Gaia

Exhibition: Andrea Polli – Breathless

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Turin

28 October 2011 -26 February 2012

Andrea Polli

BREATHLESS

in collaboration with Chuck Varga

From the 28th of October 2011 to the 26th of  February 2012 the first solo exhibition by Andrea Polli takes place in Turin in Italy. Andrea Polli is known as an ecological artist and lives and works in Albuquerque in New Mexico. She presents some of her most meaningful works in collaboration with Chuck Varga at PAV Living Art Park in Turin.

Her exhibition Breathless deals in an innovative way with the comprehension of phenomena like climate change and global warming. In cooperation with scientists, weather experts and climatologists she transforms scientific data in aesthetic experiences through mixed media installations. For example data on urban air pollution is analyzed and different interpretations are offered. She chooses site-specific environmental installations to make invisible effects of climate change visible and tangible for the visitor. Polli also sees signs of cultural change in the climate variations and investigates the impact of the climate on the future of life and on the balance of the whole planet.

The exhibition of the American artist is curated by Gaia Bindi and Claudio Cravero and the opening hours are Wednesday to Friday, 13.00 – 18.00 and Saturdays and Sundays, 12.00 – 19.00.

You can find more info, photo, biographic news and video links about the artist at www.andreapolli.com.
For more information about the exhibition mail to info [at] parcoartevivente [dot] it

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Earth Matters On Stage: Rachel Rosenthal

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“One of the first things people ask me, is, did I know Arteaud?”

This is how Rachel Rosenthal begins her keynote.  Here at EMOS, it’s perfect. Artistic Director Theresa May has just given her a fantastic introduction. She is in a room full of full-out EcoDrama nerds, folks who don’t need an explanation of the guttaral relationship between earth and body, who know her and her work, or who at the very least don’t need a speech about earth-saving. They know Arteaud wrote “The Theatre and its Double,” and chuckle. She knows her audience.

Rosenthal junkies at EMOS got a major fix: a presentation which included her first performance in almost 10 years, an opportunity to buy Moira Roth’s Rosenthal anthology and have it signed by the artist, and the next morning, an analysis of her work by a panel of her former students and devoted independent scholars. Heady.

Rosenthal did not, in fact, know Arteaud, but he did “save her life:” his writing gave her a logical basis to begin creating her own unique brand of performance: eco-feminist, deeply personal, and dramatically sharp. Clips shown over the weekend included L.O.W. in Gaia, in which she writes her age on her bald head in lipstick and drags bags of trash behind her on the stage, and The Others, which included 42 “non-human animal” performers.

In a presentation days later given by Deke Weaver, an interesting conversation arose. What is the line between sharpened meduim and effective message? How do you articulate an important issue without pandering, how do you push the form without driving away your audience? Rosenthal is famous for creating a body of work that is made of her own body, stories and trembling articulations. Whether or not watching Gaia rise from a pile of garbage is your idea of an endurance test, it is deeply rooted in a sobbing, grappling love for the earth. Rosenthal was saddend to learn that Arteaud never saw his idea of theater realized onstage. But of her own methods, she decries: “I will not die without having seen it, because it’s MINE.”

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What if?… James Lovelock and the five in six

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This week James Lovelock was in conversation with the journalist and writer Tim Radford in front of a packed audience at the RSA. His latest book The Vanishing Face of Gaia is currently 22 on Amazon – a remarkable achievement for a book which is not exactly a laugh a page.

In fact both James and Tim were full of humour at the RSA event, so it’s a moment before some of the facts sink in. People next to me suck in their breath at Jim’s prediction of one billion people on earth by the end of the century. We are around six billion at the moment. I join the breath suckers. Five in six of us. I’m pretty sure I heard him say that India will pretty much be gone entirely. If he’s right.

If he’s right – this is left hanging in the air and hanging in the balance.

Today a headline in The Guardian reads “Obama pulls back on early climate change legislation”. I see this just as I’m trying to write a positive statement for the Business Council for Sustainable Development, ten years focusing on the practical implementation of sustainable development values. There’s so much progress that has been made and now is the time to build on that, rather than gloom up on the worst case scenario. But nor should we forget it. Just as apathy had terrible consequences for so many in the Second World War, so could complacency in the face of this century’s challenges.

Note to self, get on WattzOn.com and see how you’re shaping up Crimmin before tub thumping any further.

Photo: Gansu Province, China, 2007 by Susannah Sayler, used courtesy of The Canary Project. Photo taken following the 2006 drought, China’s worst in 50 years. This is the former site of Qin Tu Hu Lake.

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