Monthly Archives: January 2016

A Magical Cardboard for Forrest by French Artist Eva Jospin

MELD

This post comes from MELD

Sculptor Eva Jospin constantly reinvents the idea of what a forest is over and over again. She cuts, layers, arranges, glues and builds cardboard into different interpretations of The Woods. Her pieces range from smaller 2D pictures compiled from dense sticks, branches and flaky bits of wood, to life size 3D installations that you are invited into, and can move around within. For Jospin, cardboard is just the medium for a larger message; these trees express many things:

The forest – an incarnation of nature in the wild – is above all the setting in traditional storytelling of tests of courage, and can be a gloomy or initiatory place. The forest is also where one encounters oneself. This walk through the forest initiates the visit to ‘ Inside’, which is also an inner journey. (Interview with Eva Jospin Palais de Tokyo)

Jospin uses a material that is not only durable, robust, strong, and supportive, but also fragile, impermanent, raw and insubstantial. She plays on these two points of view – they mirror the actual qualities of trees, nature and our relationship to it. These poetic attachments to Josie’s Forest pieces isn’t lost on her critics either:

To look at a forest is an optical experience that challenges the typical laws of perspective in western representation. Facing visually the depth of a forest means to forget the horizon, it means to get lost. And is not the danger of getting lost the only risk tied up to that natural labyrinth that is a forest? (Interview Eva Jospi at Galerie Piece Unique)

The post, A Magical Cardboard for Forrest by French Artist Eva Jospin, appeared first on MELD.
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meld is an ongoing interactive global art platform and collaborative catalyst to commission, produce and present ground-breaking and evocative works of art embedded in the issues and consequences of climate change. meld invites exceptional artists and innovative thinkers dedicated to the moving image and committed to fostering awareness and education to join us in our campaign for social change. Through a collaborative dialogue, we hope to provoke new perceptions, broaden awareness and education and find creative solutions concerning climate change, its consequences and its solutions.

meld was formed by a devoted group of individuals guided by a passionate belief in the power of art to convey personal experience and cultivate social progress. meld is inspired by the idea that when art melds into the public realm, it has the power to reach people beyond the traditional limitations of class, age, race and education and encourage public action.

Go to MELD

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Street Artists and Muralists to Paint All 314 Threatened North American Birds

MELD

This post comes from MELD

The National Audubon Society estimates that there are more than 800 birds in North America, though it has only collected and analyzed data on just over 590 of these animals. Of these catalogued avian species, 314 birds are classified as threatened; much of this threat is attributable to human-caused climate change. These numbers are behind the National Audubon Society’s collaboration with gallerist Avi Gitler for the Audubon Mural Project, which encourages street artists and muralists to create works that feature the climate-threatened birds.

As Audubon Society Vice President of Content Mark Jannot tells GOOD, the mural project grew out of theAudubon Birds and Climate Change Report, published in 2014, which detailed how climate change is impacting North American birds. It has grown from a few dozen murals to hundreds, painted on security gates and building exteriors around Manhattan, with a vast array of street artists and muralists enlisted from New York City and beyond.

Jonnot and Gitler came to work together on the Audubon Mural Project when the two were introduced by Jonnot’s neighbor, artist Tom Sanford. Gitler told Sanford he had decided to ask artists to paint about 10 roll-down security gates in his Harlem neighborhood. He already knew that John James Audubon, the famed ornithologist and naturalist, had spent the last years of his life in this very same uptown area, so Sanford suggested Gitler talk to Jonnot about a possible collaboration with the National Audubon Society.

Sanford also suggested that Gitler ask street artists and muralists to paint only climate-threatened birds. But it was Jannot who upped the ante by hitting on the idea of painting all 314 threatened birds. Jannot admits the monumental task was undertaken with “gleeful abandon,” but that they were determined to find a way to run it as a cost-neutral enterprise.

Ultimately, there won’t be 314 murals, Jonnot explains. Instead, the team is committed to 254 murals that will include all 314 species of threatened birds. Currently, there are approximately 24 murals representing about 36 birds. As for the variety of street artists and muralists, Jonnot said they range between various locales and styles.

“Because we’ve been able to find recesses in sides of buildings where we can mount paintings that have been painted in studios, we’ve been able to work with studio artists who aren’t as comfortable painting in real-time on the street, as well as street artists and major wall-mural painters,” Jonnot explains. “It’s a pretty big range. We’ve had a lot of interest from artists all over the country when they heard about it. We tell them we can’t fly them in but to let us know when they’re coming through town.”

 

The post, Street Artists and Muralists to Paint All 314 Threatened North American Birds, appeared first on MELD.
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meld is an ongoing interactive global art platform and collaborative catalyst to commission, produce and present ground-breaking and evocative works of art embedded in the issues and consequences of climate change. meld invites exceptional artists and innovative thinkers dedicated to the moving image and committed to fostering awareness and education to join us in our campaign for social change. Through a collaborative dialogue, we hope to provoke new perceptions, broaden awareness and education and find creative solutions concerning climate change, its consequences and its solutions.

meld was formed by a devoted group of individuals guided by a passionate belief in the power of art to convey personal experience and cultivate social progress. meld is inspired by the idea that when art melds into the public realm, it has the power to reach people beyond the traditional limitations of class, age, race and education and encourage public action.

Go to MELD

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Fields of Green Launches EP at Celtic Connections

Creative Carbon Scotland

This post comes from Creative Carbon Scotland

Back in 2007, while on tour with cult singer-songwriter Vashti Bunyan, sitting on her third aeroplane of the day in a holding pattern above an American city, Jo Mango had a revelation about the potential impact of her itinerant job on the world and on herself. That moment led to some serious decisions about her lifestyle and an ongoing fascination with exploring the unsustainability of the musical life.

The EP’s title is an extension of those thoughts into a research project for which Jo enlisted the help of leading Scottish singer-songwriters Rachel Sermanni, RM Hubbert, Louis Abbott (Admiral Fallow) and The Pictish Trail. The songs they have written together explore a gamut of emotions related to travel, the environment and music.

The title “Wrack Lines” refers to the name given to the waving line of detritus that is left on the beach when the tide goes out. It calls to mind images of travelling across the ocean, but also the unmistakable residue of waste that is left behind us when we do. It is also an image of the creation of music (which itself is made from waves).

There are songs that are an expression of the need to keep moving and to keep finding new audiences to gain the kind of catharsis that makes life worth living. Others explore the off-kilter rhythms of living on the road. There is the tension between the material and the ephemeral: loneliness and exhaustion of constant travelling versus the uplifting glories of musical performance; the concrete and objective nature of the resources that we use up in order to reach audiences versus the unmeasurable and immaterial aspects of the music that is given back in return.

Each songwriter was tracked as they travelled across the 2015 festival season. Maps of their movement were used as the basis for the artwork (created by illustrator and designer Helen Kellock).

It was in snatches of time between those miles that the EP was recorded, wherever the artists’ paths could cross. Between the five of them they travelled approximately 118,000 passenger miles and generated 19,314kg of CO2 emissions. It’s a carbon footprint for the songwriting quintet which will leave its mark, in song and in Wrack Lines.

Wrack Lines will be released on CD and on digital format through Olive Grove Records on 15 January 2016. Rachel Sermanni, Louis Abbott, RM Hubbert, The Pictish Trail and Jo Mango celebrate the launch of the new EP with a one-off performance at Platform in Glasgow on 21 January 2016 as part of Celtic Connections. Find out more and order tickets here.

All profits from the sale of this EP will go to the charity Creative Carbon Scotland in their work to put culture at the heart of a sustainable Scotland.

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The EP forms part of a research project called Fields of Green: Addressing Climate Change Through Music Festival Communities. It aims to explore what audiences, organisers and musicians can do to encourage environmentally sustainable behaviour around music festivals. The project was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (Grant Number AH/M009270/1) and is a collaboration between researchers at the University of the West of Scotland, Edinburgh University, Lancaster University and the charity Creative Carbon Scotland.

www.creativecarbonscotland.com/project/fields-of-green/

For further media information, press photos and interview requests please contact

Lloyd Meredith on 07967037755 or lloyd@olivegroverecords.com

download

The post Fields of Green Launches EP at Celtic Connections appeared first on Creative Carbon Scotland.

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Creative Carbon Scotland is a partnership of arts organisations working to put culture at the heart of a sustainable Scotland. We believe cultural and creative organisations have a significant influencing power to help shape a sustainable Scotland for the 21st century.

In 2011 we worked with partners Festivals Edinburgh, the Federation of Scottish Threatre and Scottish Contemporary Art Network to support over thirty arts organisations to operate more sustainably.

We are now building on these achievements and working with over 70 cultural organisations across Scotland in various key areas including carbon management, behavioural change and advocacy for sustainable practice in the arts.

Our work with cultural organisations is the first step towards a wider change. Cultural organisations can influence public behaviour and attitudes about climate change through:

Changing their own behaviour;
Communicating with their audiences;
Engaging the public’s emotions, values and ideas.

Go to Creative Carbon Scotland

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Future Scenarios – Applications surgery and networking event

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Join us for an evening exploring why scenarios are such a key element of climate change research and politics, and also why it is important to invite a wider range of perspectives on these themes.

In December 2015, University of Sheffield and the Open University launched Climate Change in Residence: Future Scenarios. This funded programme of work provides an opportunity for three artists to be ‘in residence’ for one year from June 2016 within key climate change networks and institutions. The project includes an award for each artist of £10,000. Through these residencies, artists will be able to research climate change, and spend time exploring and developing their own artistic practice. In this way we hope these artists will introduce a new cultural depth to public conversations around the future.

This evening event at ArtsAdmin will explore climate scenarios and be an opportunity to learn more about the University of Sheffield and the Open University’s programme to support three artists-in-residence to develop new work in response to climate change scenarios with lead researchers Renata Tyszczuk and Joe Smith and producer Hannah Bird. It will be an opportunity for applicants to develop their applications before the deadline on 15 February 2016.

This project is generously supported by Jerwood Charitable Foundation, The Ashden Trust, The University of Sheffield and The Open University

WHEN
Wednesday, 27 January 2016 from 19:30 to 21:30 (GMT) Add to Calendar

WHERE
Artsadmin, Toynbee Studios – 28 Commercial Street City of London E1 6AB GB – View Map

Call for Papers: Ecologies of Socialism – German Studies Association 40th Annual Meeting San Diego, Sept. 2016

Open Calls

Jointly sponsored by the German Socialisms and Environmental Studies  and GSA Interdisciplinary Networks

In the past decade, the natural environment has come to occupy a central place in scholarship in multiple registers and in multiple disciplines. This has been especially true in the fields of American history and studies, as well as German history and studies. In fact, there has been a growing transatlantic connection between German and American studies through the bridge of environmental studies, with the newly inaugurated Rachel Carson Center in Munich acting as a key site of this exchange.

Recent important works have contributed specifically to our knowledge of the natural environment in the German Democratic Republic. Such works have sought to problematize the all-too-easy critique of state socialism as having degraded and polluted the natural environment as possibly its worst sin, and explored socialist nature in more nuanced grains and broader contexts. Recent works in the field of urban history have moved towards urban ecology, or ecologies, many inspired by Neil Smith, such as the work of Jens Lachmund, Matthew Gandy, Dorothee Brantz, and Bettina Stoetzer, combining an investigation of the city as a ecological space with both a critique of capitalism as well as a history of socialist Germany. Scholars such as Katharina Gerstenberger, Axel Goodbody and Sabine Wilke have also turned to East German fiction dealing with nature as refuge or site of catastrophe—epitomized by the contrasting pair of Christa Wolf’s Störfall and Sommerstück—to investigate the range of representational frameworks (feminist, regional, global, individualist, productivist, etc) for portraying the relationship of East Germans to nature.

At the same time, however, a new field of Eco-Marxism / Eco-socialism, or “Red-Green,” thought has been emerging, represented by the work of André Gorz, Murray Bookchin, Paul Burkett, John Bellamy Foster, Nancy Fraser, Ariel Salleh, Jason Moore, and others. Whereas before, Marx and socialism seemed inherently as in opposition to the environment, new trends since the end of the Cold War have focused on rethinking a critique of capitalism partially through its insatiable desire for and exploitation of resources. Even Marx himself has undergone a remarkable re-evaluation in this vein!

It is far from clear how to interpret this recent remarkable confluence—nature, capitalism, critical theory, socialism, Germany, the transatlantic context. In a way, these threads combine to form their own “ecology.” The German Socialisms and Environmental Studies GSA Interdisciplinary Networks therefore seek paper proposals that enter that ecology from any number of points, including:

  • histories of nature and the environment under German state socialism
  • views of nature in the German socialist imaginary, both before and after 1949
  • interactions between green and left-wing politics in Germany
  • new theoretical avenues of “red-green” thought, eco-feminism, or reinterpretations of Marx
  • “ecologies” as a concepts, including ecologies of humans, plants and socialisms
  • third world solidarity and notions of foreign ecologies during the GDR

Please submit a 250-word abstract and 3-page CV to Eli Rubin (eli.rubin@wmich.edu) or Scott Moranda (scott.moranda@cortland.edu) by January 25. We expect to create a sequence of 3 panels.

The GERMAN SOCIALISMS NETWORK is a vehicle for connecting the diversity of current scholarship on the GDR with a broader academic base that explores the impact and meanings of Socialism in all of its manifestations, from its beginnings in the 19th century to the present. Encouraging both speculative and empirical methodologies, the Network seeks to bring together scholars operating in all fields and time periods for a productive exchange that questions the world in which we live and the political machinations that created it.

The Environmental Studies Network, founded in 2012, is an interdisciplinary effort within the German Studies Association to promote eco-critical approaches to environmental issues through literary, historical, sociological, visual, and cultural perspectives. Scholars within the Environmental Studies Network are keenly interested in examining how these areas of study, which include political and philosophical questions drawn from deep ecology, eco-feminism, environmental justice, “new materialism,” and the Anthropocene, might inform our understanding of German culture and society. The German Studies Environmental Studies Network also welcomes debate and dialogue with the natural sciences and policy studies. Indeed, it is also our goal to show that environmental problems are always already cultural and scientific, ethical and technological.

Opportunities: Open Call – Twenty-Three Days at Sea: A Travelling Artist Residency

Open Calls

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS
Twenty-Three Days at Sea: A Travelling Artist Residency
Year Two 2016-17
DEADLINE: Monday, February 15, 2016

Access Gallery, in partnership with Burrard Arts Foundation, invites submissions for the second year of its Travelling Artist Residency Program, Twenty-Three Days at Sea. Twenty-Three Days at Sea grants selected emergent visual artists passage aboard cargo ships sailing from Vancouver, Canada to Shanghai. Crossing the Pacific Ocean takes approximately twenty-three days, during which time the artist will be considered “in residence” aboard the vessel.

There are many hundreds of residency programs worldwide. Twenty-Three Days at Sea follows the “aberrant” turn in artist residencies, in that it imposes specific conditions and constraints (the strictures of the port; the solitude of the freighter cabin; the expanse of the open sea) that will, in turn shape artists’ ideas and work. It offers the opportunity to integrate critical and creative practices into a new set of parameters, and the potential of challenging established routines, activities and assumptions. At its base, Twenty-Three Days at Sea asks artists to question what constitutes creative space, and to consider how time is experienced over the highly charged, yet largely invisible, spatial trajectory of a trans-Pacific shipping route. It offers a profoundly generative time and space—in the unconventional studio space of the cargo ship cabin—for focused research and the creation of provocative new ideas and work.

For the 2016-17 year, successful candidates will sail on separate freighters between the months of June and September, 2016.

The Objectives
The aim of this residency program is to generate a new work or body of work (which, depending upon the artists’ practices, may take place aboard the vessel or in the months following) in response to the sea voyage, which will then be exhibited before audiences at Access Gallery in the following months. For the extent of the residency voyage, artists will also be requested to keep a daily “log.” Subsequently published by Access, these logbooks will accumulate as an ongoing collection of bookworks, chronicling diverse responses to a shared experience of being at sea.

The Proposal
In keeping with our organizations’ mandates, proposals will be considered from emergent visual artists working in any and all media. Submissions will be adjudicated by committee and successful candidates will be notified in late March, 2016.

Applicants are encouraged to propose projects that consider issues resonant with sea travel and with the ubiquitous but, for most of us, largely invisible world of the global shipping industry. These may include, but are by no means limited to, matters of trans-Pacific connectivity, traffic and trade; maritime histories and culture; and, significantly, notions of time and space, since crossing a great expanse of water is experienced far differently on an ocean vessel than by more conventional air travel.

The Logistics

  • The Residency will cover the cost of travel aboard the freighter (single cabin and all meals), accommodations for four days in China, and return airfare back to Vancouver
  • Residency artists are expected to fund their own travel to and from Vancouver (the point of departure)
  • Residency artists must prove their own purchase of international travel insurance and to secure all necessary travel documents
  • Artists are free to travel at their own cost within Asia following disembarkation, provided details are arranged in advance for the purpose of booking return airfare from Shanghai
  • Residency artists are expected to arrive in Vancouver prepared to work independently on his/her work for the duration of the residency in whatever capacity that is possible or to use the voyage to gather research in order to produce the new work independently following the close of the residency

Conditions at Sea

  • Artists must understand that there is no internet connectivity aboard ship. Email is often reserved only for ship’s business
  • Residency artists must produce medical certificates proving good health. There are generally no doctors on board. The vessel has a well-stocked ship’s dispensary and a treatment room. The Captain and officers have the necessary skills to give first aid and are also able to provide further treatment
  • Since this is a working ship (with no elevators), there are unfortunately no facilities for individuals requiring wheelchairs, walking sticks or crutches, etc.
  • All meals are taken in the officer’s mess
  • Sea voyages can be unpredictable and the artist must prepare for and manage any unexpected obstacles resulting from his/her time at sea (ie. Seasickness). Access Gallery and Burrard Arts Foundation cannot be held responsible for delays in the production of work due to these obstacles. The artist assumes responsibility for all costs of the research, production and shipment of any work produced while at sea.

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES
In keeping with our organizations’ mandates, this residency invites emergent visual artists, or artists entering an experimental phase of their practice, to submit proposals. They accept work in all forms of media, time based, process, research based, exhibition focus, social practice etc.

Access will accept ELECTRONIC submissions in the following format ONLY:

  • one page cv
  • artist statement (maximum 250 words)
  • a residency proposal (maximum 250 words) accompanied by a maximum of 5 images (if applicable)
  • maximum 10 images (or hyperlinked videos) of relevant previous work
  • please format your proposal into a single pdf (under 20 mb)

SUBMIT to: submissions@accessgallery.ca

DEADLINE: Monday, February 15, 2016
Please title your email subject line “23 Days at Sea 2016”

2016 LAGI international design competition

Open Calls

The Design Guidelines

LAGI 2016 invites creatives, scientists, engineers, and others from around the world to submit ideas for large-scale and site-specific public art installations that generate carbon-neutral electricity and/or drinking water for the City of Santa Monica, California.

The competition is free and open to everyone. We encourage designers, artists, engineers, architects, landscape architects, university students, urban planners, scientists, and anyone to enter who believes that the world can be powered beautifully and sustainably. There is a cash prize of $15,000 for the 1st Place winner and $4,000 for the 2nd Place winner.

Please take a moment to click on the “register” link and create an account. By doing so, you will stay informed as there are updates.

  • JANUARY 1, 2016 Announcement of call to teams
  • JANUARY 1, 2016 to APRIL 15, 2016 Open period for questions
  • MAY 15, 2016 Deadline for submission
  • JUNE 2016 Selection and jury process
  • JULY 2016 Winners and shortlist contacted
  • OCTOBER 2016 Announcement of winner and award ceremony, Public exhibit of selected entries

MORE INFO

 

Shivaji Competition Open Call

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The great warrior king of 17th century India, Shivaji Maharaj, established the Maratha Empire against the dominant Mughals and held off the territorial ambitions of the Europeans. Part of his legacy is a group of island forts in the Arabian Sea with stonewalls ringing the edges against the sea and the Europeans. The Shivaji island forts are the starting metaphor and reality for responses to the invasion of the seawaters for the barrier islands and low elevation islands and deltas around the world.

With the predicted sea level rise of one meter, thousands of islands and deltas and millions of people around the world will be threatened with frequent saltwater floods from storms and king tides. Freshwater may disappear. Sewer and rainwater drainage will not function. Evacuation will intensify a refuge crisis and tensions in national borders. Most islands have a light human or agricultural intervention. Others like Miami Beach are dense urban places.

The competition asks artists, architects, designers, planners, scientists and writers to propose the practical and impossible to maintain the continued human habitation of these islands throughout the 21st century. The ideas should be demonstrated on an island or delta under high risk to bring worldwide attention to these threatened places and push the world to live up to Article 8 of the COP21 agreement signed in Paris.

Responses can be elaborate infrastructures for urban cities and DIY methods for agricultural islands by residents with very limit economic resources. (or vis-a-versa). Both parody and reality are welcome as long as the proposals help wake up politicians, engage the minds of a broad public and respect the people of the islands or deltas. Think like Shivaji. The old political structure has lost its ability to respond and the invasion of the little known outside forces from the sea pose a serious threat to your way of life.

Each entry will be submitted online as a GIF demonstrating a proposal when the sea rises at least one meter. The GIFs should be persuasive to an international audience. Humor, drama, paradox and factual reality in photographs, anime, renderings and all other visual formats are acceptable. Clarity of idea and message is very important.

A group of 15-25 finalists will be selected by most of the participating artists, architects and scientists from Rising Waters Confab 2015 & 2016. These finalists will become part of a traveling exhibition available to museums, global warming conferences and outdoor giant screens. One of the finalists will be selected to join Confab 2016 for one week in May 2016. All expenses will be paid to travel and to participate.

Organizer

The competition is a project organized by Glenn Weiss as a contribution to the Rising Waters Confab 2016 dialogue. Weiss has curated and managed other competitions and exhibitions for the public art agencies in the USA including Times Square and for institutions such as the Storefront for Art and Architecture and PS1 in New York City.

Rising Waters Confab 2016 at Robert Rauschenberg Residency
The second annual Confab will be held for 4 weeks at the Robert Rauschenberg estate on the threatened island of Captiva in the Gulf of Mexico. In the 2016, Buster Simpson and Glenn Weiss are coordinating the residency and think tank to produce works and dialogues about rising seas and global warming. The 2016 list of artists, architects and scientists has yet to be released, but 2015 included David Buckland, Mel Chin, Xavier Cortada, Orion Cruz, Gretel Ehrlich, John Englander, Walter Hood, Lewis Hyde, Natalie Jeremijenko, Edward Morris, Helen Nagge, Jeremy Pickard, Andrea Polli, Thomas Ruppert, Susannah Sayler, Tom Van Lent, Glenn Weiss, June Wilson, Kristie Anders and organizers Buster Simpson, Laura Sindell and Anne Focke. The online catalog of projects from 2015 can be downloaded at https://risingwatersrr.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/risingwatersreportfinal.pdf

Links

What can the arts contribute to a Land Use Strategy for Scotland?

ecoartscotland

This post comes to you from EcoArtScotland

Woodland cover in Scotland. Image from Scottish Government website

The Scottish Government is consulting on a new Land Use Strategy for Scotland. This builds on the first Strategy (2011) and also on the two pilot studies done (Aberdeenshire and the Scottish Borders).

At the heart of the Land Use Strategy are the ideas of Natural Capital and Ecosystems Services Assessment. and the use of GIS to integrate many different aspects of our understanding of the land.  Dr Aileen McLeod, Minister for Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform, says in the Introduction to the consultation document,

In the wider context we have seen the development of the natural capital agenda and the formation of the Scottish Forum for Natural Capital, the increased use of an ecosystems approach and significant developments in areas such as the use of spatial mapping tools.

Natural Capital and Ecosystems Services Assessment are problematic both in terms of the financialisation of everything, as well as in the fundamental anthropocentric focus.  But they also shift the framework from ‘single issues’ to ‘systems,’ and the Ecosystems approach recognises the cultural dimension, albeit mostly through a tourism lens.

It is acknowledged that the cultural dimension is particularly difficult to assess in part because it relates to both tangible (e.g. recreational areas, footpath networks, scenic beauty as well as perhaps traditional practices) as well as intangible (e.g. stories, myths and values as well as again traditional practices). Traditional agricultural practices for instance shape the landscape, but are also part of the cultural identity of a landscape. An example of the intangible aspect of this might be the Bothy Ballads of the North East. These form part of the landscape metaphorically, but also can perhaps contribute to understanding the pattern of land use.

But the cultural dimension is not only understanding and valuing the past, it can also be about the present and the future. This has been exemplified in two recent publications. Alec Finlay’s ebban an flowan is a poetic primer for the marine renewable industry and We Live With Water is a vision for Dumfries, where “…tak[ing] an alternative approach and try to imagine a future where increased rainfall, sea-levels and river surges would be seen as an opportunity. We tried to imagine Dumfries as River Town….a place that embraced its environment…a place that Lives With Water.

image-4-300x271

As previously highlighted in the blog Land Use Strategy Pilot: What’s it got to do with artists? there are many examples of contemporary arts practices which can contribute to the Land Use Strategy, and we highlighted ones which already work with GIS systems, the spatial planning tool which is at the heart of Land Use Strategy development.

GIS is very valuable for seeing the relations between soil, water quality, biodiversity, ecosystems health and resource extraction. But it is a particular challenge to introduce cultural knowledge into GIS systems both because cultural knowledge doesn’t typically have a spatial character in the way that knowledge about soil type, forest cover, water or agricultural land quality is inherently spatial.

But if we believe that ‘place’ should be at the heart of any Scottish Land Use Strategy then artists and other cultural practitioners across the humanities (cultural historians and geographers, environmental philosophers, anthropologists, literature and language studies and art historians amongst others) need to find ways to contribute to the Land Use Strategy, especially given that the inclusion of the cultural dimension within the Ecosystems Services Assessment legitimises that input.

Moreover arts practices that focus on the systemic, relational and dialogic, artists with social and community, environmental and ecological practices, can make very important contributions. They can ask questions such as,

“What would Scotland’s landscape look like if significantly more people had stewardship over it?”

“Is conservation, and in particular keeping people out, the only way to manage areas of iconic significance?”

“What does a river see when it looks at us?”

“How can brownfield restoration meet more than legislative requirements?”

“What if renewable energy technology was developed by architects, designers and artists for communities?”

You can contribute to the Scottish Government’s Land Use Strategy consultation here.  The questions seem to be very specific and directed at confirmation (or dissent) rather than any sort of open-ended discussion, participatory or deliberative process.

If you are willing to share your thoughts about what you you think the questions are and how the arts might contribute to understanding those questions (or enabling other questions to be asked) with ecoartscotland we’ll publish them to promote a greater understanding of the ways in which artists, producers, curators and cultural managers can contribute to this important issue.

Please include examples: we are particularly interested in examples of arts projects that address ecosystems, eco-cultural well-being, and ways of working with GIS systems (or challenge the spatial technologies).

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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New Infographics Mapping Summer Touring Patterns

Creative Carbon Scotland

This post comes from Creative Carbon Scotland

This summer, four Scotland-based singer-songwriters, Rachel Sermanni, RM Hubbert, Louis Abbott (Admiral Fallow) and The Pictish Trail, worked with Jo Mango to explore the themes of travel, the environment and music in their songwriting practices. Together they created a new EP of songs titled Wrack Lines released today and which will be performed at Platform in Glasgow on 21 January 2016 as part of Celtic Connections. 

Coinciding with the writing of songs, each musician kept a log of their summer touring schedules as they travelled across the 2015 festival season. Maps of their movement were used as the basis for the artwork created by illustrator and designer Helen Kellock, published today which reveals the visual patterns arising from their different travel routes.

Read more about the Wrack Lines EP here.

Wrack-Lines-infographic_600px-wide_final

Wrack Lines will be released on CD and on digital format through Olive Grove Records on 15 January 2016. Rachel Sermanni, Louis Abbott, RM Hubbert, The Pictish Trail and Jo Mango celebrate the launch of the new EP with a one-off performance at Platform in Glasgow on 21 January 2016 as part of Celtic Connections. Find out more and order tickets here.

If you’re interested in keeping track of your travel, whether your an artist or working within an organisation, you can do so using ClaimExpenses.com. This free, easy to use travel tool keeps track of your expenses whilst calculating the associated carbon footprint.

The post New Infographics Mapping Summer Touring Patterns appeared first on Creative Carbon Scotland.

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Creative Carbon Scotland is a partnership of arts organisations working to put culture at the heart of a sustainable Scotland. We believe cultural and creative organisations have a significant influencing power to help shape a sustainable Scotland for the 21st century.

In 2011 we worked with partners Festivals Edinburgh, the Federation of Scottish Threatre and Scottish Contemporary Art Network to support over thirty arts organisations to operate more sustainably.

We are now building on these achievements and working with over 70 cultural organisations across Scotland in various key areas including carbon management, behavioural change and advocacy for sustainable practice in the arts.

Our work with cultural organisations is the first step towards a wider change. Cultural organisations can influence public behaviour and attitudes about climate change through:

Changing their own behaviour;
Communicating with their audiences;
Engaging the public’s emotions, values and ideas.

Go to Creative Carbon Scotland

Powered by WPeMatico