sunand prasad – The CSPA

U-n-f-o-l-d. A Cultural Response to Climate Change

Art exhibition and various events at Columbia College Chicago â€“ March 14â€“April 23, 2011

Museum of Contemporary Photography (600 South Michigan Avenue) â€“ Glass Curtain Gallery (1104 South Wabash Avenue), Chicago, IL (USA)

U-n-f-o-l-d. A Cultural Response to Climate Change presents the work of twenty-five artists who participated in Cape Farewell expeditions to the Andes and the High Arctic. Each artist witnessed firsthand the dramatic and fragile environmental tipping points of climate change.

Featured Artists: Ackroyd & Harvey, Amy Balkin, David Buckland, Adriane Colburn, Sam Collins, Nick Edwards, Leslie Feist, Francesca Galeazzi, Nathan Gallagher, Marjie de Haas, Robyn Hitchcock + KT Tunstall, Ian McEwan, Brenndan McGuire, Daro Montag, MichÃ¨le Noach, Lucy + Jorge Orta, Sunand Prasad, Tracey Rowledge, Lemn Sissay, Shiro Takatani, Clare Twomey and Chris Wainwright.

More info at: this website

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

Pole to pole: making art in the Antarctic and the Arctic

The artist Neville Gabie is currently in the Anarctic with the British Antarctic Survey as artist-in-residence at the Halley Reseach station on the Brunt ice shelf. He’ll be there for four months and each week he’s recording a video blog of his life there, One Minute Week.

Temperatures there on a typical summer day – and it is summer right now – are abalmy -10 degrees. Much of the BAS’s scientific work involves trying to figure out how the Antarctic works as a regulator of global climate. As the ice freezes during an Antarctic winter, vast amounts of denser salty water “rejected” by the iceÂ drift to the bottom of the oceans. This movement helps create the ocean currents that carry heat around the globe. The BAS also assess whether man-made climate change is having a direct impact there. The BAS’s measured views on that are here.

Anyway, this is Neville’s latest posting:

Getting ready for station-Z [Halley] from Ali Roche on Vimeo.

Neville’s artwork is based around the idea of flying kites in the Antarctic. “Flying kites in the Antarctic,” he says, “even in the summer months, is the antithesis of our expectations. Not only are the weather and wind conditions hostile, but the very idea of ‘recreation’ in the Antarctic seems contrary to the seriousness of the work undertaken there.”

I’ve just posted a video interview with RIBA President Sunand Prasad on the main website. Where Neville is planning to fly kites in the Antarctic, Sunand attempted to fly balloons in the Arctic, the other end of the earth, during last year’s Cape Farewell expedition. His description of trying to launch balloons in the wild, harsh katabatic Arctic winds suggests that Neville’s enterprise isn’t going to be a summer picnic.

Go to RSA Arts & Ecology Blog