Monthly Archives: March 2012

Warm winter, early blooms

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Kellie Gutman writes:

Our yearly collaboration with the Paideia School, in Atlanta Georgia has just wrapped up.  Each year they send a pre-written postcard, ready to be filled in with a date, for the first spotting of a blooming daffodil.  All of those who receive cards are within 5 miles of U.S. Route 1, which stretches from the southern tip of Florida to the northern tip of Maine.  As the cards return to the school, they are used by the  9- and 10-year olds to plot the advance of spring on a map.  When all the cards are in they use their maths skills to figure out the rate at which spring advances.

This year the winter was unseasonably warm on the east coast. In Boston, where the snowfall average is 41.3 inches, we have received only 9.1 inches.  This is only a tenth of an inch more than the least snowiest winter on record.

Last year the first daffodil was spotted on April 5th.  This year it was three and a half weeks earlier on March 12.  We will have to wait until all the cards have been returned to see if spring in general was much earlier this year.

See also:

 

“ashdenizen blog and twitter are consistently among the best sources for information and reflection on developments in the field of arts and climate change in the UK” (2020 Network)

ashdenizen is edited by Robert Butler, and is the blog associated with the Ashden Directory, a website focusing on environment and performance.
The Ashden Directory is edited by Robert Butler and Wallace Heim, with associate editor Kellie Gutman. The Directory includes features, interviews, news, a timeline and a database of ecologically – themed productions since 1893 in the United Kingdom. Our own projects include ‘New Metaphors for Sustainability’, ‘Flowers Onstage’ and ‘Six ways to look at climate change and theatre’.

The Directory has been live since 2000.

Go to The Ashden Directory

TippingPoint makes a step-change

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Wallace Heim writes: The TippingPoint last month, co-hosted by the Newcastle Institute for Research on Sustainability, made a step-change from previous TP events. Many of the same elements were there, but something shifted. Something sparked in the combination of TP’s open structure and those participants, those presentations, the talk, the room and the city. It felt as if many things were converging, and instead of being an event proposing or speculating that culture and the arts could be important responses to climate change, it was an event going with and propelling the diverse and energetic work that is being made, and being dreamt of.

The presentations in more conventional conference form, many now online, were provocative, each presenting a distinct direction and raising questions that filtered through the rest of the event. Kevin Anderson and Matt Ridley’s heated head-to-head (“Two men slugging it out over data” as one participant named it) exemplified adversarial strategies and the ways in which the ‘deniers’ and those who accept the consensus views of science tend to define one another’s arguments, leaving a blank between them. It also brought out the difficulties of seeing and critiquing the rhetoric and argumentation in debates that rely on scientific data.

Lucy Conway presented the artwork that is the Isle of Eigg, and how the population there is realising low-carbon, high socially and culturally benefitted living. Ben Twist from Zero Carbon Scotland +TBD, introduced the problem of whether art can, or should, be linked to behavioural change. Erica Whyman from Northern Stage showed how the major cultural organisations in Newcastle are collaborating across their business and institutional interests, and building a network that could include developing plans for material sustainability. The idea of organisational collaboration returned in Alan Davey’s announcement of Arts Council England’s decision to embed environmental sustainability into its funding agreement.

On the last day, Sue Gill, of Dead Good Guides led everyone in singing a version of ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful’ before John Fox gave his reflections on the transitions in art-making from commercialised spectacle to vernacular art, to ‘random acts of culture’. “Even if the markets fail, we must not tolerate the failure of imagination.”

The three days were planned to allow for chance conversations and random mixing in small groups, like the ‘Show and Tell’ session, where participants bring an object with meaning for them relating to climate change. Some of these personal and emotive exchanges drifted into the wider discussions. The three Open Space sessions had themes, the first two mostly ignored: ‘In what ways might I influence the future’ and ‘Exploring Possibilities’, in favour of people’s more immediate concerns. The third, ‘What am I going to do about the future’, drew out dozens of groups talking about their projects, and help that could be given to them.

The openness of TP makes reporting back very subjective. It did feel as if something happened, more than presentations and networking. The unrepeatable, and well-facilitated, combination of the people, the ideas, the timing came together to make an event that showed and advanced the many edges of social and artistic action.Audio recordings of the presentations, tweets, blogs, interviews and commentaries with participants and some of the evenings’ entertainment are on Amplified. Photos above posted on Amplified by quitexander.

“ashdenizen blog and twitter are consistently among the best sources for information and reflection on developments in the field of arts and climate change in the UK” (2020 Network)

ashdenizen is edited by Robert Butler, and is the blog associated with the Ashden Directory, a website focusing on environment and performance.
The Ashden Directory is edited by Robert Butler and Wallace Heim, with associate editor Kellie Gutman. The Directory includes features, interviews, news, a timeline and a database of ecologically – themed productions since 1893 in the United Kingdom. Our own projects include ‘New Metaphors for Sustainability’, ‘Flowers Onstage’ and ‘Six ways to look at climate change and theatre’.

The Directory has been live since 2000.

Go to The Ashden Directory

Review of Peter Fend’s “Über die Grenze: May Not Be Seen or Read or Done”

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Installation shot, courtesy of Essex Street

Colby Chamberlain’s intelligent review of Peter Fend’s show of current projects at Essex Street: Peter Fend’s “Über die Grenze: May Not Be Seen or Read or Done” | Art Agenda.

Extensive hi res documentation of the work on the Essex Street website.

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

Etienne de France – Tales of a Sea Cow

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2012, March 30 to June 24 – Parco Arte Vivente, Torino (Italy)

Curated by Annick Bureaud – Opening: March 29 at 6.30 pm

In a finis terrae like scenery – rarefied, cold and blurring – takes place the story of a scientific team engaged in a field research across the seas of Iceland and Greenland, in order to prove (at least in the form of sound recordings) the survival of some specimens of the “Steller’s Rhytine” – a marine mammal declared extinct. Science or science fiction?

Chronicle of an adventure as well as methodological exercise, the multimedia project by Etienne De France (living in Paris and Reykjavik) blurs reality and fiction, retracing and reshaping the traces of a world both virtual and potential, a plausible Otherwhere, which is mirror and metaphor of the Real.

Opening hours: from Wednesday to Friday, 1 pm – 6 pm ; Saturday and Sunday, 12 am – 19 pm
PAV – Parco Arte Vivente, Via Giordano Bruno 31.

Events:

  • Inner focus: March 28th, 5 pm, Accademia Albertina delle Belle Arti, via Accademia Albertina 6.  Speakers: Etienne de France, Massimo Melotti (ethics of communication) and Maria Teresa Roberto (phenomenology of contemporary arts).
  • Press conference: March 29th, 11 am, PAV – Parco Arte Vivente

Background

Collaborating with paleo-zoologists and biologists, the artist retraces every tiny detail concerning the existence of Steller’s rhytine and reconstructs its world – its habitat, the routes it used to follow, its behavioural patterns – trying to fill the void created by the animal’s extinction. Exploiting the latest scientific methods and techniques, De France imagines and follows a team of experts engaged in checking reports of some unexpected sightings, looking for confirmation, at least in the form of sound recordings, to prove the survival of some specimens of the long-lost Sirenian.

The result is a blend of science and fiction, a return to the atmosphere beloved of Jules Verne, in which elements of the real are interwoven with the dimension of the possible, perhaps with that of dreams.

Within the framework of PAV Educational and Teaching Activities, curated by Orietta Brombin, Tales of a Sea Cow becomes the starting point for the workshop Gulliver’s Travel, dedicated to exploring in depth the theme of otherness through the curious eyes of the traveler of the eighteenth-century literary genre.

In the area of education for young artists and adults in general, on Saturday June 2nd the theme will be taken up again by Piero Gilardi in a public workshop entitled Noi come animali (Us as animals).

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 – Environmental Humanities & the Challenge of Multidisciplinarity

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This call for papers articulates an argument for a broad, in the terms of the call multi-discipliary, approach to environmental issues.  The text of the call is a clear and cogent case for the involvement of a wide range of disciplines and positions to develop an ethics.

A Workshop at the 13th International Conference of the International Society for the Study of European Ideas, *“The Ethical Challenge of Multidisciplinarity: Reconciling ‘The Three Narratives’—Art, Science, and Philosophy”*

University of Cyprus, Nicosia, July 2 – 6, 2012

THEME OF THE WORKSHOP

Environmental issues are typically framed within public discourse as problems that require empirical information and technological solutions.  This paradigm holds not only scientific but also philosophical assumptions, most importantly that the real world is the one described by natural science, the world of scientific realism. In this worldview, all other disciplines (such as ethics, the qualitative social sciences, and politics and policy) are assimilated as “tools in the toolbox” used to solve the problems previously defined by Western science. The intensity of current environmental crises—especially global climate destabilization—energizes this focus on practical problem-solving and on technological and policy solutions within existing institutional, economic, and political frameworks. However, this approach fails to recognize that the humanistic disciplines, including philosophy, literature, and the arts, both construct and express knowledge of nature that exceeds the bounds of problem-solving and the ontology of scientific realism. Further, claims about nature that appeal to the authority of Western science, though masked as objective, are frequently deployed to undergird ideological constructions about race, class, gender, and nation; the authority to make claims about nature is inseparable from political power.

Underlying this default position of the natural sciences is the unexamined assumption that environmental problems are encountered independently of any context, values, history, or disciplinary biases.  Humanities scholars in the emerging fields of ecocriticism, environmental art, environmental philosophy, and related areas of inquiry vigorously challenge this assumption, arguing that our environmental problems are inescapably ethical, historical, and political. The very definitions of environmental problems at any given moment are a function of human ideas and negotiations that have a particular cultural location and history and that reflect specific concepts of ethical responsibility and justice. Consequently, the methods of the natural sciences, although necessary for meeting our environmental challenges, cannot replace the interpretive, critical, and artistic methods of the humanities. The emergence of the “environmental humanities,” as a multidisciplinary site of convergence within academic scholarship, responds to this need.

This workshop will engage with the emerging disciplines of the environmental humanities to pose a series of questions, including:

* How are the methods and epistemology of the humanities distinct from those of the empirical sciences?

* What would a genuinely interdisciplinary approach to questions of the environment look like, and how can this be negotiated within current institutional limitations?

* What impact can the humanities have on public discourse and political will in specific areas, such as environmental justice and climate change?

PROPOSAL SUBMISSIONS

Please submit two-page abstracts by email in Word format to the workshop organizers by*15 March 2012*. Each presenter will have 20 minutes and is asked to present rather than read a paper. Abstracts of accepted presentations will be circulated to the participants in advance of the conference.

CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS

Final versions of the papers (not to exceed 3,000 words, or 10 double-spaced pages, including notes) will be reviewed by the workshop organizers for possible publication in the conference proceedings.

THE CONFERENCE

This workshop is planned under the auspices of the 13th International Conference of the International Society for the Study of European Ideas, on the theme “The Ethical Challenge of Multidisciplinarity:

Reconciling ‘The Three Narratives’—Art, Science, and Philosophy.” For more information, visit ISSEI’s website at http://issei2012.haifa.ac.il/

THE VENUE

The workshop will be held at the University of Cyprus – Main Campus, Kallipoleos Avenue 75, Nicosia 2100 Cyprus.

WORKSHOP ORGANIZERS

Janet Fiskio, Environmental Studies, Oberlin College, jfiskio@oberlin.edu

Ted Toadvine, Philosophy and Environmental Studies, University of Oregon, toadvine@uoregon.edu

–

Ted Toadvine
uoregon.edu/~toadvine

Head, Department of Philosophy
Associate Professor, Philosophy& Environmental Studies
University of Oregon

Editor-in-Chief, Journal of Environmental Philosophy
ephilosophy.uoregon.edu

Co-Editor, Chiasmi International
filosofia.unimi.it/~chiasmi/

Editor, Ohio University Press Series in Continental Thought
ohioswallow.com/series/Series+in+Continental+Thought

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

TENTH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON NEW DIRECTIONS IN THE HUMANITIES

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Centre-Mont Royal, Montreal, Canada

14-16 June 2012

http://www.TheHumanities.com/Conference/

We are pleased to announce the Call-for-Papers for the Tenth International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities. The conference and its companion journal provide vibrant, intellectually stimulating spaces for scholars from all geographic and disciplinary areas to learn, converse, and create. The aim is to generate new knowledge about the nature of the humanities, building strongly on the past traditions of the humanities while setting a renewed agenda for the future.

Plenary speakers, who will address our special theme ‘Looking Forward: Humanities for the Future’, include:

  • * Diana Brydon – Canada Research Chair in Globalization and Cultural Studies; Director of the Research Centre for Globalization and Cultural Studies, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada
  • * Jean-Claude Guedon, Department of Comparative Literature, University of Montreal, Montreal, Canada
  • * Donna Palmateer Pennee – Dean, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, University of Western Ontario (Western University), London, Canada
  • * Stefan Sinclair, Digital Humanities, McGill University, Montreal, Canada

The Humanities Conference is held annually in different locations around the world. Over the past nine years, the Humanities Conference has established a reputation as a focal point for new ideas and new practices in humanities research and teaching. The conference was held at the Universidad de Granada, Spain in 2011; at the University of California, Los Angeles, USA in 2010; in Beijing, China in 2009; at the Fatih University, Istanbul, Turkey in 2008; at the American University of Paris in 2007; at the University of Carthage in Tunis in 2006; at Cambridge University in the UK in 2005; at the Monash University Centre in Prato, Italy in 2004; and at the University of the Aegean in Rhodes, Greece in 2003.

In addition to plenary speakers, the conference will also include numerous paper, workshop and colloquium presentations by practitioners, teachers and researchers. We invite you to respond to the conference Call-for-Papers. Presenters may choose to submit written papers for publication in The International Journal of the Humanities. If you are unable to attend the conference in person, virtual registrations are also available, which allow you to submit a paper for refereeing and possible publication in the journal.

Whether you are a virtual or in-person presenter at this conference, we also encourage you to present on the Humanities YouTube playlist. Please select the Online Sessions link on the conference website for further details. Additionally, please join our online conversation by subscribing to our monthly email newsletter and subscribing to our Facebook, RSS, or Twitter feeds at http://www.TheHumanities.com/ .

The deadline for the next round in the call for papers (a title and short abstract) is 5 April 2012. Future deadlines will be announced on the conference website after this date. Proposals are reviewed within two weeks of submission. Full details of the conference, including an online proposal submission form, may be found on the conference website at http://www.TheHumanities.com/Conference/ . Submissions are also open for Spanish language proposals and presentations.

We look forward to receiving your proposal and hope you will be able to join us in Montreal this June.

Yours Sincerely,

Tom Nairn

Globalism Institute, RMIT University

Melbourne, Australia

For the Advisory Board, International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities and International Journal of the Humanities

 

MARS (a play about mining) a work-in-progress performance 3/24

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Sat, March 24 @ Dixon Place*

9pm: have a drink with us in DP’s superb lobby bar

10:30pm: PERFORMANCE (run time approx. 30min)

Tickets $12 in advance, $15 at the door, $10 students/seniors

*Dixon Place, 161 Crystie St. btw. Rivington & Delancey

Featuring an all-male cast, a fusion of dance/fight choreography and a soundtrack of live percussion, MARS examines the complex issue of mining via a fictional allegory set on the volatile red planet. Based on the history of Appalachian coal mining and mythologies of war, MARS marks the sixth in our distinctive series of ecology-inspired Planet Plays.

conceived and directed by Jeremy Pickard

assisted by Stephanie Pistello

created & performed by Brian Belcinski, Tom Coiner, William Cook, Jon Erdman, Bill Felix, Brian Hashimoto,Daniel Kublick, Mike McNulty, Peter Waluk & Adam H. Weinert 

with original percussion by Adam Miller

Join us on March 24 for an exclusive excerpt from MARS, give us your feedback and chat with us about the transition from research to eco-play.  Your presence and response will be integral in the journey toward our first full draft production of MARS, set to premiere in December 2012.  

Call for Submissions – The Sustainability Review’s Final Issue of the School Year (March 27)

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The Sustainability Review (TSR) [http://www.thesustainabilityreview.org/], an online sustainability journal, is seeking submissions for its last issue of year, Spring 2012. TSR facilitates sustainability dialogue through four sections: art, opinion, features, and research.  We are an online journal edited and published by graduate students at Arizona State University and hosted by the university’s School of Sustainability.

Our publication welcomes short pieces that integrate environment, society, and economy to explore a better way forward for humankind. Please review the guidelines for word limits: http://www.thesustainabilityreview.org/submit/.

Submissions for this issue will be accepted until March 27, 2012 and will be published starting April 16, 2012. We look forward to hearing from you over the coming weeks.

Just released! Energy Conservation Audits for Six Performing Arts Facilities

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Between May and October 2011, Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, Factory Theatre, Tafelmusik, Tarragon Theatre, Theatre Passe Muraille, and Toronto Dance Theatre/STDT provided a year’s worth of utilities bills for analysis. The Energy Conservation Audits report is the first step in Toronto’s Green Theatres,  a concerted approach to greening performing facilities in Toronto.

Measures taken to green Toronto theatres will result in improved working and public environments – along with significant energy savings over time. Each of the participating companies received detailed, practical recommendations that will help them integrate greening into their facility upkeep and repair and renovation plans.

 Toronto’s Green Theatres is the first arts sector initiative of its kind in Canada and a possible model for other communities. Like all Creative Trust’s work, it was developed collaboratively and will rely on our collective muscle for its success. We thank both Toronto’s Cultural Services and Energy Efficiency Offices, which have been wonderfully supportive of our plans to work across our sector to reduce theatres’ carbon footprints. We hope that our results will act as a catalyst for changing awareness and behavior around one of the most compelling issues of our day.

FULL ARTICLE

Call for Submissions: Cultural Mapping as Cultural Inquiry

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Cultural mapping, which spans many academic disciplines and methodologies, is informed by the observation that cultural phenomena are distributed spatially and that people experience the symbolic resources of their communities in spatial terms. While cultural mapping is firmly grounded in the world of academic disciplines and inquiry, it has a pragmatic dimension as well. In the Creative City Network of Canada’s Cultural Mapping Toolkit, for example, Cultural Mapping is defined pragmatically as “a process of collecting, recording, analyzing and synthesizing information in order to describe the cultural resources, networks, links and patterns of usage of a given community or group.” Cultural mapping is generally regarded as a systematic tool to identify and record local cultural assets—and these assets are thought of as “tangible” or quantitative (physical spaces, cultural organizations, public forms of promotion and self-representation, programs, cultural industries, natural heritage, cultural heritage, people, and resources) and “intangible” or qualitative (community narratives, values, relationships, rituals, traditions, history, shared sense of place). Together these assets help define communities in terms of cultural identity, vitality, sense of place, and quality of life.

Cultural mapping, then, is a theoretically informed research practice and a highly pragmatic planning and development tool.  But cultural mapping can also be viewed as a form of cultural production and expression. Mapping can itself be cultural—that is, animated by artists and artistic approaches to mapping collective and competing senses of place, space, and community. The Folkvine project in Florida (and the work of the Florida Research Ensemble generally); the memory mapping work of Marlene Creates and Ernie Kroeger; the storymapping of First Nations experiences in small cities documented by the Small Cities CURA; Map Art and Diagram Art from the Surrealists to the Situationists to the work of contemporary artists; Sound Mapping, sonic geographies, and acoustic ecology research: these alternative approaches to mapping culture and community are helping to expand and refine the possibilities for mapping as a form of cultural inquiry.

The editors of Cultural Mapping as Cultural Inquiry seek submissions that address cultural mapping in all its forms and applications. Abstracts and inquiries should be sent by March 30, 2012 to Dr. W.F. Garrett-Petts, Faculty of Arts, Thompson Rivers University: petts@tru.ca

Editors for the refereed book publication (to be published jointly by the Centro de Estudos Sociais at the University of Coimbra, Textual Studies in Canada and the Small Cities Community-University Research Alliance): David MacLennan, W.F. Garrett-Petts, and Nancy Duxbury.

Centro de Estudos Sociais: www.ces.uc.pt

The Small Cities CURA: www.smallcities.ca