Environmental Science

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

Atmospheres of Protest

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This post comes to you from Cultura21

Symposium on Sustainability and Contemporary Art

Central European University Budapest (Hungary) – 11 May 2012

The upsurge of new popular movements from Egypt to Greece and Bucharest to New York has engendered an atmosphere of defiance and social creativity that has captured the global imagination. Beyond the ebb and flow of individual protest movements, this symposium asks whether global solidarity has really taken hold this time and considers the variety of ways in which contemporary art is embroiled through practices of dialogue and collaboration in the emergence of a common horizon and the imagining of a sustainable future. Providing a trans-disciplinary forum for discussion of the vital issues bridging the fields of art and environmental thought, the symposium sheds light on our understanding of the multifarious notion of sustainability, which appears by turns as a radical concept in global ecological thinking, can be recruited as a corporate strategy for green capitalism, and may act as a spur to new forms of social activism.

Speakers include artist-activists Noah Fischer and Maria Byck, who are members of the Occupy Museums Collective that protests against the domination of the interests of the 1% in the running of New York art institutions, as well as Berlin and Amsterdam-based urbanibalists Matteo Pasquinelli and Wietske Maas, who will present a radical gastro-manifesto that seeks to recover the spontaneous living matter of the city. Activist and writer on affective labour Emma Dowling will reflect on the sustainability of the protest movement in the light of the spread of locally-organised occupations of public and private space, while Tomas Rafa’s video archive of marches and counter-demonstrations illuminates the spectrum of contemporary protest.

The symposium is organised by curators Maja and Reuben Fowkes (Translocal.org) in collaboration with the Department of Environmental Science and Policy and the Centre for Arts and Culture at Central European University (CEU).

Attendance is free, advance reservation is recommended. For more information see the symposium website: www.translocal.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

Cape Farewell and the Scottish "bellwether" islands

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This post comes to you from Ashden Directory

Cape Farewell known for its seafaring expeditions to the Arctic to study climate change, with scientists and artists aboard, is taking a journey closer to home.Kellie Gutman reports on Cape Farewell’s latest voyage.

For four weeks starting July 15, a rotating crew of thirty-two artists and nine scientists will sail around Scotland’s coastal islands to investigate the effects of climate change on the island cultures and ecologies.  A recent report by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation warns about the ‘severe impact’ rising sea levels are likely to have on the coastline of the UK, and the Outer and Inner Hebrides are the ‘bellwethers’ for the coast. Each week will have a theme: Gaelic language; island musical tradition and story-telling; marine and environmental science; local resources and the built environment.

Cape Farewell associate director Ruth Little comments:

‘One of the aims of the project is to challenge the widespread assumption that climate change impacts are only relevant to coastal communities in the global south.  The environmental, social and economic situation in Scotland’s island communities resonates strongly with that of other island and coastal cultures worldwide… [We] will seek to develop new forms of communication for the human experience of climate change, and new forums for collaboration and bold imaginative response to the profound changes we all face.’

The islands have a wide range of sustainability projects ongoing, and Cape Farewell will use these as a starting point for a four-year plan of artist residencies to document, disseminate and bring together
islanders around the issues of sustainability.

The expedition blog can be followed on the Ashdenizen blogroll in our left-hand column.

“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.

Go to The Ashden Directory

Aesth/Ethics in Environmental Change, transdisciplinary workshop, May 2010, Germany

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Aesth/Ethics in Environmental Change
Invitation to a transdisciplinary workshop about the aesthetics, ethics, art, religion and ecology of the environment

Arranged by the European Forum for the Study of Religion and the Environment, Religious Studies, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Biological Station of Hiddensee, University of Greifswald, Environmental Ethics, University of Greifswald

Hiddensee, 24-28 May 2010

Aesth/Ethics in Environmental Change is an international workshop joining ethics, arts, religion and science in an attempt to reach a combined and deeper insight in nature, landscape and its changes. We invite scholars from different disciplines to participate in this workshop on the beautiful island of Hiddensee!

The following questions will be addressed:

  • What does the perception and awareness of the environment and ourselves within it contribute to our understanding of and dealing with nature? How can arts widen our perception of nature?
  • How are aesthetics and ethics connected to each other in habitats, places and spaces? Can both be entangled into an integrated “aesth/ethics”? Can such a view be incorporated in the aims of nature conservation?
  • How and where to seek, find and express the Sacred in nature? How are worldviews, values, rituals, visons, belief systems and ideologies at work within the human ecology?
  • How can humans in general encounter an accelerating and expanding environmental (incl. climatic) change? How can they perceive, experience, reflect and adapt to it?
  • How can aesthetics, ethics, religion and ecology transcend contemporary political modes of environmental protection? How could they catalyze a truly transdisciplinary environmental science?

Schedule:

The workshop will alternate between lectures, seminaries, discussions, practical art work and excursions,and it will offer varying options to let the  island itself intervene. Scholars and postgraduate students from all faculties and regions around the world are welcome to attend the workshop, and we expect all to stay during the whole workshop. The numbers of participants is limited to 30 persons. The early bird catches the worm:

Please register as soon as possible, using the registration form at: http://www.hf.ntnu.no/relnateur/

Basic accommodation will be provided to every accepted participant.

Island of Hiddensee

The island of Hiddensee is situated west of the island of Ru:gen in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany. Hiddensee is about 19 km2 in size with around 1,100 inhabitants. The island is completely situated within the Nationalpark Vorpommersche Boddenku:ste. Its beautiful nature including shorelines and shallow water, coastal dunes, heathlands, coastal meadows, dry grasslands and forests, attracks not only tourists, but also biologists!

Keynote speakers:

  • Sigurd Bergmann, Religious Studies/Theology, Trondheim, Norway
  • Irmgard Blindow, Ecology, Hiddensee, Germany
  • Emily Brady, Geography, Edinburgh, UK
  • Forrest Clingerman, Theology, Ohio, USA
  • Celia Deane Drummond, Theology and Religious Studies, Chester, UK
  • Thomas Jaspert, LandArt artist, Bokel, Germany
  • Konrad Ott, Environmental Ethics, Greifswald, Germany
  • Thomas Potthast, Ethics in Science, Tu:bingen, Germany
  • George Steinmann, Artist, Bern, Switzerland
  • Heike Strelow, Curator, Writer and Art Historian, Frankfurt/M., Germany

Call for papers:

Oral presentations (15 min) and posters are invited on the conference theme.  Abstracts (no more than 200 words) should be sent by 15 February of 2010 by e-mail.

Sigurd Bergmann, prof. dr.theol.
Department of Archaeology and Religious Studies
Norwegian University of Science and Technology
NO – 7491 Trondheim
NORWAY
Institutt for arkeologi og religionsvitenskap
Norges Teknisk-Naturvitenskapelige Universitet (NTNU)
NO – 7491 Trondheim
Phone:  +47-73 59 65 87, +47-73 91 97 07
Skype:  sigurdbergmann
Fax:    +47-73 59 14 64

http://www.ntnu.no/arv/english/staff/sb
http://www.hf.ntnu.no/relnateur/