Monthly Archives: May 2012

Tom Toles wedding cartoon

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Copyright (c) The Washington Post

This post comes to you from Ashden Directory Kellie Gutman writes: Pulitzer-Prize-winning Washington Post cartoonist Tom Toles‘ latest cartoon on climate change. Toles has been nominated three times for the Pulitzer Prize in Editorial Cartooning, winning in 1990.  He replaced the legendary cartoonist Herblock at the Washington Postin 2002. Toles’ cartoons are syndicated in over 200 newspapers.  He is known for tackling complicated subjects such as environmental issues.  He often includes a small doodle, a caricature of himself, in the corner.

“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

Call for Papers “Creative Communities 3: Risks & Possibilities”

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This post comes to you from Cultura21

September 26th- 28th 2012 – Gold Coast, Australia

Hosted by Griffith University Centre for Cultural Research

‘Creative communities’ is a well-worn phrase conventionally equated with notions of well-being, civic participation and social inclusion. Creativity in this sense is regarded as social glue that bonds individuals together through collaboration in various forms of creative projects – be it visual art, drama, dance, theatre,music, writing or a combination of these. that bring communities together in positive and fulfilling ways.

Similarly, community connotes a wholehearted feeling, the strength of relationships in networks or inclusiveness through a sense of shared characteristics and values.

There is now a significant body of practice, policy and academically focused work that highlights the importance of the ‘creative community’ in fostering community well-being. At the same time, however, the term creative community throws up a number of questions that remain largely unaddressed in existing research, for example;

  • How does creativity actually impact community?
  • What is lost when the term ‘creative communities’ is imposed on place?
  • How are decisions on processes of inclusion / exclusion in creative practices made and who controls such decisions?
  • What happens to a creative community when access to resources that facilitate its creativity are lost or compromised and what sort of factors can contribute to this – e.g socio-economic change, civil unrest, urban redevelopment, shifts in state and government policy?

Call for Proposals

Griffith Centre for Cultural Research invites proposal submissions from scholars, artists & cultural workers, designers, urban designers, architects and policy makers interested in presenting oral papers, presentations, interactive workshops, panels or roundtable discussions on the following Conference themes;

1. Creative Communities At Risk

  • Perceptions of societal danger- Aversion and subversive behaviour
  • Individual versus collective risk and possibility between invisibility and presence
  • Laws and regulations and their impact or influence on creative communities

2. Itineraries of engagement

  • Creative Practice and cultural indicators in policy making
  • Idealization and leadership
  • Professional versus hobbyist perspectives of creative practice
  • Public events as catalysts for community
  • Observing and evaluating participation in creative engagement
  • Possibilities of participation- gatekeepers

3.Transcultural dialogues

  • Emergent global creativities
  • Community, creativity and post transnational trauma -, for example, 9/11- Bali bombing, London ‘youth’ riots, Black Friday Victorian bush fires
  • Cultural tourism /mis-tourism
  • Asia Pacific heritage ·dialogues

4. Politics of networks

  • Digital social networking (lived environments versus online/virtual)
  • Politics, kinship, and the role of communities /Creative geographies, ecologies and networks
  • Migration of skills and experience (migrants/refugees, professional arts workers, skills exchange learning, mentors and novice)
  • Flexible and local forums and networks, complexity in varied contexts
  • Hard-to-reach’ membership cohorts.

5. Diversity and inclusion: Creativity as a catalyst for reconciling difference Social Sustainability and the creative artist: socially responsible creative commitment

  • Personal Development as a liberating force: confidence building in community sub groups
  • Collaboration: reliable interdependence: links through non-political non-biased creativity
  • Transparency and ownership: who owns the project
  • Old and skilled/young and skilled: forging links and breaking down generational barriers

Proposals due 23rd June 2012 to gccr [at] griffith [dot] edu [dot] au

Please use this form to submit your application.

Applicants will be notified of the acceptance of abstracts by 20th July 2012 at the latest.

For more information, click here

For program updates, please visit http://ps3beta.com/project/8334

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

U.S. Energy Secretary Chu on The Avengers

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This post comes to you from Ashden Directory
Kellie Gutman writes:

Steven Chu, the 12th Secretary of Energy for the United States, has a post on his Facebook page about the new movie, The Avengers. Though his friends are not listed, he does have 18,963 ‘likes’ on his page. Chu lists his job:

As Secretary of Energy, proudly carrying out President Obama’s ambitious agenda to invest in alternative and renewable energy, reduce our dependence on foreign oil, and create millions of new jobs.

About The Avengers  he says:

‘[It] focuses on a new, limitless clean energy source called ‘The Tesseract.”… While the “Tesseract” may be fictional, the real-life global competition over clean energy is growing increasingly intense, as countries around the world sense a huge economic opportunity AND the opportunity for cleaner air, water, and a healthier planet…’

“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

Manifesta 9

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This post comes to you from Cultura21

Opening on June 2nd 2012 and running until September 30th 2012, Manifesta 9 takes place in the former coalmining complex of Waterschei in Genk, Limburg, Belgium.

Manifesta 9 is an assembly of artworks, testimonies, and participants inviting the viewer to rethink the role of culture in industrial and post-industrial societies. For its ninth edition, which take place in Limburg, Belgium, the curatorial team, composed of Cuauhtémoc Medina (México), Katherina Gregos (Greece) and Dawn Ades (U.K.) has developed a concept creating a dialogue between different layers of art, heritage and history.

The point of departure of Manifesta 9 is the significance of the former coalmining region of the Belgian Campine, as a locus for different imaginary and ecological issues associated with industrial capitalism as a global phenomenon.

For more information about Manifesta 9, you can visit their website : http://manifesta9.org

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

ASTR Working Session Calls for Papers “Trans-cultural, trans-national, trans-species histories in performance”

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This post comes to you from Cultura21

Since their first American Society for The Theatre Research (ASTR) Working Group session at the 2010 conference in Seattle, the Performance and Ecology Working Group has spawned symposia, anthologies, and publications. Foremost among those is a new volume that grew out of the 2010 session: Readings in Performance and Ecology, eds., Wendy Arons and Theresa J. May (Palgrave 2012). The Working Group has continued valuable research on numerous fronts, including “Earth Matters on Stage” conference at Carnegie Mellon University (2012) and “Staging Sustainability” at York University (2011).

“The rising tide of this focused research indicate not only a growing concern and mounting artistic will in the realm of ecological sensibility, but also faith in the imagination as a critical aspect of our individual and collective ecological identities.”

This year, as part of ASTR’s “Theatrical Histories” focus, they turn their attention to trans-cultural, trans-national, and trans-species performance in anticipation of a second volume of ecocritical writings on theatre and performance. The questions for the upcoming 2012 Working Group session, that will take place November 1st.- 4th 2012 include:

  •  How do transcultural and transnational performances re-map our understanding of what May has called “ecodramaturgy”?
  •  What constitutes “theatre of species” (Chaudhuri) and how might these trans-species performances rearrange or reinterpret understandings of representation?
  •  How do the material characteristics of artistic sites condition the aesthetics of the work produced?
  •  What kinds of geological and geographical histories emerge alongside socio-cultural storytelling?
  •  How do intersecting histories – indigenous, place-based, community-driven – play out on stage in performance?
  •  How do ecological transitions, transmigrations, transmutations, transformations and transference shape artistic practice and meaning-making in the theatre?
  •  Other questions, approaches and topics that clearly address trans-national, trans-cultural, trans-species topics in performance.

Please send Abstracts as word attachments to both Working Group conveners below by May 31, 2012:

Theresa May, University of Oregon ( tmay33 [at] uoregon [dot] edu)

Nelson Gray, University of Victoria ( ncgray [at] uvic [dot] ca)

 More info: http://www.astr.org/conference/2012-working-session-cfps

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

Talking about climate change

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Jason's story

This post comes to you from Ashden Directory

Wallace Heim writes: 

One of the explanations offered for why climate change is not more prominent in people’s thinking is that it’s not physically seen. It doesn’t feel ‘real’ enough.

But a different view comes out in the stories people tell about how climate change is immediately altering their everyday lives. The climate is changing how they feel about the world and their decisions about what to do.

Project ASPECT, based at University College Falmouth, is gathering people’s stories about climate change from individuals and communities in Wales, northern England, London and Cornwall. Building a digital narrative archive, they are capturing on DVD how people talk about the climate in the context of their everyday lives.

There are those who watch. Heather continues the diary her mother started, recording every day what work is done on the family farm and the weather. Duncan and Matt are surfers in Cornwall, watching the storms. There are those who work with renewable energy, or, like Hanna, find green jobs for young people. Many are changing the way they grow food and eat: Mary from Incredible Edible; Owen with his backyard in Peckham; and masked night-time Ninja guerrilla gardeners. Singers, rappers, athletes tell their stories. Spontaneous acts of community kindness sit alongside the meticulous work of digitising the weather reports from World War I ship’s logs.

In these stories of everyday life, there is a cultural reality emerging, soft-voiced, but pressing.

“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

I-LAND X-ISLE – Latai Taumoepeau

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Sydneysiders and visitors to the Harbour City can explore the impact of climate change on island communities through this large-scale performance installation by Tongan Islander, Latai Taumoepeau. Large blocks of ice, suspended using traditional Tongan architectural lashing techniques for binding, will draw connections between melting ice glaciers and rising sea levels. Lanai says that she attended the UN Climate Change Conference in Bali in 2007, and thereafter decided to “extend the voice of our invisible pacific people through my artistic practice.”

 In her own words… “My name is Latai Taumoepeau, I am a performance artist with a new performance installation campaign called i-Land X-isle. It is about the impact of climate change on vulnerable indigenous communities from the arctic to coastal low lying islands. My body will be bound by rope to a 2 tonne block of ice to parallel the experience of already impacted people of human induced climate change to a form of water torture, that is imposed by developing countries. It will be live and a durational performance over 2 days.

I humbly invite you… to use my public art spectacle as a platform to raise wider awareness of communities already impacted by human induced climate change and instructions of how ordinary citizens can change to minimise and cease harm to Australia’s nearest coastal neighbours all the way to the Arctic.”

Faka’apa’apa Atu (with respect), Latai Taumoepeau

When: 26 & 27th May 2012

Time: 10am – 12noon & 2pm – 4pm

Where: Museum of Contemporary Art – Circular Quay Sydney. 

(outdoors on the forecourt).

http://www.mca.com.au/events/i-land-x-isle-latai-taumoepeau/

Be a gathering! The Natural Circus trainings, Spring 2012

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This post comes to you from Cultura21

‘I am movement and stillness at the same time’

The Natural Circus trainings are a body and movement practice (and maybe a bit more), embedded in an understanding that ‘nothing lasts, nothing is finished, nothing is perfect’.

Situated in a powerful natural environment, they are playful gatherings beyond the human(-centered) perspective that may help realize the complete interdependence and interconnectedness of the human being with the natural world – until what remains is dance only. The trainings integrate elements of Contact Improvisation, Physical Theater, Tango, Bodywork, Meditation, Deep Ecology and Nature Awareness Work, Taoist/Advaita/Zen philosophy.

This 4-days gathering will take place in Barnave/Diois, France; from May 24th to the 28th, and will feature Diethild Meier (Dancer, improviser, visual artist), Lars Schmidt (Wandering Monk, Natural Thinker, Improviser) and Romain Petit (Freeclimber and climbing teacher).

The cost of the gathering is 240€, housing on site (Le Serre) included, in two rustic apartments, food will be extra, shared and prepared together. The number of participants is limited to 12 persons

For more information, go to Natural Circus´ website.

Registration: contact [at] passiveactivism [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

Sustainability in Theater Conference Recordings Online Now!

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Sustainability in Theater: People, Planet, Profit, Purpose

A blended conference dedicated to providing tangible, practical strategies to implementing greener theater practices, ensuring theaters remain a vital part of our community.

Day One (WEBCASTED LIVE): Learn

A full day of learning and networking, featuring sustainability experts, sustainability in theater pioneers and success stories.

All Day One activities were broadcast online – and are NOW AVAILABLE.

Please find the recording of the conference online! http://bnw.qwikcast.tv/

Climate Change Theory

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This post comes to you from EcoArtScotland

Thanks to Alison Bell for drawing attention to this.

OPEN HUMANITIES PRESS is delighted to announce the publication of two new open access books in its Critical Climate Change series:

TELEMORPHOSIS: THEORY IN THE ERA OF CLIMATE CHANGE, vol. 1
edited by Tom Cohen (University at Albany)
Freely available here

The writers in the volume explore how the 21st century horizons that exceed any political, economic, or conceptual models alter or redefine a series of key topoi. These range from figures of sexual difference through to bioethics, care, species invasion, war, post-carbon thought, ecotechnics and time. As such, the volume is also a dossier on what metamorphoses await the legacies of “humanistic” thought in adapting to, or rethinking, the other materialities that impinge of contemporary “life as we know it.”

Introduction: Murmurations-”Climate Change” and the Defacement of Theory by Tom Cohen

  1. Time by Robert Markley
  2. Ecotechnics by J. Hillis Miller
  3. Care by Bernard Stiegler
  4. Unicity by Justin Read
  5. Scale by Timothy Clark
  6. Sexual Indifference by Claire Colebrook
  7. Nonspecies Invasion by Jason Groves
  8. Bioethics by Joanna Zylinska
  9. Post-Trauma by Catherine Malabou
  10. Ecologies of War by Mike Hill
  11. Notes Toward a Post-Carbon Philosophy by Martin McQuillan
  12. Health by Eduardo Cadava and Tom Cohen

IMPASSES OF THE POST-GLOBAL: THEORY IN THE ERA OF CLIMATE CHANGE, vol. 2
edited by Henry Sussman (Yale University)
Freely available here

The diverse materials comprising Impasses of the Post-Global take as their starting point an interrelated, if seemingly endless, sequence of current ecological, demographic, socio-political, economic, and informational disasters. These include the contemporary discourses of climate change, ecological imbalance and despoilment, sustainability, security, economic bailout, auto-immunity, and globalization itself.

Introduction: Spills, Countercurrents, Sinks by Henry Sussman and Jason Groves

  1. Anecographics: Climate Change and “Late” Deconstruction by Tom Cohen
  2. Autopoiesis and the Planet by Bruce Clarke
  3. Of Survival: Climate Change and Uncanny Landscape in the Photography of Subhankar Banerjee by Yates McKee
  4. Global Warming as a Manifestation of Garbage by Tian Song
  5. The Physical Reality of Water Shapes by James H. Bunn
  6. Sacrifice Mimesis, and the Theorizing of Victimhood (A Speculative Essay) by Rey Chow
  7. Security: From “National” to “Homeland” … and Beyond by Samuel Weber
  8. Common Political Democracy: The Marrano Register by Alberto Moreiras
  9. Bare Life by Ewa Plonowska Ziarek
  10. Sustainability by Haun Saussy
  11. The Global Unworld: A Meditative Manifesto by Krzysztof Ziarek
  12. Bailout by Randy Martin
  13. Auto-Immunity by Henry Sussman

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