Explorations

Environmental “artshop” and teaching laboratory this fall at Parsons the New School for Design

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This post comes to you from Cultura21

From the 27th of September, continuing over a four-month period, artists, designers, architects, dancers, chefs and scientists will be offering a wide array of interactive exchanges, ranging from workshops to of-site explorations at theSheila C. Johnson Design Center (SJDC) atParsons The New School for Design (NYC, USA).

The focus of this laboratory lies in public participation dynamically transforming and shaping the experience of both visitors and artists. Radhika Subramaniam, Director and Chief Curator of the Sheila C. Johnson Design Center and the curator of the lab supports this approach of letting the public engage more and subsequently think more:

“We see the galleries as spaces with which to think, rather than as venues for display.”

The opening reception illustrates the nature of the gallery, as the artist Tattfoo Tan is assisted by a member of the Staten Island Collective 5 P.M. (Poop Machine) ,  a chicken, in  the workshop on raising urban chickens!

For a full program and to sign up for workshops, visit www.SJDCParsons.org.

For more information about the Design Center visit www.newschool.edu/sjdc.

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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Framing the World — An art & ecology notebook

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Excerpted From Cathy Fitzgerald’s An Art & Ecology Notebook:

Twelve essays  in four parts, focusing on ecocinema as activist cinema; the representation of environmental justice issues in Hollywood; independent and foreign films, the representation of animals, ecosystems, natural and human-made landscapes and readings of two mainstream eco-auteurs, Kiyoshi Kurosawa and Peter Greenaway, Framing the World; explorations in ecocriticism and film, edited by Paula Willoquet-Maricondi, 2010

At last, a book on ecocriticism for film that is more than a review of films with environmental themes (though there are so very few of the latter as well). Lots of very valuable and timely essays on both mainstream cinema but also identifying key experimental filmmakers who have developed ecocentric approaches to film-making, for eg. in the work of independent Slovenian film/sound artist Andrej Zdravic. Also an excellent chapter on the very real limitations and lack of critical awareness in the director Herzog’s popularly regarded environmental films.

Also of note and just published this year is ‘Chinese Ecocinema in the Age of Environmental Challenge‘. I think its great to have this perspective of film from a region that has endured vast ecological destruction and is producing many poignant environmental films. This book is much more academic but again an excellent resource for those interested in the critical development of ecocinema. It’s also made me eager to search out the films mentioned in the book, like this one centered on  the 3 Gorges dam – ‘Still Life’

via Framing the World -two timely new books on ecocriticism and film — An art & ecology notebook.

Photo Exhibits Issue Call to Protect Mexico’s Natural Beauty | Inhabitat #COP16

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Any country that agrees to host a UN climate change conference is bound to be scrutinized for their environmental policies, and at COP16 Mexico has met this scrutiny full force with at least three independent exhibitions and explorations of its natural beauty. Some are federally-funded exercises in propaganda. Some are the fierce work of jungle explorers. All reveal a landscape beyond the manufactured shores of Cancun – read on to take a look!

via COP16: Photo Exhibits Issue Call to Protect Mexico’s Natural Beauty | Inhabitat – Green Design Will Save the World.