The Broadway Green Alliance is pleased to once again offer the College Green Captain Prize to an outstanding college student who has helped his or her campus theatre department become greener. The deadline for all applications is March 4, 2019.
Winners will have brought innovative, creative, and/or widely-applied greening and energy-efficiency methods into the design and/or production of theatre to their campuses. Entries from this year’s finalists will be displayed at the BGA booth at the United States Institute for Theatre Technology, Inc. (USITT) Annual Conference & Stage Expo, which runs from March 20-23, 2019 in Louisville, Kentucky.
The winner will be selected by a panel composed of members of the Broadway Green Alliance and will be announced at the USITT Expo. He or she will receive tickets to the Broadway production of Hadestown and, subject to availability, a professional backstage tour of the production or a meeting with a current Broadway Green Captain.
For more information on how to apply, please visit the BGA website by clicking here. Entries can be sent to green@broadway.org. Students or faculty/staff members interested in helping to green their theatre departments are encouraged to sign up to be a College Green Captain.P
The Point, owned and managed by Eastleigh Borough Council is undertaking an Arts Council Funded Small Capital grant programme called Your Point throughout 2019. As part of this refurbishment and transformation, one of the strands of work is to light up the building from the outside making it more visible to visitors, audience and place it firmly as a vibrant cultural destination in Eastleigh town centre. The commission will also encompass internal wayfinding to ensure once visitors are within the building they can orient themselves and navigate from place to place with ease. This commission wishes to enable the design & implementation of a digital lighting treatment to the outside of the venue to make it visibly bolder using artist designed lighting and continue the work inside the building to ensure a connection between the external and internal environments.
Please send your submission digitally in PDF format by email to sacha.lee@eastleigh.gov.uk By 12 noon on Monday 4th February 2019
The total budget for this work is in the region of £20,000 exc VAT. This is inclusive of design, materials, installations, all associated fees and expenses.
Danielle Eubank’s 20-year quest to visit and paint the waters of every ocean on Earth will be complete in early 2019, when she ventures to Antarctica. This, the Southern Ocean, will be Eubank’s fifth and final ocean to visit and will cap her decades-long quest to paint every ocean on the planet, hence the name of her project: One Artist Five Oceans.
“Painting all of the Earth’s oceans is about showing, through art, that the oceans sustain us – literally and, for me, artistically,†says Eubank. “There is a unifying preciousness amongst these bodies of water – and the people and animals that rely on them.â€
A Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant awardee and a member of The Explorer’s Club, Eubank’s relationship with ocean water began as a young girl growing up near Bodega Bay in Northern California. In her travels as a young artist, she was captivated by bodies of water. She focused on painting water in its myriad conditions, refining her techniques of abstraction and realism until she was able to render their ephemeral qualities in her own style.
Eubank’s 20-year quest to paint all five of the planet’s oceans started in 2001 in Andalucia, Spain after a bicycle accident forced her to abandon her travels and spend time in a fishing village, painting the Atlantic coast. This work led to an invitation to serve as the expedition artist aboard the Borobudur Ship, a replica ancient Indonesian vessel that rounded the Cape of Good Hope sailing from Indonesia to Ghana, in 2003-4.
The experience cemented her commitment to paint the five oceans of the world and in 2008-2010, she sailed on a replica of a 2,500-year-old Phoenician ship that circumnavigated Africa, a trip originally made 500 years before the birth of Christ. Eubank most recently (2014) sailed aboard a barquentine tall ship on an expedition to the High Arctic that took her to the northernmost human settlement on Earth.
In each of these journeys, the vessel she sailed on in the open sea inspired her to view the bodies of water in exciting new ways, capturing each ocean as an entity, with her work portraying individual portraits of mood and emotion.
In February 2019, she is embarking on a rare voyage to the Southern Ocean, the fifth and final ocean for Eubank to visit and capture. This journey will complete her life-long quest and will inspire the creation of a landmark series of ocean paintings which will be exhibited beginning in 2019.
Eubank is exploring the consequences of the human footprint, including climate change, on seascapes all over the world. The body of work simultaneously communicates the preciousness of water and the impact of humans on the environment.
Arts Territory Exchange Residency in Sustainable Practice.
Submitted by Gudrun Filipska
The ARTS TERRITORY EXCHANGE is an organisation which facilitates creative exchange across borders and works with artists in remote locations and those whose work explores ideas of place, territory and environment. ATE’s work involves the pairing up of Artist’s across the world in creative long distance correspondences.
The first ATE Residency in Sustainable Practice took place on Art Aia’s Eco farm in Friulia, Italy this September and ran in conjunction with the Pordenone Litterary festival. The CSPA advised on the project and Meghan Moe Beiticks was on the selection panel alongside Veronica Sekules, art critic and curator at GroundWork Gallery, UK. Kelly Leonard in Australia and Beatrice Lopez in Norway had been corresponding digitally and by post for a year before they were selected by the panel and had developed an intriguing body of weaving and text based works forging a dialogue between their respective locations.
The idea behind the residency was for participants of the ATE to be able to meet face to face and spend a week intensively developing the work they had already begun, with specific focus on ideas of sustainability in its material and conceptual forms. The artists were provided with a series of contextual writings on ecology and arts practice and were encouraged to engage with some of the CSPA’s back editions.
Art Aia’s Eco farm in Fruilia provided an interesting backdrop through which to engage with ideas of sustainability extending beyond the materiality of the art world, the artists were able to visit vineyards and factories and discuss the crossovers of culture and sustainable agriculture with their host Giovanni Morassutti. Giovanni says his Art Aia residency space has its interests in ‘Creating the kind of connections between people that lead to collective civic action, political expression, community dialogue, shared cultural experiences’.
The artists already had shared interests in textiles, weaving, and installation as performative action in outdoor settings, performances which have political dimensions beyond the traditional uses of their chosen materials. Kelly installs woven works in the landscape around her home town of Mudgee, Australia – a location threatened by the open-cast coal mining. Her works are conceptual and ephemeral referencing 1970’s activist stitchers such Kate Walker and more contemporary iterations such as ‘Yarn bombing’, subverting the very domestic history of women’s tapestry weaving and stitching. They are guerrilla actions with serious messages about climate change and the destruction of habitats, stitched messages such a ‘resist’ and ‘Regent Honey Eater‘ – yet the works are sensitive to the local environment – photographed and then removed. This respect for the environment and the responsibilities of the artists within it was shared with co-collaborator Beatrice Lopez with her own practice, placing temporary compositions within the Norwegian landscape.
Beatrice and Kelly had already developed a number of ideas during their ‘digital’ and postal collaborations and began to adapt them in relation to the Italian landscape and residency space. Kelly Leonard says ‘Our year of working together in the virtual space meant we had a foundation to draw from when we met, we had a type of creative short hand already established’. Meeting in person the artists noted their physical differences in terms of, weight, body shape and age.
‘Sketch for a performance for two people’ Image Courtesy of the artists.
In the documentation of the performance works undertaken at the residency their height difference is particularly apparent, adding an interesting extra dimension to their performative works.
The artists made site responsive work in relation to a number of agricultural sites they visited, Beatrice says, ‘ Following a performance we did at the local biological vineyard, where we walked with a filtering fabric between us in front of a large deposit of processed soya that was used to create bio energy. The performance emphasised the necessity to filter and re cycle. It was also symbolic for our shared bond and collaboration for a sustainable future. The fabric was then hung up in the gallery space along with residue of soya.’
Installation in Art Aia Project space. Image courtesy of the artists.
Beatrice and Kelly share common interests in the politics of place and post colonial narratives, both researching, and feeling affinity with, the indigenous cultures of their homelands, Kelly, as an Australian of European heritage, acknowledging the cultural authority of the Wiradjuri people as the traditional owners of the land in which she makes her work.
Throughout their time working together the artists have used the phrase ‘Connected by a Thread’ as a motto through which to explore environmental causality and potential for spiritual affinity. In researching the cultures of Huichol Indians of South America, Beatrice had previously begun to work with ideas of ‘offerings’ made to the elements of the earth as a way of re dressing a balance tipped over by a culture’s obsession with production at the expense of the environment.
The Motif of the ‘offering’ is one which also comes through strongly in their collaborative work and is felt on a number of levels beyond symbolic reparations to nature. Their works are offerings to an audience, documents of performative actions, and act as residual templates of the artists physical experiences with the natural elements they work with. Regarding their work ‘Prayer Wheel’, one can imagine the performative and repetitive actions which led to its creation; the collecting of local grasses, the tying of grass bundles, positioning grass and read heads in a circle, winding sticks with colourful yarn… each wrapped stick containing a written instruction for an immersive call to action; referencing the prayers contained in a traditional Buddhist Prayer Wheel and offering potential for audience engagement.
‘Prayer Wheel’ Image courtesy of the artists. Art Aia Project space.
The ideas of repetitive and ritualistic practices are followed through in the other works made on the residency, In ‘Interconnected Walk’ the two artists walked over a three day period, in two large intersecting circles similar to a lemniscate symbol. (See a short Video documenting part of the performance Here). The work makes obvious reference to walking artists such as Richard Long and Hamish Fulton but, is conceived as a walking performance for two. Watching the artists courteously side step each other as they cross paths at certain intersections is touching, saying perhaps more about their growing relationship with each other than the land scape they are marking with their repetitive footsteps.
In ‘Soft Touch’, Soft white Icelandic wool brought to the residency by Beatrice, rests on top of local detritus, broken leaves, feathers and sticks. The piece evokes both a nest and alter – the clean pristine wool, an offering to temped hands, to touch and lift its threads.
Another work ‘Water talks’ was made by recording ambient sound of water near to their residency accommodation, a land of damp earth and agricultural irrigation ditches. Overlaying the sound of water, the two artists recite a poem by Norwegian Poet Lars Saabye Christensen, Kelly in English and Beatrice in Norwegian.
The sound piece ‘Water Talks’ housed in a metal frame structure interwoven with Puzzlegrass and Reed heads.
Image Courtesy of the artists.
A further work ‘South North’, makes connections between the three countries, Norway, Australia and Italy; a silhouette of Kelly traced in pebbles is connected by a thread which runs across an antique map of Norway, out over the lintel of the window, into the Italian countryside… As well as connection between the three locations, disjunctures were also keenly felt, departing Australia at a time of drought, Kelly was shocked by how verdant Northern Italy was, saying, ‘I found the area of Italy to be too green, too rich, too comfortable…’. The impact of climate change is felt very differently in Europe, not as urgently perhaps, although a short train journey from Art Aia’s residency space, sea levels rise around a sinking Venice.
About
the artists.
Kelly Leonard
I first learnt to weave as a teenager from a German Master Weaver, Marcella Hempel, in Australia. My art practice has been re-activated since moving back to my home-town two years ago; moving from a traditional craft based medium to one that is highly conceptual, collaborative and moves across art forms responding to the environment. My work is very much informed by environmental philosophy which provides a context for both making and showing the work.
I weave on a European floor-loom what I call props for the environment which are placed in site-specific locations around Mudgee, photographed and then removed. The locations are chosen because they are under stress from the impact of the open-cut coal mines operated by the big coal mining companies. The images are exhibited on-line and one of my goals is to develop some alternative broadcasting methods to reach a wider audience in the near future. The work I make is pretty much process driven and I derive a lot of satisfaction from thinking of the environment as a collaborator and audience.
I make work in Wiradjuri Country whose sovereignty was never ceded, I walk on traditional land. I try to consider all aspects of a landscape by: how it smells, tastes, feels, sounds and the multiple narratives embedded into it. The landscape is never passive, always watching me make work. It is also a collaborator, helping me to shape the work.
Beatrice Lopez
Beatrice is an artist that works in different mediums such as painting, installation and sound. Gaining a BA from Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti in Milan as well as an exchange from the Pratt Institute in New York. She has had a solo exhibition entitled `Ritual Lines` at Art Licks festival and taken part in various group exhibitions through institutions such as White Space gallery, MAMU galleria and most recently at Galleri Vanntårnet. Through her abstract paintings in ink and soft pastel, fleeting textures appear reminiscent of inner visions and organic forms. Her multimedia works are placed in nature, using thread and organic material to create curious compositions. Her continuous interest in nature and topographies has led her to take part in the Arts Territory Exchange, an ongoing collaborative correspondence project based on nature, ecology and topographies. Exchanging ideas by post with the artist Kelly Leonard based in Australia. They met for a one week residency this fall made possible by CSPA and ATE. Beatrice participated at Performance Art Oslo event `Contemplating landscape through art` this year at Steilene in Norway. Beatrice was born in 1986 and is currently based in Oslo.
Holding the ATE residency in Sustainable Practice at Art Aia In Pordenone was an attempt to forge connections between artists, farmers, eco entrepreneurs and members of the local rural community. A weaving together of conceptual and material iterations of ‘sustainability’, interests which ATE plans on developing in various forms and in different locations in future years. Thankyou to Beatrice Lopez and Kelly Leonard for their participation in this residency.
The Nomad/9 MFA offers artists a relevant, field-based approach to graduate studies. Created in 2015, Nomad/9 is a rigorous, low-residency program with a high-impact curriculum that includes ecology, history, culture, and craft. The curriculum provides a thoughtfully curated set of residencies which augment each student’s in-depth thesis advising with artists Christy Gast and Mary Mattingly. During residencies, visiting faculty teach courses in that utilize each site as a learning lab, such as:
Mark Dion addressing the sub-tropic ecosystems in the Everglades of South Florida
Muriel Hasbun on Central American art, cultural memory and diaspora in El Salvador
Ramona Kitto Stately teaching Dakota culture through beading in Minneapolis
Allison Smith offering a class on protest textiles in her studio in Oakland
Linda Weintraub addressing Eco Materialism in Rhinebeck, New York
Nico Wheadon teaching Professional Practices for Public Art through the Studio Museum of Harlem
Caroline Woolard teaching Art and Economies at Brooklyn Commons
This unusual curriculum is the result of founder and director Carol Padberg’s application of ecological design principals to graduate pedagogy, with a focus on ethical culture. The resulting graduate program is built for a diverse student body of artists from a variety of disciplines and divergent points of view. Socially engaged artists, artist educators, interdisciplinary practitioners, eco artists, craftspeople, and artists with an interest in new forms and collaborations are encouraged to apply. Applications for the incoming Cohort 4 are now available online at nomad9mfa.org, with a deadline for Scholarship Consideration of February 1, 2019.
Arts Feminism Queer (CUNTemporary) is now accepting proposals for ‘Deep Trash: Eco Trash’ & ‘Queer-feminist Ecocriticism in Live Art & Visual Cultures’, which will be part of the larger programme ‘EcoFutures’, taking place in (London, UK) in April 2019.
The programme will explore urgent topics ranging from ecological disasters and their impact on climate refugees; plastic/toxic waste and the contamination of aquatic and human bodies; the relationship between increasing air toxicity and human and animal diseases; high-speed capitalist consumption and the ungovernable production of trash and techno-waste; from neo-colonialist soil exploitations to indigenous land reclamations and green economies; the rise of temperature and sea levels and their direct effects on the environment, with a focus on the Global South / Majority World.
Artists, activists and theorists are invited to engage with these topics through feminist, queer and decolonial approaches to provide alternatives that draw from situated knowledges, eco-sustainable modes of living, non-exploitative human and animal relations within ecosystems, as well as speculative scenarios of imagined futures, nature-based spirituality, earth magick, feminine powers and ecosexuality.Â
Calling for:Â
Performances, videos, installations, prints and other 2D/3D and time-based media artworks for the multi-disciplinary exhibition and performance club night ‘Deep Trash: Eco Trash’ on Friday 19 April 2019 at Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club.
Theoretical output and (performative) lectures to be presented during the 1-day conference ‘Queer-feminist Ecocriticism in Live Art & Visual Cultures’ on Saturday 13 April 2019. This will be hosted by the Department of Drama at Queen Mary University and will include contributions by guest speakers Gaia Giuliani (University of Coimbra, Portugal), Shela Sheikh (Goldsmiths University, UK) and João Florencio (Exeter University, UK); screenings of works by Adelita Husni-Bey and Wangechi Mutu; with more special guests from Europe and the US to be announced soon.
Written contributions (articles, write-ups, interviews, short essays, cross-genre, creative writing…) for an editorial piece to be published online at www.cuntemporary.org/editorial
Your proposal may include, respond to, be affected by, but not restricted to:
Indigenous and native two-spirited/trans responses to land expropriations and natural destructions.
Connections between toxic masculinity and ecotoxicology
Creating sustainable micro-economies against capitalist exploitation/new forms of labour from a gendered perspective.
Hysteria and Nature: historical representations and contemporary subversions of the association between untamable femininity and environmental disasters.
Climate change and the impact on the Majority World and the ecosystems: from the rise of water levels to the Sixth Mass extinction of species.
Projections of monstrosity and alienation: how climate refugees face increasing racism and xenophobia.
Environmental disasters, alien/monster attacks and post-apocalyptic events wiping out the white, able-bodied, nuclear heteronormative family (and associated values).
Afrofuturist connections to botanic healing and eco-spirituality.
Plastic pollution in water and the ecosystems: eco-destructions and creation of new forms of water bodies’ resistance in speculative fiction scenarios.Â
Politics of DIY and bio-hacking experimentation: cyborg organisms and non-human to human hybridisation.
Trash and techno-waste as resources for post-porn activism.
Transspecies relationality and hybridity: from animal to geological and water alliances.
How animal sexualities resist normative ideas of sexuality and gender and the perception of ‘natural/deviant’ in human discourses.
Ecology without nature or ‘dark ecology’: symptoms of ecological catastrophes and dystopic visions of ‘non-human’ worlds and societies.
Feminist critiques of (m)Anthropocene theories.
Ecosexuality as a form of resistance to heteronormative relationality and anthropocentrism.
Critiques and reflections on meat consumption and queer-vegan standpoints.
Meat, flesh and cannibalism: radical approaches to human and non-human body politics.
Anarchic and anti-speciesist utopias.
Transexuality and queer genealogies in plant and animal domains.
Affective Xenopolitics: anti-systemic struggles for the emergence of new alliances in bio- and ecological territories beyond the rhetoric of (nationalist and other) belonging.
Eco-rituals ranging from neo-paganism, wicca, green witches, radical faeries, pansexual communities and menstrual magick.
Shamanism and the practice of curanderas: the power of healing with herbs and channeling supernatural dimensions.
The impact of colonialism, globalisation and capitalist-industrial development on the ecological demise of the colonised territories and periphery countries.
Scene invites submissions for it’s special issue on: Scene on Sustainability – from any angle covered by the UN SDGs. (https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/?menu=1300) and the intersections of arts, design, performance and any aspects of the creative and cultural industries.
The Sustainable Development Goals are the blueprint to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all. They address the global challenges we face, including those related to poverty, inequality, climate, environmental degradation, prosperity, and peace and justice. The Goals interconnect and in order to leave no one behind, it is important that we achieve each Goal and target by 2030.
Deadline: 15 January 2019.
Papers are invited for Scene, the journal from Intellect which explores all aspects of design contexts for live and recorded performance, giving special attention to the shaping of artistic vision, aesthetic sophistication, critical thinking and craft. Our remit covers the following: cinema, television, commercials, theatre, opera, musical, interior design, lighting design, costume design, theme parks, scenography, architecture, visual special effects, visual arts, virtual sets, multivision, location sets, games design and virtual environments, modes of spectating.
The journal incorporates investigations into the development of new technologies and modes of operating, distribution of content and profiles of design for film, television, theatre and events, as well as new platforms such as gaming and virtual environment design. We explore the understanding that the designer’s multifaceted contribution to a production involves much more than providing a visual background.
We also welcome reviews of new work, scholarship, criticism and exhibitions. We invite submissions of articles of 4,000-8,000 words from any discipline related to the topics outlined above.
Submissions Submissions are welcome from scholars and practitioners. Contributors are encouraged to approach design for entertainment from any discipline and to turn their attention to practices from all countries and in all languages.
• Article submissions: please send a 300-word abstract and include the word ‘Article’ in the subject heading. Please indicate the intended word count of the article. All submissions will be peer-reviewed • Papers must be submitted in English • Reviews of publications and exhibitions: please include ‘Review Exhibition’ in the subject heading • Creative submissions: please include the word ‘Creative’ in the subject heading
All articles submitted should be original work and must not be under consideration by other publications.
Journal contributors will receive a free PDF copy of their final work upon publication. Print copies of the journal may also be purchased by contributors at half price.
Theatre Journal is delighted to announce two upcoming special issues: “Theatre and the Nonhuman” and “Water” with deadlines in January and February 2019. Please contact individual issue editors with questions. We welcome your submissions.
Julie’s Bicycle announce the winners for the 2018 Creative Green Awards
Julie’s Bicycle is proud to announce the winners of the second Creative Green Awards celebrating the many outstanding organisations taking action on climate and the environment. With over 300 Creative Green certificates awarded, the awards are a moment for the sector to showcase their leadership in climate action.
The awards are supported with sponsorship from First Mile, Seacourt Printing and Pilio with Good Energy also sponsoring the award for Highest Achievement for Improvement. We have partnered with environmental solution providers as they are innovative in the sector able to best support arts organisations turn their ambition and commitment into reality for reduction environmental impacts and engage their audiences in climate action.
The Awards were hosted last night at the Roundhouse, with contributions from Baroness Lola Young, artist Michael Pinsky and Matthew Bourne of New Adventures.
Categories and shortlist:
Outstanding Achievement
Festival Republic
Highest Achievement for Commitment
Shambala Festival
Highest Achievement for Understanding
Universal Music
Highest Achievement for Improvement (sponsored by Good Energy)
Glyndebourne
Best Festival
Reading & Leeds Festival
Best Museum and Gallery
Discovery Museum
Best Cultural Venue
Young Vic
Best Newcomer
Siamsa Tire
Best Creative Programming
V&A Museum
Best Campaign
Lyric Hammersmith
Best Creative Group
Curzon Cinemas
Green Champions
Jordan Bedding – Curzon Cinemas
Jackie Bland – Tyne & Wear Archives and Museums
Vikki Chapman – Festival Republic
Paul Josefowski – National Theatre
Creative Green Pioneer
New Adventures
Alison Tickell, Director of Julie’s Bicycle on the awards:
“These awards show the outstanding quality and progressive leadership on climate and the environment from the UK’s cultural community. With energy and imagination the sector continues to drive down emissions and power up sustainable change.â€
Sir Matthew Bourne, Artistic Director, New Adventures on the awards:
“New Adventures is thrilled to be the first touring company to be working in partnership with Julie’s Bicycle on a Creative Green Touring certification. As the UK’s biggest and busiest touring Dance company, we visit theatres across the world and travel to very picturesque settings. I believe that it’s important to conserve the natural beauty around us and it is something that we’re very passionate about. We hope that our Green Adventure with Julie’s Bicycle will help us to spread the word to our wonderful presenting venues and audiences around the globe about how to lead more sustainable lifestyles, so that generations to come can continue to enjoy all that our planet has to offer.â€
“New Adventures is delighted to be awarded the Creative Green Pioneer award in recognition of our work with Julie’s Bicycle over the past 18 months. We are now very excited to see what we can achieve in the future, particularly on our UK tour of Swan Lake.â€
Climate Change Theatre Action 2019Â is just around the corner. Once again, we’re bringing 50 new climate change plays by 50 international playwrights into the world. We’re lighting the way and imagining together how to create the just and sustainable future we all deserve.
To get the project underway, we need to raise $15,000 by December 13th – our most ambitious campaign yet! – so we can commission our playwrights. We would love for you to become part of this amazing community of changemakers. Can you chip in $10, $25, $50 or more? Every contribution level gets you some cool perks that we have lovingly put together for you as an expression of our gratitude.
This is an all-or-nothing deal: either we reach or goal, or we get no money at all. Please contribute generously and help us spread the word by sharing this campaign with your networks. Are you with us?