Curated

GREEN ART PARADE – July 13 & Aug 10

This post comes to you from Green Public Art

dd6004796c8b04814e47d27d65bc7c40GREEN ART PARADE: San Diego ~ July 13 and August 10, 2013

Join us on two Saturday evenings this summer for a GREEN ART PARADE, a curated street spectacle of portable sculptures, art bikes, green fashion and performances by Southern California artists with a message about the environment.

The PARADE will begin at 7:00pm at Art Produce (3139 University Avenue, San Diego, CA 92104). The parade will conclude around 8:00pm with a reception for the artists at the Art Produce gallery. Visit some of the local North Park businesses for prime viewing locations along the route: Art Produce, Urbn, Splash, Pigment, Linkery, West Coast, Heaven Scent/Bottle craft, Wangs, Hesse, Vintage Religion, and Swoon.

Expect to be delighted with the work of ten artists who will participate in the PARADE including:

Dia Bassett – Temaztub

Dia Bassett, an artist from San Diego, was raised in a family of artists and began performing at 5 years old in her father’s productions. Her involvement in performance both behind stage and onstage has influenced her art, leading her to create a blend of sculpture and performance. She uses a combination of traditional fiber techniques such as sewing, weaving, crocheting and knotting to create soft-sculptural forms, some of which are worn on the body during performances.

Artist’s statement: Temaztub is an invented term referring to the Western European tradition of bathing in a claw foot bathtub mixed with the Mesoamerican rite of purification in a sweat lodge called Temazcal. The hybrid form of Temaztub will juxtapose elements from each bathing structure of basin and dome. Temaztub is a mobile sculpture attached to wheels so that it can easily be pulled in the PARADE.

Temaztub is also a sculptural performance, which combines bathing traditions from indigenous and Western cultures. Western cleanliness requires soap and fresh water, though other traditions, like Mesoamerican, rely on minerals, rock and mud exfoliation, herbs, and steam. Because bathing traditions fluctuate over time and place, I want to ask viewers to reexamine their ideas of “clean” and “pure.” The performers’ mash-up of bathing traditions serves to confound viewers and give them the opportunity to pause and ponder the notion of bathing.

Marina de Bris

…more information about this project to come!

Janelle Despot

…more information about this project to come!

Suki Berry and Friends – Shark Bikes

Suki Berry and 8 other friends will bring a group of glowing Shark Bikes to the PARADE. Species like Great White, Hammerheads, and Basking Sharks, each measuring about 5 feet in length will be attached to bikes riding in the PARADE.

Every year tens of millions of sharks are slaughtered for only their fins, a process called “shark de-finning.” Without fins, sharks cannot swim, and without being able to move water through their gills, they drown. If the fishing rate of sharks keeps up we won’t have many of these beautiful fish left in the ocean. Over fishing is a huge problem today, and eliminating more shares from the ecosystem throws off a delicate balance.

A. Laura Brody – Fashion on the Fly (Live Staple Drawing)

A. Laura Brody creates works of beauty, function and purpose that are ecologically sound. She gives fabric remnants and discards new life as works of art shaping them around participant’s bodies with a stapler, staples and scissors. The newly dressed viewers will then be encouraged to join the parade for as long as they wish.

Artist’s statement: Many people in the Western world have little to no experience in making or working on their own clothing. The craze for fast, cheap fashion and goods is unsustainable in and encourages horrible excesses. The Bangladeshi garment factory collapse and the Foxcon scandals are sadly just the most recent examples in a long history of the ultimate cost of making cheap, mass-produced goods. Even “sustainable” fashion is suspect, because of the toxic processing required to generate, bleach and dye fabrics. Encouraging people to start making their own clothing from reused materials is a positive way to help break this vicious cycle.

My staple draped creations are made exclusively from reused and donated fabrics. The only new materials used are the staples. Staple draping is an unconventional way to get people engaged in the art and fun of creating, using simple and inexpensive tools and materials. It shows people the delight of sculpting on the body and opens them up to their own creative possibilities by demystifying the making process.

Richard Gleaves

Wearing street clothes and a red-ball clown nose Richard Gleaves will walk the parade route pulling, over his shoulder, a line connected to a bridal train of several hundred plastic bottles, which drag and rattle on the pavement behind him.

Artist statement: May your throwaway follow you everywhere.

Terri Hughes – Oil Well and Tomatoes

Terri Hughes, an Associate Professor at San Diego City College, creates sculptures, interactive and site-specific installations, and public artwork. She directs the Sugar Museum, a non-profit museum that organized exhibitions and projects at various locations. Her recent artwork is themed on her childhood memories of growing up surrounded by oil wells in Huntington Beach and the transformation of that city. For the PARADE, she will create a mobile sculpture made of 95% repurposed materials; a 8’ x 2’ x 10’ oil pumper made from Styrofoam scraps which will be pulled by 6-8 children wearing heirloom tomato costumes made from thrift store fabrics.

Artist’s statement: The oil pumper structure symbolizes our dependence on fossil fuels and most people do not realize that conventionally grown food uses lots of fossil fuels. But, local organic farms growing heirloom tomatoes produces far less of a carbon footprint than conventionally grown tomatoes.

One could view this project as ironic since typically the fossil fuels produce the tomatoes and here, the tomatoes are pulling the oil pumper. It also could be viewed as the heirloom tomatoes pulling the oil pumper, a dead horse, a thing of the past. I often use humor and sarcasm in my artwork. Involving kids in the project will also symbolize hope for the future.

Miki Iwasaki and the Bakery Design Collective – Caravan

Miki Iwasaki’s curiosity in making and building things eventually led him to pursue a career in architecture, and attend California State Polytechnic University in Pomona California. Miki also studied for a year at the Kyushu Institute of Design in Fukuoka, Japan and received his Masters in Architecture from the Harvard Graduate School of Design in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Miki, currently adjunct faculty at Woodbury University San Diego, School of Architecture, has remained dedicated to his own art projects and furniture designs.

Artist’s statement:  As we look back on the history of personal transportation in California, we have a relatively short but colorful story. From the early California pioneers and the covered wagon, to the advent of the automobile and it’s many permutations, to bicycles, skateboards, segways, scooters, recreational vehicles, custom cars and travel trailers, the culture and identity of California has been intertwined with the way we move. Many fascinating inventions and vehicles have already been introduced and are currently on the drawing boards of designers and creative people today, all in an effort to satiate our longing to explore and our need to get from point A to B. The Caravan project for the PARADE celebrates this history and introduces a mobile space of sorts, a way of having fun while thinking about a range of questions surrounding transport. What we choose to ride, how long it takes to get there, where the materials and fuel come from, how it is made and why we are so dependent on them, are all questions worth asking.

David Krimmel – Demeter’s Chariot

David Krimmel is a community artist, museum exhibit designer and aspiring farmer in San Diego, CA. His art spans many genres from the wheat hARvesT project to performance collaboration, “A Watershed Tale,” with the Mid-City Propagators.

Artist’s statement:  Demeter’s Chariot references the Greek goddess of Demeter, the god of the harvest and her chariot pulled by horses. Riding in the artist’s mobile sculpture will be Demeter. The public will be invited to a workshop where they will make vegetable hats, with materials provided by the artist, to wear in the PARADE.

Benjamin Lavender – Keep the Ball Rolling

Benjamin Lavender’s art reflects his lifelong fascination with the growth and erosion of nature. His signature style involves shaping metal and industrial objects into organic forms reminiscent of plant life. His latest sculptures are constructed primarily out of metal straps (from reclaimed whiskey and wine barrels) that have been cut, shaped and twisted into the shapes of various forms. His 7ft in diameter sculpture will be pushed along the streets in the parade.

Artist’s statement: The Idea behind this piece is that once the “ball” is in motion, it is our responsibility to keep this ball rolling on the right path; in this case referring to environmental awareness using green materials. My sculpture will be a large ball (approx.. 7’ diam) made of reclaimed wine barrel hoops, circling around a ceramic inner ball suspended in the middle representing the earth. Visually, I want to create the earth inside of its atmosphere, which is of obvious concern when promoting green building and conservation. Also, I want this to double as a single cell, with the planet representing the nucleus. Since the single cell is what all living animals start out as, it is the first “ball” to get rolling.

Interested in participating? Contact Rebecca Ansert at rebecca@greenpublicart.com.

**About Green Public Art Consultancy**
Rebecca Ansert, founder of Green Public Art Consultancy, is an art consultant who specializes in public art project development and management, artist solicitation and selection, and creative community involvement for private and public agencies. She earned a master’s in Public Art Studies at the University of Southern California and has a unique interest in how art can demonstrate green processes or utilize green design theories and techniques in LEED certified buildings. She founded her Los Angeles-based firm in 2009 in an effort to advance the conversation of public art’s role in green building.

**About Art Produce Gallery**
Art Produce is a unique artist-run, storefront exhibition space and public art experience in North Park, a diverse and historic urban community of San Diego. The gallery, entirely visible from the sidewalk, is designed to accommodate sculptural installations, cross-disciplinary works, digital media, and performance events. The space allows for unconventional presentation opportunities for artists and unexpected art encounters for viewers. Intended to enliven the experience of the pedestrian it is an experiment in public art that is accessible to everyone in the community – an attempt to render visibility and transparency into the art process itself.

 

Rebecca Ansert, founder of Green Public Art, is an art consultant who specializes in artist solicitation, artist selection, and public art project management for both private and public agencies. She is a graduate of the master’s degree program in Public Art Studies at the University of Southern California and has a unique interest in how art can demonstrate green processes or utilize green design theories and techniques in LEED certified buildings.

Green Public Art is a Los Angeles-based consultancy that was founded in 2009 in an effort to advance the conversation of public art’s role in green building. The consultancy specializes in public art project development and management, artist solicitation and selection, creative community involvement and knowledge of LEED building requirements. Green Public Art also works with emerging and mid-career studio artists to demystify the public art process. The consultancy acts as a resource for artists to receive one-on-one consultation before, during, and after applying for a public art project.
Go to Green Public Art

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[UN]NATURAL LIMITS – Austrian Cultural Forum New York

This post comes to you from Cultura21

Jan 23 – April 1, 2013

Austrian Cultural Forum New York 11 East 52nd Street – New York, NY 10022

Artists: Desire Machine Collective, Thomas Hirschhorn, Mathias Kessler, Superflex, Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Lois Weinberger
Curated by Dieter Buchhart & Arnaud Gerspacher
Curatorial Advisor: Mathias Kessler

The new international group exhibition [UN]NATURAL LIMITS, which opened on January 22nd, gathers together different artistic reactions to the alienating effects of the unfettered global exploitation of resources, and offers insight into the denial and myopia of current political responses to what increasingly appears to be a perpetual crisis.
It focuses on the environmental relays sent back in response to our human activities (or failures to act), while giving voice to various groups, thinkers, and artists who seek to interrupt narcissistic and destructive self-involvements in society.

The exhibition, which was commissioned by the Austrian Cultural Forum’s director Andreas Stadler and curated by the Viennese-New York team of Dieter Buchhart and Arnaud Gerspacher, maintains a deep ambiguity towards the modernist legacies of endless expansion and selective prosperity, as our social and political systems slowly begin to confront the limits of growth and sustainability. Each artist or collective poses a challenge to the perceived limits that condition our understanding of the world: on the one hand, the limited prospect for action, compassion, and change, while on the other, the limitless drive for resources and capital in all its forms. A reversal is necessary: it is compassion that should be limitless.

The show will include an installation by Swiss artist Thomas Hirschhorn titled Resistance-Subjecter (2011), which was first shown as part of his Crystal of Resistance at the Venice Biennial 2011. The bodies of the eight mannequins have seemingly been infested and corroded by 1 million year-old crystals. We are left to guess whether the crystals were produced in the body and stand for a material resisting cultural, economic, social, ecological, and aesthetical habits, or whether the body was produced by the crystals, now hosting them in order to resist the jaded times we live in.

Austrian artist Lois Weinberger’s Invasion (2005/2011) also plays with the limits of the organic and inorganic. The installation consists of a group of mushrooms that climb, protrude, and seem to grow from the Austrian Cultural Forum’s gallery walls. The work is a striking confluence of nature and artificiality, though the limits between the natural and unnatural are not as clear as they may first appear: the walls themselves were once organic growths in a forest and the artificial lighting is itself produced by natural sources of energy.

Equally engaged in uncovering the often-arbitrary limits between ecology and the economic functioning of the urban landscape, Mierle Laderman Ukeles has been committed to interrogating the social role of art within these processes. Her Manifesto for Maintenance Art 1969! (1969) states that art should be concerned with maintaining life, its systems and environments. In her yearlong performance documented in Touch Sanitation Performance (1977-80), Ukeles shook hands with 8,500 sanitation employees, while sharing and documenting their stories, and thereby drawing attention to the ecological underbelly of New York City and its often socially stigmatized workers.

In Experience Climate Change As… (2009), the Danish collective Superflex advertises a series of hypnosis sessions offered in conjunction with international global climate change summits. The first one took place in 2009 at the UN Global Climate Summit in Copenhagen, and future events are planned through the year 2050. These hypnosis sessions allow participants to experience climate change as a specific animal, in a relatively playful gesture that nevertheless points to the serious relationship between the natural limits of global ecosystems and the seemingly limitless capacity of world powers to defer action due to realpolitik and economic reasons.

The rapacious capacity to excavate natural sites is documented by Mathias Kessler in his piece,Jarrells Cemetery, N37o53.96’ W81o34.71’. Eunice Mountain. West Virginia. (2012). The artist traveled to a commercial surface mining site in West Virginia to document the operation and the local stories mourning the lost landscape, the political situation, and the area’s history. Verbal accounts are audible to visitors outside the gallery, before they are confronted inside by a massive wallpaper depicting the carved out hillsides which appear overwhelmingly dry and diseased. In serious irony, the only remnant and survivor in an otherwise lifeless scene is a cemetery, now even more cut-off from the living.

Finally, [UN]NATURAL LIMITS includes a documentation of Periferry – An incomplete Balance Sheet (2013), a nomadic space for hybrid art practices mounted and maintained by Desire Machine Collective. Located on a ferry barge on the Brahmaputra River in India, this project provides a space for experimentation and new media approaches, public and community arts, which are relevant to immediate local concerns and aim at the empowerment of the community and reclaiming the public space, while at the same time connecting with the global.

For more information, visit acfny.org

Reposted from eflux newsletter

Cultura21 is a transversal, translocal network, constituted of an international level grounded in several Cultura21 organizations around the world.

Cultura21′s international network, launched in April 2007, offers the online and offline platform for exchanges and mutual learning among its members.

The activities of Cultura21 at the international level are coordinated by a team representing the different Cultura21 organizations worldwide, and currently constituted of:

– Sacha Kagan (based in Lüneburg, Germany) and Rana Öztürk (based in Berlin, Germany)
– Oleg Koefoed and Kajsa Paludan (both based in Copenhagen, Denmark)
– Hans Dieleman (based in Mexico-City, Mexico)
– Francesca Cozzolino and David Knaute (both based in Paris, France)

Cultura21 is not only an informal network. Its strength and vitality relies upon the activities of several organizations around the world which are sharing the vision and mission of Cultura21

Go to Cultura21

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Aviva Rahmani, January Events

Water, part 2 of Oil & Water diptych, encaustic on archival digital print by Aviva Rahmani 2011.

Water, part 2 of Oil & Water diptych, encaustic on archival digital print by Aviva Rahmani 2011.

One of a Kind III

Curated by Heidi Hatry

January 11 – February 24, 2013

Owens Art Gallery, Mount Allison University

61 York Street, Sackville, New Brunswick, Canada

Galley hours M-F 10-5 PM, Sat & Sun 1-5 PM

http://www.mta.ca/owens/index.php

 

Trigger Points After the Storm  

An evening event/discussion

Hosted by Aviva Rahmani with Wendy Osserman in the

Philosoprops & Onotological Apparatus Dialectic Revival Series Exhibition

by Alyce Santoro

Monday January 21st @ 7 PM

“In a post-Sandy environment can we layer bioregionalism,

environmental justice and intuition for coastal resilience?

We will explore how aesthetic tools can trigger healing.” -Aviva Rahmani

Gasser Grunert Gallery

523 W 19th St. New York, NY

http://gassergrunert.net

http://alycesantoro.blogspot.com/2013/01/dialectic-revival-series.html

http://www.wendyossermandance.org/dancers.htm

 

It’s the End of the World as We Know it (and I Feel Fine)

January 30th @ 6 PM Rahmani will give an Artists Talk at the opening reception

Feb 28th @ 3:30 PM Rahmani will participate in the Panel Discussion

January 30th Opening Reception 5-7 PM

Curated by Amy Lipton

January 30 – March 6, 2013

Ramapo College Art Galleries

Jersey 505 Ramapo Valley Rd., Mahwah, NJ

Gallery Hours Tue, Thu, Fri: 1-5 PM, Wed: 1-7 PM

http://www.ramapo.edu/berriecenter/galleries/index.html

http://ecoartspace.blogspot.com/

Shifting Baselines Residency and Exhibition Project

This post comes to you from Cultura21

Gallery Talk & Exhibition Opening
Monday, January 7, 2013 – 6pm @ Santa Fe Art Institute

Shifting Baselines Exhibition
January 8 – 25 – Monday – Friday, 9am – 5pm @ Santa Fe Art Institute

Shifting Baselines, an exhibition curated by ecoartspace founder Patricia Watts, opening on the 7th of January, 2013,  will show existing and new work from installation artist Hugh Pocock and painter Cynthia Hooper, a Northern California painter and video artist who teaches at College of the Redwoods in Eureka.

Shifting baseline is a scientific term used to describe the way changes in the environment can be measured against previous reference points (baselines) that represent significant changes from the “original state.” For example, places that swarmed with a particular species hundreds of years ago may have experienced long-term decline, but it is the level of recent decades that are considered the appropriate reference point for current populations. In this way large declines in ecosystems or species over long periods of time were, and are, masked. There is a loss of perception of change that occurs when each generation redefines what is “natural.” This term has become widely used to describe the shift over time in the expectation of what a healthy ecosystem baseline looks like.

The exhibition will also be the inaugural event of the Santa Fe Art Institute’s 2013-14 season of programming – Contested Space, focusing on arts role in communicating and exploring new territory in an already mapped out world.

To learn more about the Shifting Baselines residency and exhibition, please go to the Santa Fe Art Institute blog.

Cultura21 is a transversal, translocal network, constituted of an international level grounded in several Cultura21 organizations around the world.

Cultura21′s international network, launched in April 2007, offers the online and offline platform for exchanges and mutual learning among its members.

The activities of Cultura21 at the international level are coordinated by a team representing the different Cultura21 organizations worldwide, and currently constituted of:

– Sacha Kagan (based in Lüneburg, Germany) and Rana Öztürk (based in Berlin, Germany)
– Oleg Koefoed and Kajsa Paludan (both based in Copenhagen, Denmark)
– Hans Dieleman (based in Mexico-City, Mexico)
– Francesca Cozzolino and David Knaute (both based in Paris, France)

Cultura21 is not only an informal network. Its strength and vitality relies upon the activities of several organizations around the world which are sharing the vision and mission of Cultura21

Go to Cultura21

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The Sun behind the Clouds

This post comes to you from Cultura21

A meditation about the sky by Ettore Favini and He-He

Parco Arte Vivente´s (PAV) 2012 art program, dedicated to the Ethos of the living,  is being concluded with the dual-person show The Sun behind the Cloudsby Ettore Favini and the Anglo-German duo He-He(Helen Evans, UK and Heiko Hansen, D).

The exhibition, curated by Claudio Cravero, proposes a new vision of the sun (Favini) and the clouds (He-He), two natural phenomena explored as issues of a both aesthetic and ethical meditation, but also acting on the stage of a even more careless relationship between man and world.

From the 31th October 2012 till the 13th January 2013 the different artworks and installations can be seen at the living art park in Turin, Italy.

For more information on PAV and the exhibition:http://www.parcoartevivente.it/pav/index.php?lingua_sito=2

Cultura21 is a transversal, translocal network, constituted of an international level grounded in several Cultura21 organizations around the world.

Cultura21′s international network, launched in April 2007, offers the online and offline platform for exchanges and mutual learning among its members.

The activities of Cultura21 at the international level are coordinated by a team representing the different Cultura21 organizations worldwide, and currently constituted of:

– Sacha Kagan (based in Lüneburg, Germany) and Rana Öztürk (based in Berlin, Germany)
– Oleg Koefoed and Kajsa Paludan (both based in Copenhagen, Denmark)
– Hans Dieleman (based in Mexico-City, Mexico)
– Francesca Cozzolino and David Knaute (both based in Paris, France)

Cultura21 is not only an informal network. Its strength and vitality relies upon the activities of several organizations around the world which are sharing the vision and mission of Cultura21

Go to Cultura21

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Water, Water Everywhere

This post comes to you from Cultura21

Film still from Shifting directed by Michael Varisco

The Museums of Los Gatos hosts a Film screening of select films from the traveling media exhibition: “Water, Water Everywhere: Paean to a Vanishing Resource“, curated by Jennifer Heath.

Thursday, September 27, 7-9pm

Location: The Art Museum | 4 Tait Avenue

All other films from Water, Water Everywhere will  be exhibited in conjunction with the current exhibition Shaped by Water: Past, Present and Future at the History Museum of Los Gatos from August 1-December 30, 2012. Visitors will have to opportunity to view films not featured in the screening throughout the duration of Shaped by Water.  These films will be  juxtaposed with historic film footage of Santa Clara Valley waterways.

Media Exhibition Description:

Water is the world’s most crucial commodity and the basis for all earthly life. Its preservation and protection may be our greatest environmental challenge.

WATER, WATER EVERYWHERE is comprised of 30-second to 30-minute videos from 40 artists worldwide exploring water issues from the political to the personal and from ethics to aesthetics, with works that are documentary, experimental, educational, humorous, solemn, animated or acted. WATER, WATER EVERYWHERE is designed to be a platform for discussion and action to bring to light the world water crisis and the sanctity of water and its sources.

Cultura21 is a transversal, translocal network, constituted of an international level grounded in several Cultura21 organizations around the world.

Cultura21′s international network, launched in April 2007, offers the online and offline platform for exchanges and mutual learning among its members.

The activities of Cultura21 at the international level are coordinated by a team representing the different Cultura21 organizations worldwide, and currently constituted of:

– Sacha Kagan (based in Lüneburg, Germany) and Rana Öztürk (based in Berlin, Germany)
– Oleg Koefoed and Kajsa Paludan (both based in Copenhagen, Denmark)
– Hans Dieleman (based in Mexico-City, Mexico)
– Francesca Cozzolino and David Knaute (both based in Paris, France)

Cultura21 is not only an informal network. Its strength and vitality relies upon the activities of several organizations around the world which are sharing the vision and mission of Cultura21

Go to Cultura21

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Green Acres: Artists Farming Fields, Greenhouses and Abandoned Lots

This post comes to you from Cultura21

September 22, 2012–January 20, 2013

Guest curated by Sue Spaid and opening September 22, 2012, Green Acres: Artists Farming Fields, Greenhouses and Abandoned Lots addresses farming as both activism and art form. Featuring a real working farm within the gallery, a farm stand in the museum lobby, sculptures used for farming, videos and other installations, as well as multiple satellite projects in the community, Green Acres presents farming as art through a wide variety of approaches.

The show is presented in five sections:

  • Farming Awareness explores how artists have alerted food consumers to the significance of food production.
  • Innovative Farming Strategies surveys artistic practices that have contributed to the development of inventive farming techniques.
  • Community Farming/Farming Communities juxtaposes “community farming”—farms organized by artists for constituents—with “farming communities”—farms implemented by artist-farmers with the public.
  • Biodiversity presents a cause important to the artist-farmer as artists have consistently considered their efforts in stark contrast to the industrial type of monoculture-farming.
  • Farming Mysticism shows artists offering blessings, rituals and other esoteric approaches that highlight emotional connections between people and the earth, as well as the historical pairing of spiritualism and farming.

Artists include: Kim Abeles, Agnes Denes, Dan Devine, Field Faring, Futurefarmers, Anya Gallaccio, Avital Geva, Lonnie Graham, Harrison Studio, Mei Ling Hom, Homeadow Song Farm, Patricia Johanson, Sakarin Krue-On, J. J. McCracken, Matthew Moore, N55, Permaganic Eco Garden, Mara Adamitz Scrupe, Mara Scrupe, Bonnie Ora Sherk, Åsa Sonjasdotter, Susan Leibovitz Steinman, Tatfoo Tan, Shannon Young

You can find more information at http://contemporaryartscenter.org/

Cultura21 is a transversal, translocal network, constituted of an international level grounded in several Cultura21 organizations around the world.

Cultura21′s international network, launched in April 2007, offers the online and offline platform for exchanges and mutual learning among its members.

The activities of Cultura21 at the international level are coordinated by a team representing the different Cultura21 organizations worldwide, and currently constituted of:

– Sacha Kagan (based in Lüneburg, Germany) and Rana Öztürk (based in Berlin, Germany)
– Oleg Koefoed and Kajsa Paludan (both based in Copenhagen, Denmark)
– Hans Dieleman (based in Mexico-City, Mexico)
– Francesca Cozzolino and David Knaute (both based in Paris, France)

Cultura21 is not only an informal network. Its strength and vitality relies upon the activities of several organizations around the world which are sharing the vision and mission of Cultura21

Go to Cultura21

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Etienne de France – Tales of a Sea Cow

This post comes to you from Cultura21
2012, March 30 to June 24 – Parco Arte Vivente, Torino (Italy)

Curated by Annick Bureaud – Opening: March 29 at 6.30 pm

In a finis terrae like scenery – rarefied, cold and blurring – takes place the story of a scientific team engaged in a field research across the seas of Iceland and Greenland, in order to prove (at least in the form of sound recordings) the survival of some specimens of the “Steller’s Rhytine” – a marine mammal declared extinct. Science or science fiction?

Chronicle of an adventure as well as methodological exercise, the multimedia project by Etienne De France (living in Paris and Reykjavik) blurs reality and fiction, retracing and reshaping the traces of a world both virtual and potential, a plausible Otherwhere, which is mirror and metaphor of the Real.

Opening hours: from Wednesday to Friday, 1 pm – 6 pm ; Saturday and Sunday, 12 am – 19 pm
PAV – Parco Arte Vivente, Via Giordano Bruno 31.

Events:

  • Inner focus: March 28th, 5 pm, Accademia Albertina delle Belle Arti, via Accademia Albertina 6.  Speakers: Etienne de France, Massimo Melotti (ethics of communication) and Maria Teresa Roberto (phenomenology of contemporary arts).
  • Press conference: March 29th, 11 am, PAV – Parco Arte Vivente

Background

Collaborating with paleo-zoologists and biologists, the artist retraces every tiny detail concerning the existence of Steller’s rhytine and reconstructs its world – its habitat, the routes it used to follow, its behavioural patterns – trying to fill the void created by the animal’s extinction. Exploiting the latest scientific methods and techniques, De France imagines and follows a team of experts engaged in checking reports of some unexpected sightings, looking for confirmation, at least in the form of sound recordings, to prove the survival of some specimens of the long-lost Sirenian.

The result is a blend of science and fiction, a return to the atmosphere beloved of Jules Verne, in which elements of the real are interwoven with the dimension of the possible, perhaps with that of dreams.

Within the framework of PAV Educational and Teaching Activities, curated by Orietta Brombin, Tales of a Sea Cow becomes the starting point for the workshop Gulliver’s Travel, dedicated to exploring in depth the theme of otherness through the curious eyes of the traveler of the eighteenth-century literary genre.

In the area of education for young artists and adults in general, on Saturday June 2nd the theme will be taken up again by Piero Gilardi in a public workshop entitled Noi come animali (Us as animals).

Cultura21 is a transversal, translocal network, constituted of an international level grounded in several Cultura21 organizations around the world.

Cultura21′s international network, launched in April 2007, offers the online and offline platform for exchanges and mutual learning among its members.

The activities of Cultura21 at the international level are coordinated by a team representing the different Cultura21 organizations worldwide, and currently constituted of:

– Sacha Kagan (based in Lüneburg, Germany) and Rana Öztürk (based in Berlin, Germany)
– Oleg Koefoed and Kajsa Paludan (both based in Copenhagen, Denmark)
– Hans Dieleman (based in Mexico-City, Mexico)
– Francesca Cozzolino and David Knaute (both based in Paris, France)

Cultura21 is not only an informal network. Its strength and vitality relies upon the activities of several organizations around the world which are sharing the vision and mission of Cultura21

Go to Cultura21

New metaphors for sustainability: the timeless meal

This post comes to you from Ashden Directory

Carolyn Steel calls herself a ‘food urbanist’, and she brings a notion of the ‘good life’ to our series of New metaphors for sustainability. 

What is it we’re trying to sustain? For me, the meal is the emblematic, wonderful situation that sums up the whole point of sustainability.
I think in metaphor all the time and food has become this way of seeing the world not just in terms of ‘how are we going to feed ourselves in future?’ – this kind of doom and gloom thing – but also in terms of asking ‘what kind of society is it that we are trying to create as well as sustain?’.
When you talk about food, there’s a tendency to talk about ‘how much grain can you produce on that much land with that much water’. That’s very important, but you have to relate every conversation you have about food with the kind of life that you are talking about. It’s about a vision of society, an idea of the good life.
The table is a place where you don’t just share food, but you share ideas, you share love, you share conversation.
It’s a beautiful metaphor of the kinds of things that we’re trying to sustain. It’s society. It’s ‘good life’ in every possible sense – not just good in terms of wonderful food – but also good in terms of the ethics of what you eat. If I am hungry I have a practical problem. If you are hungry, I have an ethical problem.
This business of sitting around a table with other people, the decorum of the table, and the sharing food – it brings the social relevance of sustainability into the conversation.
A timeless meal, a meal that is enjoyed through time that has a past that we all intuitively understand, but a future as well, sums up for me the idea that food is life on earth.
Carolyn is included in our film.
Photo: Feast on the Bridge, 2009, curated by Clare Patey. Photo by Tim Mitchell.

 

 

“ashdenizen blog and twitter are consistently among the best sources for information and reflection on developments in the field of arts and climate change in the UK” (2020 Network)

The editors are Robert Butler and Wallace Heim. The associate editor is Kellie Gutman. The editorial adviser is Patricia Morison.

Robert Butler’s most recent publication is The Alchemist Exposed (Oberon 2006). From 1995-2000 he was drama critic of the Independent on Sunday. See www.robertbutler.info

Wallace Heim has written on social practice art and the work of PLATFORM, Basia Irland and Shelley Sacks. Her doctorate in philosophy investigated nature and performance. Her previous career was as a set designer for theatre and television/film.

Kellie Gutman worked with the Aga Khan Trust for Culture for twenty years, producing video programmes and slide presentations for both the Aga Khan Foundation and the Award for Architecture.

Patricia Morison is an executive officer of the Sainsbury Family Charitable Trusts, a group of grant-making trusts of which the Ashden Trust is one.

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Nurturing Nature

This post comes to you from Cultura21

There are still some weeks left to visit the exhibition Nurturing Nature which runs through April 16th at OSilas Gallery on the campus of Concordia College in Bronxville NY.

Artists in the exhibition include: Eva Bakkeslett, Norway; Vaughn Bell, Seattle; Susan Benarcik, NYC; Michele Brody, NYC; Jackie Brookner NYC; Linda Bryne NYC; Xavier Cortada, Miami FL; Sonja Hinrichsen, Germany; Basia Irland, CO; William Meyer, Westchester, NY; Maria Michails, NYC; Roy Staab WI; Joel Tauber, CA.

Curated by Amy Lipton, ecoartspace and Patricia Miranda, Director OSilas Gallery

Cultura21 is a transversal, translocal network, constituted of an international level grounded in several Cultura21 organizations around the world.

Cultura21′s international network, launched in April 2007, offers the online and offline platform for exchanges and mutual learning among its members.

The activities of Cultura21 at the international level are coordinated by a team representing the different Cultura21 organizations worldwide, and currently constituted of:
– Sacha Kagan (based in Lüneburg, Germany) and Rana Öztürk (based in Berlin, Germany)
– Oleg Koefoed and Kajsa Paludan (both based in Copenhagen, Denmark)
– Hans Dieleman (based in Mexico-City, Mexico)
– Francesca Cozzolino and David Knaute (both based in Paris, France)

Cultura21 is not only an informal network. Its strength and vitality relies upon the activities of several organizations around the world which are sharing the vision and mission of Cultura21

Go to Cultura21