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Dancers for Dolphins

New Zealand's Soul Speed Activist Theatre and Dance Troupe

Dancing for Dolphins

We can’t see dolphins swimming under the water, getting caught in nets, BUT we can see dancers imitating dolphins getting caught.

Maui’s Dolphins are endangered dolphins found in New Zealand’s waters: There are only about 110 Maui’s Dolphins left. The most significant dangers are entanglement in fishing nets and by-catch.

Read here to see how this group of activists found a powerful way to bring attention to an additional danger disrupting the dolphin’s life: invasive research methods.

Most of the activists are parents, and they want their children to grow up with the dolphins in their shared future of humans, nonhumans and the land.  To protest the research actions, they created a dance.

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Sequelism Pt 3: the installation underway

Sequelism Pt 3: Possible, Probable or Preferable Futures opens this weekend at the Arnolfini in Bristol featuring work by  Heman Chong, Haegue Mariana Castillo Deball, Graham Gussin, Victor Man, Francesc Ruiz, Jordan Wolfson and Haegue Yang, with events by Neil Cummings & Marysia Lewandowska, Roy Ascott and Will Holder

Via Latitudes blog, here are images of the installation in progress:


Information on the exhibition, opening July 18.


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Quick Friday notes…

Transition Town innovator Rob Hopkins noted that Ed Miliband used the notion of “transition towns” a lynchpin concept in the launch of his White Paper on Energy and Climate Change Policy. Determined to discover whether his movement was being used as window dressing or not, he publishes his own review of the paper giving the proposals 6/10.

John Vidal at the Guardian has given it credit for seizing control of the levers of control of the energy industry, saying that this sort of thing has never been attempted on this scale before:

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Meanwhile, LA continues to surprise by confounding its image as a megalopolis on on the road to hell. This Arts:Earth Partnership initiative, greening the city’s performace spaces, is interesting.

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APInews: Land Art Initiative Emerges in United Arab Emirates

Land Art Initiative Emerges in United Arab EmiratesA new initiative in the United Arab Emirates aims to embed land/ecological art installations across the region, continuously distributing clean energy into the electrical grid. The intent of the Land Art Generator Initiative LAGI is that each land art sculpture will have the potential to provide power to up to 50,000 homes in the UAE. Directed by artist Elizabeth Monoian and architect Robert Ferry and sponsored by the Society for Cultural Exchange, a nonprofit in Pittsburgh, Pa., LAGI is in a research phase, seeking further sponsorship. At the conclusion of 2010, the initiative plans to have pragmatic and comprehensive site/art proposals that will arise from an open competition to which artists, scientists, engineers and architects will be encouraged to submit ideas. See the blog section of the site bLAGI for related arts examples. There is a video about the project on the Web site of the Tavis Smiley Show: http://www.pbs.org/kcet/tavissmiley/voices/656.html. Thanks, Land Arts listserv.

via APInews: Land Art Initiative Emerges in United Arab Emirates .

Nature as violence: Gustav Metzger

I like this flickr photo Fustav Metzger’s Flailing Trees at the Manchester International Festival by Pete Birkinshaw aka BinaryApe, especially for the title BinaryApe gave it:   Iä!  Shub-Niggurath! The Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young!

That reference, along with his link to Wikipedia, confirms him to be …

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Congress Uses Poetry to Talk about Climate Change

One of my favorite poets, Drew Dellinger, has reached Congress through the raw beauty and strength of his words.  Click here to see Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin refer to Drew’s poem in aid of Al Gore describing our responsibility to our future grandchildren as it relates to climate change.

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Madeline Bunting in today’s Guardian: the “quiet powerhouse” that is RSA Arts & Ecology

Radical Nature’s The Dalston Mill project

Radical Nature’s The Dalston Mill project

Madeleine Bunting’s article on the role of arts in changing perceptions about the environment kicks off by looking at Radical Nature’s The Dalston Mill project, and discusses new work Gustav Metzger and new thoughts from Tim Smit and gives a very warmly appreciated nod to the RSA Arts & …

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How we failed to change minds

Tim Smit

Tim Smit

We know how serious things are. So why doesn’t everyone agree with us? Despite Tim Smit’s  “scream from the future”, attitude change is agonisingly slow.

It’s tough to admit that activists have clearly alienated a lot of the middle ground – the middle ground that needs to change behaviour the most. …

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