Environments

Open Call: ENVIRONMENTAL UTTERANCE

University College Falmouth inc. Dartington College of Arts invites you to

“ENVIRONMENTAL UTTERANCE”

 1st-2nd September 2012 

Deadline for applications: 31st March 2012

Across disciplines academics and artists are researching and creating practices that are highly contextual (determined by the environment in which they are located), exploring ways of articulating specific environments, spaces or places.  This conference examines a specific problematic that attends the dissemination of this work: how to engage with ‘being there’ when ‘there’ is not here?

We understand environment (social, built, natural, technological) as that which surrounds and informs us. Through our practice we influence our environment.  What we create is shaped by our surroundings. We exist in a relation of mutual exchange; making ourselves other and incorporating that which is other in turn.  This conference offers a forum for academics and creative practitioners to come together and engage with articulations of mutual formation: to discuss work as environment.

Such work often relies on direct, personal experience of a particular environment.  Transfer and abstraction, necessary for the communication of this work beyond the specifics of this original environment, challenge the work.  Negotiating publication or conference environment, for example, necessitates reformulation of the work, engendering changes in texture and experience, in adapting to alternative structures.  What do such alterations, translations or transformations, mean for this work?

This conference aims to examine these questions on a very practical level. When it comes to considering environment, what is the relationship between the structures of dissemination and the environment our work seeks to convey?  What is the relationship between our academic environment and the work we (aim to) produce?  How do we utter our environment?

We invite poets and writers, artists, academics, social and environmental scientists, performers and musicians, among others, to discuss ways of uttering environment. We seek work that explores the phenomenological sense of speaking with environment. We encourage the use of a diverse range of media as part of this dialogue. Participants are invited to find new ways of expressing their research and/or artistic practice in a conference setting that reflects upon this process of adaptation as a process of practical enquiry.

Instead of presenting what they already know, participants are invited to experiment with their ‘potential’ environment, using the space of the conference as an opportunity to learn from and with each other. The structure of the conference is specifically designed to support such an exchange.  Over the course of two days we seek to create a plastic community of practice. There will be both indoor (seminar rooms, lecture theatres, studios) and outdoor (gardens, orchard, parkland) spaces available to present your work. Your proposal will have to comply with the health and safety norms of Tremough Campus. Please refer to the health and safety guidance before you start planning your presentation/performance.

The (types of) environments we invite participants to explore in their presentations include (but are not limited to):

  • natural
  • social
  • technological
  • digital
  • ideological
  • logical
  • intuitive
  • empathetic
  • linguistic
  • imagined
  • the body
  • the archive
  • the laboratory
  • the book
  • the recording studio
  • the gallery
  • the library
  • the seminar room
  • the lecture theatre
  • the conference
  • professional
  • domestic
  • specialist
  • private
  • public
  • visual
  • auditory
  • oral
  • tactile
  • olfactory

Those interested in participating are invited to send a paper/performance summary (250 words max) along with an indication of how they wish to present this work (250 words), to Camilla Nelson, Natalia Eernstman and Jeanie Sinclair at environmental.utterance@gmail.com , describing:

  1. How or what will you present
  2. The main questions & ideas you aim to explore through your presentation
  3. The media you will use
  4. What space and/or additional equipment you require

Special Call to Develop Live Exchange

This is a call for proposals to design a method of documentation to function as an integral part of this ‘conference-as-community-of-practice’: a method of exchange whereby ideas, insights, lessons learned, questions and connections are cross-referenced between the different times and spaces of the conference. We invite applicants to submit proposals to environmental.utterance@gmail.com detailing a process that will (effectively & inspiringly) collect, record and disseminate participants’ experiences. Media and methods might include (but are not limited to) technology, social media, interactive installations, mobile performance, poetic or artistic representations, etc. Selected participants will run their activity for one morning or afternoon of the conference. The material costs required to realize the activity will be reimbursed in consultation with the conference organizers.

Deadline for applications: 31st March

Materials, Objects, Environments – A HotHouse Workshop on Ecological Thinking

This post comes to you from Cultura21

Reposted from www.projetcoal.org

19 & 20 May 2011; Lowy Centre, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia

What is ecological thinking and how does it transform the way we understand materials, objects and environments? Participants of this HotHouse workshop are invited to brainstorm about a future exhibition project on hyperobjects for the new gallery complex at the College of Fine Arts.

Tickets and registration on: www.niea.unsw.edu.au

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

Arup’s Insect Hotel – Core77

Arup Associates have just won the Beyond the Hive Competition, sponsored by the City of London, to design a Bug Hotel for its parks. This one encourages the presence of stag beetles, solitary bees, butterflies, moths, spiders, lacewings and ladybirds by combining all these species’ required environments into one.

The ‘hotel’ consists of a vertical wall with cells divided into a voronoi pattern, where detritus and materials can be stuffed to creaqte the perfect environments for a wide variety of insects. The sides of the hotel are accessible to moths, and the top can absorb rain water through planting.

via Arup’s Insect Hotel – Core77.

May 21-31: Earth Matters on Stage, Eugene, OR

The mission of Earth Matters on Stage is to nurture connection and collaboration among artists and scholars who share an ecological sensibility.
 
The purpose of the Ecodrama Festival is to nurture and inspire new and innovative dramatic work that explores our ecological condition; then to showcase the best work through collaborative workshops and production.

The concurrent Symposium asks us to think more deeply about how theatre and performance might participate in a sustainable society.

Join us May 21 ~ 31, 2009 for ten days of performances, workshops, readings, and round-table discussions dedicated to nurturing theatrical work that rises out of our connection to the environments we share and love.

Wondering “what IS ecodrama anyway?”  Click here for our musings: What Is Ecodrama?

Presented by the Department of Theatre Arts  of the University of Oregon.

The .pdf of the Festival brochure

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Go to the Green Theater Initiative

The Environmental Health Clinic

Last month, Ian and I travelled to Houston for the Systems of Sustainability Seminar (SOS) hosted by the University of Houston’s Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts and Blaffer Gallery.  

Natalie Jeremijenko, of the Environmental Health Clinic, was a notable speaker.  Natalie is an artist with a background in biochemistry, physics, neuroscience and precision engineering.  She directs the xDesign Environmental Health Clinic, a clinic that prescribes action instead of medicine, and approaches health from an understanding of “its dependence on external local environments; rather than on the internal biology and genetic predispositions of an individual.”  

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Take a look at projects from the Environmental Health Clinic, including NOPARK, photographed here.  www.environmentalhealthclinic.net