Features Interviews

Chasing Ice Chases Oscar

February 14, 2013Ashden DirectoryAcademy Award Nomination, Associate Editor, Chases, Documentary Award, Effects Of Climate Change, Features Interviews, Film Festivals, Gutman, Interviews News, Melting Glaciers, Metaphors, National Geographic Photographer, Oscar Nomination, Photographer James, Robert Butler, Scarlett Johansson, Six Ways, Time Lapse, Twitter, Violinist Joshua Bell

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Kellie Gutman writes:Â Chasing Ice a film about National GeographicÂ photographer James Blalog’s quest to document the melting glaciers, has received an Academy Award nomination for Best Song. Â The film, directed by Jeff Orlowski, chronicles Blalog’s three-year project setting up time-lapse cameras to chronicle the effects of climate change on the great glaciers of the world. Â Although the film is in limited release, the Oscar nomination should bring more attention to it. Â Screenings in the UK, Canada and the US are listed here.

Chasing IceÂ has won twenty-three awards at film festivals, including the Environmental Media Association’s Best Documentary Award. Â The nominated song, “Before My Time,” was written by J. Ralph. It is performed by Scarlett Johansson and violinist Joshua Bell.

Sanitation is culture

January 31, 2013Ashden DirectoryArchitects, Artist In Residence, Associate Editor, Brooklyn, Brooklyn Museum, City Planners, Climate Change, Debeer, Department Of Sanitation, Endless Hours, Features Interviews, Floor Sweepers, Interviews News, Maintenance Staff, Metaphors, New York City Department Of Sanitation, Peggy Johnson, Robert Butler, Security Guards, Twitter

talking with
Brooklyn Museum employee Peggy Johnson

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Wallace Heim writes: In New York last week, Mierle Laderman Ukeles, artist in residence since 1977 for the New York City Department of Sanitation, conducted a series of live interviews with Brooklyn Museum’s daily maintenance staff, window washers, floor sweepers, security guards, and told them what they do is “the first kind of culture”.

In her performance, which also included architects and city planners, she asked each person a series of questions: How do you personally survive? What do you need to do to keep going? What happens to your dreams and your freedom when you do the things you have to do to keep surviving? What keeps New York Cityalive? What does the city need to do to survive after Sandy?.

Ukeles told the workers, “Here’s the museum with all this stuff, and then there’s what you do. You are culture, and your work is culture. And the endless hours that will never be done, that’s what enable us to be in an institution like this. Mopping up the garbage from yesterday. It’s safe. And the things in here are taken care of. That’s culture.”

Full interview with Ukeles on Gallerist NY.
photo: Carole DeBeer, courtesy Brooklyn Museum.

h/t to ecoartscotland.net

From six seasons to two

January 16, 2013Ashden DirectoryArtistic Director, Associate Editor, Central India, Climate Change, Excessive Heat, Features Interviews, Gutman, Hardware Store, Interviews News, Monsoons, Nature Watch, Puppeteers, Puppetry, Puppets, Reck, Robert Butler, Short Transition, State Of Orissa, Summer Winter, Twitter

Bronze-winged jacana. Â Photo: India nature watch

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Kellie Gutman writes:

The state of Orissa, located in east-central India, was once known for having six seasons. Â Not only were there six, Grishmar (summer), Barsha (rainy), Sarata (autumn), Hemanta (dew), Sisira (winter), and Basanta (spring), each two months long, but the people in the area could forecast the onset of each one by the behaviour of certain birds. Â For instance, the bronze-winged jacana would lay its eggs during the monsoons, so its mating calls signaled the arrival of the rains.

But climate change has brought excessive heat to Orissa, and now people say there are only two seasons: rains and summer. Winter is just a short transition between them.

The Glass Half Full Theatre in Austin, Texas, which crafts “Environmental Puppetry” is putting on Once There Were Six Seasons, opening February 13, 2013. Â Environmental Puppetry uses very small puppets on large landscapes with visible puppeteers. Â The puppetry focuses on the changing landscapes more than on the actual puppets. Â Their earlier work, Bob’s Hardware, about a small family-owned hardware store being pushed out by a big-box store can be seen here:

Once There Were Six Seasons is based on the story of Orissa’s seasons, as told to the artistic director, Caroline Reck, on her visit to India.

See: WhatÂ happened to the seasons

Peace on earth

December 31, 2012Ashden DirectoryAssociate Editor, Astronauts, Climate Change, Continuum, December 7th, Earth From Space, Features Interviews, Gutman, Interviews News, Metaphors, Peace On Earth, Philosophers, Prelude, Robert Butler, Sense Of The World, Six Ways, sustainability, Timeline, Twitter, Word Overview

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Kellie Gutman writes: OVERVIEW is a short documentary with near-constant views of the earthÂ from space interspersed with comments form astronauts, philosophersÂ and writers. The word “overview” is used to refer to the astronauts’Â views of the earth. It was released December 7th, 2012 and is aÂ prelude to a film in the making, CONTINUUM. Â OVERVIEW gives a strongÂ sense of the world being one environment, and a very fragile one, thatÂ needs to be protected.

The tide could turn with ‘Ten Billion’

December 23, 2012Ashden DirectoryAbbott, Associate Editor, Audiences, Climate Change, Energy Power, Features Interviews, Fossil Fuels, Green Energy, Intellectual Questions, Interviews News, Metaphors, Michael Billington, Robert Butler, Six Ways, sustainability, t-shirt, Theatre Critic, Timeline, Turn Of The Tide, Twitter

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Wallace Heim writes:

Theatre critic Kate Abbott in today’s Guardian joins Michael Billington in reporting a life-changing experience watching Ten Billion at the Royal Court.

Like the facts that Stephen Emmott presented, Abbott can recite the well-polished instructions to “help us out of this hole”:

“Never buying a car, iPod, or cotton T-shirt again â€¦ stopping our addiction to fossil fuels, starting a mass-desalination programme, building green energy power points on every strip of land, harnessing every scrap of wind, and every turn of the tide â€¦”

But one change is missing. What about demanding that theatre itself changes? What about demanding that mainstream theatre no longer turns away from the compelling emotional, moral and intellectual questions of how humans can continue to live in a time of climate instability? Theatre is more than science, more than facts, more than an instruction manual. What about demanding that theatre takes on its full life-changing role, somewhere between fiction and fact, and becomes the place where audiences wrestle with their future?

See ‘Ten Billion’ from another side.

‘Ten Billion’ changes Billington

December 19, 2012Ashden DirectoryAssociate Editor, Climate Change, Ecosystems, Features Interviews, Human Overpopulation, Interviews News, Katie Mitchell, King Lear, Lion King, Metaphors, Michael Billington, Reflection, Robert Butler, Six Ways, sustainability, Theatrical Performance, Timeline, Twitter, Upstairs, Water Shortages

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Stephen Emmott in Ten Billion

Wallace Heim writes:

Michael Billington in today’s Guardian nominates Ten Billion as the ‘mostÂ momentous theatrical performance’ of 2012. The show was a lecture by StephenÂ Emmott, at the Royal Court Theatre Upstairs, on the consequences of human overpopulation and climate change.

Billington writes:Â ‘I came out shaking with fear, but also moved by theatre’s capacity toÂ confront the emergency facing our planet.

‘This was theatre doing what it does best: confronting us with unpalatableÂ facts about our very existence. This doesn’t mean that there is no room forÂ invented stories or that King Lear and The Lion King have suddenly becomeÂ redundant. But Ten Billion, directed by Katie Mitchell, shocked us into aÂ new awareness of the future, and even the existing present, with ecosystemsÂ being destroyed, the atmosphere polluted, temperatures rising and a billionÂ people facing water shortages.

‘I don’t know a single person who saw it whoÂ didn’t feel it was a life-changing experience. If enough people, especiallyÂ those in positions of power, could see Emmott’s lecture, it might, justÂ might, help to save our planet from destruction’.

Turkey limerick: melting glaciers

December 6, 2012Ashden DirectoryAmerican Citizens, Associate Editor, Climate Change, Coastline, Duke University, Eastern Standard Time, Epidemic, Features Interviews, Global Temperature, Gutman, Himalayas, Interviews News, Limerick, Melting Glaciers, Metaphors, Nicholas School, Robert Butler, Six Ways, Storms, Twitter

Melting Glaciers in the Himalayas (Credit: top-10-list.org)

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Kellie Gutman writes:Â Unable to pass up the opportunity to submit an “Environmental Turkey of 2012” in the form of a limerick, to the Nicholas School of Environment contest at Duke University, I have chosen the epidemic of melting glaciers worldwide as my subject. Â The contest, open to American citizens, ends at midnight Eastern Standard Time tonight.

My offering:

As the global temperature warms

Our planet reacts with fierce storms.

The impact is felt

When our glaciers melt

And the coastline around us re-forms.

See: There once was a turkey

Hitting the high water mark before Sandy

December 2, 2012Ashden DirectoryAssociate Editor, Baseball Fields, Chalk Lines, Climate Change, Features Interviews, Feet Above Sea Level, Flood Protection, Heavy Hitter, High Water Mark, Impossibility, Interviews News, Lower Manhattan, Metaphors, Mosher, New Yorker, Robert Butler, Six Ways, Ten Feet, Twitter, Water Line

Eve Mosher: High Water Line

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Wallace Heim writes:

The Talk of the Town in the New Yorker last week was all about Sandy. Elizabeth Kolbert framed her piece on the impossibility of flood protection around an artwork by Eve Mosher.

Using a Heavy Hitter, the machine to make chalk lines on baseball fields, Mosher drew a blue line around the edge of Brooklyn and lower Manhattan ten feet above sea level, the height that waters were expected to rise during a once-in-a-hundred-year flood.

Mosherâ€™s plan with High Water Line was to leave a visual mark and to open up a space for conversation, in 2007.

“I have pictures of where I drew the line and, if you look at the debris line, theyâ€™re pretty close”, Mosher writes on her blog, continuing, “I never wanted to be right.”

dramas missing in action

November 5, 2012Ashden DirectoryAssociate Editor, Boston Globe, British Lad, British Playwrights, Climate Change, Dearth, Don Aucoin, Features Interviews, Gutman, Interviews News, Metaphors, Missing In Action, Robert Butler, Six Ways, Steed, Theatre Critic, Tony Award, Tonys, War Horse, World War I

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Kellie Gutman writes:

With War Horse coming to the end of its run in Boston, the theatre critic for the Boston Globe, Don Aucoin remarks on the dearth of war dramas on stage. Â He writes:During a decade when the United States was mired in two wrenching, costly, and divisive wars, the only combat drama to win a Tony Award as best play was a heartwarming, puppet-driven tale about a British lad and his beloved steed in World War I: War Horse… In fact, if you scan the list of plays, musicals, and performances nominated for Tonys in the past ten years, you’d barely know we were at war at all.

Until recently, much the same could be said about plays on climate change.

See british playwrights have “blithely ignored” climate change

miniature horse meets war horse

October 24, 2012Ashden DirectoryAnimal Cruelty, Animal Rescue League, Basil Jones, Boston Globe, Broadway Production, Climate Change, Cruelty Case, Dedham Massachusetts, Features Interviews, Gutman, Interviews News, Miniature Horse, Play Date, Puppet Company, Puppeteer, Robert Butler, Six Ways, Twitter, War Horse, Windsor Castle

Celeste and Joey, courtesy the Boston Globe

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Kellie Gutman writes:

War HorseÂ opened in Boston on October 10 for a two-week run. Â The traveling Broadway production, which originated at the National Theatre a few years ago, is getting all sorts of press. Â The day before the opening the main characters – the horse Joey, his owner and his puppeteer – went to the Animal Rescue League in Dedham, Massachusetts to have a play date with Celeste, a miniature horse who had been involved in an animal cruelty case earlier in the year. Â Joey is a well-traveled steed. Â He has also been to Windsor Castle where he apparently won over the heart of the Queen. Â The Handspring Puppet Company cofounders Adrian Kohler and Basil Jones, who designed the War HorseÂ puppets, were featured in a long article about their puppets in the Boston Globe.