Duende

Sun. October 28: The Nomadic People of Kentifrica

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LOS ANGELES – Look for our 1951 Spartan trailer at the Leimert Park Art Walk on Sunday, October 28 where multimedia artist Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle will present “Kentifrican Travel Narratives,” a performance piece exploring  the nomadic cultures of Kentifrica, a continent where the history of Kentucky and the ancestral heritage of West Africa converge. The event will feature a concert with Kentifrican songs for safety on the road and other music performed on instruments made from and inspired by Kentifrican culture.  A café with Kentifrican food will offer food to the public.

Kenyatta Hinkle (Cal Arts, M.F.A. ’12) was the youngest artist to participate this summer in the Hammer Museum’s  “Made In L.A.”  Her work is currently on display at a group exhibit, “BAILA con Duende”at Watts Towers (September, 2012 – January, 2012. )  In October, she will be at the Bindery Projects in St. Paul, MN.  In November her work will be shown at another group exhibit at  The Studio Museum in Harlem.

 Kentifrican Travel Narratives: Transversing Boundaries                                    Leimert Park Art Walk                                                                                                                Leimert Park Village, Los Angeles, CA 91804  map                                                               Sunday, October 28 – 12 pm – 4 pm                                                                                               This event is a co-production with Ben Caldwell’s Kaos Films

This post is part of a series documenting Sam Breen’a Spartan Restoration Project. Please see his first post here and check out the archive here. The CSPA is helping Sam by serving in an advisory role, offering modest support and featuring Sam’s Progress by syndicating his feed from http://spartantrailerrestoration.wordpress.com as part of our CSPA Supports Program.

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New metaphors for sustainability: the Spanish Dehesa

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This post comes to you from Ashden Directory

Our series on new metaphors for sustainability continues with Alison Turnbull‘s ‘Spanish Dehesa’, a sylvopastoral system that marries production and nature conservation.  Alison was born in Bogotà, lives in London and exhibits her artwork there.  

I first saw the Spanish dehesaon a trip to Extremadura some twenty years ago. We drove for over fifty miles without passing another car and the temperature soared to 53º C. It was difficult to believe we were in Western Europe and not in the plains of the American west or crossing an African savannah.  I’ve been back every year since, walking and experiencing this unique eco-system in all kinds of weather, under all sorts of light.

Rather like the evocative Spanish term duende, used in the performing arts to mean ‘soul’ or ‘spirit’, dehesa is a difficult word to translate. Meadow, wooded pastureland and grazing operation, it is a sylvo-pastoral system that covers 20,000 square kilometres, mostly in southwest Spain but also stretching into Portugal and Morocco. It is one of the oldest created landscapes in Europe – a cultural landscape if you like – just how ancient no one quite knows, but certainly several centuries, and it remains an outstanding example of intelligent husbandry.  It is beneficial to the needs of human beings but also hospitable to a whole variety of other creatures, including many rare butterflies.

The grassed zones in between the oak trees are famously home to acorn-fed Iberian pigs that produce the most wonderful ham in the world. Honey, cheese, cork and charcoal are all products of the dehesa. It is an area of exceptional bio-diversity – for instance it is the wintering ground for most of Europe’s population of Grus grus, the common crane.

The dehesais special in that it is an area where maximum exploitation sits side by side with maximum conservation. It’s man-made and it’s right here in Europe.

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ashdenizen is edited by Robert Butler, and is the blog associated with the Ashden Directory, a website focusing on environment and performance.
The Ashden Directory is edited by Robert Butler and Wallace Heim, with associate editor Kellie Gutman. The Directory includes features, interviews, news, a timeline and a database of ecologically – themed productions since 1893 in the United Kingdom. Our own projects include ‘New Metaphors for Sustainability’, ‘Flowers Onstage’ and ‘Six ways to look at climate change and theatre’.

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