Research Associate

Heartwood

'Ogon-no-ki' by Elodie Lefebvre, 2011

This post comes to you from EcoArtScotland

There is a recurrent theme in the work of some artists in Scotland – it is an enquiry and response to our relationship with landscape and nature.  Other places evoke this enquiry as well, but Scotland has a particular tradition. Heartwood, which is now in its third year, is an artist-led (organised, curated, invented, managed, initiated, imagined, selected) thing.  Open for a week in September in Perthshire when the leaves are turning, perhaps the most beautiful time of year, the exhibition comprises work by the artist organisers as well as invited artists.

Venue: Monkquell, Brucefield Road, Blairgowrie, Perthshire, PH10 6LA.

Heartwood is at Monkquell, Brucefield Road in Rosemount, on the East side of A923 about 3 miles from Coupar Angus towards Blairgowrie, Perthshire. From Blairgowrie it is one mile towards Coupar Angus.

Dates & Opening Hours:
Sat 3 – Sun 11 September,
10 am – 5 pm.

Heartwood Press Release EAS. 

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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Top 5 reasons why tar sands cover-up “ethicaloil.org” is a seriously dirty trick | Platform

This post comes to you from EcoArtScotland

Top 5 reasons why tar sands cover-up “ethicaloil.org” is a seriously dirty trick | Platform.

Thanks to Suzaan Boettger for drawing attention to PLATFORM’s rebuttal of the “ethicaloil.com” website.  “ethicaloil.com” is a web site that purports to demonstrate that tar sands are an ethical form of oil extraction as distinct from “conflict oil”.  We know that in the Middle East and Africa oil is associated with conflict ranging from invasion to insurgency and terrorism as well as corruption.  Supposedly oil from tar sands is better and this site, crafted to look like an activist project, is trying to spin, spin, spin.

 

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.
Go to EcoArtScotland

Animal Ecologies in Visual Culture

This post comes to you from EcoArtScotland

Antennae, the Journal of Nature in Visual Culture, and Minding Animals International, a ‘bridge between academia and advocacy,’ are hosting an event entitled Animal Ecologies in Visual Culture at University College London on Saturday 8 October 2011. Information also available on Facebook.

Antennae’s website has all the back issues of the Journal available for download as pdfs.  Themes include insects, taxidermy, Deleuze, plastic bags.

Minding Animals has a range of networks, study groups and organises conferences.

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.
Go to EcoArtScotland

Jeanette Ingberman RIP

This post comes to you from EcoArtScotland

Exit Art in New York is one of the alternative spaces that regularly programmes eco-art.  Sadly Jeanette Ingberman who co-founded the Gallery died recently.  She was a great advocate for ways in which the arts could draw attention and propose alternatives.  Obituary.

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.
Go to EcoArtScotland

IHDP Writing Contest: Win a prize and be published!

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Contest for new writing on the green economy, deadline 15 September

The International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change (otherwise known as IHDP), which is part of the United Nations University, has announced a competition for new short essays on the green economy that will speak to a broad audience.

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.
Go to EcoArtScotland

Funded PhD opportunity

This post comes to you from EcoArtScotland

On The Edge Research and Woodend Barn Banchory have created a wonderful opportunity to undertake a funded PhD.

Woodend Barn is a multi-arts centre outside Aberdeen with a strong environmental programme including an organic cafe, allotments, etc.  On The Edge Research is a practice-led programme focused on artists working in public.

Supported through the Arts and Humanities Research Council’s Collaborative Doctoral Awards Scheme, they are looking for someone interested in understanding how

“creativity is channeled and provoked by the presence of an artist and in what ways this presence stimulates critical, socially and aesthetic understanding and action. It draws on a recent history of artists’ constructs and protocols for critiquing the institutional and organizational. It also draws in entrepreneurship studies, in particular approaches to understanding community as a dynamic.”

This could be undertaken by an artist as a practice-led, self-reflective, programme, or through other approaches.

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.
Go to EcoArtScotland

New metaphors for sustainability: Le Tour

This post comes to you from Ashden Directory

Le Tour de France is the metaphor Bradon Smith offers in our series of New metaphors for sustainability. Bradon is  a research associate in the Geography department at the Open University, and is also the AHRC research fellow on climate change for the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. 

The bicycle is a wonderfully efficient and ecological mode of transport; and the dynamics of professional cycling are a model for the cooperation that real sustainability will require.

This week saw the climax of the Tour de France. Four hundred thousand people gathered on the mountain roads leading up to Alpe d’Huez to watch that one stage alone. Cycling works as a spectator sport partly because of the intense physical effort, but also because of the layers of tactics and teamwork: strength and stamina aren’t enough to win the Tour.

No rider could win the Tour without their team. Teamwork, co-operation and the team’s different skills are required to win even a stage. Many of the members of a team (the domestiques) ride not for their own chances of glory, but for the benefit of another member of their team: setting the pace for their leading rider, carrying water for them, sheltering them from headwinds, and so on. These sacrifices are central to a team’s success.

Nor can any rider win any stage – some are more suited to mountains, others to flat stages. The rider who can achieve the fastest speeds (a sprinter) is unlikely to win the Tour, which requires a better all-round rider. Some teams are dedicated to the success of a single rider, others spread their efforts more widely. A team has to play to the strengths of its members.

Despite the intense competition, and personal rivalries, there is a fundamental trust within the peloton. Hurtling along the road at 40mph, wheels within inches of one another, each rider must trust that the others will hold their line.

And this trust has built a unique ethic: the peloton follows a set of unwritten rules. It is not done, for example, to profit from other riders’ crashes – the peloton will wait instead. And the team of the leading rider is expected to do the most work, setting the pace for the whole peloton.

Technological developments have dramatically affected cycling: bikes are lighter and more aerodynamic, and the riders are all equipped with radios for constant communication with their teams. Fans are divided over whether these changes are detrimental. But these developments have not drastically altered the basic ethic of the peloton.

But there is another side to cycling. Teams are reliant on their corporate sponsors, and team tactics are also built around giving the most TV exposure to their sponsors’ logos. Deals are done between riders of competing teams: ‘you can have this win, if you help me tomorrow’. And – the big ones – doping blights the sport and fans speculate about deals and corruption at a high level. It isn’t really clear how these problems will be eradicated; but in a sport shot through with the ethos of teamwork and cooperation, they strike right at its heart.

There is a temptation to ‘cheat’ with sustainability too: to greenwash and make tokenistic changes, but never integrate it fully into our lives and societies. But the cooperation that is central to professional cycling is also central to sustainability; as in a cycling team, one specialism will not be enough; and like in the peloton, we need to trust that others will also make the effort.

“ashdenizen blog and twitter are consistently among the best sources for information and reflection on developments in the field of arts and climate change in the UK” (2020 Network)

The editors are Robert Butler and Wallace Heim. The associate editor is Kellie Gutman. The editorial adviser is Patricia Morison.

Robert Butler’s most recent publication is The Alchemist Exposed (Oberon 2006). From 1995-2000 he was drama critic of the Independent on Sunday. See www.robertbutler.info

Wallace Heim has written on social practice art and the work of PLATFORM, Basia Irland and Shelley Sacks. Her doctorate in philosophy investigated nature and performance. Her previous career was as a set designer for theatre and television/film.

Kellie Gutman worked with the Aga Khan Trust for Culture for twenty years, producing video programmes and slide presentations for both the Aga Khan Foundation and the Award for Architecture.

Patricia Morison is an executive officer of the Sainsbury Family Charitable Trusts, a group of grant-making trusts of which the Ashden Trust is one.

Go to The Ashden Directory

Videos of key thinkers on sustainability

This post comes to you from EcoArtScotland

Who’s written the top books on sustainability? Capra, Lovelock, Pearce, Barbier, Yunus?  Cambridge University Press has put online videos of interviews with authors and thinkers featured in their list of the top 50 books on sustainability.  It’s an amazing resource, including transcripts of each interview, well worth exploring.

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.
Go to EcoArtScotland

Steep Trail Eco Lab  – Greener Leith News

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Emily Dodd has written a really nice piece about the Steep Trail Eco Lab for the Greener Leith Blog.

 

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.
Go to EcoArtScotland

EU LIFE projects

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The EU Life programme has published a series of pdfs on current projects in three categories:

  • Nature and Biodiversity
  • Information and Communication
  • Environment and Governance
  • as well as projects outside the EU (or what are termed ‘Third Countries Projects).

According to the EU all of these projects demonstrate innovation and development.

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.
Go to EcoArtScotland