Performing Artists

Odyssey: Climate

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This post comes from Chantal Bilodeau’s Artists and Climate Change Blog

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All photos credit: Nikolai Wolff/Fotoetage

This information was shared with me by Natalie Driemeyer. Hearing about the festival and seeing the amazing photos that Natalie sent me makes me wish I could have attended.

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This past June, the transdisciplinary festival ODYSSEY: CLIMATE  took place at the municipal theatre in Bremerhaven, Germany.

At the centre of the festival was the CLIMATE-PARCOURS. Actors, performers, musicians and dancers performed in exceptional venues – extreme-climate-spaces – dealing with the elements (fire, water, earth, air) and the extreme natural events caused by climate change. The artists were supported in their work by scientists from various fields. This transdisciplinary exchange allowed participants a different, more sensual approach to the creation of visions for our future on the planet; it opened up new possibilities and looked at our chances for adapting to new circumstances and ways of life.

The festival was proud to have both the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research as partners. The involved scientists didn’t just advise the artists, some of them stood on stage as well.

Falck Safety Services

The festival presented guest-performances that dealt with climate change. The performer Eva Meyer-Keller cooked natural disasters with the help of gourmet chefs – naturally, everyone had a taste of the catastrophe. Anna Mendelssohn brought her one-woman conference on climate change Cry Me A River. And the renowned architect, designer and urban planner Friedrich von Borries let the audience in on his visions for our future ways of living.

The International Theatre Institute (ITI) asked performing artists from around the world to join in a live Skype debate. Artists from South America, Asia, and Africa spoke about the situation in their country and about their theatrical approaches to the topic.

In front of the theatre a tent city, the KLIMA-ZELT-STADT, hosted a scientific conversation and a laboratory for sustainable urban development. Food, which supermarkets would have thrown away, was served, films were screened, bands played, and a photo-exhibit about life in Antarctica was presented.

WeserWind

Climate is very topical in Bremerhaven: the city has become a major centre of excellence on climate change due to its scientific bodies and as a location for the offshore wind energy industry. Furthermore, Bremerhaven, which lies in the estuary of the river Weser, needs to adapt to man-made climate change. A few weeks prior to the festival, the new embankment, which was raised by two meters, was re-opened. Energiekonsens, a non-profit company that works on energy conservation in the region, advised the festival about CO2-minimization. For the CO2-emissions that could not be prevented 1 € per ticket went towards the climate fund “Klimafonds.”

Thanks to support from the German Federal Cultural Foundation as well as from the municipal environmental agency and friends of the theatre, the artists involved were able to continue their examination of relevant social themes through festivals, as begun with the festival ODYSSEY: HEIMAT (home/belonging).

For more information (in German):
www.stadttheaterbremerhaven.de

Filed under: Multidisciplinary, Performance

Artists and Climate Change is a blog by playwright Chantal Bilodeau that tracks artistic responses from all disciplines to the problem of climate change. It is both a study about what is being done, and a resource for anyone interested in the subject. Art has the power to reframe the conversation about our environmental crisis so it is inclusive, constructive, and conducive to action. Art can, and should, shape our values and behavior so we are better equipped to face the formidable challenge in front of us.

Go to Chantal Bilodeau’s Artists and Climate Change Blog

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Let’s Share: LA STAGE OPENS NEW DOORS

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20130301LASAPostersmallLA STAGE Alliance (In partnership with your friends at the CSPA) has just secured a new facility in the vibrant Atwater Village neighborhood and, true to their mission, we’ve asked ourselves how our move can benefit the greater Los Angeles theatre community at large. What we’ve come up with is LA STAGE Space, which will house several activities:

1)  A 7,000 square foot Warehouse Co-op for LA performing artists to house and share all their sets, props, costumes and equipment with each other throughout the year.

2) A space to give the community a shared physical location, in the form of a “Community Lounge,” where artists and community members can gather, find materials and information on arts sustainability, and relax. (And get free coffee & wifi!)

3) Additional meeting, audition, and rehearsal space — as an added bonus!

All we need now is to outfit the empty building so it can be used more effectively — shelving, pallet movers, barcode scanners, furniture, decorations, coffee pot… and maybe even a truck to help things come to and fro.

Let’s join together to make it happen!  

Contribute to the IndieGoGo Campaign today!

 

LASAandBOD

The LA STAGE Alliance Board and Staff

COMMUNITY BENEFITS

There are so many ways this Co-Op will positively impact the community. It will…

  • HELP NONPROFIT ARTS ORGANIZATIONS to save money and be financially sustainable.
  • HELP REDUCE WASTE by re-using materials, resulting in a more eco-friendly LA and LA arts community.
  • UNIFY THE COMMUNITY by providing a physical location for artists to congregate and share.
  • INSPIRE COLLABORATION for performing artists, and promote innovation for the rest of the country to emulate.

We’ll also be using environmentally-friendly practices and materials.

CORE GOALS & STRETCH GOAL

Core Goal: $25,000 will outfit LA STAGE Space and the Warehouse Co-op in its most basic state. This includes shelving, ladders, furniture, and a high-tech (and easy-to-use) online barcoded inventory system — making it possible to open our doors to the entire community.

Stretch Goal: An additional $25,000 will, apart from allowing us a bit more wiggle room, give us access to a used moving truck (and have gas and insurance and maintenance covered). This will be our Strike Truck, and will allow for Co-op members to arrange pickups after their strikes, which will carry materials back to the Warehouse (or to deliver materials to their theatres from the warehouse).

Our Sustainability Partners

We are pleased to partner with many organizations on LA STAGE Space, including the Center for Sustainable Practice in the Arts, Arts:Earth Partnership, and Good Planet Media, all organizations dedicated to sustainability in Los Angeles and around the world.

Burning Ice #5 – We the Gardeners…

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This post comes to you from Cultura21

From June 5th to 9th 2012, the Kaaitheater is holding the fifth Burning Ice festival in Brussels (Belgium)

This year the festival revolves around art and ecology and brings together performing artists, scientists and other experts. The programme comprises performances, exhibitions, inspiring study days and talks. The theme of Burning Ice#5 is ‘We Are the Gardeners’, about the increasing tension between nature and culture.As always, they also let scientists and theorists have their say.

For more information, please visit the Kaaitheater website, or you can also check the brochure here.

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

Go to Cultura21

White Mountain National Forest & Arts Alliance of Northern NH Invite Applications for 2012 WMNF Artist-in-Residence Program

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This post comes to you from Cultura21

Artists in all media are invited to apply for the 2012 White Mountain National Forest (WMNF) Artist-in-Residence program

The program, a collaboration between the WMNF and the Arts Alliance of Northern New Hampshire, seeks to highlight the ways the arts can be used to explore and interpret the forest environment and forest-related issues.

The residency offers professional and emerging artists from around the country (visual and performing artists, craftspeople, writers, composers and choreographers, eco artists and media artists) an opportunity to pursue their particular art form while being inspired by the surrounding forest and, on several occasions, sharing their work and their artistic process with members of the public.

Deadline for applications is May 18; the artist selected will choose a period of at least three weeks between July and September to be in residence.

Click here for more information and to download application materials.

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

Go to Cultura21

Community Supported Theater

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A model we’ve been discussing for a while at the CSPA in regards to our producing partnerships, it’s exciting to see the idea of modeling a theater on a community agriculture model. Makes sense to us since we started trying to make it so that community wasn’t a dirty word in theater anymore.

To catch you up on the discussion we picked it up through The Artful Manager this past week:

Is unprofitable theater (or other arts endeavor) a charity, a community resource, an entitlement, a labor of love, or some combination thereof? Whatever we choose as our cluster of definitions, it will be helpful to align our business models and our resource strategies accordingly.

Which led us to Flux Theatre:

I talked a little about this model, and how it might work for Flux, in the post The Metabolism of Theatre. On the surface, this idea could feel like a reframed subscriber relationship for an age that hates subscribing. For the change to be more substantive, several conceptual and practical things need to happen.

and Stolen Chair:

For the past nine months, Stolen Chair and six other artists have been developing models for economic and financial sustainability through The Field’s Economic Revitalization for Performing Artists (ERPA) program, supported by the Rockefeller Foundation’s 2008 New York City Cultural Innovation Fund.

Jon Stancato/Stolen Chair proposed a way to adapt the business plan followed by most Community Supported Agricultures (CSAs). Like the CSA model, Stolen Chair hopes to build a membership community, a “CST”, which would provide ‘seed’ money for the company’s development process and then reap a year’s worth of theatrical harvests.

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Listen to the CST model presentation for ERPA’s Public Display of Invention at WNYC’s Jerome L. Green Performance Space, Sept. 21, 2009.

ERPA Clip 5 Jon Stancato/Stolen Chair Theatre Company from The Field on Vimeo.

All of this comes out of ERPA….

Economic Revitalization for Performing Artists (ERPA – pronounced ur•pah) tackles tough economic realities on two fronts: inventive public dialogues (AKA Invention Sessions) and an ambitious entrepreneurial lab. Since 2008 ERPA dialogues have engaged more than 500 artists and cultural stakeholders in topics ranging from alternative fundraising tactics, to the romanticization of the starving artist paradigm, to a smackdown exposé on the ‘new’ economy.

The Invention Sessions helped set the stage for a competitive proposal process in November 2008, from which seven projects were selected (out of 116 applicants!) to receive Planning Grants from The Field.  Each ERPA artist received a $5,000 stipend and a variety of professional development resources to support their ideas-in-progress.  After more than a year of entrepreneurial investigations, their unique approaches to financial stability were presented in a Public Display of Invention at WNYC’s The Greene Space – visit the ERPA blog for audio coverage.  View clips from the Public Display on the ERPA vimeo channel.