Land Art

APInews: Land Art Initiative Emerges in United Arab Emirates

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Land Art Initiative Emerges in United Arab EmiratesA new initiative in the United Arab Emirates aims to embed land/ecological art installations across the region, continuously distributing clean energy into the electrical grid. The intent of the Land Art Generator Initiative LAGI is that each land art sculpture will have the potential to provide power to up to 50,000 homes in the UAE. Directed by artist Elizabeth Monoian and architect Robert Ferry and sponsored by the Society for Cultural Exchange, a nonprofit in Pittsburgh, Pa., LAGI is in a research phase, seeking further sponsorship. At the conclusion of 2010, the initiative plans to have pragmatic and comprehensive site/art proposals that will arise from an open competition to which artists, scientists, engineers and architects will be encouraged to submit ideas. See the blog section of the site bLAGI for related arts examples. There is a video about the project on the Web site of the Tavis Smiley Show: http://www.pbs.org/kcet/tavissmiley/voices/656.html. Thanks, Land Arts listserv.

via APInews: Land Art Initiative Emerges in United Arab Emirates .

DESIGN-AND-BUILD EARTH ARchiTecture RESIDENCY in Ghana

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Download Call as PDF

http://www.focusonthearts.org
http://afropoets.tripod.com/eta
E-mail: africoae@gmail.com

CALL FOR PARTICIPANTS

ARchiTecture Residency: DESIGN-BUILD-AND-LIVE IN PROJECT

Target Group: International

Discipline: All the arts (visual, performing, literary and new genres), Architecture

Duration: 3 to 24 months according to project scope and nature of funding.

Organizing Institution: FOTA Foundation, a registered NGO in Ghana (FOTA is an acronym for “focus on the arts”)

This is a project-based residency opportunity for creative persons in earth architecture, earth art/ land art/ earthworks, engineering, and others who can design-and-build dwellings or non-dwellings out of earth and other materials from the environment.

Working individually or in teams, the participant in the ARchiTecture (art+architecture) Residency Project will live in the village next to our 800-acre Artist Village in development at Maabang in the Ashanti Region of Ghana until the participant completes the project on the 800 acreage and can move in. Project is open to traditional and  modern construction methods, and experimental approaches that are known to work. Submissions in methods such as adobe, cob, compressed earth, rammed earth,  ceramic house, poured/cast earth, papercrete, earthbag, straw-bale, stackwall, earth-shelter, earthship, and other best practices may therefore be in order. Integration of rainwater harvesting, solar and wind energy generation system are indispensable but not obligatory. The lot size and shape are open; you could build it on 120×120 ft plot, an acre, or more. The only criteria that should be met are:

  1. Using earth/ other materials from the environment in part or in whole
  2. Creating a durable non-dwelling or a dwelling of at least three-bed rooms ready to move in
  3. production budget of between €1,000 to €5,000 Euros.

Priority may be given to those who have funding or can secure part-funding to complete their conceived project

For Architecture, in the framework of Fathy (2000), the contemporary participant specialist will be assigned a local master builder and two assistants, or as relative to the
proposed process and structure. In sum, we will collaborate with the international participant to procure her/him the per diem and accommodation, and assistance from
local specialists and interns in constructing the structures in anticipation that cross- cultural interchange and growth in knowledge and skills will be commonplace.
International participants will be responsible for sourcing own return air ticket, insurance,  and other personal costs. One of our supporting area institutions is the School of Fine  Art, College of Arts and Social Sciences, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) at Kumasi; so, academic presentations and relevant others are possible.

Individuals or teams wishing to participate in the project should submit formal application to the Artistic Committee; the application should include your work plan, CV/resume, and a sample of completed works or web site to: africoae@gmail.com. The work plan should include at least 3 sketches of the floor plan/ sections/ elevations, budget, and a description of the method/materials, participants, time estimates, etc required to complete the proposed project.

Conceptual basis

The art+architecture project takes in the theoretical frame of the book, Architecture for the Poor: An Experiment in Rural Egypt by a known Egyptian architect, Hassan Fathy. In it, he puts forward that an informed person can, in fact, self-build durable, aesthetic and highly functional buildings without using expensive materials. Along these lines, we are developing a model artist village on some 800 acres in Maabang in the Ahafo Ano North District of the Ashanti Region of Ghana for replication in other parts of Africa. For the locals, it will mean a resolution to the age-old problem for people of artistry- painters, sculptors, actors, dancers, musicians, designers, and others who require low-cost and expanse of space in which to live and work; and for persons in the arts from around the world, it will be a contact point for artist-in-residence for community-based arts projects, cross-cultural conferences and environmental retreats.  Thus, we will next add studios, and a multipurpose complex for conferences and community-based arts mission to these residential cottages, as would be road construction to link parts of the village.

We are equally open to some alternative Housing Development Models that work. One example is the condominium program by which International NGOs with similar goals as ours, can design-and-build their structure at own costs and pay development due of €100 per room/per year, as the grounds are owned by FOTA Foundation. If the local artist/ architect group footed all cost, the group would need to pay development due of 50 GH¢ per room/per year, as the grounds belong to our Foundation. However, we are strict that the completed structure be used solely for the purpose proposed.

Location

Maabang is a rural community in the Ahafo-Ano North District in the north-western part  of Ashanti Region. The area is located between latitude 6˚ 47’N and 7 02’N and longitude 2˚ 26’W and 2˚ 04’W. The District Hospital at Tepa is the major health facility  around the Maabang Traditional Area; there are four smaller health service stations. Like  much of Ghana, few of the roads are tarred. The project acreage is along the main road, Tepa-Goaso Road. About 85% of the working population entails farmers in cassava, yam, maize, and plantain but chiefly in cocoa. There, in the town, is a cocoa research center. Timber is one of the many traditional commodities, as the region is mostly of tropical rainforest. Maabang is in the deciduous savannah transition zone. The mean monthly temperature ranges from 26° (in August) to 30° (in March). Relative humidity is generally high, ranging between 75-80 percent in the Rainy season and 70-72 percent in the dry season. The mean annual rainfall is between 125 cm and 180cm. Nationwide, there are two main seasons, the raining season and dry season. The raining season is from approximately April to October followed by the dry season, which starts in December with the Hamattan wind blowing from the Saharan Desert and ends in March.

Arrival

Board flight from a major international airport to Kokota International Airport (ACC), and then to Sunyani Airport; Maabang is 45 minutes drive from Sunyani.

DEADLINE: Ongoing but apply at least two months in advance

TO APPLY: Candidates should send the following materials to africoae@gmail.com

  1. Formal Proposal (includes budget and work plan)
  2. Bio/resume
  3. Other relevant materials (includes work sample or web site)

For additional information go to: http://afropoets.tripod.com/eta and www.focusonthearts.org

Non-Toxic Eco-Art Roundup

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Since it’s recently been made public that supposedly “inert” ingredients of pesticides like Roundup are not, in fact, not so very intert, we thought we’d celebrate (hem hem) with a short overview of detoxifying eco-art events.

You might have seen the buzz for it, but the LAND/ART symposium just passed.  We were forced to miss it this year, but there are some riveting descriptions on the Smudge Studio Blog. Especially check out CLUI’s Bus Tour of New Mexico’s Superlative Ground-Sky Resonances. The title is super-intellectual: the journey is all about enchantment and the atomic bomb. Feeling detoxified yet?

Fellow eco-art blogger Abigail Doan altered us to the presence of Aviva Rahmani’s new booklet: What the World Needs is a Good Housekeeper. we just got it in the mail. It’s a small, bound overview of the Rahmani’s process, detailing some of her artistic work in collaboration with restoration ecologists, scientists and architects.  An instructional pamphlet, if you will. A quote: “The value of an artist’s eye is to see relationships that might otherwise be missed.”

Lastly: they are always having fun in the Netherlands. The image above is from Yang Zhichao’ s Planting Grass, currently featured in an exhibition called  Foodprint at Stroom in The Hague. Featuring works by Fritz Haeg, Agnes Denes, and Atelier Van Lieshout,  it examines our relationship with food and landscape. The artworks are paired with a timeline that parellels advances in industrial food production with the development of European and American art. Very mentally refreshing.

Go to the Green Museum

APInews: LAND/ART Opens in New Mexico

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“LAND/ART,” a massive six-month environmental art project involving more than 25 presenting organizations in New Mexico, opened last weekend with a symposium. Coordinated by 516 ARTS, events began June 27 with a guided bus tour by The Center for Land Use Interpretation through dramatic built landscapes. Continuing through December 2009, “LAND/ART” explores relationships of land, art and community through dozens of new exhibitions, community-based projects, site-specific art works, speakers series, performances, tours, excursions and a culminating book. “Historically,” says the organizers, “New Mexico has been a place where the intersection of nature and culture is at issue. In the 1960s and ‘70s, the American Southwest was the location of the first generation of Land Art or Earthworks,” including The Lightning Field, the Star Axis, Spiral Jetty, the Sun Tunnels and Roden Crater. Details are online.

via APInews: LAND/ART Opens in New Mexico .

More Used Art Books for Under $10

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I received some positive feedback on a February post listing used art books for under $10. With the economy still on shaky ground (and most artists just as poor as ever…) here’s more books for recession 2009. These are listed from cheapest to most expensive at current Amazon used prices.

Thomas Kinkade: Heaven on Earth
A steal at 81 cents! This catalog is from Jeffrey Vallance’s 2004 survey of Kinkade. Good essays and examination of Kinkade’s work in the context of contemporary art.

Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder
Can’t go wrong with this one. A great read about LA’s Museum of Jurassic Technology.

Worldchanging: A User’s Guide for the 21st Century
Not the greatest book—more encyclopedic than anything else—but it’s worth a couple bucks.

Between Artists
Haven’t read this one personally, but it looks good. Artist’s conversations from the mid-90s.

Camera Lucida and A Lover’s Discourse by Roland Barthes
These should be in your library. Classics! and good reads too.

Robert Smithson
This expanded version of Smithson’s writings is a pretty good deal. Why not put it on your school book shelf so you can look like every other student?

Spiral Jetta: A Road Trip through the Land Art of the American West
At $9, this is approaching the almost-not-a-good-deal category. I’m curious to check this one out though—I’ve heard mixed reviews.

The Future of the Image by Jacques Ranciere
Only a few bucks cheaper than the new version, but this recent philosophic tract is a good deal either way. Plus it’s a looker!

Go to Eco Art Blog

California Map Project

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{California Map Project, 1969, by John Baldessari}

Somehow I missed learning about this piece until just recently, but it’s my new favorite work of “land art.” In 1969, John Baldessari took the map of California (lower right) and then went to each place on the map where the map letters spelling ‘California’ would be located. At these sites, he spelled out the letter in rocks or some other way, or maybe he found them. I don’t know exactly how he mad the piece, but it’s a pretty hilarious work and definitely in line with my other favorite piece of land art, Bruce Nauman’s untitled text piece which states, “Leave the Land Alone.” (A whole issue of Mammut was devoted to this text piece.)

Unfortunately, the online images of Baldessari’s piece aren’t that great. I’ll keep my eyes open for a better version, maybe in a book image that can be scanned. I also just read an excellent Dave Hickey piece on land art from the September-October 1971 issue of Art in America. In it, Hickey examines the perceived notion that land or earth artists were challenging the status of object production or the space of the museum. This is a viewpoint that still seems to be thrown around today. Hickey points out that the work was marketable and that many museums commissioned land art projects. He goes on to write that

It is not the Earth artists who are challenging the market and the museums, but the magazines themselves. Earth art and its unpackageable peers cannot hurt the market, but extensive magazine coverage can, since not as much object art will get exposure. The magazines have found in this unpackageable art a vehicle through which they can declare their independence from art dealers who invented the critical press, nurtured it, and have tended to treat it like a wholly own subsidiary. Now there is an art form ideally suited to presentation via magazine. Work consisting of photographs and documentation is not presented by journalism, but as journalism—a higher form—needless to say.

The people on the magazines must believe (and I think rightly) that these indefinite art forms might do for the magazines what Pop Art did for the dealers—lend a certain institutional luster,, and with it a modicum of arbitrary power.

It’s a great read of Earth Art and it makes sense to me. And works like Baldessari’s map project or Nauman’s text piece point to movements spawned by Earth Art, such as environmental art, where it’s not about bulldozers and diesel or creating monuments, but instead a use of land in a way that is less invasive. And artists have come up with a variety of strategies to turn that kind of art into careers—whether that means founding their own non-profits, existing on museum commissions or yes, making things for galleries. It’s hard to be a rebel these days, but there are still interesting things to do.

Go to Eco Art Blog