Monthly Archives: March 2017

culture/SHIFT ¦ two cities, two challenges

This post comes to you from EcoArtScotland

Creative Carbon Scotland’s culture/SHIFT programme has two events specifically focused on key issues for cities – Aberdeen and Glasgow:

  1. What can be done in post-industrial North Glasgow?
  2. How to speed up post-fossil fuel Aberdeen (i.e. move postively to the post-industrial)?

Aberdeen Green Tease: Cultural Practices in a Post-Fossil Fuel Aberdeen

with Nuno Sacramento (Director, Peacock Visual Arts) & Dr Leslie Mabon (Sociologist, Robert Gordon University)

Date Monday 20th March, 18:00 – 20:00

Venue: The Lemon Tree, 5 West North Street, Aberdeen, AB24 5AT

How can cultural practices address a post-fossil fuel future? Join Nuno Sacramento and Dr Leslie Mabon during Aberdeen Climate Week for a special conversation addressing the intersections between culture and sustainability in Aberdeen. Nuno and Leslie will discuss with the Green Tease network key questions about Aberdeen’s future social, economic and environmental sustainability, and the role of art and art institutions in creating an independent framework for addressing these concerns. Read more and register here.

Glasgow Green Tease: Whatever the Weather: Being Climate Ready in North Glasgow

Date: Wednesday 29th March, 18:30 – 20:30

Venue: The Grove Community Centre, 182 Saracen St, Glasgow, G22 5EP

What are the challenges and opportunities associated with climate change in North Glasgow? How can cultural practitioners contribute to climate change engagement strategies within the city’s communities and more widely? During this Green Tease we’ll be joined by the Glasgow Centre for Population Health and multi-disciplinary collective ice cream architecture to learn about the ‘Whatever the Weather’ engagement project in North Glasgow, exploring how communities can become more prepared and stronger in the face of climate change. We’re keen to use this opportunity to share experiences and learn from others working in similar engagement and intervention initiatives throughout the city. Read more and register here.


About EcoArtScotland:

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

Artists Doing Nature Research

This post comes from the Artists and Climate Change Blog

This week, the Jan Van Eyck Academy, a post-academic institute for art, design and reflection in the quaint town of Maastricht (Netherlands), opened a Lab for artists to do Nature Research. In addition to offering a range of (amazing) facilities that can support woodwork, (RISO) printmaking, photography, video, and metalwork, the institute now acknowledges that nature is not only a great inspiration for artists, but the lack of it is a growing concern for many. The Van Eyck is positioning itself on the frontline of international pioneering art institutions that are enabling artists to explore in depth, through their work, their relationship to nature. The playground for this new Lab is a studio, garden, and greenhouse. Named after Jac. P. Thijsse, a famous Maastricht ecologist, the Lab gives artists an opportunity to do active research (get their hands dirty) and to consider the subject of nature in relation to ecological and landscape development issues. It’s supposedly a place to build bridges – between humankind and nature, but also between art and other disciplines, including agriculture, biology, botany, and (landscape) architecture.

The Jac. P. Thijsse Lab launched during the Van Eycks annual Open Studios with two works, including one by artist Marcus Coates who will be a Van Eyck advisor this year. Outside in the gardens, people could hear birds enthusiastically singing, ready for spring. Inside the Lab studio, however, it was revealed that the cheerful chirping outside was human voices replicating bird songs. Coates’s Dawn Chorus (2007) features individuals sitting in their own habitats – a car, an office, a bedroom, a school staff room – singing bird songs. For this project, Coates recorded birdsong of individual birds and then digitally slowed down the songs by up to 20 times. Singers from amateur choirs were asked to mimic this slowed down sound, which is similar in tone to the human voice. The recording was then sped up to the original speed of the birdsong, creating a magical transformation of the human voice into that of a bird. The work shows us a new way to look at nature and highlights our interconnectedness. Solely by changing the speed of the sound, we end up speaking  the same language.


In the greenhouse, a mysterious installation by artists Fabio Roncato (Van Eyck participant of 2016/2017) and Ryts Monet was found. It consisted of original bricks from the greenhouse, infused with a bright blue Yves Klein-esque pigment that reminds us of chapel ceilings in small Italian towns. A galvanised meteorite seemed to have crashed on the floor among the blue bricks – an invitation from the artists to reflect on the topic of the unknown landscape and the outer space. Their work shows that a greenhouse in the context of the Van Eyck is not just a place to grow plants; it is really a laboratory for ideas, questions, experiments, and reflections on the landscape in the widest sense of the word.

The van Eyck is not the only art institution that has picked up on artists’ growing interest in growing. Other great European places that accommodate artists unafraid to get their hands dirty include Prinzessinengarten (Berlin, Germany), ZKU (Berlin, Germany), Pollinaria (Abruzzo region, Italy), Grizedale Arts (Lake District, UK) and AtelierNL (Noordoostpolder, Netherlands) amongst others. In the last few years, even upmarket commercial gallery Hauser and Wirth re-purposed an old farm and garden in rural Somerset (UK) into an artist residence, complete with restaurant and exhibition space (see photo at the top of the page).

We live in times that force us to formulate a response to a wide range of serious environmental challenges: mass extinction, loss of biodiversity, climate change. However, these crises aren’t just disasters. They’re also great opportunities to demand and help build new systems that serve people and planet more equitably than neo-liberalism has. Moving away from the old systems requires a new mentality, which includes a big re-think of our relationship to the natural world. Is nature solely a resource for us to enjoy and plunder? Or are we nature? We are stuck in the idea that the world revolves around humans. This is why, not so long ago, we refused to believe Galileo Galilei. We, humans, want to be at the epicenter of it all. The potential for non-human narratives has barely entered our consciousness.

Moreover, we have become so addicted to fossil fuels and raw materials that humankind is now a climatic and, some scientists argue, geological force. A new geological epoch called the Anthropocene – which marks the commencement of significant human impact on the Earth’s geology and ecosystems – has now replaced the Holocene. This shift comes with a responsibility to ourselves, nature, and other species, and with plenty of new questions to grapple with. If art spaces that provide time for nature research can help artists to engage with some of these questions, we might be moving towards interesting answers.


 

About Artists and Climate Change:

Artists and Climate Change is a blog that tracks artistic responses from all disciplines to the problem of climate change. It is both a study about what is being done, and a resource for anyone interested in the subject. Art has the power to reframe the conversation about our environmental crisis so it is inclusive, constructive, and conducive to action. Art can, and should, shape our values and behavior so we are better equipped to face the formidable challenge in front of us.

Go to the Artists and Climate Change Blog

Holly Keasey: Policy, Possession and Place

This post comes to you from EcoArtScotland


One needs to reflect upon US history and its troubling legacy of “placemaking” manifested in acts of displacement, removal, and containment. This history is long and horrible…how is Creative Placemaking different or complicit with these actions?

‘Placemaking and the Politics of Belonging and Dis-belonging’, (Bedoya 2013)


 

As of writing this blog, I have a further two weeks until I complete my residency and return to Dundee. Over the past two years I have spent more time away from, than in Dundee, to the point that I arrived at SFAI increasingly aware that Dundee doesn’t feel like home, and for that matter there isn’t anywhere that feels like home. This unsettled feeling has somewhat preoccupied my residency, trying to overcome it by getting to know Santa Fe on foot and New Mexico through a broad scope of historic and current socio-economic and environmental research – creating a temporary, or maybe an internalised and necessary illusion, of being in-place for myself.

Trying to understand this somewhat unintentional bodily-working-through of my own psychological processes often acts as a stimuli to my practice which in turn gives body to my hypothesis for performative practice as a form of public art that can hold active criticality. In the instance of trying to locate a sense of being in-place in Santa Fe, due to my lack belonging elsewhere, I have come to realise that there is a swinging movement between the original intention for my residency – researching the misuse of law, with a particular focus on the laws that regulate water rights in New Mexico, and the potential space that can be create through the misunderstanding of a non-specialist – and the implications and hence role of public arts policy.

Image One

Screenshot of Event Bite ‘How Students and the Arts Fuel a Vibrant Downtown’

A key underpinning to my research so far is the understanding that Water Rights[1] are inherently linked to Property Rights[2]. Both of which imply the legal possession of use of a resource. And it is this mind-set of possession-of-use that is central to the current situation in New Mexico.

An inescapable example of this possession-of-use mind-set can be traced through the on-going treatment of Native American communities. Many settlers considered the Native way of life and collective use of land to be communistic and barbaric, with settler ideals stemming from the view that individual ownership of private property was an essential part of civilization. In an attempt to force these ideals upon Native populations, Congress passed the General Allotment Act in 1887, which authorized the president to survey Indian tribal land and divide the area into allotments for individual Indians and families. Members of the selected tribe or reservation were either given permission to select pieces of land—usually around forty to one hundred and sixty acres in size – for themselves and their children, or the tracts were assigned by the agency superintendent. If the amount of reservation land exceeded the amount needed for allotment, or if the allotment was not used in the westernised sense, the federal government could negotiate to purchase the land from the tribes and sell it to non-Indian settlers. As a result, sixty million acres were either ceded outright or sold to the government for non-Indian homesteaders and corporations as ‘surplus lands’. (See the History of Allotment on the Indian Land Tenure Foundation page for further detail.)

What can be drawn from this act is a significant relationship between the ideals of individualism, private property and a prioritising of use values.

Land Status Map for McKinley County, New Mexico

For the Navajo Nation, the General Allotment Act resulted in their eastern border in Western New Mexico resembling a checkerboard. However, in spite of these attempts to colonise many Native tribes, including those of Navajo Nation, did not adopt the enforced ideals towards the environment as resources to be put to use. I was fortunate to meet with community members of Red Water Pond Road of Coyote Canyon Chapter, Navajo Nation this week, whose relationship to the land and waters is still predominantly held within their ancestral sense of belonging and being part of the land. So much so that they have continued to live at Red Water Pond Road despite its contamination in 1979, when United Nuclear Corporation’s Church Rock uranium mill tailings disposal pond breached its dam, releasing over a thousand tons of solid radioactive mill waste and ninety-three million gallons of acidic, radioactive tailings solution, which then flowed through Red Water Pond Road’s surrounding landscape. After minor clean-up with shovels, United Nuclear Corporation’s uranium mill continued to operate until 1982, after which the site was abandoned by the corporation leaving behind the infrastructure, by-products and contaminated landscape that were no longer of use to them. Whilst, the Red Water Pond Road residents, many of whom worked the uranium mines, continue to reside here despite the lack of employment and income they had become accustomed to or the ability to return to previous vocations such as shepherding due to the extent of radioactive contamination. It is now a place where net wire fencing, typically used for dividing farm land, acts as a visual divide between residents and their neighbouring pilings.

Uranium tailing at Red Water Pond Road Community

There is a comparison that can be drawn here between the legal possession-to-use and its accompanying mind-set, that fosters a lack of long-term responsibility to that which is made use of whether it be a landscape or grouping of people, and the Navajo ancestral sense of belonging and being part of this landscape which manifests as a commitment towards a continuing to live here. For me, these comparative relations to the same area of land stir up a question – can a westernised (and patriarchal) ideal, and consequently entitlement, towards possession-to-use ever result in a mode of living that is ecologically sensitive?

It is in this question that I currently tread water, continuing to seek understanding through this arid landscape. I know there is a link to be formed between a critique of and beyond property and water rights as legal possessions-to-use (and the mind-set that supersedes this); a reflection on my own performative researching practice towards establishing a temporary sense of place in Santa Fe; and a role for public arts policy.

An initial reaction to this may be to look towards Creative Placemaking, a term co-opted by planning development that makes use of artistic methods and/or forms to drive an agenda for change, growth and transformation (or put succinctly, gentrification). Such developments frame their intentions as revitalisation in the interest of identified communities. By revitalisation they mean attaining the forms in which 21st Century ideals of successful civilisation are attributed. Similarities can be drawn between this and the intentions behind the General Allotment Act to ‘organise’ (for which one can read colonise) Native Communities. In addition, acts of Creative Placemaking are typically achieved via the use and extraction of an area’s resources in such a way that the original community’s ability to continue to reside is often reduced. For Red Water Pond Road community it is due to radioactive contamination. For communities subjected to Creative Placemaking it is due to real estate speculation. In many ways, this form of Creative Placemaking is an expansion of the entitlement towards possession to use – who makes the most successful use these identified areas? The current residents, or the affluent residents who replace them?

It is for the above reasons that as an artist I believe there is a need to be insistent that the aesthetics of criticality is at the core of Public Arts Policy.


[1] The right to make use of the water from a stream, lake, or irrigation canal.
[2] Property rights are socially-enforced constructs for determining how a resource or economic good is used.


Bedoya, Roberto. 2013. ‘Placemaking and the Politics of Belonging and Dis-belonging’ Grantmakers In The Arts Reader, Vol 24, No 1 (Winter 2013) http://www.giarts.org/article/placemaking-and-politics-belonging-and-dis-belonging


About EcoArtScotland:

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

Pages from the Frozen Sea

This post comes from the Artists and Climate Change Blog

Pages from the Frozen Sea is a scattering of photographs of the ways that ice can freeze a moment in time. Against a background of disappearing ice, the gathered photographs explore different ways to hold on to memory and emotion. Is it possible, as ice is melting more quickly than expected, to create a temporary stopgap? A photograph proposes a suspension of an experience, of an emotional state. It’s a suspension of disbelief, as if it might allow us to stop and steady ourselves, and find a way to think straight again (and reimagine the future).

Sarah Stengle and I wanted these explorations of ice to float in a digital sea. We wanted the pages to be fragmented and free, but to be considered a book all the same. We sent out an open call and received submissions from the US, Canada, England, Finland and Germany which we posted to a Facebook and an Instagram page.

Burning carbon is creating exponential change to the climate. Yes, fire and ice have always fought it out on this planet, but we’ve been working on the side of fire all these years now. Fire is winning. It would be wonderful to tell humans to cool it, because the rapid melting of the polar ice caps is terrifying. In the face of extreme weather, of upheaval and chaos, I think we feel frozen in our tracks. Freezing up is its own defense, and we lock down our fear inside ourselves.

Kafka imagines an interior emotional landscape that is trapped in ice. He writes, “a book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.” A book can break through by delivering life-affirming warmth, truth, inspiration, art and craft. You need to be free. Your wellspring needs to flow.

In thinking about extremes of temperature and art, Sarah and I talked about Olafur Eliasson’s glacier melting in Paris, about Andy Goldworthy’s icicles and David Hammons’ sidewalk sale of snowballs. We thought about the decentralized spirit of Yoko Ono’s work, and her instructions to: “use things until they melt.” The material and the moment change completely in the hands of each artist.

Sarah and I are now the caretakers of photos floating in a digital sea, gathering around an idea. It seems to me these floating photos possibly reverse the idea of a glacier fragmenting. Instead of dissipating and becoming less, they have the potential to become more. Maybe our book is a gathering of ice, a growing of ice. If Kafka’s book is an axe, maybe this book of ours is a crystal.

AylinGreen

Aylin Green’s photo is of a frame frozen in ice: a freeze frame. It’s a portrait without a face, and darkly I feel I could know it well. There’s something important here, and if only it could be carefully melted, lovingly cared for, it would be revealed. Ice is very personal after all. They call this the Anthropocene age. Our stories are lurking everywhere on this planet, and this planet is lurking everywhere within us too.

KariannBlank

Karian Blank seems to be documenting geology and her photo could easily belong in a natural history museum. Photographed in the cold, clear light of day, this specimen tells a prehistoric tale. When I learn that it’s pure invention and that the marks are the imprints of vintage buttons, I have to marvel at the power of stories we tell ourselves. The marks then may be seen as a form of human fossils.

Veronika Irwin’s photo of wire lace frozen in a thin layer of ice is mysterious. She expresses mathematical concepts through delicate lines that gain strength through repeated patterning. Her lines are vulnerable and loopy and yet they suggest strength and a quiet musicality. They prove a logic capable of replicating themselves ad infinitum. Inhabiting a pale light, for the moment, they bubble with possibility.

SarahStengle2

Sarah and I have felt our imaginations stretched as we viewed these and the many other submissions we received. As artists ourselves, we too have been creating ice pages. Sarah’s art is always alert to the drama that occurs when strangely ordinary materials come into relationships with one another. In her photo, there are what look like nails scattered on the floor of what could be an invented ice cave. I see elements of rough construction work below contrasted with finely crafted and futuristic-looking angles above. What Sarah was doing was not quite what I am seeing. Her method was simple but not obvious: she recorded what happened to blue ink, water, straight pins and the force of a magnet in freezing temperatures. Nature had a hand in creating her fiction.

My process was to freeze a photograph from a magazine into a chunk of ice, leaving the image trapped in a stubborn form (see picture at the top of the page). An image of snow-covered trees appears, as if it were a mirroring of beautiful surroundings, but it’s only a torn sheet of paper. An illusion. I don’t know if Kafka’s axe needs to break it open to reveal its emotions.

Sarah and I will keep growing our crystalline book of ice when we announce another open call for 2018. The form may change in a year’s time. The weather may change. This winter there were not enough cold days in Sarah’s Minneapolis or my New Jersey to freeze our art outside and, anti-heroically, our explorations happened in our kitchen freezers. This year was an El Nino year, and so our hope is that next winter will be colder. Pages from the Frozen Sea needs more cold to come together.

______________________________

Eva Mantell is co-curator with Sarah Stengle of Pages from the Frozen Sea. Other curating projects include Start Fresh at the Arts Council of Princeton and Windows of the Future at Carrier Clinic, NJ. Eva’s artwork has been exhibited at the Hunterdon Museum, Jersey City Museum, the Brooklyn Museum of Art and in ongoing projects with the arts collective Overflow. Upcoming exhibits include Natura Mathematica at Central Booking, NYC and Animal Architecture at the Monmouth Museum, NJ. Eva has a BA from Penn and MFA from the School of Visual Arts and lives in Princeton, NJ.


About Artists and Climate Change:

Artists and Climate Change is a blog that tracks artistic responses from all disciplines to the problem of climate change. It is both a study about what is being done, and a resource for anyone interested in the subject. Art has the power to reframe the conversation about our environmental crisis so it is inclusive, constructive, and conducive to action. Art can, and should, shape our values and behavior so we are better equipped to face the formidable challenge in front of us.

Go to the Artists and Climate Change Blog

Catalogue Released on Collaboration of Refugee and Local Hamburg Artists.

One year ago we invited to the exhibition  ort_m [migration memory]  in the Frappant Gallery in Hamburg-Altona. Prior to this exhibition, we organized a studio where we – artists as well as artists in Hamburg – could work together for a period of four months. In this  Third Space  (Homi K. Bhabha) we have produced art works that were dealt with life experiences about, migration, globalization, and colonialism in the past and the present. A wide network of activists, helpers and art interested visitors. We would like to express our gratitude. Now we want to celebrate with you the fresh off the press  ort_m  catalog. Come and see – looking forward to meeting you!  

Catalog ·  Ort_m [migration memory]

Hannimari Jokinen, Dieu-Thanh Hoang (Hrsg./ed.)

In German and English, 140 pages / pages

EUR 24,00 Revolver Publishing, 2017  ISBN 978-3-95763-365-1  

More information on ORT_M

 

deLight Art Festival 2017 (March 23 – 27)

The deLight project is an environmentally-oriented light-art festival promoting sustainable lifestyles through contemporary art: we are establishing a new form of communication between eco-institutes, eco-initiatives, and audiences.

Every year, the WWF movement called Earth Hour brings communities from all around the globe together. During the initiative, people switch off their lights for one hour thus demonstrating their commitment to fighting climate change and raising awareness of environmental issues. Major cities of the world also contribute by de-energizing their landmarks including The Sydney Opera House, The Brandenburg Gates, and many others.

In 2017, deLight projects joins this worldwide action and provides all those interested in environmental problems with a chance to participate in it through our perspective. DeLight not only will disconnect from the electric network, but will generate electricity for a sustainable sound and light performance, adding a new dimension to Earth Hour and bringing the ‘non-electricity concept’ to a whole new level. Between 20:30 and 21:30 on March 25th 2017, in the forecourt of the club Ritter Butzke, a show with musical content by the sound-artist and composer Hugo Morales will take place. Light, sound, and tailor-made equipment will be our main tools for the performance in which the audience can also actively participate. Right afterwards, Ritter Butzke will invite our guests to a sustainable after party.

With the help of low-energy technologies, artists from all over Europe will highlight invisible natural phenomena such as the magnetic fields, temperature, vibrations, waves, and others. The exhibition will be held in ‘A Space Under Construction’ area located on the second floor of Ritter Butzke.

The third partner venue of the festival is Spektrum: a place aimed at presentation of technology-based artworks, science-focused events and futuristic utopias based on the principle “do-it-together-with-others”. At Spektrum, visitors will see Berlin’s live premiere of the AtomTone show by Czech artist Jiří Suchánek. And also a.melodie by Mélodie Melak Fenez, an experimental electronic music project, which is based on the responses plants have to their direct surroundings. Her work promotes complex interconnectivity between elements and presents Nature as a sentient being with inherent worth.

The deLight program also includes public talks with internationally renowned speakers experienced in the fields of green politics, sustainable lifestyle, ecology, eco-art, and light-art. Apart from that, film shows elaborating on environmental issues in unexpected contexts will be held.

And don’t forget to bring your old light bulbs – they will be carefully collected and recycled by the company Lightcycle.

Electric light has extended the boundaries of human capacity. Now, deLight is extending the boundaries of light.


Schedule:

Time:                                                          

23.03.2017 – 27.03.2017 deLight

#Earth Hour: 25.03 | 20:30

23.03 | 20:00 Live Show «A.Melodie» Melodie Melak Fenez, Spektrum

23.03 | 21:30 Live Show «AtomTone» Jiri Suchanek, Spektrum

25.03 – 27.03  Light-art Exhibition, A Space Under Construction

25.03 | 17:30 Public Talk, A Space Under Construction

25.03 | 20:30 Earth Hour: Sustainable Light&Sound Performace, Music by Hugo Morales

25.03 | 21:30 Afterparty, Ritter Butzke

26.03 | 19:00 Eco, Urban, Art – Film Screening


Locations:                                                

A SPACE UNDER CONSTRUCTION

Ritterstr. 26, Kreuzberg 10969

www.facebook.com/asucberlin                                                     

RITTER BUTZKE

Ritterstr. 26, 10969 Berlin

www.club.ritterbutzke.com                                                          

SPEKTRUM

Bürknerstraße 12, 12407 Berlin

www.spektrumberlin.com


Artists:

Hugo Morales

www.hugomorales.org                                                                                               

Dmitry Gelfand, Evelina Domnitch

www.portablepalace.com

Jiri Suchanek

www.jiri-suchanek.net                                                          

Akitoshi Honda

www.ahonda.org

Raum Zeit Piraten

www.raumzeitpiraten.com                                                          

Damien Beneteau

www.damienbeneteau.com

Mélodie Melak  Fenez

www.a-melodie.com                                                          

Alexander Isakov

www.vimeo.com/isakvo

Curated by Dariya Susak


Contact:

www.delight-art.de

www.facebook.com/delightartfestival

info@delight-art.de

Dariya Susak (Curator)dasusak@gmail.com, +49 176 292 47 165

Diana Kim (Assistent curator)info@delight-art.de

Elena Barysheva (Producer)postbarysheva@gmail.com

Susanne Felsberg (Producer) – sponsorship@delight-art.de

Emilia Stebulyanina (PR-Manager) press@delight-art.de 


For more information, please see the informational PDF

Open Call: In Other Tongues Now Accepting Registrations

In Other Tongues is now accepting registrations. Held at the beautiful Dartington Hall in southwest England from June 7-14 2017, it comprises an international gathering/conference from June 7-9 followed by a small-group residential short course from June 10-14.

Keynote speakers at the conference are Prof. Wendy Wheeler and poet Alyson Hallett; other presenters include sound artist Tony Whitehead, leading us into the sonic world of night-time and dawn-time; Felix Prater, Laura Cooper and Cherie Sampson helping us discover animal lives and our animal selves; Lori Diggle, Nancy Miller and others reminding us of the power of myth and story-telling and its continuing and new relevance; John Hartley will take us on to the river; Stephan Harding will be joining us to explore the science of interspecies communication. Others are materialists, guiding us to new insights into stone, field, water, fungi. We will encounter languages familiar and strange, and we’ll aspire to co-annunciate new forms of communication together through this unique gathering amongst the long, heady days of summer along the River Dart in some of England’s most beautiful countryside.

Download more details at artdotearth.org/pdf/IoT-main.pdf or visit inothertounge.info

The short course is led by Alyson Hallett and writer-illustrator Mat Osmond. Throughout the course visiting guests will (thus far) include acclaimed poet Alice Oswald and art.earth’s Director Richard Povall. Creative use of words form the core of the course along with image-making, voice and embodied exercises. We will work both indoors and outdoors as we deepen and attune more to ourselves and our experiences of place. Numbers are very limited.

Open Call: Inner Nature, Against the Tide 2017/18

NEW!

until April 30th, 2017

1. Open call

In its third edition, INNER NATURE EXHIBITION has consolidated its reputation as an independent international exhibition about art, ecology and contemplation. Its interdisciplinary and decentralized vocation transcends the conventional form of audiovisual festivals to include other strategies for mobilizing and connecting very different territories around the world.

The intention is to contribute to a critical cultural movement that can help, through eco-social commitment, to create awareness and to invite collective participation. The first two editions of the exhibition took place in different art spaces in Spain, France, Finland, USA and Chile. Starting from this year, the show becomes biannual with the aim of widening and strengthening the interaction among all the art centers adhering to INNER NATURE NETWORK.

2. Theme

The third edition will revolve around the theme of water, an essential element for life. Water cycles and availability have been drastically modified by the effects of climate change and pollution, two anthropogenic phenomena that, among others, are causing alterations of ecosystems.

Moreover, the evocative potential of water and its antithesis – the aridity of the desert – is a recurrent element in the work of artists who re-signify traditional symbols and iconography from a more contemporary perspective. Our purpose is to collect some contemporary proposals that tackle this issue through an ecological approach.

3. Participants

Artists working both individually and collectively are welcome to apply. All submissions must be original. If they contain images whose copyright belongs to other authors, the participants must meet the national legislation on copyright.

4. Format

Artists may submit video artworks in formats such as AVI, MOV, MPEG, FLV, ASF, 3GPP, with a good screening quality in order for them to be shown on different types of screens and devices. Their duration must not exceed 5 minutes.

5. Submission of works

Artworks can be submitted until April 30th, 2017 through the online application form available at:

https://innernatureexhibition.com/20open-call/inscripcion-tercera-edicion/

In order to ensure anonymity and transparency in the selection process, artists have to use a pseudonym. Moreover, the works must not contain any information regarding their authors. If the author’s name were visible in the opening or closing credits, it should be covered or pixelated before the submission of the work.

Therefore, an anonymous version of the work must be uploaded to an online repository (like vimeo, youtube, etc.) where it can be viewed at the highest possible quality. Artists should not use their personal youtube or vimeo account but must create a new one in which any reference to their identity is omitted. When completing the online form, artists will include the link and -in case of a private video-  the password to view the artwork. Files directly submitted to Inner Nature e-mail address or sent on physical formats (DVDs, USB, etc.) will not be accepted.

Selected artists will be notified by e-mail and will be asked to send the original work and personal details within a period of 15 days after the notification. If the organizers do not receive any information after this deadline, the artist and his or her work will not be included in the exhibition. The file submitted in this last phase must be exactly the same as the one that was uploaded online. Any change or re-editing of the work will result in exclusion from the show.

6. Evaluation criteria

The submitted videos will undergo a pre-selection process in which the works that do not meet the minimum technical requirements for a proper display on different types of screens and devices will be excluded. Then, a panel of experts will choose the works that proceed to the final selection according to the following criteria:

– coherence with the exhibition concept

– originality and innovation of the artwork

– formal and technical quality

– meaning and conceptual strength

The final selection will be carried out by the centers hosting the travelling exhibition. The centers’ coordinators will vote in full independence according to the above-mentioned criteria. Focus on the following thematic areas will be positively valued:

– Visibilization of eco-social issues related to water: global warming, waste, ice loss in polar areas, flooding of coastal regions, pollution and overexploitation of aquifers, etc.

– New ecological transition models giving priority to basic human needs over economic and business interests.

– Innovative formulas for effective community management of water resources.

– Critical analysis of the impact of large infrastructures for water exploitation and management.

– Opportunities for critical interventions of new media technologies for alternative approaches to water management.

– Symbolic and evocative aspects related to water, exploring the potential of contemplation for fostering empathy, interdependence and environmental care.

7. Selection results

The selection results will be published on INNER NATURE´s site in July 2017. Selected artists will be notified personally by email and will be asked to send the original work and personal details within a period of 15 days after the notification. In case of shared authorship, one artist shall act as a representative of the collective that created the submitted artwork.

The selected works will be divided into two sections:

  • Official section: it includes the most appreciated and best rated artworks. The total duration of this selection will be of approximately 30 minutes.
  • Variable section: it consists of highly-appreciated videos that were not included in the official section and whose total duration does not altogether exceed 20 minutes.

In case of a technical tie between two or more videos, the team of the Polytechnic University of Valencia will decide which artwork will be included in the show.

The official section is the core of the exhibition and will be shown at all art centers participating in the project. The official selection may also include the work of an artist of international renown invited by the organizers and whose research is particularly significant in relation to the theme of the show.

In addition, partners and collaborating centers have the possibility to adapt the selection of works to their specific needs and local concerns by adding one, some, all or none of the videos belonging to the variable section. All artworks belonging to the variable section will be included in the opening of the exhibition in Valencia, and will be granted visibility through INNER NATURE website, press releases, publications, social media, etc.

8. Travelling exhibition

The selected videos will be part of collective show which is scheduled to travel to several exhibition spaces in Spain and internationally. The opening of the show will be held in Valencia (Spain) at the IVAM Museum of Contemporary Art (www.ivam.es) in November 2017, concomitantly with the Conference of the Parties (COP 23) to the UN Convention on Climate Change.

The exhibition will then travel to other places in Spain such as Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (Espacio Guia), Teruel (Human and Social Science Department), Salamanca (Espacio Zink), Gijón (PACA), Valencia (La Posta Foundation) and Las Tablas de Daimiel National Park (Cultura de Ribera). Furthermore, it will also be shown in other countries: at Climate, Sustainability & the arts (CSArts) at Temple University in Philadelphia (USA), at the Botanical Garden of Marnay-sur-Seine (France) and El Lobi in San Juan (Puerto Rico).

The organizers will make all the necessary effort to maximize exhibition opportunities during 2018 in order to give the widest possible visibility to the works. Artists will be informed about each exhibition and at the end of the travelling show will receive a certificate including all the venues.

9. Funding

INNER NATURE is a non-profit initiative that runs on volunteer work and depends on grants offered by public institutions related to the mission of the project. Artists agree to show their works in the exhibition without a fee and are offered international exposure. INNER NATURE team works actively to obtain funding: our aim is to create a network as a strategy to gain collective strength and visibility in order to influence public institutions and demand greater commitment to the field of culture and the environment.

Depending on the budget of each edition, our team will consider the possibility of supporting the people and/or the art centers involved in the project to cover expenses related to the acquisition of equipment, display rights, artists, technicians or cultural managers´ fees, etc.

10. Intellectual property rights 

The authors of the selected artworks will transfer their rights for free exclusively for the public screening of the videos in the travelling exhibition. Their authorship will always be acknowledged, contributing to the widest possible visibility of their work. Moreover, the videos will be included in the website of the show (www.innernatureexhibition.com) in the form video fragments or in their entirety, according to the authors’ will.

The organizers can use stills of the artworks or little fragments of the videos (less than twenty seconds) to promote the show through posters, press releases, the internet, etc., always mentioning the authors’ names in the photo credits.

If the videos contain fragments whose copyright belongs to other artists, INNER NATURE EXHIBITION is not responsible for the misappropriation or misuse of those images. The authors must certify that they hold the intellectual property rights of the submitted works according to the legislation in force.

11. Acceptance terms and conditions

Participation in this project implies understanding and acceptance of these terms and conditions in their entirety. The organizers hold the right to make changes and take initiatives, if they contribute to improve the quality and impact of the exhibition.

Download pdf

Plastic, plastic, every where!

This post comes from the Artists and Climate Change Blog

Plastic, plastic, every where,
All the fish are bereft;
Plastic, plastic, every where,
Not a soul is left.

I met Hong Kong painter Michelle Kuen Suet Fung at an artist residency in Alaska in 2016. She is a diminutive woman with a big smile, a big vision, and an even bigger heart. Four four weeks Michelle and I shared meals, living quarters, hikes, hopes, and worries, and together navigated the intricacies of ferry travel in remote regions. I was lucky to get to know her and her work, and to see the world through her eyes for those four weeks. I gained a friend, a colleague and a new tip for avoiding all those environmentally harmful plastic utensils when eating out: carry bamboo travel utensils (like these) with you at all times…

Michelle draws inspirations from a wide range of sources and popular sub-cultures, including fairy tales, children’s picture books, the Japanese Otaku, fifteenth-century European etching, as well as traditional Chinese painting. Animals and their relationships with humans is a long recurring thread in her works.

What are you working on right now?

I have three main projects in 2017. For the past month, I have been working on a book manuscript of “Plastic, plastic, every where!,” a dystopia of plastic consumption. (See video interview.) The cautionary tale begins in the present and spans about a hundred years. The narrative, which borrows from fairy tales, children’s literature, and prophecy, presents a future where humans’ frenzied consumption of plastic (as in objects like lifesaver donuts, telephone hotdogs, etc. …) has led the human race past the point of no return:

In the first half of the 21st century, marine animals have developed such an insatiable appetite for plastic that the nations of the world set up feeding stations. Over time, however, fewer and fewer animals show up to the feedings, and eventually, none show up. The global craze for plastic-eating originates from the 2084 annual meeting of the Great Five Industrial Nations on Miami Island, cut off from the mainland because of rising sea levels. At the meeting, China (in the form of a pig) proposes that if animals can learn to eat plastic, why can’t children?

The work was presented as a drawing installation in 2015. I have adapted the narrative into book form, and the story is shortlisted in the Young Writer’s Competition in Hong Kong. I will complete the manuscript in the spring and hopefully the book will be chosen for publication.

Concurrently, I am making “Plastic, plastic, every where!” into a moving drawings video. The work-in-progress has been almost two years in the making and went through substantial changes after my artist residency at Art Omi (NY, USA) last summer. This year, I will invest time to complete the final draft before pairing music and sound to the visuals.

“Plastic, plastic, everywhere!” exhibited as a drawing installation at Hong Kong Baptist University in 2015.

Last but not least, China’s micro-narrative in “Plastic, plastic, every where!” has been developed into an autonomous work. In 2084, China has solved its pollution problems with Plan Polluta, condensing air pollution into building bricks. With these bricks, China builds floating artist colonies in the sky. I am making propaganda posters and banner paintings (loosely based on those from the Cultural Revolution era) to be shown in a solo exhibition at Pro Arts Gallery, Oakland, CA, in 2018. The gallery will be transformed into a promotional center for the Ministry of Polluta. Besides painting, I am also conducting research for the two performances that will take place during the exhibition.

You have lived in many countries. How do you think that influences your work?

I never quite knew how it affected me until last summer art critic Dominique Nahas described my works as cosmopolitan. It then dawned on me that I could only make cosmopolitan works because I was exactly that! I have lived in Hong Kong, Canada, UK and the US and speak three and a half languages (the half language is French.) I really enjoy looking at things from multiple points of views without realizing it. For instance, when I translate, I often find meaning differs slightly in different languages. It comes down to cultural sensitivity and connotations. However, I am poorly educated in the Middle Eastern, African and Native perspectives, and many other minorities. While it is impossible for any works to be truly inclusive, I hope my works are less about navel-gazing.

Do you consider yourself an activist? Why?

I have been asked that question before, and I don’t see myself as one. I think fundamentally activists work to bring about social change and artists focus on making their best possible work. I definitely belong to the latter group. Having said that, I do think the most compelling advocacy is to lead by example. Far from perfect, I strive to live a greener lifestyle. I stopped ordering anything take-out unless I have my own containers. I haven’t bought chemical household products such as laundry detergent, shampoo, conditioner, toothpaste, household cleaner for years. I make my own from food scraps or other greener materials. By persisting in my own habits, I see changes in people around me. I also share some of my insights on social media: the response is almost always encouraging.

The scene of the G5 annual meeting of 2084 where China comes up with a proposal, ‘If animals can learn to eat plastic, why can’t children?’

You participated in the Tidelines Ferry Tour in 2016. Can you tell me a little bit about that experience?

That was a humbling journey. We toured eight communities in Southeast Alaska in one month under the theme of climate change. Having lived in Canada for almost two decades, I barely had contact with First Nations. I had to reassess my presumptuous assumptions about a green lifestyle in the 21st century. On this trip, I developed enormous reverence for a community for its respect of nature. Meat-eating is damaging to the planet in most developed countries, but salad-lovers may cause more harm in Alaska if we consider all the fuel and energy needed to fly in the leaves. The trip taught me to take my urban arrogant attitude home.

I wrote bilingual (Chinese and English) weekly blogs on the tour for Altermodernists, a Hong-Kong-based media platform for local artists:

Week 1 Blog Entry
Week 2 Blog Entry
Week 3 Blog Entry
Week 4 Blog Entry 

Michelle Kuen Suet Fung working on a banner in Sitka, Alaska during the Tidelines Ferry Tour in 2016.

What is the single most important thing artists can do to address climate change?

In this age of chaos and uncertainty, I hesitate to give artists an aura of visionaries. Artists should do what we have historically done well: Make great work. Facts do not compel change; pain and strong emotions do. If my work can elicit strong reactions that result in concrete change in one viewer’s behavior, I will consider my work successful.

What gives you hope?

It is relatively easy for those who live in the war-free First World to find solace: A blue ocean, a delicate flower, a cool breeze, a delicious meal, and our loved ones. When I gaze at these beautiful things, I have a fierce urge to protect them. When I look at my niece’s porcelain skin and watch her play with two leaves for almost an hour, I know we want to still have tigers, whales, elephants, and polar bears for her to experience. If we choose to have no hope, all battles are lost. I choose to have hope, because that is the only thing we have to go on.


About Artists and Climate Change:

Artists and Climate Change is a blog that tracks artistic responses from all disciplines to the problem of climate change. It is both a study about what is being done, and a resource for anyone interested in the subject. Art has the power to reframe the conversation about our environmental crisis so it is inclusive, constructive, and conducive to action. Art can, and should, shape our values and behavior so we are better equipped to face the formidable challenge in front of us.

Go to the Artists and Climate Change Blog

A Hope I Can Live With

This post comes from the Artists and Climate Change Blog

This article was originally published on HowlRound, a knowledge commons by and for the theatre community, on September 20, 2016.

I am a theatre director in an early stage of thinking about performance and climate change—more of an idea and question gathering place than a how-that-translates-to-process-and-dramaturgy place. This is a tour of some ideas.

This past fall, I co-organized a conversation with Sarah Cameron Sunde and Moe Yousuf in conjunction with the Theatre Without Borders Conference. About twenty-five folks (across disciplines and nationalities) shared personal entry points to making real the massiveness of climate change; themes I remember include anticipatory grief, environmental racism, individual vs. collective agency, and tempered hope in human ingenuity and the earth’s resilience. Then, Sarah invited Moe to lead us in making pickles. Pickling framed our conversation in a longer experience of time, and it gave (some of) us a reason to meet again later to experience our (well, failed) pickles.

Moe Yousuf facilitated a pickle making process as part of a climate change think tank held in conjunction with the 2016 Theatre Without Borders Conference. Photo by Sarah Cameron Sunde.

Also thinking of a conversation I had with Dehlia Hannah. Hannah is a curator-as-research practitioner whose current project A Year Without Winter, co-led with scholar Cynthia Selin, gathers scholarly and artistic responses to climate change over three years in resonance with the Year Without a Summer and its role in forming Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. (The Year Without a Summer, 1816), was a tumultuous global cooling event sparked, in part, by a massive volcanic eruption.) When I asked about hope in the context of climate change, Hannah expressed concern that hope can be an uncomfortably close bedfellow with denial. Even if climate change is not an apocalyptic disaster flick, it will effect real and unknown loss—to the planet’s ecological systems, and to the human (and other) life inside those systems. Imagining climate change will require being present to loss—anticipated and experienced. Maybe to replace hope with attention. How do we sustain attention in the context of climate change? A Year Without Winter provides a conceptual framework, a dialogical network, and a three-year incubation to connect wide ranging entry points in imagining and responding to anthropogenic climate change. This creative system models an ecological way of seeing.

I’ve been thinking, for my own work, about what makes up an ecological way of seeing. Some entry points that make sense to me include complexity, corporality, contingency, and collective action.

Anne van Galen’s Warriors of Downpour City (2015) is a collaboration between A Year Without a Winter and X and Beyond. The summer 2016 exhibition Dressing in a World of Endless Rainfall showcased Anne van Galen’s work and explored fashion’s anticipation of worlds to come. Photo courtesy of A Year Without Winter.


Complexity
Anthropogenic climate change happens on a scale that’s hard (for me) to imagine. It’s not drought, hurricane, or weather in general. It’s a change in long-term patterns of weather. This distinction feels important because chronic, systemic change requires different attentions than extreme weather events. Warming global climate doesn’t follow a dramaturgy of crisis, although, as we are seeing more and more, it can contain crisis. It follows more closely a dramaturgy of chronic illness. Something that will play out over time in unpredictable ways and that requires continual and curious action. It requires urgency, but urgency without attachment. We will not see all the consequences of our actions—good or bad—within our lifetime. How does my theatre rehearse a seeing with this kind of sustained and unresolved attention?

Corporality
As weather patterns change, stories about folks’ connection to land and life take on new stakes. Narratives about human control over nature contributed to seeing the natural world as disposable resource, contributed to actions that created climate change. I don’t think this assumption, especially embedded in Western culture, can get us out of climate change. How does my theatre center stories (remembered or reinvented) that situate human beings as part of larger living and evolving systems?

Contingency and Collective Action
Something that impacts the whole planet requires the whole planet to respond. I grew up wearing a lot of sweaters inside in the winter and rolling down car windows in the summer; and I think a performance of personal responsibility is a meaningful practice. I rehearse mindfulness, but I don’t think it’s an impactful practice in terms of emission reduction. This requires not just pooling individual actions, but changing regulations, energy sources. This requires collective action. How is my theatre rehearsing a personal awakening to collective action? And, what are the images I have for the collective? As many folks in this series have pointed out, climate change disproportionately effects many communities of color. Rebecca Solnit has some language I appreciate about natural disasters as policy disasters, as putting pressure on existing social inequalities (particularly referencing Hurricane Katrina and discussed cogently in an On Being interview.) How does my theatre enact and envision a global community that is multivalent, fluid, and offers specific critique to entrenched systems of oppression?

One of the formidable aspects of man-made climate change is that we don’t know exactly how the earth will respond to a rising average temperature. In order to be able to respond deeply and impact fully, it seems important that our attending prepares us to continue not knowing. An older image of apocalypse is not physical destruction, but disclosure of knowledge. As artists, we know something about waiting for this apocalypse, about doing the deep and urgent work of being changed, with the trust that changed seeing leads to changed action, changed policies. I admire projects like Chantal Bilodeau’s Arctic Cycle, Mondo Bizarro and ArtSpot’s Cry You One, and Lars Jan’s Holoscenes for crafting such spaces. And, I would add, this work, this orientation to apocalypse is also a definition of hope. A hope I can live with.

______________________________

Emily Mendelsohn is a Brooklyn-based director.  As a member of Waypoints, an ensemble of US/East African artists, Emily directed Erik Ehn’s Maria Kizito and Deborah Asiimwe’s Cooking Oil through residencies in Kigali, Kampala, New York, New Orleans, and Los Angeles. Emily co-curates Border Labs, a process and performance exchange between artists in Los Angeles and Tijuana. She is a recipient of the TCG Global Connections In the Lab program and a Fulbright Fellowship in Uganda. Affiliate artist New Georges, member Theater Without Borders. MFA CalArts.


About Artists and Climate Change:

Artists and Climate Change is a blog that tracks artistic responses from all disciplines to the problem of climate change. It is both a study about what is being done, and a resource for anyone interested in the subject. Art has the power to reframe the conversation about our environmental crisis so it is inclusive, constructive, and conducive to action. Art can, and should, shape our values and behavior so we are better equipped to face the formidable challenge in front of us.

Go to the Artists and Climate Change Blog