Ian Garrett

MAKE8ELIEVE – online art magazine issue dedicated to oil

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305092_489458227750074_33562497_nAs an organisation that combines arts, activism and research with a pretty hefty focus on the damage caused by UK oil companies, we were super-excited to have a flick through the third issue of an online arts magazineMAKE8ELIEVE, that aims to “build international connections by publishing creative interpretations of one topic per issue.”

It’s a 254 page, full colour labour of love, with submissions from many different artists with a dizzying variety of practices. Campaigners on oil issues would do well to have a browse and draw inspiration from the creativity of the contributions rather than falling back on what can become quite a tired pallet of images and associations that evoke the impacts of the global oil industry.

It’s particularly great to see Liberate Tate‘s dramatic participatory and unsolicited The Gift that took place in Tate Modern last July, and involved the installation of a 16 metre wind turbine blade as a reaction to Tate’s ongoing and increasingly controversial sponsorship relationship with BP. You can browse this stunning publication below (Liberate Tate can be seen on pages 151-161), or visit the MAKE8ELIEVE site for more info on the artists.

Sustainability in Oregon Film & Media

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Grimm_biodiesel_web-280In Oregon, the Annual Governor’s Meeting on Film and Video was recently held in Portland, which is quickly becoming a hub of media activity thanks to the dedicated efforts of independent filmmakers, the success of Laika Animation Studio films like Coraline and ParaNorman, and current television productions Grimm, Portlandia, and Leverage (which has just finished shooting on its final season).

According to the Governor’s Office of Film and Television, the average amount spent on production in Oregon each year has risen from $7 million to $100 million. This amount is expected to surpass $120 million next year as tax credits and other incentives draw production away from the hustle and bustle of Los Angeles to the relatively more laid back atmosphere of the Pacific Northwest.

With this change, the Office of Film and Television has gone out of its way to promote sustainable production practices and has included a link to a Green Production Guide on their website. At the meeting, Oregon’s First Lady Cylvia Hayes took the stage and delivered a well-received presentation on Grimm‘s efforts to use blended biodiesel for their fleet, Leverage‘s use of sustainably harvested wood for set construction, and Portlandia‘s decision to hire a “master recycler” to oversee on-set sustainability. Though the state still has a long way to go to make productions carbon neutral, these initial steps are very encouraging as Oregon seeks to promote itself as a new destination for green film and video production.

Donyale Werle to Speak at USITT 2013

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USITT-DonyaleWerle-tonyTony Award-winning scenic designer Donyale Werle will speak at the upcoming USITT conference in Milwaukee on the subject of making Broadway more environmentally friendly. Werle, who is the pre-production co-chair of the Broadway Green Alliance, is committed to making theatre a “greener” practice, and uses salvaged materials in her sets and designs. Her set for Peter and the Starcatcher, for which she won a Tony, was made entirely of recycled materials. She will speak on Saturday, March 23.

Donyale Werle, winner of the 2012 Tony Award for scenic design and a leader in the Broadway Green Alliance, has been added to the already-stellar lineup of participants at the 2013 USITT Annual Conference & Stage Expo March 20-23 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Ms. Werle’s session will focus on producing greener theatre. She has gained much acclaim for her use of salvaged materials in her sets and for her creative designs; she won her recent Tony for Peter and the Starcatcher, whose set was made entirely of recycled materials.

Werle serves as pre-production co-chair for the Broadway Green Alliance, which works for sustainable practices in the theatre community and is sponsoring her appearance at the USITT Conference on Saturday, March 23. BGA is a supporting member of USITT, the national association for backstage professionals, whose annual conference draws 5,000 people from the world of theatrical design and technology.

USITT considers Werle’s appearance a major coup for the conference, which has devoted resources to promoting greener theatre and production for several years. Last year USITT awarded a grant to Technical Director Paul Brunner, assisted by Scene Designer Michael Mehler, co-chairs of BGA’s Education Committee, to support their efforts to bring sustainable practices to educational theatre. They will be holding a separate seminar on “Reimagining Theatre with Green Ideals” at the upcoming conference and helped bring Werle in as a speaker.

World Premiere of Cassie Meador’s How To Lose a Mountain

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Dance Place

Washington DC

March 16, 2013 at 8 p.m.

March 17, 2013 at 7 p.m.

Click here for tickets

This Spring, Dance Exchange Artistic Director Cassie Meador examines loss and gain, risk and reward, and the distances travelled by our stories, our stuff, and ourselves, in How To Lose a Mountain. The National Performance Network commissioned stage production is part of a multi-year choreographic project, which included a 500-mile walk and community engagement tour last spring.

One year prior to the How To Lose a Mountain world premiere, Meador investigated the resources that power by walking from her home in Washington, DC to a site of mountaintop removal in West Virginia. Along the way, she and Dance Exchange artists visited power plants, led movement and outdoor education workshops called “Moving Field Guides,” and collected stories from community members in workshops called “500 Miles/500 Stories.”

During this past year following the walk, Meador and her artistic collaborators returned to the studio to build the evening length work that addresses issues of use and reuse, of living in the now and honoring our past, of what we lose when we gain and what we gain when we lose. The piece features a few additional voices, including that of a 200-year-old piano that will play an unconventional role in How To Lose a Mountain.

How To Lose a Mountain is a National Performance Network (NPN) Creation Fund Project co-commissioned by John Michael Kohler Arts Center in partnership with Dance Place, Dance Exchange and NPN. For more information: www.npnweb.org.

This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts. Art Works.

 

John Michael Kohler Arts Center
Sheboygan, WI
April 25, 2013

A new performance by Sara Wookey presented by Automata Arts Los Angeles

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tumblr_llyvwrdY7x1qje7eco1_500.1AUTOMATA PRESENTS: Sara Wookey’s new solo performance/lecture

Disappearing Acts & Resurfacing Subjects

The performance considers dance as a disappearing act, an erasure as construct, and questions recurring subjects floating in the public sphere- such as the preservation, ownership, and value of dance itself.

Through image, movement and text, Sara reflects on being a subsidized artist in Europe in the 1990’s, a freelance artist creating site-based projects in Los Angeles, and a selection of responses to her well known Open Letter to Artists. She spins together large themes of legacy in dance, the economic condition of artists, and strategies for making it (including a humorously touching, yet failed, fundraising campaign on Kickstarter), into a digestible, funny and poetic consideration of dance in our time.

MARCH 15 & 16, 8:00PM
MARCH 17, 4:00PM

SEATING IS LIMITED: Please purchase your tickets in advance at Automata Arts 
$15 General
$12 Members/Students/Seniors

Tauris by Sarah Moon

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tauris-image-with-black-1Sarah Moon’s new play Tauris will be performed as a staged reading at the Wild Project in New York March 16th and 17th.

She’s fundraising with Kickstarter to help cover the costs of production, rehearsal and publicity. This reading is an important step in the development of the play and I feel grateful to have the opportunity to workshop it with a great cast, director and music director before another revision and full production — Tauris has been accepted into the Planet Connections festival in June.

This play adapts the Greek drama Iphegenia at Tauris, mashing it up with sci-fi elements, contemporary issues and music to create a story that is adventurous, dramatic and sometimes funny. The play aims to address the challenges we face as a society and as individuals regarding a shift away from a one-way relationship with nature to real sustainability. The goal is not to preach or “teach the world to sing.” We’re well past the shaming phase of environmentalism, we’re well past believing in a utopian back-to-land fantasy. Where does that put us? This play explores where we’re at now relative to re-shaping our relationship to the earth and each other and the personal issues we face in coming to terms with the fact that no one of us can make the journey alone.

We’re raising $2,500 to cover the costs of production. Whether you can contribute $3 or $30 or more, it means a lot. And if you don’t have a cent to spare, but know some people who would be interested in supporting this project, please pass this along.

Tickets: https://web.ovationtix.com/trs/pr/921097.

Contribute: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1310353082/staged-reading-of-tauris

Call for papers on The Politics of African Contemporary Art – Seismopolite Journal of Art and Politics

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seismopoliteRecent approaches to African contemporary art often celebrate the advent of a global contemporary art scene in which they see an abolition of the provincialist and historicist concepts that were imposed by the West during the colonial period. One assumes that by taking part in new and post-historical/ post-national networks of exchange, facilitated by large-scale international exhibitions, biennials and fairs, artists can express themselves more truly as they are no longer doomed to wrestle with the notions of the pre-colonial/ colonial; to be measured against Western art-historical paradigms, or to be defined via enduring fictions about their own parochialism.

This issue of Seismopolite aims to assess the validity of this perspective and to further inquire into the possibilities and limitations pertaining to the global contemporary art scene in terms of addressing political issues in, and rewriting the history and future of African societies (as well as African art history) in a consequential way through art.

In particular we wish to shed a critical light on how the contemporary art economy influences the political agency and interaction of artistic expression in African societies, and reversely, how African art, although it may be free to address political issues, can retain or represent such a political agency once it has become part of the global contemporary.

Contributors from diverse disciplinary backgrounds are invited to submit essays, exhibition reviews or interviews that address the theme “The politics of African contemporary art” through a high variety of possible angles.

Topics may include, but are not restricted to:

  • The role of art and artists in the rewriting of (art) history and political geography.
  • The development of international contemporary art venues/ festivals/ biennials in African countries, and their impact on the societal function and meaning of art in these contexts.
  • The agency and potential of art to stimulate new future trajectories in precarious socio-political situations.
  • Political activism and post-colonial consciousness in art and art communities under colonial rule.
  • The relationship between cultural politics/ geopolitics and international contemporary art venues/ festivals/ biennials in African countries.
  • Changes to the role and the economy of the artist in African societies.
  • Processes of translation in the global mediation of African contemporary art.
  • Aesthetics and politics of art in ‘African diaspora’.

We accept submissions continuously, but to make sure you are considered for the upcoming issue, please send your proposal, CV and samples of earlier work to submissions@seismopolite.com within February 20, 2013. Completed work will be due March 8, 2013. Commissioned works will be translated into Norwegian and published in a bilingual version.

Seismopolite Journal of Art and Politics is a bilingual English and Norwegian quarterly, which investigates the possibilities of artists and art scenes worldwide to reflect and influence their local political situation.

Current issue: www.seismopolite.com

Previous issues: www.seismopolite.com/artandpolitics

Contact: submissions@seismopolite.com

I-Park 2013 Artists-in-Residence Program Application

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Screen-Shot-2012-12-02-at-6.37.05-PMApplication Deadline for Visual Arts, Music Composition/Sound Sculpture, Creative Writing, Moving Image: February 18, 2013

Application Deadline for Environmental Art, Landscape/Garden Design, Architecture: April 1, 2013

Self-directed, multi-disciplinary artists’ residencies will be offered from May through November 2013. Most sessions are 4-weeks in duration and are offered to those working in the Visual Arts, Music Composition/Sound Sculpture, Architecture, Creative Writing, Moving Image and Landscape/Garden Design. There is also a special Environmental Art Program in 2013.

Except for the $30 application fee, the residency is offered at no cost to accepted artists and includes comfortable private living quarters, a private studio and meal program. International applicants are welcome. To defray the cost of travel, four $750 grants will be awarded in 2013 to non-North American artists.

For details and to apply, visit http://www.i-park.org/residency-programs/2013-residency-program. Contact: iparkapplications@gmail.com or 860-873-2468.

 

 

Superhero Clubhouse and Matchboxarts in association with Chez Bushwick present MARS (a play about mining)

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uqze_MARSlogo2013FacebookcoverphotoMarch 7-9, 7:30pm

Center for Performance Research (CPR)

Williamsburg, Brooklyn

Displaced Appalachians resettled on Mars face a familiar dilemma when their leader initiates a questionable mining operation. The sixth in our Planet Play series, MARS is a dance-theater event featuring live music, graphic art and an original story inspired by the history of Appalachian coal mining.

MARS (a play about mining)
adapted from the graphic novel MARS! by  Tom Coiner
Choreography by Adam H. Weinert
Music by Adam Miller
Graphic Art by Kristy Caldwell with assistance from Clay Rodery and Ray Jones
Stage & Costume Design by R.B. Schlather
Stage Management/Assistant Direction by Alessandra Calabi
Dramaturgy by Megan McClain

Directed by Jeremy Pickard

Created & Performed by

Javier Baca
Nathaniel Bausch-Gould
Rosie Dupont
Aba Kiser
Logan Kruger
Dan Lawrence*
Keisuke Matsuno
Adam Miller
Manelich Minniefee
Jeremy Pickard
Davon Rainey
J.P. Schlegel
Adam H. Weinert

*appearing courtesy of Actors’ Equity Association

marslogoMust human progress always end in destruction?  What are the risks we will take to restore our home? Contemporary politics and childhood fantasies come crashing together in this unique event inspired the history of Appalachian coal mining.  Led by choreographer Adam H. Weinert, director Jeremy Pickard and composer Adam Miller, MARS features original dance, live music, graphic art and a strong ensemble of cross-disciplinary performers. Our technology is opening new frontiers… and new mines. We can go to Mars, hold the internet in our palm… and blow the tops off America’s oldest mountains. The controversies and paradoxes of mining have never been more relevant. In MARS, we explore these topics in our own unique way, and invite you to join in the adventure and the conversation.

Energization Survey

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ABOUT ME

My name is Maddalena and I am a Ph.D. student of Iuav University of Venice (Italy).  I am an industrial and interaction designer with a passion for theatre and this is why I started my research. If you are interested in knowing more information about me: www.maddalenadesign.it

Energization is a project I started last year to investigate how perceptions and imagery about energy is going to change  in the context of performing arts and, above all, buildings for theatre. At the moment, I am inviting people to join the debate and I am collecting information.

FIRST STEP: THEATRE WORKERS QUESTIONNAIRE

To start knowing more about you I would like to kindly invite you to answer an on-line questionnaire. You can decide to answer anonymously or you can insert your name, as you prefer.  THEATRE WORKERS questionnaire covers different specific areas so, if you don’t know some information  because it is not prerogative of your profession, really don’t worry  (it is not an exam and most of time  people don’t know some information I am requesting), simply skip and go to next question.

DATA COLLECTION

The data I am collecting are going to be used only for study purposes related to my research.  The results of the whole questionnaire will be reported as aggregated data in my Ph.D. thesis  or other form of scientific documentations (such as for example Energization’s website: www.maddalenadesign.it/ energization) For any suggestion, thought and reflection or question, or if you are interested in receiving a copy of the results of this study (when ready), feel free to contact me at maddalena@maddalenadesign.it

WHAT TO DO

When you have 15-20 minutes of time ;):

  1. go to this webpage: http://www.maddalenadesign.it/energization/survey/
  2. click on “SURVEY FOR THEATRE WORKERS (people that works in the field of performing arts)”
  3. write the password: teatroenergia26
  4. PLEASE BE CAREFUL YOU WILL BE ASKED TO CLICK THE “SUBMIT SURVEY” BUTTON 2 TIMES (otherwise I will not receive you answers)

 

Thank you so much,

kind regards

Maddalena