Inhabitants

Moveable micro-city to innovate culture of sustainablity

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This post comes to you from Culture|Futures
ArtEpi-livet-mellem-bygningPaint a picture of Europe’s sustainable thinking, knowledge and experiences. That is one of the assignments for a ‘green performing city’, Art-Epi, which will be kaunched in Denmark on 18 August 2013. The project aims to find new ways of cultivating innovation and development in the sustainable sphere – socially, scientifically, artistically, culturally, tourist- and business-wise.



An interesting experiment blending arts, architecure and science is taking shape in the centre of the Danish mainland, Jutland: a moveable micro-city of 100 inhabitants, organised around a series of sustainable, environmental and resource-conscious building activities, lectures and workshops.

This year, Art-Epi will roll out a laboratory and a pilot project where sustainable thinking of the future will be stimulated and co-created. The micro-city will rise on the moor of Præstbjerg in Mid-Western Jutland from 18 August til 19 October 2013.

The goal is that Art-Epi, with all its initiatives and ideas, will travel in Europe the next couple of years. After that Art-Epi will return to Denmark and visit Aarhus when the city becomes the Cultural Capital of Europe in 2017, gathering and presenting all the experiences and inspirations from four years of travelling.

The micro-city will function as an ordinary city where 100 people live and work, half of the inhabitants are to have come from outside of Denmark and half from within the country, in a blend of approximately half from the arts world and the other half from the
world of science, creating interdisciplinary networks locally, regionally, nationally and internationally on a platform where music, theater, visual art, beekeeping, science, carpentry and farming can meet and inspire and learn from each other.

The green performing city will have a performance venue, a communal soup-kitchen, and many other facilities enabling it to host events on a daily basis. Visitors are welcomed to walk around on the site and to join the daily activities.
They must bring with them everything they need during their stay, and they should have a focus on sustainability.

Starting up in Jutland, the micro-city will be like an epicentre right in the middle of group of collaborating cities.
Art-Epi is organised by the organisation Kultursamarbejdet i Midt- og Vestjylland – The Cultural Collaboration in Mid-Western Jutland – a collaboration between 57 cultural organisations and seven
municipalities.

“The word Art in Greek means ‘crafts’. Everyone has his or her own ‘craft’ to help create new ways of thinking, acting, producing, concept development and innovate with a focus on sustainability.
By bringing different worlds together in an alternative room, we bring different mindsets together. This gives the opportunity to create new connections, new networks and the opportunity to visit different worlds,” writes t

Culture|Futures is an international collaboration of organizations and individuals who are concerned with shaping and delivering a proactive cultural agenda to support the necessary transition towards an Ecological Age by 2050.

The Cultural sector that we refer to is an interdisciplinary, inter-sectoral, inter-genre collaboration, which encompasses policy-making, intercultural dialogue/cultural relations, creative cities/cultural planning, creative industries and research and development. It is those decision-makers and practitioners who can reach people in a direct way, through diverse messages and mediums.

Affecting the thinking and behaviour of people and communities is about the dissemination of stories which will profoundly impact cultural values, beliefs and thereby actions. The stories can open people’s eyes to a way of thinking that has not been considered before, challenge a preconceived notion of the past, or a vision of the future that had not been envisioned as possible. As a sector which is viewed as imbued with creativity and cultural values, rather than purely financial motivations, the cultural sector’s stories maintain the trust of people and society.
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Eat your view – The Landscape of our food

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This post comes to you from Cultura21

An interesting research project, organized by the Diepenheim art society, is taking place throughout this year in Diepenheim, NL. Jeroen van Westen, visual artist and participant in this artistic study shortly describes it:

Eat your view has its focus on how our food is related to our landscape. If food builds our body and mind, and food production defines our landscape, it must be that our food is an expression of our landscape. But, when we eat, we don’t recognize our landscape. There is a blind spot for where our food comes from. In Eat your view we try to ‘define’ that blind spot in its different forms.
We hope to be able to produce strategies to minimize the blind spot, make it more transparent, and thus to release energy and create focus to work on a healthier relation people-food-landscape.

Four experts, ranging from anthropologists to Trappists, were released on an exploration day in Diepenheim, respectively in Spring, Summer and Autumn, with the assignment: “What does the landscape have to offer?” and afterwards discussing their findings with inhabitants, interested public and a panel. The short film, by documentary film-maker Sacha Barraud, shows footage of these three days.

The concluding Winter exploration day on January 12th, will consist of a public discussion of the 12 “scouts”, the panel, inhabitants, general public and invited experts.

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

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Mainstream ecology in public art

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This post comes to you from EcoArtScotland

Make a contribution, air your most profound lessons (or the things you rant about).

The questions raised by art and ecology, the issues of culture in a time of environmental crisis, don’t always impact on mainstream public art practices.

The public invitation to contribute to a new series of books, entitled Hints and Tips, is a chance to provoke people to think about ecology, systems, sustainability, inhabitation and dwelling, as well as the role and value of artists, designers and other creative practitioners alongside project managers, contractors, committees, inhabitants, tenants and communities.

For instance, surely all the inhabitants are important, not just the human ones?

Hints and Tips is being developed in the context of a long term residency with Glasgow Housing Association being undertaken by Peter McCaughey and Ben Spencer.  They have approached PAR+RS to collaborate on the development of these publications.  For more information and to make your contribution: Hints and Tips · Reflections · PAR+RS.

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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jakub szczesny: water purification island

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jakub szczesny of the collective centrala designed this floating island where visitors can purify water
through exercising. the installation located on the vistula riverside is part of the synchronicity architectural
and arts festival in warsaw.

‘I’ve proposed a systematic approach: a water treatment plant powered by human muscles by
warsaw inhabitants performing fitness exercises and pumping poluted river water via kinetic pumps
integrated in the fitness machines to four filters and four tanks to a fountain basin at the very end
of the cycle. the whole installation is supposed to perform a role of a propaganda tool changing
the consciousness of warsawers by showing the efficiency of human action in the process of
puryfing the waters of their river. what’s meaningful, is the fact, that many poles, even after twenty years
of liberalization, still don’t believe in their own potential as individuals or members of commuities,
in positively changing their life environment.’ -  jakub szczesny

more information and image can be found here.