

Supported by Steep Trail Project, University of Edinburgh: Knowledge Exchange, East Lothian Arts Services: ELC and Creative Scotland

How to get there:

Location

Transport options:

Train,

Lothian Buses (26, 44) 30-40 mins from outside Waverley Station Edinburgh.

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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Environmental Art Festival Scotland – call for proposals and partners

This post comes to you from EcoArtScotland

Wide Open together with Spring Fling

Landscape, Chris Fremantle

Landscape, Chris Fremantle

and The Stove have launched a call for proposals and partners for Scotland’s first Environmental Art Festival Scotland.

The deadline for all strands is Thursday 22 March 2013.

There are several strands:

Open Call for Ideas – ideas for artworks that connect aspects of land, sustainability, energy, coast, rural living, Biosphere, Dark Skies, climate change, ecosystem services, transport, etc. and are relevant or connected to Dumfries and Galloway.  These could be small or large ideas.  Proposals are invited from any discipline.

Ten ideas will be selected to receive small grants towards their development.  They will be included in the Environmental Art Festival in some form (depending on the stage of development).

Commissions – temporary installations for the duration of the festival (30 August to 2 September 2013) addressing the theme of “energy and the land”.  There is a budget of £5,000 for each commission.  Commissions can be across a wide range of media including visual art, sound, film, digital media, text based or combinations.  The Environmental Art Festival is looking to demonstrate cutting edge art practices engaged with ecology, nature or land art which is moving, meaningful and dynamic.  The

Venues, Places, Organisations – Wide Open is interested in hearing from Venues, Places or Organisations with existing or planned activity that fits with the themes of the Environmental Art Festival.

Full Call is here.

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

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Open call – Museum of Arte Útil

This post comes to you from Cultura21

dec6_queens_logoThe Museum of Arte Útil is a collaboration between the artist Tania Bruguera, theQueens Museum of Art, New York and the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, the Netherlands. The Museum of Arte Útil is the result of Tania Bruguera’s decade of research into a concept that emphasizes effectiveness and implementation over representation, looking at historical and contemporary examples of alternative strands in socially informed art practice.

Útil as a term refers to something being useful. But it goes further than the English translation, encompassing the idea of a tool or device. Bruguera states that “Arte Útil moves beyond a propositional format, into one that actively creates, develops and implements new functionalities to benefit society at large.”

The project will comprise research, an online platform, an association of Arte Útil practitioners, a series of public projects, a lab presentation at the Queens Museum of Art beginning in February 2013, culminating in the transformation of the old building of the Van Abbemuseum into the Museum of Arte Útil in the Fall of 2013 and a publication. The aim is to present a survey of past and present projects that are rooted in the notion of art’s use to its users and to society at large. Central to the project’s various forms is this open call.

The notion of what constitutes Arte Útil has been arrived at via a set of criteria that Bruguera and the participating museums’ curators have formulated. These criteria will set the parameters of the project and its working methodology. Arte Útil projects should:

  1. Propose new uses for art within society
  2. Challenge the field within which it operates (civic, legislative, pedagogical, scientific, economic, etc)
  3. Be ‘timing specific’, responding to current urgencies
  4. Be implemented and function in real situations
  5. Replace authors with initiators and spectators with users
  6. Have practical, beneficial outcomes for its users
  7. Pursue sustainability whilst adapting to changing conditions
  8. Re-establish aesthetics as a system of transformation

The public is invited to submit information on past or ongoing projects that align with these criteria. Submitted projects should meet as many of these criteria as possible. The selected projects will be listed on the website, to be launched in February and will be considered for inclusion in the artist association, the exhibition at the Queens Museum, the Van Abbemuseum, and/or the publication. Projects can be submitted by anyone, from any field, and need not be submitted by the initiators of the project.

The deadline for project submissions is 15th February 2013.

Click here for the submission form.

For questions, contact: opencall [at] arteutil [dot] 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

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Growing Communities pick-up point in the Dalston Eastern Curve Garden

Sustainability embodies many facets; entwined in the common strands of energy and water efficiency and cutting carbon emissions sits food. As a nation a lot of the food we consume is non-seasonal and has to be imported. This has a tremendous impact on the environment through transportation pollution from increased food miles. We could easily make changes to our eating habits and more carefully choose the foods we eat to include more fresh locally produced seasonal produce. Making this change would have many benefits, such as supporting the local economy, reducing food miles and therefore environmental damage, involving local community groups in producing the food, and encouraging healthy eating.

In Hackney, this change is made easier for you by the work that Growing Communities does. It is a social enterprise which runs community-led box schemes that build community-led alternatives to the current damaging food system. In short, community groups grow vegetables which are delivered in boxes to various pick-up points in Hackney which you then go and collect. How does this work? You choose the size of your box, you place a standing order, and this guarantees you a box of fresh vegetables each week! This is a fantastic idea which means you are eating seasonal locally produced food, from carrots to cucumbers and leeks to beetroot, and lies at the core of the importance of sustainability.

We would like to know your thoughts of this scheme and whether you would use a Growing Communities pick-up point in the Dalston Eastern Curve Garden.

If you would like to know more about the scheme or to place an order, click on the link below:
http://www.growingcommunities.org/organic-box-scheme/pick-up-points/

If you are interested in a possible pick up point in the Dalston Eastern Curve Garden, please email: boxscheme@growingcommunities.org

Below is a link to the Eastern Curve garden where you could soon be collecting your veg boxes from!
http://www.dalstongarden.com/

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Tidal Elements

{Sample / Laminaria digitata by Deborah Wing-Sproul}

These are beautiful: knitted strands of seaweed and rolled up kelp balls by Deborah Wing-Sproul. Part of an ongoing work since 2004, this investigation into North Atlantic tidal culture takes the form of objects (such as those pictured here) and performances. More at deborahwingsproul.com.

 

{Raw/Laminaria digitata by Deborah Wing-Sproul}

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