RSA Arts & Ecology

Waste and opportunity: Tristram Stuart on how we could save the world with what we throw away

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What we could do with what we waste from RSA Arts & Ecology on Vimeo.

Last week at the Birmingham Book Festival  I chaired Tristram Stuart talking about his excellent book Waste, an event programmed by the RSA. It is a brilliantly researched piece of work that leaves you horrified at the scale of the developed world’s pointless overconsumption.

Half way through the talk he brought the scale of our wasteage dramatically to life when pulled out a sliced granary loaf that he’d picked out of a bin outside a bakery a few hours earlier and started counting out the slices.

At that point I pretty much gave up chairing and pulled out my little video camera…

Read the book; it’s good.

Tristram’s Waste website

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The Big Draw under The Black Cloud

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bigdrawbristol
Two projects we’ve been involved with came together in a good way this weekend. The idea forThe Black Cloud, the public shelter artwork created by Heather and Ivan Morison emerged out of a Bristol residency the RSA Arts & Ecology Centre organised back in 2007, with the support of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. Curated by Situations, the shelter has been hosting a series of community events based loosely on how we imagine our uncertain future – all held literally under The Black Cloud.  After the discussion it was also host to The Big Draw, the Campaign For Drawing’s great project to get as many people drawing as possible. This year is their tenth year and they asked The RSA Arts & Ecology Centre to pick one of the themes; we chose Look to the future: work together to combat climate change.

Michaela Crimmin, Head of Arts at the RSA was down there this weekend and took this on her phone.

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Wooloo.org | Call to artists

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wooloo.org | PARTICIPATE OR DIE
Call to artists and curators

Deadline October 1 2009

NEW LIFE COPENHAGEN
Wooloo.org is organizing the people of Copenhagen to open their homes to 5.000 environmental activists during the United Nations (UN) Climate Change Conference in Denmark this December.

Utilizing this large-scale human meeting as its exhibition platform, the NEW LIFE COPENHAGEN festival invites artists and curators to submit work proposals.

New Life Happenings. Propose a happening or event for the thousands of NEW LIFE COPENHAGEN hosts and guests during the UN Conference. Your concept should involve collective action and will be implemented alongside works by artist groups Superflex (DK), Signa (DK/A) and Raketa (SE) among others.

To learn more about NEW LIFE COPENHAGEN and to apply for participation, go to:http://www.wooloo.org/festival


PARTICIPATE OR DIE
From December 7th to 18th, 2009, representatives from 192 nations will gather in Denmark for the UN Climate Change Conference to reach an agreement on a new global climate treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol. In addition to the large number of official UN delegates, thousands of activists and Non-Governmental Organizations are bound for the conference which has been called: “Humanity’s last chance to combat a climate problem that is now all but overwhelming.” (Tim Flannery, Scientist and environmental activist).

However, there will not be enough hotel space to accommodate most of these visitors, as all hotels in Copenhagen and the surrounding area (including Sweden) have already been booked for the official delegates. Furthermore, even if they were available, many visitors from all over the world would not be able to afford them anyway.

In order to help solve this substantial problem, NEW LIFE COPENHAGEN is running a volunteer-based campaign to get private Danish homes to open their door to the thousands of visitors. Through street campaigns and collaborations with local organizations, NEW LIFE COPENHAGEN aims to reach this goal by November.

ANOTHER WORLD IS POSSIBLE?
At the end of Al Gore’s film “An Inconvenient Truth”, Gore lists ten simple life rules to combat global warming. These include using less hot water, recycling more, etc. While Wooloo.org supports this sustainable thinking, we also believe that the real problem will not be solved by asking individuals to modify their behavior but only through addressing the wrongs of a global economic system that thrives on exploiting natural resources and people.

Seen in this way, the climate crisis is not just a threat but also an opportunity: The opportunity to create transnational commitment around radical re-thinkings of a destructive system. The first step to create such change, is to develop alternatives to the current system and our existing cultural codes.

That is our mission with NEW LIFE COPENHAGEN.

By asking artists to develop happenings and reflections for a new life – and then request that thousands of participants implement them – Wooloo.org aims beyond the traditional art exhibition to become an active organizer of experiments in civic engagement and social empowerment.


PEOPLE BEHIND
NEW LIFE COPENHAGEN is organized by the artists-run community Wooloo.org.

Founded in 2002, Wooloo.org is today used by more than 13.000 artists from over 140 countries. Wooloo.org projects have been presented in such places as: Artists Space (USA), White Box (USA), Basel Kunsthalle (Switzerland) and the Third Guangzhou Triennial (China).

For more information, see http://www.wooloo.org and http://www.wooloo.org/festival

For further questions about NEW LIFE COPENHAGEN or Wooloo.org, please contact Martin Rosengaard; email: contact@wooloo.org / phone: +45 6171 6101, Wooloo.org, Pastursvej 46, DK-1778 Copenhagen V.

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Actors wanted | The Waste Ed Roadshow

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Waste Ed Roadshow, charity creating educatioinal tools for young people, is looknig for two actors for pilot project

We are a registered charity creating exciting educational tools for teaching young people about ecology. Our new project - The Waste Ed Roadshow – is looking for two actors – male and female – to perform a 20 minute humourous dialogue about waste and how it effects ourselves and the environment.

Suitable people will be 18-25 years old, lively and confident, have some acting experience, and be genuinely interested in ‘green’ issues.

The performance will be part of up to 5 pilot runs of the roadshow, from end of May through June. Rehearsals will be led by our Project Leader (a professional actress). To keep travel expenses to a minimum, we are looking for volunteers from the West Greater London/Woking/Ascot area.

If you’re interested in getting involved contact us with a bit about yourself, your experience, and a photo if possible.

You can also visit www.waste-ed.org.uk for more information about the roadshow.

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Invitation to local artists | Tatton Park Biennial 2010

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Tatton Park Biennial | Invitation to local artists
Artists from Cheshire and the North West are invited to take part in Open Competitions as part of Tatton Park Biennial 2010

Next year sees the return of this remarkable contemporary arts event in Tatton’s gardens. The inaugural Biennial, which took place in the summer of 2008, saw nearly 30 artists, performers and writers develop new works for Tatton Park, to considerable critical and public acclaim.  Tatton Park Biennial 2010 will take a site-specific theme of “Framing Identity” that explores our association with place.

For 2010, artists will be commissioned in three ways: by curator’s appointment, peer recommendation from leading organisations and via two Open Competitions, engaging artists from Cheshire and the North West. 

One competition is open to artists who have recently completed formal training and are either currently living or working in Cheshire or are originally from the county. The second is open to all artists living or working in the North West. Artists are invited to apply by developing their own site-specific proposals, based on the 2010 theme and can apply as individuals or as collaborative groups.   

Selected artists will be awarded a budget of £5,500 to cover fees, materials and expenses.  Most importantly, however, they will be able to participate in the prestigious 2010 Biennial, sharing a high-profile platform with other emerging as well as established national and international artists.

The submissions for the open competitions will be judged by Biennial curators, Danielle Arnaud and Jordan Kaplan from Parabola, Brendan Flanagan, Tatton Park and Visitor Economy Manager and Helen Battersby, Arts, Heritage and Museums Manager, Cheshire East.

Curators, Danielle Arnaud and Jordan Kaplan commented “We are so pleased to be able to offer this opportunity to artists! It is not the easiest option, but it is crucial to our ambition for increasing the scope and reach of the Biennial. Soliciting proposals from artists who are not currently known to us is just one of the ways the Biennial is working as a creative laboratory – positioning itself as a unique event and a new model for participation with contemporary art of the highest calibre”.

Brendan Flanagan, Tatton Park and Visitor Economy Manager said “’Framing Identity’ will explore our relationship with place, whether that be the Egerton family who owned Tatton Park, today’s visitors, or our own identity with place as an individual, community or business. Through the Tatton Park Biennial, Cheshire East Council can extend a unique opportunity to artists from the region.”

Proposals should be submitted via the Spaces Cheshire website

http://www.spacescheshire.com/spacesapp/commissions.aspx

The deadline for submission of applications is midnight Wednesday 30 September 2009. Interviews will be held on Thursday 15 October 2009.

Framing Identity

8 May to 26 September 2010

From 8 May to 26 September 2010, Tatton Park will stage its second Biennial of contemporary art, with up to 20 commissioned works responding to the site and notions of identity that emerge from it. Landscape as a social platform; social divides reflected in landscape; a sense of place in relation to the macro- and immediate vicinity of the Park; the relevance of the boundary wall that encircles its 1,000-acres; people who work at the site and know it intimately and those who live in the very different estates that ring Tatton and are not included among its current visitors are all subjects of enquiry. The opportunity to re-examine the site as a living and evolving subject rather than as an historical keepsake is at the heart of 2010. 

Partners from across the arts and cultural sectors in the Northwest and the UK are working with the Biennial to deliver a programme that will extend the reach of the event to national and international audiences. There will be several commissioning opportunities involving multiple sites and organisations like museums, universities and community groups. 

There are three commissioning schemes: curators’ invitation; peer recommendation and open competition, which will work to develop the artistic scope of the Biennial as it locates itself as a dynamic laboratory for experimentation and exchange. Artists working internationally will be commissioned alongside some of the most innovative emerging artists in Britain, with work taking on a variety of media, from large-scale installation to film, video, book & web-works and performance, with new collaborations throughout.

www.tattonpakbiennial.org



Tatton Park is managed and financed by Cheshire East Council on behalf of the National Trust.

This impressive historic estate receives in the region of 750,000 visitors every year all of whom come to enjoy its Georgian Mansion, Tudor Old Hall, award winning Gardens and 1930s rare breeds farm.  The 1,000 acre deer park is home to Red and Fallow deer and the estate also boasts speciality shops, adventure playground, restaurant and year-round events programme. 

www.tattonpark.org.uk

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Online workshop to create a collective artwork

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Pyranees | Art and ecology in the 21st century
Online workshop
September 12 to October 17

The aim of this workshop is to develop a collective artwork via the internet that will reflect on the transformations in the landscape caused by climate change. This work will be presented in an exhibition that will be mounted in 2010.

The online workshop is directed by Lluís Sabadell Artiga, an artist, curator and designer specialising in themes of Art and Ecology and in the use of virtual resources to realise collective creative projects via the Net.

This workshop falls within the project Pyranees: Art and ecology in the 21st century, which aims to use contemporary artistic language to disseminate current scientific knowledge on the changes that are starting to be evident in the landscape as a result of human activity, as well as discussing the sense and function that art can bring to our knowledge of nature and society in the 21st century.

The project Pyranees: Art and ecology in the 21st century is divided into two phases:

Phase 1: Scientific seminar: Evolution of the landscape, climate change and art (theory and practical) with the participation of the scientists: Jaume Terradas, Albert Pèlachs, Francisco Lloret, Jesús Camarero, Iolanda Filella.

Phase 2: Work period in residence with the artists: Edgar Dos Santos and Montse Vendrell (Catalonia), Carl Hurtin and Suzanne Husky (Midgia-Pirineus), Christel Balez (Languedoc-Roussillon) and Online Workshop
Pyranees: Art and ecology in the 21st century is a project organised by the Centre d’Art i Natura de Farrera in collaboration with Caza d’Oro and Accueil et Découverte du Conflent – «Les Isards».


Programme and organisational details

This virtual workshop is aimed at any interested person who, regardless of his/her field of work, wishes to become involved in a shared online creative process revolving around art and ecology. People from all disciplines are encouraged to participate in order to cross-fertilise knowledge and create a transdisciplinary collaboration. Artists, architects, designers, scientists, philosophers, naturalists, historians, naturalists, farmers…

http://www.pirineusartiecologia.org/

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Declining newspapers: arts moving into empty spaces

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Artists love disused space. Artists And Makers have been tweeting me about the Empty Shops Conference they’re running on October 19. Meanwhile here’s another example of a street artists moving into a disused property. The collapse of the newspaper market in the US has been even more precipitous than it has been here in the UK. Print ad sales fell by a horrendous 30% in the first quarter of 2009; titles have been disappearing at an alarming speed.  The newspaper is a strange but crucial part of the social glue in the US, a country where there is no such thing as a “national” newspaper outside of USA Today. Americans are losing a major part of the way in which they tell their stories.

Out of decline comes opportunity. Here’s an example of one street artist Bumblebee, who has been opportunistically taking over empty newsboxes on the streets of Los Angeles, to create a series of narrative tableaux, linking the declines of newspapers to that of another endangered species.

The art, it has to be said, is pretty grim. Nice idea, though…

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RSA AGM: Rethinking the community garden

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grow your ownTomorrow is the RSA’s AGM; the house will be full of RSA Fellows here to discuss the organisation, its future and the new charter. We’ve decided to shamelessly exploit the presence of all these experts being in a single place on a single day by running a series of brain-picking seminars.

I’m doing one with the excellentConnected Communities project which gives me a chance to start talking about something that I’ve been working on for a little while now. Back in the spring I was researching the subject of artists working in productive gardens, talking to people like Fallen Fruit, Amy Francheschini – and more recently Clare Patey of Feast. There is a huge enthusiasm around for this stuff. How can we create new ways to garden? How can we create new places to garden?

That connected with an idea that was put forward by a Fellow and so we’re now on the verge of launching our own project, Rethinking the community garden. The recession has meant that there is a lot of land – particularly building land – which is on hold in cities right now. How can we change the idea of gardens as permanent fixtures to something that’s more flexible, something that maximises land use throughout a city turning semi-derelict land into an asset?

We want to attach that to Fellow’s expertise and experience to make the project come to life in New Cross Gate, South London, an area that Connected Communities are already working in. If you are an RSA Fellow and you want to come along to this, or to any of the other seminars, it’s not to late to register. We need bright heads to brainstorm along the the following lines:

  • How can we persuade landowners to let us use small parcels of land for one, two or more years, and leave them confident that there’s not going to be local resentment when they need them back?
  • How can we persuade gardeners to pour their work into a piece of land they might only have for a single growing season?
  • How can we help the users design gardens in a practical way on land that may only be available for 18 months?
  • Research shows that successful garden projects are often run by a small group of people. How can we make a successful garden project that engages a wide slice of the local population?

Thanks to Harmen de Hoop for the use of Grow Your Own Vegetables – again.

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Encouragement of the Arts

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I’m wildly excited about two books, one coming out this month the other next year – both are radical insights about what environmental change means for the human relationship to the planet. One is Stewart Brand’s Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto and the other is Timothy Morton’s The Ecological Thought.

What I find so vital in their work is that they are strongly against the misanthropy that seems to underpin much of the dominant narrative around the environmental movement. To my mind, the idea that humans are stupid, indifferent and deliberately destructive is not only an inadequate account of human nature it is heartbreaking. It is heartbreaking because it is debilitating at every level. At a time when we most need compassion and creative thinking the very sentiments that block these – pervasive cynicism and conservatism – are prevalent. (I’ve used too many words beginning with ‘c’ in that sentence, I’ll move onto the letter ‘R’ for a while).

What roots the rigorous accounts given by ecological experts such as Brand and Morton is that people are hugely capable of complex thinking, adaptive living, resilience and resourcefulness. We have created this situation of environmental change so now we must rise to challenge of transforming how we think and behave in response to it. And when I read documents like Peter Head’s Entering an Ecological Age, and see speakers at the RSA like Graciela Chichilnisky, not only do these extraordinary changes feel crucial they appear do-able.

Drawing on Brand, Head and Morton, I have written a short essay for the Copenhagen exhibition RETHINK: Contemporary Art & Climate Change.
Here’s a bit of it:  Art and ideas are not timeless, they are historically specific. The uneasy realisation of our current situation is that we are part of an ecological system that we influence more than we previously thought was possible. We are not outside observers, we are participants; we engage and affect systems whether we intend to or not. … we are the co-creators of our environment. Yet we do not yet fully recognise ourselves as such. This is a revelation awaiting to be fully explored through the arts.

It is the beginning of some work I’m developing for the Arts and Ecology Centre on what the arts may contribute  in moving us towards an ecological age.  Some of the ideas are controversial. And as part of this, writer Josie Appleton has been commissioned to write an essay for this website, as her work sets out to explore fresh thinking about human capability.The Challenge of Climate Change: Towards a New Human Consciousness – is a ‘thought experiment’, as she says in her blog – so comments are welcome.

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Charles Clover: “environmentalists are very boring”

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How 2009 became the year of the campaign movie from RSA Arts & Ecology on Vimeo.

Charles Clover energised the campaign to alert the world to approaching fish stock collapse earlier this year with the film The End of the Line. It was a great example of how a single coordinated attack using the right media can produce a quantum leap in awareness. I spoke to him and  the Guardian’s Environment Editor John Vidal about how an imaginative, passionate and above all clever approach can galvanise action and force suppliers and politicians to rethink their strategy.

But he’s scathing about how the broader environment movement has failed to grip the public imagination. Responding to a recent IPPR survey that said the public were “bored” with climate change:

It’s because environmentalists are very boring, he says. They used not to have jobs when I got into this business. They had something very burning and interesting to say which quite a lot of people wanted them not to say, and people tried to shut them up. They were very exciting people to know, and they didn’t have a pension fund. Now they have pension funds and sit around in offices and try and think of something interesting to say, and not a lot of them achieve it.

Has the professionalisation of the climate movement creating a beast that feeds itself? Is that part of the reason the public finds climate activists, in the words of the report “smug”?

Charles Clover and John Vidal were in the house to discuss The End of  the Line at a screening organised by RSA Events who run the best public lectures series you’ll find in London – and you don’t have to work here to think that. Follow them on http://twitter.com/RSAEvents

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