Collaborators

EcoArt: It’s Only Natural Film Project

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This film project shows how art can fuse with environmental science and community engagement to protect and preserve fragile and endangered ecologies.

Since EASF’s founding in 2007, the number of Florida artists engaged in the demanding trans-disciplinary practice of EcoArt has doubled! And they are creating stunning, ecologically productive artworks at the rate of 1-2 a year.

The project documents the phenomenon of EcoArt’s growth in South Florida, addressing the ups and downs of the journey. The film’s perspective will be through the eyes and experiences of the artists and their collaborators who will candidly respond to the key question: “Why EcoArt?” EcoArt South Florida believes their story of how EcoArt has become a powerful force, in a state with multiple, serious ecological problems, can spark the emergence of similar trans-disciplinary efforts elsewhere.

EcoArt South Florida is teaming up with Miami filmmakers Southern Land Films to mark EcoArt practice’s arrival at “critical mass” stage in the region. Our documentary, which is already underway, will profile 11 of the seventeen EcoArt works that have been completed or are in progress. It is thrilling that their efforts to catalyze the emergence of South Florida as a new, vibrant center for EcoArt practice are working!

Visit our website to learn more about our work at: ecoartsofla.org

Contribute to the project here: http://www.razoo.com/story/Ecoart-Film

Environmental Artist in Residence – McColl Center for Visual Art

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Charlotte, NC
Deadline: Ongoing-May 1, 2011 for first selection
Media: Sculpture, Installation
Geographic restrictions: None
Residency period: From weeks to 3 months

Call for established and emerging artists, design professionals and collaborators to create works of environmental art in the public domain. Opportunities for installations that go beyond interacting with the urban environment and become remedial interventions. The Environmental Artist-in-Residence (EAIR) program encourages artists to have beneficial impacts on the urban life through creation of art that is scientifically relevant, meaningful and beneficial environmental art.

Prospectus: http://www.mccollcenter.org/documents/eair_application_2.2011_.pdf
Information: http://www.mccollcenter.org/
email: eair@mccollcenter.org

Coalition of the Willing: film-making, collaboration, activism

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This is a brilliant initiative: a growing online activist movie created by an army of collaborators, who are animating a script by philosopher/activist Tim Rayner:


Still from Coalition of the Willing: Back to the 60s by World Leaders

The film is appearing online at coalitionofthewilling.org.uk. Rayner’s collaborator is the film maker Simon Robson aka Knife Party, who has pulled in a glorious range of film makers and animators to bring Rayner’s script – on how activists can come together to combat climate change.

The first clips went up at the start of this week. More will be appearing in waves in the coming weeks.

it’s a really exciting way of bringing creative people together on a project like this. The medium is wonderful. I’m not entirely sure I’m convinced of the message – though I would like to be. The Coalition of the Willing’s theme is that that the net allows “swarm politics” to flourish, giving activists a unique chance to mobilise against global warming.

While the net does have that effect, there are two other effects which seem to be just as strong:

1) It gives exactly the same power to those who think the very opposite of what you do – witness the swarm  of warming scepticism online.

2) Though it creates lots of networks there is no real incentive for those networks to link up. They are often reproducing exactly the same message, deploying the same tactics, in isolation from each other. At the same time as it pulls people together it also keeps them in separate silos.

Knife Party, Tim Rayner

FILMMAKERS: Adam Gault & Stefanie Augustine, Bran Dougherty-Johnson, Cassiano Prado, Mario Sader & Ralph Pinel, Clapham Road Studios, Dave Baum, Decoy, Dom Del Torto, Dylan White & Andy Hague, Echolab, Foreign Office, Andreas Gebhardt, James Wignall,BBWD (Loyalkaspar), Sehsucht – Directed by Mate Steinforth, Mighty Nice, Parasol Island, Thiago Maia, World Leaders, Yum Yum London

Go to RSA Arts & Ecology

Earth Matters On Stage: Blood and Bodies

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That’s a shark signing his chummy painting above, proving once and for all that eco-art is not for the faint of heart.

It’s an image used by Una Chaudhuri in her keynote address  “Animal (and) Planet: Zooesis and Ecological Extremity”  at this year’s EMOS. Chaudhuri is responsible for major contributions to the written EcoDrama field, and so wields terms like “gynesis,” and “anthropological machine” expertly (even while folks like Mike Lawler and I are squinting to catch up).

It was a look at performance and animals– or performance and non-human animals, if you prefer.  The bookends of the speech were a piece called “Helena”, in which artist Marco Evaristti  gave the public the option of pulverizing live goldfish in blenders–  and the work of Olly and Suzi, who go out into the wilderness and make collaborative paintings with animals ( not just your alley cat or field mouse: see above).

So here I am, at a conference intended to examine the relationship between our planet and our performance art, and I have to confess that I feel silly using the term “non-human animal.” But that’s the essence of what Una Chaudhuri is addressing: at what point do we stop looking at “the others” as something we manipulate and use, and start acknowledging them as collaborators in our community– ecologically, and in this case, artistically?

These same themes come up again and powerfully in EMOS during a panel on Rachel Rosenthal’s work, and in the context of the artist’s own flesh and blood. There’s also much more: green theater practices, Boal, space, giraffes, rituals and rollings on the grass– I’ll be posting more frequently in the next week as the eco-nerddery swells my brain . . .

Go to the Green Museum