Creating Awareness About Sustainability Through Art & Design

ABOUT

RAIR’s (Recycled Artist in Residency) mission is to create awareness about sustainability issues through art and design. We are located in Northeast Philadelphia within Revolution Recovery, a 3.5 acres construction, demolition and manufacturing waste recycling facility in Philadelphia that processes over 250 tons of materials per day. Our unique position as a bridge between art, sustainability and industry allows the reach and potential impact of RAIR to be great. As such, we have strategically chosen to focus our efforts on four program areas: residency program, education and awareness, material sourcing, and exhibitions.

Mission 

History

RAIR formed when three individuals from different backgrounds realized they were passionate about the same thing: the value of waste. Avi Golen, co-owner of Revolution Recovery and an expert in the recycling industry, had been fielding request from artists since the founding of his company in 2004. Billy Blaise Dufala, a Philadelphia-based artist and co-teacher of a found materials course at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, had been looking for access to a material stream for his work. Fern Gookin, project manager at Revolution Recovery and Board of Directors member of the Delaware Valley Green Building Council, had decided to focus her graduate thesis work on the role art can play in creating awareness about sustainability issues. With three different perspectives and a shared goal, RAIR has been able to establish itself as a specialized and unique program that reaches across disciplines.

From the 7 – 8th October 2014 Julie’s Bicycle and Watershed will host an Environmental Data Lab at the Watershed’s Pervasive Media Studio, Bristol.

Applications are now open until 9am Monday 1st September 2014 for participants. There will also be public showcase of the Lab outcomes and works-in-progress on the 8th October.

See below for further details of the open call.

About the Lab

As the world gets more connected, we are surrounded by devices, networks and infrastructure which carry data about the buildings and places in which we live and work. But whilst we collect data on everything from energy consumption to WiFi signal strength, weather predictions to traffic, this data often feels abstract and inscrutable. Would we feel and act differently if it was made more tangible, more accessible? Would it help us to understand and trace our own environmental impact if we could interact with the data in more human-centred ways? The cultural sector has a real opportunity to connect with other disciplines to make interventions which explore the value, meaning and potential of environmental data and what we do with it.

Focusing on the environmental data that we collect from cultural organisations and our immediate surroundings, including both pre-prepared and live data sets, Julie’s Bicycle and Watershed will run an exploratory Lab on 7 and 8th October 2014.

The two-day Lab aims to make the ‘invisible’ environmental data around us visible by bringing together a diverse community of artists, technologists, data analysts and designers, to explore how environmental data might be visualised and made tangible in creative ways to increase public engagement and data literacy, and inspire long-term behaviour change.

Through a two-day process of thinking through making, we will engage in playful enquiry, and prototype new ideas for sustainable futures.

Open call for applications

This Lab invites creative individuals and/or cultural organisations who would like to explore the opportunities inherent in environmental data sets, to submit an application to attend.

There are three spaces available to individuals and/or organisations with a strong vision for participation. Applications will be particularly welcomed from those that can bring one or more of the following skills and approaches:

• Interest and/or experience in how data can be creatively translated to drive change
• Ability to analyse data from a technical and/or creative perspective
• Ability to develop code
• Some level of environmental literacy as relevant to the arts and culture
• Experience of behavioural and/or organisational change approaches

What support is on offer?

Lab participants will receive:

• £300 bursary for two days participation, including travel.
• One night’s accommodation in Bristol, where necessary.
• Breakfast, lunch and refreshments on both days. Pizza will be provided at the end of day one.
• A variety of materials for use during the Lab.
• A structured process featuring making, discussion and a sharing event.
• A peer community of potential collaborators for current and future projects.

What do we expect from you?

• Participation in an online conversation prior to the Lab, to help with planning.
• Attendance and participation in all Lab activities over two days.
• An open, rigorous, experimental approach.
• An informal group presentation of a work in progress prototype as part of a sharing event at the end of day two of the Lab.
• Completion of a short evaluation following the Lab.

Where

The Lab will be hosted at Watershed’s Pervasive Media Studio. Located within the Watershed building in Bristol’s historic Harbourside, the Studio brings together an active network of over 150 artists, creative companies, scientists, technologists and academics to work on new and emerging ideas.

Timetable

• Open for applications: 10th July 2014
• Close to applications: 9am, 1st September 2014
• If your application is successful you will hear by: 10th September 2014
• Successful applicants announced: 15th September 2014
• Lab takes place: 7-8th October 2014

How to apply

If you are interested in applying for the Lab, please complete a short application form and return it to sholeh@juliesbicycle.com by 9am Monday 1st September 2014. Click here to download the application form.

Contact

If you have any questions or queries please contact:

Sholeh Johnston, Arts Manager, Julie’s Bicycle | sholeh@juliesbicycle.com | +44 (0)20 8746 0400

“Making Your Life as an Artist,” a free ebook, takes a serious and at times mordantly humorous look at the creative process of surviving and thriving as a professional artist

The arts in America are thriving. And American artists are astonishingly hard-working, driven, and adaptable. So why are so many artists exhausted, overwhelmed, and broke?

In his new book Making Your Life as an Artist, Andrew Simonet – choreographer, writer and, for 20 years, Co-Director of Headlong Dance Theater – offers answers to why anyone would choose the life of an artist, and how to manage that life. He shares what artists already know: building a life as an artist is a creative act, and using your artistic skills outside the studio can make it sustainable.

The book is downloadable at: http://www.artistsu.org/making/

Simonet’s book does not offer “how-to” steps to succeed in the art world. You won’t gain gallery representation or get your play produced by reading it. Instead it shares carefully considered—and mordantly humorous—survival skills and techniques for sustaining a creative life.

As part of Simonet’s mission to put tools in the hands of artists, the e-book of Making Your Life as an Artist is free and available to all. It can be downloaded at www.artistsu.org/making.

Simonet identifies artists’ skills at adapting to and navigating the ‘new economy’ by piecing together multiple jobs and blending wage work with entrepreneurship. Our part-time, self- generated, freelance, startup economy, says Simonet, is exactly the world artists have lived in for decades. Making shares artists’ insights for thriving under these conditions.

Making Your Life as an Artist challenges silly and damaging myths about artists:

Artists don’t contribute to society. Artists are cultural researchers, asking questions about thought, image, and the agreements that bind our society together. Artistic work anticipates, and then contextualizes, social movements like civil rights, feminism, and gay rights. In a culture where change is accelerating, artists generate resilience and reflection, new insights into our shifting lives.

Artists are lazy. Artists work incredibly hard, often too hard. Imagine having full-time work to support yourself and a second full-time job making art. Most artists in America are, at best, earning enough money from their art to cover the costs of making it.

Artists are bad with money. Artists are amazing with money; they usually don’t have enough of it. Through barter, reuse, problem-solving, and resourcefulness, artists produce large-scale projects with very little cash. Making art with limited resources requires incredible financial skill.

If I’m lucky as an artist I will “make it.” Inside and outside the art world, being “discovered” is the presumed route to success, and the myth that leads a lot of artist suffering. The vast majority of artists create and re-create their systems of support and survival every year.

OPENING JULY 18, 2014 at 7pm

Welterbe Zollverein – Areal A
[Schacht XII], Halle 6 [A6] Gelsenkirchener Straße 181
45309 Essen

SAVE THE DATE

Interdisciplinary Symposium (including a night of theater): 16. AUGUST 2014

Exhibition: 18/07/2014 – 04/09/2014

Expeditions in aesthetic and sustainability is distinguished by the German UNESCO Commission as Decade Project of the UN Decade in Education for Sustainable Development 2014.

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

The finiteness of the energy reserves, the threat of climate change, the erosion of biodiversity are also penetrated deep into the public perception before the failed world climate summits in Copenhagen and Cancun, as a concern. After the peaks arises urgent than ever the question of individual possibilities.

We need visions of a sustainable life, with sense (sensitivity), desire and passion of one’s actions combine. recommended to imitation! focuses on the cultural and aesthetic dimensions of sustainability into the sense awareness, to counter so the observable Vernutzung of the term. You aware that sustainability, which sees itself as shaping, can not do without the arts and sciences; of them is to learn to think in transitions, temporaries, models and projects.

Artistic questions and concepts for action increasingly aim at the multi-faceted action fields of ecology and increasing attention to increase their social resonance chamber. Sustainability requires a development space, in which the multiple links of the existing wealth of knowledge and experience in the arts and sciences can only truly develop and at the same time the idea that each | individual can have them share.

recommended to imitation! expeditions in aesthetics and sustainability is the first comprehensive exhibition in the Federal Republic, which focuses on the cultural dimension of sustainability to the center by establishing the links between sustainability and aesthetics. About 40 national and international positions from art, science, film and architecture to face the questions of survival on the risk in all respects planet.
It shows artistic practices that will contribute to the preservation of the planet and to influence conscious consumer behavior, are economically viable and artistic positions in which dissolve the boundaries between art, activism and inventions, and the experience and practice of environmental initiatives with artistic approaches connect.

Sustainability needs expanding perception in interaction. But the boundaries between artistic and technical creativity are aware canceled between feasibility and idea. The sensuality is the unifying element in the works and presentations of visual artists, inventors and scientists as well as in exemplary works of design and architecture, but also in examples of sustainable management, the challenge in their own particular way, the individual dimension of action.
In addition to technical innovations and materials participatory projects and networks will be presented in the field of renewable energy, water and climate change, ecology and Re | upcycling.

An integral part of the concept to be touring the exhibition, in order thus to escape the fast pace of the art market and weave at each other exhibition the peculiarities of the local, artistic, scientific and umweltaktivistischen competence. After kicking off the shores halls in Berlin-Wedding, was recommended to imitation! Kunstverein Gartow, the Federal Environment Agency and the Bauhaus University in Dessau, at the same time in the three Bavarian art associations Oberpfaffenhofen, Ingolstadt and Neuburg. By the end of August 2011, the exhibition at the Water Tower Bremen was a guest now, since 9.9. 2011 she is in Hamburg, overseas HafenCity quarter. 2012 lead us the expeditions to Bombay, to Addis Ababa and Beijing, respectively, in cooperation with the Goethe-Institut.

We appreciate great appreciation for the sophisticated publication, published by Hatje Cantz. She received the Art Directors Club Award in 2011 and the red dot award 2011 in the category of editorial design. And for an art project unusual was recommended to imitation! with two environmental awards: the media Special Prize of the German Environmental Aid and as a project workshop north of the Council for Sustainable Development.

Artists in the exhibition

Aziza Alaoui (MEX | MOR), Jennifer Allora & Guillermo Calzadilla (U.S. | CU), Francis Alÿs (MEX | BEL), Nele Azevedo (BR), Richard Box (GB), Joseph Beuys (D), Ines Doujak (A) Adib Fricke (D), gallery of landscape art (D), Studio Lukas Feireiss and Tomorrow’s Thoughts Today with Luis Berríos-Negrón (D | UK | PR), Dionisio González (e), Emiliano Godoy (MEX), Tue Green Fort (DK ), Hermann Josef Hack (D), Henrik HÃ¥kansson (S), Ilkka Halso (FIN), Cornelia Hesse-Honegger (CH), Folke Köbberling | Martin cold water (D), Christian Kuhtz (D), Christin Lahr (D), Antal Lakner (HU), Jae Rhim Lee (KR | U.S.), Till Leeser (D), Marlen Liebau | Marc Lingk (D), Gustavo Lipkau (MEX), Susanne Lorenz (D), Petra Maitz (A), Gordon Matta -Clark (U.S.) (adaptation), Gerd Niemöller (D), Dan Peterman (U.S.), Nana Petzet (D), Clement Price-Thomas (U.S.), Dodi Reifenberg (IL | D), Pedro Reyes (MEX), Ariel Rojo (MEX), Gustavo Romano (AR), Miguel Rothschild (AR), Michael Saup (D), Ursula Schulz-Dornburg (D), Dina Shenhav (IL), David Smithson (U.S.), Robert Smithson (U.S.), Superflex (DK), Jakub Szczesny (PL) The Yes Men (U.S.), Maria Vedder (D), Gudrun F. Widlok (D), Xing Danwen (CN), home power plant (D), interim Report (D).

The campaign launched on May 1^st has so far been endorsed by more than 500  organizations worldwide. 

• Read the Declaration and see the wide range of organizations demanding the inclusion of culture in the SDGs classified by country
• Use the communications tools to ask organizations and individuals that have not yet endorsed it to do so
• Share the most recent translations of the Declaration in Arabic, Portuguese and Russian to broaden the campaign’s reach
• Follow #culture2015.org on Twitter to join the discussion online
• Watch the UN Special Thematic Debate on Culture and Sustainable Development and the civil society intervention
• See how culture is included in the latest draft of the SDGs at the UN and our collective letter to the Open Working Group co-chairs
• Join the e-consultations convened by UNFPA, UNESCO and UNDP

See next steps

____________________________

MISE À JOUR

Plus de 1500 signataires de 120 pays demandent que la culture soit incluse dans les objectifs de développement durable des Nations unies

La campagne lancée le 1^er mai a été appuyée par plus de 500 organisations dans le monde. 

• Lisez la Déclaration et voyez la grande diversité d’organisations, classées par pays, qui demandent que la culture soit incluse dans les ODD
• Utilisez les outils de communications pour demander aux organisations et individus qui n’ont pas déjà signé de le faire
• Partagez les plus récentes traductions de la Déclaration en arabe, portugais et russe afin d’élargir la portée de la campagne
• Suivez la discussion en ligne sur Twitter à #culture2015.org
• Regardez le Débat thématique spécial des Nations unies sur la culture et le développement durable et l’intervention de la société civile
• Voyez comment la culture est incluse dans la plus récente ébauche des ODD aux Nations unies et notre lettre collective aux coprésidents du Groupe de travail ouvert
• Participez aux e-consultations menées par l’UNFPA, l’UNESCO et le PNUD

Voir les prochaines étapes.

_____________________

ACTUALIZACIÓN

Más de 1500 signatarios proviniendo de 120 países piden la inclusión de la cultura en los objetivos de desarrollo sostenible de las naciones unidas

La campaña iniciada el 1º de mayo recibió el apoyo de más de 500 organizaciones en el mundo.

• Lea la Declaración y vea la gran diversidad de organizaciones, clasificadas por país, que piden que la cultura esté incluida en los ODS
• Utilice los elementos de comunicación para pedirles a las organizaciones, los oficiales y los individuos quienes todavía no han firmado, que lo hagan de una vez
• Comparta las más recientes traducciones de la Declaración en árabe, portugués y ruso para ampliar el alcance de la campaña
• Sigua la discusión Twitter a #culture2015.org
• Vea el debate temático especial de la Naciones Unidas sobre cultura y desarrollo sostenible así que la intervención de la sociedad civil.
• Vea como la cultura está incluida en el más reciente esbozo de los ODS en las Naciones Unidas, así que nuestra carta colectiva a los copresidentes del Grupo de trabajo abierto
• Participe en las e-consultaciones realizadas por la UNFPA, UNESCO y PNUD.

Ver las próximas etapas.

Artful Waste by Suendrini

Art Booth F16 - Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibit

4-6 July, 2014

Nathan Phillips Square - 100 Queen Street West, Toronto, On. M5H 2N2

Fri, 4th – 10.30 am to 7.30 pm

Sat, 5th – 10.30 am to 7.30 pm

(Awards Parade at 1 pm in the Square)

Sun, 6th – 10.30 am to 6.30 pm

“Respectful of the landscape tradition, and creative in the innovative application of the textile medium” were the juror’s comments, along with the Manly E. McDonald Award of Excellence of Suendrini’s County Road 12, Prince Edward County piece, from Art in the County 2013. The jurors were Katerina Atanassova, chief curator of the McMichael Canadian Art Collection in Kleinburg, Ontario; Linda Jansma, senior curator of the Robert McLaughling Gallery in Oshawa, and Peter G.S. Large, elected member of the Ontario Society of Artists and past president of the Society of Canadian artists.

Suendrini’s latest and largest piece to date entitled Secret Beach, Prince Edward County (6′ x 5′) will be showing at this year’s Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibition. Please come and see hi-def, sustainable, textile landscapes and meet the artist. Rain or shine!

www.suendrini.com 

Toronto | Prince Edward County