National Endowment For The Arts

OPEN HOUSE – Matthew Mazzotta 2013

August 26, 2013newsAlabama Artist, Artist Network, Coleman Center, Endowment For The Arts, Footprint, Grocery Store, House Grants, Iframe, Mazzotta, National Endowment For The Arts, New House, Open Conversations, Open House, People, Post Office, Public Art Project, Shape, Visual Artist, York Alabama

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OPEN HOUSE is a transforming theater in York, Alabama

Artist Matthew Mazzotta, the Coleman Center for the Arts, and the people of York Alabama have teamed up to work together and transform a blighted property in York’s downtown into a new public art project this is in the shape of a house, but can physically transform into a 100 seat open air theater, free for the public.

Through open conversations, hard work and planning we have developed a project that uses the materials from an abandoned house as well as the land it sits on to build a new smaller house on the footprint of the old house. However this new house has a secret, it physically transforms from the shape of a house into an open air theater that seats 100 people by having its walls and roof fold down. We call our project ‘Open House’.

Open House lives mostly in the form of a house between the grocery store and the post office, reminding people what was there before, but it opens up when the community wants to enjoy shows, plays, movies, and any other event people can think of that supports community life here in York. When the theater is folded back up into the shape of a house the property is a public park for anyone to enjoy.

Open House was awarded grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Visual Artist Network, as well as individual contributions

For more details – matthewmazzotta.com

The Fargo Project: Jackie Brookner at TEDxFargo City 2.0

April 23, 2013Cultura21Acre, Berlin Germany, Brookner, Copenhagen Denmark, Cozzolino, Creative Agency, Detention Basin, Endowment For The Arts, Francesca, Kagan, Kajsa, Koefoed, Mexico City, National Endowment For The Arts, Oleg, Paris France, Rana, Sacha, Storm Water Detention, Vitality

This post comes to you from Cultura21

For humans to survive, ecological artist Jackie Brookner says it is not enough to change the ways we fuel, feed, entertain and shelter ourselves. Something much more basic has to happen. We need to mainstream a different understanding of who we are, as individuals and as a species. She calls this â€œthe being of human,â€ and says it is about the â€œverbingâ€ of our existence.

Within this context, Brookner introduces TheÂ Fargo Project, the recipient of a prestigious â€œOur Townâ€ grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. The Fargo Project is transforming a functioning 18-acre storm water detention basin into a prairie commons, through a community driven process that fosters collective creative agency.

Cultura21 is a transversal, translocal network, constituted of an international level grounded in several Cultura21 organizations around the world.

Cultura21â€²s 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 LÃ¼neburg, Germany) and Rana Ã–ztÃ¼rk (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

Go to Cultura21

World Premiere of Cassie Meadorâ€™s How To Lose a Mountain

March 12, 2013newsCommunity Engagement, Dance Place, Education Workshops, Meador, Michael Kohler Arts Center, Mountain Dance, Mountaintop Removal, National Endowment For The Arts, National Performance Network, Old Piano, Outdoor Education, Place Dance, Power Plants, Risk And Reward, Sheboygan Wi, Spring Dance, Stage Production, Unconventional Role, Washington Dc March, World Premiere

Dance Place

Washington DC

March 16, 2013 at 8 p.m.

March 17, 2013 at 7 p.m.

ClickÂ hereÂ for tickets

This Spring, Dance Exchange Artistic Director Cassie Meador examines loss and gain, risk and reward, and the distances travelled by our stories, our stuff, and ourselves, inÂ How To Lose a Mountain. The National Performance Network commissioned stage production is part of a multi-year choreographic project, which included a 500-mile walk and community engagement tour last spring.

One year prior to theÂ How To Lose a MountainÂ world premiere, Meador investigated the resources that power by walking from her home in Washington, DC to a site of mountaintop removal in West Virginia. Along the way, she and Dance Exchange artists visited power plants, led movement and outdoor education workshops called â€œMoving Field Guides,â€ and collected stories from community members in workshops called â€œ500 Miles/500 Stories.â€

During this past year following the walk, Meador and her artistic collaborators returned to the studio to build the evening length work that addresses issues of use and reuse, of living in the now and honoring our past, of what we lose when we gain and what we gain when we lose. The piece features a few additional voices, including that of a 200-year-old piano that will play an unconventional role inÂ How To Lose a Mountain.

How To Lose a Mountain is a National Performance Network (NPN) Creation Fund Project co-commissioned by John Michael Kohler Arts Center in partnership with Dance Place, Dance Exchange and NPN. For more information: www.npnweb.org.

This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts. Art Works.

John Michael Kohler Arts Center
Sheboygan, WI
April 25, 2013

US town to turn drainage basin into public art

December 19, 2011ecoartscotlandArt Network, Brookner, Chris Drury, Community Image, Curators, Drainage Basin, Ecological Art, Edge Research, Environmental Artists Directory, Fremantle, Industrial Pollution, International Networks, Listening To Reading, Minnesota Public Radio, National Endowment For The Arts, Rain Water, Recreational Space, Social Practices, Summer Rains, Theoretical Texts, Water Image, West Sussex

This post comes to you from EcoArtScotland

image from Jackie Brookner's page on the Women Environmental Artists Directory

Minnesota Public Radio recently reported that Jackie Brookner is advising and supporting the inhabitants of the City of Fargo in North Dakota on a major ecological art project funded in part by the National Endowment for the Arts.Â The focus of the project is making use of a drainage basin, built to deal with heavy summer rains, as year round facilities for the community.

Thereâ€™s an interview with Brookner on the NEA blog and if you prefer listening to reading, you can hear her on the Social Practices Art Network.

image from Heart of Reeds website

In the UK Chris Druryâ€™s Heart of Reeds in Lewes, West Sussex, is probably a comparable project.Â This constructed environment remediates industrial pollution whilst providing recreational space and managing rain water.

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 byÂ Chris Fremantle, producer and research associate withÂ On The Edge Research,Â Grayâ€™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.
Go to EcoArtScotland

As the Globe Warms

September 23, 2011newsAncient Species, Arts Awards, Bears Bees, Endangered Animals, Episodic Story, Eyewitness Reports, Heather Woodbury, Herpetologist, National Endowment For The Arts, Pentecostal Pastor, Personal Narratives, Playwriting, Polar Bears, Politics In America, Religion And Politics, Religion And Politics In America, Spalding Gray, Tea Party, Vimeo, Weather Patterns

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Globe Short EP31:IntheGardenofClimate Reality from Heather Woodbury on Vimeo.

As the Globe Warms is a new genus of an ancient species â€“ an episodic story told by a single person for a live audience and for online subscribers as well. Its bare bones production puts forward an ethics of sustainability: a minimalist aesthetic yoked to a maximal engagement of imagination. As the human effect on the environment increasingly enters our personal narratives via altered weather patterns and vanishing eco-systems Globe weaves a story of ordinary people living through the extraordinary headlines of our times. It limns the themes of climate change â€“ our relation to God, nature, survival and extinction â€“ and explores the fateful intertwining of religion and politics in America.

The story:

Handsome herpetologist Reed Ferris arrives in the small town of Vane Springs, Nevada, determined to try to save a unique species of frog from extinction. He meets Lorelei Ray, the home-schooled daughter of a Pentecostal pastor, who has lately found herself mysteriously â€œspeaking in the tonguesâ€ of endangered animals and sharing these possessions online with a growing following of Evangelical youth. The unlikely friendship that forms between them has unexpected and far-reaching consequences. In the mix are Tea Party zealots, closeted gay evangelicals, a working class family itself on the brink of extinction and eyewitness reports from whales, polar bears, bees, bats and frogs.

Heather Woodbury is a recipient of the C.O.L.A. (City of Los Angeles) fellowship in performance, the Spalding Gray Award for Writing and Performance, and Kennedy and National Endowment for the Arts Awards for Playwriting.

More info

www.heatherwoodbury.com

http://vimeo.com/channels/205232