Ecological Issues

Art and Ecology?

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LogoMay 17-8 September 2013, Make active choices. Art and ecology : How? , Museum of Modern Art

Freiburg is particularly  involved  in ecological issues; as a “Green city” it  takes part in current discussions about sustainable development. In this dynamic, artists can bring new ideas : by getting involved, infiltrating, polemicising, reinterpreting and offering alternatives.For the exhibition Make active choices. Art and ecology : How? national and international artists are taking part the reflexion. With the active involvement of the visitors, the interaction between man and the environment becomes a concrete experience.

Freiburg theatre is taking part in the project by holding a symposium and an experimental game called “Regiodrom”. In front of the museum itself, urban gardeners work together with interested visitors to create green spaces. Moreover, the documentary “Earth”, directed by Alastair Fothergill and Mark Linfield, reveals insights into the natural world – providing a starting point and incentive for sustainable activities.

For more information click here

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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New Directions in Social Ecology: From Climate Action to Housing Justice

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New Directions in Social Ecology: From Climate Action to Housing Justice

owaIRpI

An Intensive Seminar for All Levels

Each year, the Institute for Social Ecology hosts intensive seminars for students, activists, and community leaders to come together to explore sets of dynamic and urgent social and ecological issues. This year, the Institute for Social Ecology is thrilled to offer, for the first time, a seminar right in the heart of San Francisco.

We will be partnering with the California Institute for Integral Studies based in the SOMA district and on major transit lines. Classes will include the politics and philosophy of Social Ecology, international social movements for direct democracy, alternatives to capitalism, climate justice with a focus and emphasis on urban housing and land struggles. We have designed this intensive to be a bit longer than previous programs so as to secure time for local field trips that will allow us to get to know the community and history in which we are studying.

APPLY HERE! for the San Francisco Intensive

What is Social Ecology?

Social Ecology is an interdisciplinary perspective that  weaves together aspects of ecology, philosophy,  anthropology, and political theory. As a body of ideas, social ecology favors a moral economy over a market  economy, while striving to foster human and biological   diversity in a directly democratic world.

The Institute for Social Ecology (ISE) was founded in 1974 as an educational institution dedicated to the exploration of social ecology and its relationship to fields  including philosophy, history, economics, the natural sciences, post-colonialism, and feminism. Historically, the ISE has been a pioneer in community-based approaches to alternative technologies, directly democratic organizing, and ecological urban design. ISE faculty, students, and alumna have played key roles in movements to challenge nuclear power, environmental racism, agricultural biotechnology, climate crisis, and global injustice.

What is an ISE Intensive?

The ISE organizes educational ‘intensive seminars’ that deepen students’ understanding of  human/nature relationships, directly democratic movements, climate change, and the historical unfolding of Left politics. At ISE intensives, students establish links between their current political work on the ground to the ‘grounded theory’ of social ecology.  In that spirit, the ISE has organized intensive seminars to among core Occupy NYC organizers while also fostering strategic ongoing movement-building in the New York area.

APPLY HERE! for the San Francisco Intensive

check out the event on Facebook!

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“I was able to attend two of these [Intensives] in NYC and would love to go again!” – Jose Whelan

“I am enormously happy that the Institute for Social Ecology is coming to SF!!! Radical, coherent and powerful body of ideas taught by talented and dedicated teachers that can transform your perspective of politics, evolution, nature, revolution, environmentalism, climate change, capitalism, power and hierarchy.” -Liana Sweeney, past Intensive student

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Dates: June 12th – 22nd, 2013

Location: California Institute for Integral Studies, 1453 Mission Street, San Francisco CA

Scholarships: Available, please inquire.

Tuition: $250 – $400 sliding scale or $50 per class. To secure your spot in the seminar, a deposit (30% of your fee) is required. To make your deposit, click on the donate button (up and to the right of this text) and describe your donation as “SF Intensive.”

Readings: coming soon!

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Intensive Seminar Instructors

Dan Chodorkoff: What is Social Ecology/the Utopian Tradition

Dan Chodorkoff is a cultural anthropologist and co-founder of the Institute for Social Ecology. He recently published his first novel,Loisaida, a reflection on the rich history of people’s struggles in New York’s Lower East Side.

Chaia Heller: Direct Democracy and Dual Power / The Alter Left (History of the Left)

Chaia Heller is a cultural anthropologist and a professor of gender studies at Mt. Holyoke College. She is the author of Ecology of Everyday Life: Rethinking the Desire for Nature, and just released her second book, Food Farms and Solidarity: French Farmers Challenge Industrial Agriculture and Genetically Modified Crops.

Peter Staudenmaier: What is Capitalism?/A Moral Economy:  Around the world, people dissatisfied with global capitalism face challenging questions about what kind of society could replace the present one: How can we build amoral economy in the wreckage of a market economy? This course will explore how capitalism works and how a fundamentally different economic system can be both possible and practical.

Peter Staudenmaier is a historian, and a professor of modern German history at Marquette University in Milwaukee, WI. He co-wrote the book Ecofascism: Lessons from the German Experience with Janet Beihl.

Brooke Lehman: Building Transformative movements: How can we build democratic organizations and movements powerful enough to shift systemic power and grounded enough to evolve the very nature how we relate to each other and to our own deepest sense of purpose? In this class students will develop their own personal mission and vision statements; practice communication skills for effective leadership; and learn how to design healthy organizational
structures and coalitions.

Brian Tokar: Social Justice and Climate Action

Brian Tokar is currently the director of the Institute for Social Ecology and a lecturer of Environmental Studies at the University of Vermont. His most recent book is Toward Climate Justice: Perspectives on the Climate Crisis and Social Change.

Hilary Moore with James Tracy: Solidarity and Alliance Building

Hilary Moore is a founding member of Mobilization for Climate Justice- West in the Bay Area. She co-wrote the booklet Organizing Cools the Planet: Tools and Reflections to Navigate the Climate Crisis with Joshua Kahn Russell.

James Tracy is an organizer with the San Francisco Community Land Trust and author of Hillbilly Nationalist, Urban Race Rebels , and Black Power: Community Organizing in Radical Times with Amy Sonnie.

Andrej Grubacic: International Movements for Democracy: What is democracy? This class will focus on several historical instances of direct democracy. From the Cossak “krug,” to the pirate ship, and from the runnaway “palenque” of Maroons, to the Chiapas village assembly.

Andrej Grubacic is a member of the International Council of the World Social Forum, the Industrial Workers of the World, and the Global Balkans Network. His most recent work is Don’t Mourn, Balkanize! Essays After Yugoslavia.

*More teachers and evening speakers TBA. The Intensive will also offer a field trip to explore urban land straggles. 

*Schedule and full class descriptions coming soon

For more information, email seminar@social-ecology.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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Mark Dion at Museum Het Domein

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museum-het-domeinThe Macabre Treasury

January 20–May 5, 2013 – Museum Het Domein – Sittard, Netherlands

“Increasingly, my work has become macabre and laced with dusky pessimism. Early on I believed that ecological calamity could be averted by awareness. If people knew about issues like the loss of biodiversity or global warming, they would act so as to halt the problem. (…) Now, I just don’t believe that it will all work out. Not that there will be a single great catastrophe, but rather the world will slowly become less biological diverse, more impoverished, an uglier, less remarkable place to live. (…) Ozone holes, burning rainforests, ecological wars, species extinction, landfill landscapes will become fantastic theatre, a spectacle of ecosystem collapse. (…) Coming soon—the planet earth becoming a crummier place, and like numerous other rude spectators, it’s hard for me to keep my mouth closed during the show.”
–Mark Dion, unpublished manuscript, 2001

Macabre Treasury an exhibition by the American artist Mark Dion, internationally acclaimed to be a prominent contemporary artist, is Dion´s first solo museum exhibition in the Netherlands since fifteen years. He is playing a pioneering role with his work, which focuses on ecological issues and our perception of nature. Dion’s work examines the ways in which dominant ideologies and public institutions like museums shape our understanding of history, the ways we accumulate knowledge, and how we regard the natural world. Appropriating archaeological and other scientific methods of collecting, ordering, and exhibiting objects, Dion creates works that question the distinctions between “objective” (“rational”) scientific methods and “subjective” (“irrational”) influences. The artist’s spectacular and often fantastical curiosity cabinets, modeled on Wunderkabinetts of the sixteenth century, are notable for their atypical orderings of objects and specimens. By locating the roots of environmental politics and public policy in the construction of knowledge about nature, Mark Dion questions the authoritative role of the scientific voice in contemporary society.

For The Macabre Treasury, Dion will transform Museum Het Domein’s contemporary art wing into a giant Wunderkabinett. The exhibition will be divided into various departments of a fictional museum. Dion’s macabre treasure chamber will thus include amongst others Departments of Zoology and Archeology, a Bureau of Museums and the Culture of Collections, a Hunting Salon, aCinematheque and a Cabinet of Mystery. As part of the exhibition of his own work, the artist will present a selection of objects from Museum Het Domein’s historical collection and from other local museums and archives. The objects vary from local archeological findings to an eleventh-century tree-trunk coffin with a female skeleton. As is the case with all of Dion’s presentations, the exhibition in Het Domein can be considered an attempt to restore something of our earlier notion of the universal museum with its hybrid combinations of different disciplines and fields of knowledge. Newly inciting the curiosity of the museum-goer is just as essential. The artist once proclaimed that museums should be restored to their roles as “powder kegs of the imagination.”

For more information and visuals, visit the museums homepage.

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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ART OF RESILIENCE festival in Latvia starting today

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Art+Communication festival

From October 4 to November 4, 2012 Riga and Liepaja will be the host cities for the14th International Festival for New Media Culture “Art+Communication ’2012″.

The “Art+Communication” festival is renowned across Europe for its proposed innovative themes. Each year, the festival gathers around hundred participants from Latvia, Europe and other world countries, discussing the newest ideas and future development trends in the field of new media art. By continuing the festival theme of its previous editions, on art’s role in building sustainability, this year’s festival with the title “Art of Resilience” looks at the scenario of sustainable development from the position of resilience tactics, re-approaches relations between nature and technologies, as well as discusses the role of art in addressing “techno-ecological” issues.

The main festival programme will take place in Riga, October 4 – 6 in Spikeri at kim? Contemporary Art Centre, RIXC Media Space and Spikeri Concert Hall.

For more information and the complete program:

http://rixc.lv/12/en/festival.info.html

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

Powered by WPeMatico

Manifesta 9

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This post comes to you from Cultura21

Opening on June 2nd 2012 and running until September 30th 2012, Manifesta 9 takes place in the former coalmining complex of Waterschei in Genk, Limburg, Belgium.

Manifesta 9 is an assembly of artworks, testimonies, and participants inviting the viewer to rethink the role of culture in industrial and post-industrial societies. For its ninth edition, which take place in Limburg, Belgium, the curatorial team, composed of Cuauhtémoc Medina (México), Katherina Gregos (Greece) and Dawn Ades (U.K.) has developed a concept creating a dialogue between different layers of art, heritage and history.

The point of departure of Manifesta 9 is the significance of the former coalmining region of the Belgian Campine, as a locus for different imaginary and ecological issues associated with industrial capitalism as a global phenomenon.

For more information about Manifesta 9, you can visit their website : http://manifesta9.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

Khoj International Residencies and Projects

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Khoj International Artists’ Association is an artist led, alternative forum for experimentation and international exchange based in India. It sees its role as an incubator for art and ideas, artistic exchange and dialogue in the visual arts. In the last few years it has developed an active network of artists in South Asia.

Applications are invited for an international residency ‘In Context:public.art.ecology Part III’ @ Khoj, for art projects exploring ecological thematics preferably in public spaces around Delhi. The residency will be for 4- 6 weeks starting in the first week of March to mid April 2012. The deadline for submitting the application to applications [at] khojworkshop [dot] org is the 30th of November.

Invited are proposals from individual artists and artists’ collectives, with projects fokussing urgent ecological issues affecting the urban city. This year’s special focus is laid on the notion of food. Food can be seen as an artistic medium incorporating performance, art installations or interactive events that re-examine the significance and relevance of food in the social context, simply in its connection with the body or as a primary ritual that fosters engagement, interaction and collaboration.

For application details see this page.

Furthermore applications are invited for the Negotiating Routes – Ecologies of the Byways project- Part III, from  artists, artists groups or professionals of Indian origin, to propose projects which are site-specific preferably in smaller cities in India. They must have an inter-disciplinary approach that combines research and art creation by artists and local communities, addressing the visible and invisible transformations currently taking place in their immediate environments.
The project must be completed within a maximum of 3 months from the date of commencement within the stipulated time frame of February- June 2012.

For more details take a look at this page.

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

Call for papers: ‘Essays in Performance and Ecology’

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Theresa J. May, founder and artistic director of Earth Matters on Stage, and Wendy Arons, director of the Performance and Ecology Public Art Initiative have issued a call for papers for a jointly edited publication, Essays in Performance and Ecology to be published in 2011.

The proposed anthology of essays, interviews, and artist statements will include papers dealing with ecocritical concerns as they relate to theatre and performance. The editors are especially interested in explorations that employ the science of ecology as a critical framework, or employ environmental history to contextualize performance.

The topics welcomed include, but are not limited to:

  • the ecological situatedness of language
  • the dialogic relationship between onstage/offstage ecological discourses
  • intersections and complications of landscape/body
  • performances that participate in/reflect ecological debates
  • ecology, technology and representation
  • the cultural (de)construction of ‘nature’
  • performative intersections of social justice and ecological issues
  • partnership projects in the arts and sciences
  • ecological dramaturgy
  • community/place and ecology
  • the body as a site of ecological intersections
  • the ecologies of theatrical space
  • semiotics of ‘nature’
  • subjectivity/inter-subjectivity and the ecological self
  • animal representation on/off stage
  • eco-activism/community-based performance.
The editors encourage submissions by artists working in the area of eco-performance and who reflect critically on their work and/or process, and encourage proposals that engage a question about how performance (broadly constructed) has or might function as part of ecological communities.
A working or final draft or an abstract of 500 words should be sent as an attachment to both editors by 15 October:
Theresa J. May, Assitant Professor Theatre Arts, University of Oregon
tmay33@uoregon.edu
Wendy Arons, Associate Professor of Dramatic Literature and Dramaturgy, Carnegie Mellon University
warons@andrew.emu.edu

RSA Arts & Ecology – Interview | Gustav Metzger

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“I thought one could fuse the political ideal of social change with art”

Emma Ridgway, curator of The RSA Arts & Ecology Centre, interviews Gustav Metzger

Born in 1926 to Polish-Jewish parents in Nuremberg, Gustav Metzger is an artist known for his radical approach. His work responds directly to political, economic and ecological issues. Creating manifestos and events in the UK since the early 1960s, he developed the concept of Auto-Destructive Art and Art Strike movements, which addressed destructive drives both in capitalism and the art industry. He still makes challenging work and his ideas continue to be influential.

With his Flailing Trees one of the centrepieces of the Manchester International Festival, Gustav Metzger’s reputation as a major figure in radical art continues to grow. Emma Ridgway talks to the artist about his long career in art and activism.

via RSA Arts & Ecology – Interview | Gustav Metzger.

Go to RSA Arts & Ecology

Respond! – or how we can make the most noise

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Anyone who’s subscribed to the RSA Arts & Ecology site newsletter will have already had this info, but for those who are not, Arts & Ecology in conjunction with Bash Creations are initiating Respond! as a way of highlighting events thorughout the UK – across all art forms – that deal with ecological issues. By networking us all together the idea is we can create that bigger splash. To wit:

Respond! will celebrate and showcase the achievements and commitment of the arts in addressing environmental issues.  Our aim is to engage and inspire arts audiences through discussion and response to the events, exhibitions, talks, projects and activity happening in June.

Visit here to find out more.

Go to RSA Arts & Ecology