We interview Deanne LaRue and Scott Mason today. They are both working on the CO2 Cube by the Tycho Brahe Planetarium in Copenhagen. We’re saving the INterview for later, but here is some footage as it was getting dark about then once the sun is nowhere to be seen.
Ian Garrett
Live from Copenhagen
Perhaps “Live” is a bit misused here, but we are in Copenhagen right now. I got in yesterday morning and Miranda, after some delays, made it last night. My host, Sara Vilslev, and I made it to Downtown Hopenhagen and met the Wooloo.org/New Life Copenhagen Guys. We also saw a number of pavilions promoting greening living in creative ways.
We’re about to head out for a fullday, but I wanted to share some pictures from our night before we get to far along!
Bikes are the standard in Copenhagen.
Downtown Hopenhagen lit up
Martin from Wooloo.org records pledges to never drink Coca-Cola again for the Yes Men.
Bike power Disco.
My contract for a sustainable burial, should I die during COP15.
That is not Brad Pitt on stage at Hopenhagen.
the nytheatre i: Kickoff! — Stolen Chair Theatre’s Community Supported Theatre
Here’s the first dispatch from Jo Ann Rosen, nytheatre.com’s “embedded journalist” with the Stolen Chair Theatre’s Community Supported Theatre program.
*****
November 22, 2009
Even before President Obama urged educators to concentrate their efforts on math and science, Stolen Chair Theatre co-artistic directors Jon Stancato and Kiran Rikhye were reaching for the stars. Last night, they launched the pilot program of their Community Sponsored Theatre (CST) that introduced friends, family and, most importantly, the new CST members to this year’s theatrical theme: Quantum Poetics: A Science Experiment for the Stage.
The evening, divided into two parts, began with a slide presentation by Jon, also the resident director, explaining the CST concept, which he hopes will solidify a long-term relationship between the theater group and its membership. The plan is to update and educate the members monthly on the creative process. Kiran, Stolen Chair’s resident playwright, focused on their mission statement: to create “playfully intellectual, wickedly irreverent and exuberantly athletic original works.†Aviva Meyer, the communications director, explained how they intend to increase awareness through telephone interviews that will become pod casts and through their online social network, The Chaise Lounge, where subsequent CST events and other related activities, will be posted.
But it was the second part of the evening that delivered on the CST concept; that is, they shared the result of their first steps in the dynamic process of creating a play. Seven actors re-enacted exercises developed during a recent creative retreat. To prepare for the retreat, each actor received a 211-page compilation of articles and books on a wide variety of scientific subjects, including theoretical physics and neuroscience. They also received books by Bertolt Brecht, Aristotle, and Richard Schechner, who, in Jon’s words, “approach theater with the same sort of empirical rigor as scientists.†During the retreat, ideas percolated and Jon added requirements and boundaries to the concepts. The actors interpreted and enacted them. The best of the compositions were presented at the kickoff.
Performances represented the personification of five theories: chaos, gravity, memory, evolution, and synethesia (senses crossing from one part of the brain to another, as from brain damage or drugs). The first exercise, made up of all seven actors, reflected an imaginative interpretation of a human collider creating new matter. The group, held tightly together by a hula hoop, moved slowly to center stage. Once the plastic ring dropped, each burst from the whole with great energy. Another performance related the story of The Three Little Pigs to represent three gravity-defining moments; a third showed the daily routine of two people that could easily have doubled for two rats in a maze. All were big scientific ideas applied to every day life. They were made comprehensible and whimsical by this very clever group.
Kiran, who will be giving shape to the final play, knows there will be lots of changes during this year-long collaboration. The final version may include parts of the exercises, maybe only a gesture, or none of it. But, what the charter members saw last night was the first spark of a new play – Quantum Poetics: A Science Experiment for the Stage. The next event is on Sunday, December 13. They will be screening clips from movies that explore scientific themes. Membership is still open.
*****
via the nytheatre i: Kickoff! — Stolen Chair Theatre’s Community Supported Theatre.
Climate changes: Steve Waters interview
Many had considered climate change an impossible subject to dramatise. But two new plays that opened at the Bush in May proved them wrong.
Steve Waters talks to Robert Butler about ‘The Contingency Plan’, his double-bill of plays about climate change, and how they were inspired by James Lovelock, the 1953 floods, and the Transition Town Handbook.
http://www.ashdendirectory.org.uk/featuresView.asp?pageIdentifier=2009122_59406680&view=
To coincide with the UN Conference in Copenhagen, Radio 3 also broadcasts a version of ‘The Contingency Plan’ (this Sunday, 8pm) and two readings of the play, with the original cast, will be produced at the Bush on 15 and 18 December.
etIntersection: Scenography Expanding
etIntersection
Scenography Expanding
Symposia 1-3
Riga – Belgrade – Evora 2010
www.intersection.cz
Scenography Expanding
Invitation and Call for Papers
Throughout the past decade, scenographic practice and performance design have continuously moved beyond the black box of the theatre toward a hybrid terrain located at the intersections of theatre, architecture, exhibition, visual arts, and media. This terrain and its spaces are constructed from action and interaction. They are defined by individual and group behavior, and are contrasted by distinct behavioral patterns.
It is proposed here that spaces that are staged in such a way – spaces that are at the same time hybrid, mediated, narrative, and transformative – result from a trans-disciplinary understanding of space and a distinct awareness of social agency. These two factors of “expansion†are seen as the central driving forces in contemporary scenographic practice and thought.
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With the aim of initiating and hosting an active and trans-disciplinary discourse on the notion of an expanding scenography, the Prague Quadrennial for Performance Design and Space issues an invitation for participation and a Call for Papers for the symposia and workshop sessions, Scenography Expanding 1-3 in 2010. Grouped under the overriding and programmatic title of Scenography Expanding, invited academic papers, artist’s presentations and expert workshop sessions will be looking to engage with notions of spectatorship, artists/authors, and curating in relation to the diverse artistic positions in contemporary spatial design.
In preparation for the Intersection Project of the Prague Quadrennial in June, 2011, we invite researchers in practice and theory (artists, curators, programers, directors, dramaturgs, critics, and theorists) to participate in 3 international scenography symposia held in Riga, Belgrade and Évora during 2010. The overall aim of these symposia is to unfold the wide range of disciplines, genres, theoretical, and artistic positions that comprise the relationships between spectator, artist/author and curator in contemporary scenographic/performance design practice.
Scenography Expanding 1-3 will be followed up by a peer-reviewed publication comprised of selected speakers` contributions in the form of academic papers and visual essays. Guidelines for authors will be available shortly via download from www.intersection.cz.
Scenography Expanding 1: On Spectatorship
February 25 – 27, 2010
New Theatre Institute of Latvia, Riga, Latvia
Speaker presentations, panel discussions, and workshop sessions engage with effects of the proposed “scenographic turn†on notions of spectatorship in performance design and space.
How are contemporary theories of spectatorship expanding by the increasingly hybrid spaces that we inhabit – in theatre (performance), architecture, exhibition, and media?  Is “space†becoming a governing factor in the negotiation between performers and spectators?
Do hybrid spaces invite new agendas to be explored, performed, exhibited, and constructed? Does an expanding notion of scenography challenge/confirm established notions of live-ness and re-mediation?
Deadline for registration and submission of abstracts (please download the application form at ww.intersection.cz): 15.12.2009
Scenography Expanding 2: On Artists/Authors
July 9 – 11, 2010
BELEF Center and Festival, Belgrade, Serbia
Speaker presentations, panel discussions, and workshop sessions investigate the question of the identity of the artist/author in the conceptualization, construction and participation in hybrid scenographic and performance design spaces.
Who are the artists and teams responsible for creating contemporary scenographies in theatre, performance, architecture, exhibition, installation, and media? Is and/or how is the trans-disciplinary nature of scenographic teams reflected in the theoretical discourse on scenography? When does audience become a co-creator? When does a curator become a co-creator?
Deadline for registration and submission of abstracts (please download the application form at www.intersection.cz): 15.3.2010
Scenography Expanding 3: On Curating
September 27 – 29, 2010
Festival Escrita na Paisagem and Centro de História da Arte e Investigação ArtÃstica (CHAIA), Évora, Portugal
Speaker presentations, panel discussions, and workshop sessions are concerned with the complex role of the curator in exhibiting spatial practice. A range of models, examples, and future perspectives are introduced and discussed. How is scenographic practice in theatre (performance), architecture, exhibition, installation, and media framed in order to curate, program, communicate, display and reflect? When does an artist become a curator? Who is the author of the space? What are contemporary perspectives on the display of ephemeral practice? Between Badious’ call for “decidedness†(2005) and Bourriauds’ relational aesthetics (2002) – where do we stand?
Deadline for registration and submission of abstracts (please download the application form at www.intersection.cz): 15.6.2010
Symposia Conveners
Sodja Lotker, Prague Quadrennial Artistic Director
Thea Brejzek, Prague Quadrennial Curator for Theory
Please send abstracts of 300 words max, and a short bio to: sodja.lotker@pq.cz and thea.brejzek@zhdk.ch (please download the application form at www.intersection.cz).
We will inform you within two weeks of the submission deadline whether your proposal
has been accepted.
More information, including registration forms and the full program (keynote speakers and speakers, publication details, etc.), will be updated on: www.intersection.cz.
Join our mailing list to get the latest information: pq@pq.cz.
The symposia are part of the Intersection: Intimacy and Spectacle – a special international project of the Prague Quadrennial that explores performance and performativity as important elements of diverse art and cultural disciplines, focusing on performance design and scenography as interdisciplinary fields. Â The project will consist of two central parts: research symposia as well as interactive installations/performance that will take place in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Serbia, Latvia, Ireland, Great Britain, Estonia, Finland, Norway and Portugal during 2011 and 2012.
Intersection project is organized by the Prague Quadrennial (CZ) in co-operation with the New Theatre Institute of Latvia (LAT); the Irish Theatre Institute (IE); the Victoria and Albert Museum (GB); the BELEF Festival (RS); the Kretakör Theatre Company (HU); the National Theatre Prague (CZ); Ente Teatrale Italiano (IT); Kiasma Theatre, Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art (FI); as well as the Institute of Design & Technology, Design Department, Zurich University of the Arts ZHdK (CH); the Escrita na Paisagem’s Festival de Performance e Artes da Terra (PT); the Centro de História da Arte e Investigação ArtÃstica (PT).
With the support of the Culture Programme of the European Union.
The Prague Quadrennial is organized by Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic and Arts and Theatre Institute.
MAMMUT MAGAZINE #4 :: CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS
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MAMMUT MAGAZINE #4 :: CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS
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WORKING TITLE: Solastalgia
What happens when the climate changes around you but you are still in the same location?
The fourth issue of Mammut Magazine will investigate the effects of climate change on the human psyche, focusing on a new definition of sadness called “solastalgia.” Coined by Australian philosopher Glenn Albrecht, it refers to a form of homesickness felt while still at home, particularly as it refers to the perceived change in one’s home environment caused by climate change. A parallel of sorts to nostalgia, solastalgia was created by combining the Latin words solacium, meaning comfort, and algia, meaning pain.
Albrecht created the term in 2003 after interviewing scores of Australians, many of whom noted that they felt a deep sense of loss as the landscape changed around them and familiar plants and animals were gone. “They no longer feel like they know the place they’ve lived for decades,” Albrecht said in a 2007 Wired interview.
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Mammut Magazine is looking for essays and artwork that:
>>> deals with, affirms or denies the idea of solastalgia
>>> investigates how we define our sense of belonging through our environment
>>> confronts how we are (or will be) affected individually and collectively by these changes.
We welcome contributions from all fields, while keeping in mind the magazine’s general focus on art and the environment.
The fourth issue of Mammut is being guest edited by Ian Garrett, the executive director of The Center for Sustainable Practice in the Arts. https://www.sustainablepractice.org
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IMPORTANT DATES
>>>Â Proposal deadline: January 15, 2010
Please send a short outline of your project and/or images to mammutmag@gmail.com
>>> If chosen, the final submission deadline will be March 1, 2010
>>> Anticipated release date:Â late April / Early May 2010
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For more about Mammut Magazine, please visit http://www.mammutmagazine.org
CSPA December 09 Newsletter
On Friday we both head to Copenhagen for the New Life Copenhagen Festival, the arts festival surrounding COP15, which began on Monday. During our stay in Europe, we’ll also be checking in on Future Arcola and a project for the 2011 Prague Quadrennial. December will be a very exciting, if not a bit chilly, month. We also have open calls for the next edition of the Quarterly and Mammut, which will be guest edited by the CSPA. As we approach the New Year, we hope that your winter is cozy (for the right reasons) and that we’ll be seeing you often in 2010!
Ian Garrett & Miranda Wright
CSPA Directors
CSPA December 09 Newsletter.
December BGA Green Sheet
Michael Crowley just sent over the December issue of the Broadway Green Alliance “Green Sheet.”
He asks that we please stay tuned to www.broadwaygreen.com, as the new BGA website should be going live next week.
As always, please keep him abreast of green practices that are helping your organization save money and instill environmentally sound thinking into staff, artists and audiences. The BGA is eager to share better green practices from across the country.
Video Chat in Artistic Endeavors
It goes without saying that the travel associated with our artist endeavors is not the most sustainable. I’ve been to so many conferences this last year, mostly traveling by plane. Next week I’m off to Europe where I’ll be staying in Copenhagen for COP15 and Wooloo.org‘s New Life Festival, but I’m also headed to London for the Future Arcola Launch and, it’s looking like Prague as well, to check in with a project for the next PQ in June of 2011.
I personally love traveling. I feel guilty, yes, but I love going places. I also feel there is no substitute for in-person discussions. The spontaneity and intimacy of direct contact is important and this is easiest to accommodate face-to-face and in the flesh. And, even when it’s not about having a one-on-one, there is also that just showing up most of the time is a big deal. I maintain that our “success” with the CSPA is due to persistence and “showing up”.
Two weeks ago, I was in Orlando for LDI for a full day of Green Sessions for the show technology crowd put together by Bob Usdin and Annie Jacobs from Showman Fabricators. There I had the chance to meet Bryan Raven of White Light in the UK again. We had been on a roundtable panel at the Theatre Materials/Material Theatre conference at the Central School of Speech and Drama‘s Center for Excellence in Theatre Training in April of 2008. That previous conference was also when I was able to meet, and have a drink with, Ben Todd from Arcola. Ben, who was not able to come to Orlando, and was instead in Stockholm (maybe you saw his post early this week) , was present via a video chat to talk about Future Arcola.
With the ubiquity of broadband connections, more and more people seem to be relying on video conference/chat technology to get other busy, high profile, greener guests to be able to be in two spaces at the same time. And, as it tends to shake out, the resident technophile/ show technologist, I get the pleasure of making a lot of them work.
Last night, at California Institute of the Arts I set up a video chat audition for guest artists that will be in residency at REDCAT, CalArt’s downtown LA space. The Artists of Invasion from the Chicken Planet, are based in New York and, though of no sustainable intention, weren’t going to fly out to audition some of our actors to use in their residency for two hours.
The day before, we had tested the connection. We used the same computer with the same software on the same network (hardwired into the wall) that we’d use the next day. We tried Skype, which was too choppy, garbled and had a couple seconds delay that made it less than ideal. We then switched to iChat with AOL Instant Messenger accounts and after realizing another computer being connected was preventing a decent video link, it proved the smoothest and most immediate.
So last night, when we moved the computer into the room that we would be conducting the auditions in, we configured the machine the same way, but were not able to make a connection on iChat. Skype had the same issues. At the prompting of a student director who was assisting, we tried Gtalk Video chat. It ended up working immediately and with excellent quality.
Earlier in the year, at Earth Matters on Stage (EMOS), when Moe Beitiks had tried to link up Brent Bucknum to present his bio-remidative work via video chat, we tried ooVoo, which we gave up on in favor of iChat again. We had almost just given up, but I only thought to use iChar from the decent chats I had experienced with my brother-in-law who was living in Edinburgh at the time. Also at EMOS we had a video conference in the University of Oregon library with a panel in London arranged by the Ashden Directory, which used their dedicated video conferencing package.
In both situations the video wasn’t great, but we could sort of communicate. The Ashden Session involved each end of the discussion/video conference going into another room to watch a video and then coming back to discuss together. But there was lag and the video wasn’t particularly clear. The Brent Bucknam session was not bad, but very one-way. For Green Day at LDI, the audio was great, but in one session, with Seema Sueeko from Mo’olelo Performing Arts, the video was minutes behind the audio connection.
Having now had extensive experience with video conferencing in less than ideal situations, I do long for the day when we’ll be able to turn on whatever client we’re using to video chat and it works smoothly and immediately, let alone with high resolution. But, that day isn’t particularly close. There are a lot of variables in the way of making that happen. Network connections, equipment, client servers, client and local network traffic, sunspots, radio waves and the phases of the moon. Even when we tried to eliminate as many of those variables in Eugene as possible, it still didn’t work ideally. Or, what was ideally was not enough to convince.
Will our broadband video connections be able to save us the footprint of air travel for conferences and internationally collaborative meetings of the mind? Not yet. There might be some expensive corporate system out there, but we lowly green artists aren’t going to hold our breath waiting for that. Oprah’s skype seems to work fine, but I’ve never had such luck, so I leave that package just to replace my need for international phone calls.
I’d still rather sit and talk to you, especially when we aren’t both staring at our monitors in our Pajamas.
Also yesterday, Enci Box of Rebel Without a Car Productions came to speak to my and Leslie Tamaribuchi’s class, Sustainability Seminar. She can to talk about producing a short film as sustainably as possible. This included not using cars and transporting everything by bike with the help of the LA Greensters (green teamsters). She made the trip from East Hollywood, in the center of Los Angeles, to the edge of the county, where CalArts resides in Valencia, without a car. She came up on a Metrolink commuter train, biking from the station to campus. She and I had worked out the options for getting there and she had the time to dedicate to coming up. Also, she was lucky to had met a guy who regularly made that journey to visit his girlfriend at CalArts and could relay the benefit of his experience. She then went back home, via bike. all roughly 30 miles of the trip. Coming up to CalArts, it took 2 hours. Returning was supposedly going to be one and a half hours. All for a 45 minute presentation.
I suppose we could have had her “skype” in (even if we don’t typically end up on skype), but having her there in-person was a much greater thrill and much more in the moment for the students and for her. Instead it took dedication to not leaving a footprint, and finding alternatives to get to the class. I’m very much indebted to Enci for making the journey, which some might say was epic, to present for a fraction of that travel time. But, I think it far surpassed our alternatives.
Bob Usdin of Showman Fabricators Announces First LDI Green Awards
Bob Usdin of Showman Fabricators, who organized LDI Green Day and the awards for best green product and best green production at this last year’s show in Orlando, is seen here announcing the recipients of those awards.
As a judge for the awards I had the opportunity to get into some great conversations about the products that were are weren’t on the show floor the weekend before Thanksgiving. I also got to ask questions about products that WEREN’T on the show floor.
We’ll be posting more from our LDI wrap-up before Miranda and I are off to Copenhagen to cover the arts festivities around COP15, primarily New Life Copenhagen by wooloo.org, Â and maybe get over to Arcola for the launch of their new facilities.
If you need to catch up on all of the greening of LDI here are some links for you to check out:
https://www.sustainablepractice.org/2009/11/19/2009-green-day-ldi
https://www.sustainablepractice.org/2009/10/28/ldi-and-sustainability-part-i
https://www.sustainablepractice.org/2009/09/28/green-awards-at-ldi