news

Well-Oiled Machine: A Q&A with Machine Project’s Mark Allen

news, , , , , , , , ,

As previously posted on 24700 (the blog for the California Institute of the Arts), Machine Project—a loose collective of Los Angeles-based artists—has been incredibly active in the Los Angeles area this fall: from its curated coatroom concerts to its recent involvement with the Fallen Fruit Project and Santa Monica’s Glow Festival.

24700 recently conducted an email interview with Machine Project’s director, founder and mastermind, Mark Allen (Art MFA 99), to discuss the nonprofit and its future.

Check it out here: 24700 » Blog Archive » Well-Oiled Machine: A Q&A with Machine Project’s Mark Allen.

ARTIST AS ACCIDENTAL ACTIVIST

news, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Fragile Spring: found cardboard box, India ink, 6

A nice mention of the CSPA and partners in Filter….

Revealing the value of the intangible has long been the domain of shamans, homeopaths, permaculturists and conceptual artists – and is perhaps one of the best hopes we have for rapidly shifting our culture towards one of increased efficiency and sustainability. Many contemporary artists are finding themselves inadvertently part of a new of movement that includes a sense of responsibility for defending the environment. Frustrated by a system based on mindless overconsumption of limited resources, they are choosing to develop creative, alternative ways to live, work, and communicate. Organisations such as Ecoartspace, The Center for Sustainable Practice in the Arts , theSheila T. Johnson Design Center at Parsons/The New School for Social Research and Art & Science Collaborations, Inc are assisting in the emergence of this new interdisciplinary field.

via Filter Magazine – filter.anat.org.au.

TenduTV mainstreams and monetizes dance film – Time Out Chicago

news, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

TenduTV just got a big write up in TimeOut Chicago (online and print). The article can be found by clicking this link:http://chicago.timeout.com/articles/dance/90546/tendutv-mainstreams-and-monetizes-dance-film

We have a truly exciting upcoming release schedule and look forward to bringing dance to new and existing audiences through the highest quality and most user friendly digital network in existence today.

YouTube radically changed the landscape for dancers and fans, as personal video collections and archival rarities made their way online. But the scenery didn’t change for the famously cash-starved field of dance itself. Enter Marc Kirschner, 36, founder and general manager of media-distribution label TenduTV. As the company’s site puts it, “No other art form has as much of an imbalance between popularity and revenue capability [as] dance, and we believe the time has come for a change.”

A graduate of Northwestern University and Columbia Business School, Kirschner worked in digital-media strategy consulting; the United States Tennis Association and producers for Discovery and National Geographic were among clients of his prior venture Sumaki. He shrewdly shifted his focus to the dance world. Companies and choreographers couldn’t control their content as it showed up online; many weren’t even aware that snippets from discontinued and slow-selling videos to which they owned rights were suddenly pulling in millions of views. (Just as young tennis pros pore over clips of Roger Federer’s forehand, aspiring ballerinas obsessively re-watch superstars perform tricky solos and pas de deux in which they hope to be cast some day.)

via TenduTV mainstreams and monetizes dance film – Time Out Chicago.

About – 350 Earth Art 2010

news, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

This November 20-28, 350 EARTH will launch the world’s first ever global climate art project. In over a dozen places across the globe, citizens and artists will create massive public art installations to show how climate change is already impacting our world as well as offer visions of how we can solve the crisis. Each art installation will be large enough to be seen from space and documented by satellites generously provided by DigitalGlobe.

350 EARTH will be the first-ever global scale group show on the front line of climate change—our polluted cities, endangered forests, melting glaciers, and sinking coastlines. People around the world are invited to take part by attending signature events, submitting their own art, and spreading the word about the project.

350 EARTH will take place on the eve of the next United Nations climate meetings in Cancun, Mexico where delegates will work to create an international climate treaty. Our politicians have all the facts, figures, and graphs they need to solve the climate crisis. What they lack is the will. 350 EARTH will demonstrate the massive public support for bold climate action and the role that art can play in inspiring humanity to take on our greatest challenge: protecting the planet on which we live.

About – 350 Earth Art.

Green Stage Scratch Night Part of the Branching Out festival (also actors needed)

Announcements, Green Stage Project, news, Open Calls, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

@ Rosemary Branch Theatre in Islington

November 28th, 7:30pm

Calling actors and directors:

We are looking for actors interested in participating in the a night of rehearsed reading for 3 exciting new plays!

We are also looking for one director who is interested in directing one of the plays.

Green Stage is an exciting new theatre project that plants sustainability at the heart of the creative process and at the root of new works themselves. Over the past 7 months they have devised original work inspired by environmental debates and interesting green spaces. Their short play Unplugged imagined how London would respond to a week long power cut and was performed at Spitalfields City Farm and Camden Green Fair. An interactive piece called Forest Trails & Urban Tales, inspired by King Henry’s Walk community garden, gave audiences a chance to reconnect with the forest through encounters with creatures both mythical and real. Now they venture inside a theatre building, with excerpts from 3 intriguing new plays tackling themes of activism, energy production and the frenzied detachment of urban living.

About the plays:

Good Fix by Meghan Moe Beitiks

A radical do-gooder art collective’s converted warehouse: a world of miso soup, grant applications, drunken hysteria and toxic sludge.
A play about the high we get from ‘right’ actions, the difficulty of pursuing lasting solutions, and the danger of defining ‘good’ too narrowly.

Cogent Park by Ian Lane

There is C. There is P. Together they make CHP.
P does the pacing. H hitches a ride.
P makes things happen. H makes things the happenings more bearable.
An absurdist physical theatre piece about the relationship between heat and power, and the benefits of cogeneration.

Hollow Glass by Lara Stavrinou

“The plundering of the human spirit by the market place is paralleled by the plundering of the earth by capital”—Bookchin, Murray, Post Scarcity Anarchism
Witness the dysfunctional social arrangements of six twenty-somethings as they struggle to accustom themselves to life in the city. Activism, vintage shoes and microwave brownies provide instant gratification, but in the midst of rising crime and distrust, can they find the space and time to relate to one another?

Rehearsals:

Thursday, Nov. 25th 6:30-9:30pm
Sunday, Nov. 28th 10:00 – performance at 7:30pm.

Unfortunately this is an unpaid opportunity but your travel expenses will be covered.

Please email: greenstageuk@gmail.com if you are interested and available for the rehearsals.

EXIT ART – Call For Proposals for Projects on Fracking

Announcements, news, Open Calls, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Exit Art announces an exhibition on fracking, on view from December 7, 2010 to February 5, 2011. Hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) is a means of gas extraction that accesses gas trapped more than a mile below the earth’s surface. Fracking: Art and Activism Against the Drill, a project of SEA (Social Environmental Aesthetics), will expose this process of gas extraction that is contaminating water supplies worldwide. Through documentary videos, photographs, commissioned works and literature, it will engage the public in dialogue on this issue through public lectures and calls to action; and encourage audiences to continue educating themselves and their communities on fracking and its effects. It is organized by Assistant Curator Lauren Rosati, and Peggy Cyphers, Ruth Hardinger, and Alice Zinnes. As part of this exhibition, Exit Art invites artists and the general public to respond to the issue of fracking by submitting a postcard-sized artwork and brief written response.

PLEASE SUBMIT:

a 4 x 6” postcard with original work on one side (original drawing, painting, collages, photograph, etc.) and a brief written statement responding to fracking on the other side. Postcards must be mailed or dropped off in person during regular hours.

ALL postcards must be received by Wednesday, November 24, 2010.

MAIL TO:

Exit Art
Attn: Fracking
475 Tenth Avenue
New York, NY 10018

All received works will be exhibited and handled by the public. Works will not be returned and will become property of the Exit Art Archive. No phone calls, please.

MORE INFORMATION on FRACKING

When a well is fracked, small earthquakes are produced by the pressurized injection of millions of gallons of fresh water combined with sand and chemicals, releasing the gas, as well as toxic chemicals, heavy metals and radioactive materials that contaminate the air and water. The Energy Policy Act of 2005, passed under the guidance of then-Vice President Dick Cheney, exempts fracking from the Safe Drinking Water Act and major provisions of other protective laws, virtually eliminating the gas industry’s liability and E.P.A.’s regulatory oversight. Exemption from the Community Right to Know Law also absolves the gas industry from being required to report the actual chemicals used in the drilling processes—chemicals that can severely contaminate the water supply and cause serious illnesses. A drilling moratorium is in effect in New York State until the D.E.C. issues fracking regulation, potentially paving the way for drilling to commence in New York in 2011.

via EXIT ART – Programs | Call For Proposals.

Otis College of Art and Design, Graduate Public Practice and Graduate Fine Arts present author and public intellectual critic Lucy Lippard

news, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

To kick off Street Smart, three events on public art, Graduate Public Practice and Graduate Fine Arts present author and public intellectual critic Lucy Lippard, whose interests and writing include tourism, archaeology, anthropology, and small New Mexico towns.

Seating limited, reservations suggested at publicpractice@otis.edu or (310) 846-2610. Free to the public.

Since 1966, Lippard has published 20 books on feminism, art, politics and place and has received numerous awards and accolades from literary critics and art associations. In her lecture, “Farther Afield,”she will speak on landscape, history, place-making and tourism from an interdisciplinary perspective. In the hands of many artists, her writing has inspired research and production on the relationship between visual art, space, activism, research, publics, and the social and political uses of art.

In a long history of key publications in the visual arts, The Lure of the Local: Senses of Place in a Multicentered Society and On the Beaten Track: Tourism, Art and Place have particular relevance for public artists. Her most recent book Down Country: The Tano of the Galisteo Basin, 1250-1782 is yet another relevant departure.

The informal studio setting of the MFA Public Practice program in the The 18th Street Arts Center –formerly home to the historic production of Judy Chicago’s The Dinner Party – will set the stage for an intimate and informal engagement with Lippard.

Graduate Public Practice Studios, 1657 18th St, Santa Monica CA 90404

Otis College of Art and Design.

Watch the Trailer for Waste Land, a Documentary About Beauty and Trash

news, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

WASTE LAND Official Trailer from Almega Projects on Vimeo.

Jardim Gramacho, outside of Rio, is the world’s largest landfill. In a new documentary called Waste Land, Vik Muniz, a Brazilian-born, Brooklyn-based artist, returns to create portraits, made from the trash itself, of the so-called “catadores” who work there.

It looks like an interesting peek at a subculture you’re not likely to be exposed to otherwise, a helpful reminder that we’re creating incredible volumes of trash, and a nice example of the redemptive power of art.

Filmed over nearly three years, WASTE LAND follows Muniz as he journeys from his home base in Brooklyn to his native Brazil and the world’s largest garbage dump, Jardim Gramacho, located on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro. There he photographs an eclectic band of “catadores” — self-designated pickers of recyclable materials. Muniz’s initial objective was to “paint” the catadores with garbage. However, his collaboration with these inspiring characters as they recreate photographic images of themselves out of garbage reveals both the dignity and despair of the catadores as they begin to re-imagine their lives. Director Lucy Walker (DEVIL’S PLAYGROUND, BLINDSIGHT, COUNTDOWN TO ZERO) has great access to the entire process and, in the end, offers stirring evidence of the transformative power of art and the alchemy of the human spirit.

Tipping Point Announces Second Round of Commissions

news, , , , , , , ,

From the Tipping Point Website:

We are pleased to announce that our second round of commissions is now launched.

This year we are delighted to be able to offer a co-commission with Without Walls, the consortium of 8 of the UK’s most strategically significant outdoor arts festivals.

We will be able to sponsor around 6 commissions and will offer awards as follows.

  • One award of up to £30k (this will be a co-commission between TippingPoint and Without Walls and should meet specific criteria)
  • One award of up to £25k (TippingPoint Commission)
  • Two awards of up to £15k (TippingPoint Commission)
  • One award of up to £10k (TippingPoint Commission)
  • Two awards of up to £5k (TippingPoint Commission)

Proposals must be submitted by Monday 6th December at 5pm. For further guidance and a full application form please download the following document: TP Commissions Round 2 How to apply.doc

Connecting culture and agriculture – The Artful Manager

news, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Recently Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle celebrated the 2010 recipients of the Governors Awards in Support of the Arts. It was another great batch of recipients full disclosure, Im on the Advisory Committee for the sponsoring organization, the Wisconsin Foundation for the Arts. Links to videos about each recipient are included below.

A particular favorite, for a while now, is The Wormfarm Institute, a combination of organic farm, artist residency, and cultural connector in rural Reedsburg, Wisconsin, working to build a sustainable future for agriculture and the arts by fostering vital links between people and the land. Artists in residency work 15 hours a week tending to the farm, and helping things grow. Artists also enhance the life and work of local farmers through the very cool Roadside Culture Stands project. The Woolen Mill Gallery provides a public space to connect the dots, as well as in the current Smithsonian exhibit there.

via Connecting culture and agriculture – The Artful Manager.