Today is the first day of System of Sustainability at the University of Houston. You should come. Miranda, myself and our Czech colleage and friend Misa Rygrova are all here all weekend.
SOShouston.org
sustainability
2009 Indy Convergence
The end of my February was spent in Indianapolis, crossroads of America, dead center of Indiana, home of the Indy Convergence. I was brought in last year and spent 30 hours making something. I decided to make a little more space for making this year and spent 10 days in Indy. As part of what was made was this short video I put together for the open lab/performance we culminated tour time together with.Â
I had led a couple of workshops on sustainability in performance and also led the effort to measure our waste, primarily by weighing our waste and then running numbers on what that waste meant. Here is that video:
[display_podcast]APInews: Systems of Sustainability: Art, Innovation, Action
Just as we’ve received a reminder from the Community Arts Network RSS feed, we are reminding all of our readers about this upcoming event. We’ll both be there in Houston (my home away from home for the better part of the last decade)Â
Sustaining our planet, our culture and our creative enterprise” are the topics of “Systems of Sustainability: Art, Innovation, Action (S.O.S.)” at the University of Houston in March. Part arts festival, part academic symposium, “S.O.S.” explores “how creative enterprise can be an integral tool for cultural growth and social change.” Organized by the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts and the Art Museum’s Blaffer Gallery at the University of Houston, the event includes site-specific projects, participatory activities, lectures, scholarly panels and opportunities for dialogue with artists, researchers, activists and scholars such as Matt Coolidge, The Center for Land Use Interpretation; Lindsay Utz, GOOD Magazine; Robert Harriss, Houston Advanced Research Center; Liz Lerman, Liz Lerman Dance Exchange; and more. The symposium runs March 27-29, 2009. [LINK]
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via APInews: Systems of Sustainability: Art, Innovation, Action .
Facebook | SOS: Art, Innovation, Action
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Systems of Sustainability: Art, Innovation, Action (“S.O.Sâ€), is a three-day event organized by the University of Houston’s Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts and Blaffer Gallery, the Art Museum of the University of Houston. Part arts festival, part academic symposium, S.O.S. explores how creative enterprise can be an integral tool for cultural growth and social change. The program will present a range of innovative practices demonstrated by a roster of local, national, and international participants including prominent artists, scientists, business leaders, activists, and scholars. Events will include site-specific projects, participatory activities, lectures, scholarly panels, and many opportunities for dialogue.
And you can join in on facebook.Â
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In the Audience
I’ve worked in theater in some form or another since high school. I have had a bad habit throughout my life in theater of being the type who says (or at least thinks) “I don’t want to go watch theater, I see so much of it from backstage, from the booth, I see it in rehearsals all day long…†So, I don’t sit in the audience much.
Now, because of the illness that blindsided me over a year ago, I really feel like a spectator sitting in the audience watching the future of green, eco-responsible theater rushing by in flashes. It’s difficult to do. So much has happened in the last few months, and ecoTheater has missed it. People close to me will roll their eyes when they find that as I write this lament I am sitting in a hospital room in Indianapolis waiting for my second and final round of high dose chemotherapy to commence. “Who cares about green theater?†they will ask.
I won’t lie — it isn’t that difficult to realize that I’ve missed out on reporting on the big Broadway initiative, supported as it is by the mayor of New York City, or the up and coming Center for Sustainable Practice in the Arts (CSPA) (founded and driven by Ian Garrett, a regularly mentioned activist on ecoTheater), or the fast approaching Earth Matters on Stage (EMOS) at the University of Oregon, or, or, or…
I mean, it’s easy enough to see that there are bigger things to consider in my life right now. But, what can I say? For once, I hate being just a spectator. It’s like sitting through hours of rehearsal, not saying a word to anyone, and not participating in any way in the production.
For now, I have taken a leave of absence from my job with CTM and have done very little “work†of any kind in the last month or so. The only project I have spent time on is The Cancer Stories Project, hopefully the first stage work for the still-being-founded Wisconsin Story Project (WSP), which I hope to be a new model of theater that will take bits and pieces from many idea-makers, heading towards not just ecologically sound theater production, but also aiming to be a model of theater that solves for pattern (or here).
Who knows? Perhaps one day ecoTheater will simply morph into a blog tracking the progress of WSP, and how we’re doing our best to stay green, while tackling other issues that plague today’s so-called regional theater.
But no matter what I’ll be back here writing soon. So, don’t forget about me…