Fossil Fuel

From Sarah Moon: Tauris to Premiere in NYC… and you can help.

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Friend of the CSPA, playwright Sarah Moon, has reached us with a letter about the next steps for her piece, Tauris, which will premiere in New York City This June:

Erin and Bryan

Dear Friends,

I’m excited to let you know that my play TAURIS, an adaptation of Euripides Iphegenia at Tauris, on evironmental themes, will be premiering  at New York’s Planet Connections Festivity in June. We’ve put together a great team that includes Director Jenny Fersch, Composer/musician Daniel Emond, Actors Erin Layton, Bryan Burton, Matt Jacques and Laura Delhauer.

We are raising funds now to support the full production of the play. We need the support of people like you who know the creators behind the project and can either donate or help us spread the word. You can find out more about the production, watch our video and donate here: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1310353082/tauris-in-planet-connections-theatre-festivity.

For those who contributed to the staged reading at the Wild Project in March, without which this production would not be happening, thank you so much. I want you to know that your support is allowing this play to reach the next step and me to achieve a dream I’ve been working toward for about ten years.

The Play: An adaptation of Euripides’ Iphegenia at Tauris, this epic musical adventure engages its audience in questions both personal and social: cultural attitudes toward environmental change, the complicated relationship between personal drive and public usefulness, and the conflict that arises when ideology gets in the way of love. Incorporating contemporary environmental concerns like mountaintop removal coal mining and the tension between fossil fuel companies and the EPA, Tauris asks audiences to consider how we transcend old enmities to find a way forward for society as a whole.

If you can attend!

Performance Dates:

Saturday 6/1/13 – 4:00pm

Monday 6/3/13 – 4:00pm

Thursday 6/6/13 – 4:30pm

Sunday 6/9/13 – 12:30pm

Wednesday 6/12/13 – 6:30pm

Thursday 6/13/13 – 8:30pm

Visithttp://planetconnections.org/tauris/ to purchase tickets

Thank you for whatever support you can provide, be it $5 or $50 or $500, or helping spread the word to people excited about new plays, original composition, and/or socially and environmentally conscious art. Please help us make this first full realization of TAURIS a success!

All Best, Sarah

MICRONATION/MACRONATION Democratizing the Energy

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This post comes to you from EcoArtScotland

How can a social cultural organisation take on issues that are creating social unrest? Earlier this year Indonesia experienced demonstrations and clashes between protesters and police over proposed price hikes in fuel.  Indonesia, like most of the rest of the world, is highly dependent on fossil fuels.  Whilst the immediate crisis was averted by a the Government withdrawing the price hike, the challenge remains.

HONF (House for Natural Fiber) in Yogyakarta, Indonesia has responded to the energy crisis and the results are presented at the Langgeng Art Foundation.  The project draws on local knowledge of plants as well as ways to use new media and technology.  They have framed the project as follows:

The presentation—as a sustainable design prototype—consists of 3 core components: a) Installation of a fermentation/distillation machine to process hay (raw material) into ethanol (alternative energy to substitute fossil fuel); b) Satellite data grabber: to obtain data related to agricultural production (weather, climate, seasons); c) Super-Computer: to process data (weather, seasons as well as ethanol production capacity), which is also capable of predicting when Indonesia can reach energy and food independence if this MICRONATION/MACRONATION sustainable project design were to be implemented as a public strategy and policy to achieve the condition of energy and food independence in Indonesia.

This presentation is a good opportunity for us to reassess basic performative premises of various practices combining science, technology and arts. HONF’s project—as with their previous projects—actually blurs the boundaries that have thus far been setting apart science, technology and arts. They combine all three, which to us brings home the question: where is the boundary between aesthetic experience and function? What possibilities could the relationship among science, technology and arts bring when confronted to actual problems in today’s communities?

ecoartscotland is a resource focused on art and ecology for artists, curators, critics, commissioners as well as scientists and policy makers. It includes ecoartscotland papers, a mix of discussions of works by artists and critical theoretical texts, and serves as a curatorial platform.

It has been established by Chris Fremantle, producer and research associate with On The Edge Research, Gray’s School of Art, The Robert Gordon University. Fremantle is a member of a number of international networks of artists, curators and others focused on art and ecology.
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Ashden signs up for 10:10

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We sign up for 10:10


The Ashden Directory has signed up for 10:10, the collective campaign to reduce carbon emissions by 10% by the end of 2010.

Devised by the team behind Age of Stupid, 10:10 is supporting people and organisations in reducing their use energy in four areas: electricity from the national grid, fossil fuel use on site, road transport and air travel.
We’ll start by calculating our current energy use, see where reductions can be made, and keep track of our progress here on the news page. We are especially interested in the amount of electricity and fossil fuel use involved in supporting the internet, and in finding out how we might calculate the effects of our usage, and if possible reduce it. Beyond that, we are three people working part-time from our own homes. Any meetings are arranged to coincide with other purposes, and most journeys are by train. And, as shown in our video conference for ‘Earth Matters Onstage’ in Eugene Oregon, we are working on how more and different connections can be made without flying. We will start talking with the companies listed on the Directory, to see how they are reducing their energy usage. More on our progress here soon.

Buckminster Fuller: the crucial difference between the main engine and a starter motor

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US Pavilion, Montreal Expo 67, 1967

“Nature is trying very hard to make us succeed, but nature does not depend on us. We are only the experiment.”

I’m never entirely sure what that quotation really  means, but R. Buckminster Fuller’s  grand turn of phrase was only one part of his genius, mixing the mystically visionary with the visonarily practical. This week sees the largest celebration of his work in 35 years open at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. Starting With The Universe explores that mixture of utopianism and engagement.

Another quote from Bucky, this time from Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth, which is published online by the Buckminster Fuller Institute here. Bear in mind this was written around 46 years ago:

The fossil fuel deposits of our Spaceship Earth correspond to our automobile’s storage battery which must be conserved to turn over our main engine’s self-starter. Thereafter, our “main engine,” the life regenerating processes, must operate exclusively on our vast daily energy income from the powers of wind, tide, water, and the direct Sun radiation energy. The fossil-fuel savings account has been put aboard Spaceship Earth for the exclusive function of getting the new machinery built with which to support life and humanity at ever more effective standards of vital physical energy and reinspiring metaphysical sustenance to be sustained exclusively on our Sun radiation’s and Moon pull gravity’s tidal, wind, and rainfall generated pulsating and therefore harnessable energies. The daily income energies are excessively adequate for the operation of our main industrial engines and their automated productions. The energy expended in one minute of a tropical hurricane equals the combined energy of all the U.S.A. and U.S.S.R. nuclear weapons. Only by understanding this scheme may we continue for all time ahead to enjoy and explore universe as we progressively harness evermore of the celestially generated tidal and storm generated wind, water, and electrical power concentrations. We cannot afford to expend our fossil fuels faster than we are “recharging our battery,” which means precisely the rate at which the fossil fuels are being continually deposited within Earth’s spherical crust.

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