Gemma Lloyd has put together this list of 10 artists responding on the Respond! site, which includes Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty, a slightly scratchy talk on Walter De Maria’s Lightning Field, film of Aleksandra Mir creating her First Woman On The Moon and this one by Tomas Saraceno:
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I’m really pleased to say that the RSA Arts & Ecology site is hosting a new artwork. It’s a collaborative piece of poetry created by Melanie Challenger and John Kinsella called Dialogue between the body and the soul.
The idea came from a reading that both poets were invited to in New York in 2007. Though they had worked together — John had edited Melanie’s debut collection — they’d never actually met, so the event would have given them both that chance. Kinsella lives in Australia; Challenger lives in the UK. But both were becoming increasingly uneasy about the idea of artists travelling internationally just to give readings of their own work.
In the end, neither travelled to New York. Instead, they’ve decided to create this collaborative work which comes from their decisions to eschew air travel for such events.
The first poem arrived in my email box yesterday; it’s posted on the site today, initiating the exchange. Take a look. I’m loving the idea of seeing a piece of work like this evolve in my email inbox.
You can link to the poems here tinurl.com/dialoguepoems.
Photo: Roger Bishop
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ISSUE #2 SPRING 2009: LIVING WITH THE CITY
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As the world’s population is increasingly concentrated in urban centers, how we choose to interact, develop and live in these cities will only become more important. With a variety of perspectives but by no means comprehensive, we hope this issue offers new ideas, directions and ways of understanding urban life.
 Mammut Magazine // Exploring the intersection of art and nature.
The poets Melanie Challenger and John Kinsella have vowed never to take transatlantic flights to promote their work. For practitioners of a form which often struggles for wider attention, to restrict themselves this way has been a difficult decision. In this new commission for RSA Arts & Ecology, they are collaborating over the next few weeks in an extraordinary exchange of poems that explores their decision. The poems are published online as they arrive.
Go to RSA Arts & Ecology