[-empyre-] Introducing Amanda McDonald Crowley and Jeannette Ingberman

Novamedia admin at novamedia.com.au
Thu Apr 24 23:15:25 EST 2008


dear all

a brief contribution to the discussion to let you know of an  
initiative we've been working on since September last year, titled  
IMPACT: living in the age of climate change.

In December 2009, Denmark is hosting the UN Climate Change Convention  
in Copenhagen, during which a new global climate treaty will be  
signed. We felt culture could play a major role in stirring up a  
broader public debate as well as in encouraging and promoting new  
ideas and creative solutions. At least this is on of the intentions of  
the initiative. This is a Danish-Australian collaboration and the  
focus will be on the crossing points between climate change issues and  
art, technology, science, politics and globalization. In  the lead up  
to the  UN convention, we will be launching a series of programs  
starting with web-debates on this website www.impact09.com,  
culminating with a major international show as part of the UN cultural  
program. We are currently working on devising the debates and, all  
things equal, hope to commence them in July.

Best regards

Antoanetta Ivanova (Curator) & Anne Sophie Witzke (Producer)
IMPACT'09

On 24/04/2008, at 10:15 PM, Jeanette Ingberman wrote:

> Thank you for the invitation to post to this list and the  
> opportunity to address this international group of thinkers.
>
> I would be particularly interested in learning and sharing how we  
> can present these ideas, works of art, the artists involved, in a  
> physical space like our galleries as well as alternative  
> involvements to what I see is an enormous public that is very  
> interested and committed.
>
> Exit Art is committing resources of time, space and funds to create  
> a major new initiative SEA (social environmental aesthetics) that  
> will address issues of the environment through exhibitions,  
> performances, panels and a permanent archive. SEA will assemble  
> artists, activists, scientists and scholars to address environmental  
> issues through presentations of visual art, performances, panels and  
> lecture series that will communicate international activities  
> concerning environmental and social activism. SEA will occupy a  
> permanent space in Exit Underground, a 3000 square-foot, multi-media  
> performance, film and exhibition venue underneath Exit Art’s main  
> gallery space. The Sea archive will be a permanent archive of  
> information, images and videos that will be a continuous source for  
> upcoming exhibitions and projects.
>
> It was so curious that although Amanda and I know each other and  
> talk, and our organizations Exit Art and Eyebeam are only blocks  
> apart in New York, we came up with similar ideas to investigate, the  
> presentations are different, but we didn't know it, till they were  
> well under way, so now we have begun talking and sharing and  
> hopefully in the future will work together on some projects. So much  
> for communication!
>
> The first project of SEA just recently opened, EPA (environmental  
> performance actions) which is an exhibition, or maybe more  
> accurately an archive of information, surveying recent performance  
> work from around the world that addresses current environmental  
> crises consisting of videos, photographs, texts, related ephemera  
> and a film program documenting recent performances. For this opening  
> project we invited curator, Amy Lipton, and founder/co-curator  
> Patricia Watts of ecoartspace, a leading international environmental  
> arts organization, to collaborate with Exit Art. Ironically the  
> impulse for the show was the incredible action by the activist Julia  
> Butterfly who lived in a 1000 year old redwood tree, to prevent it  
> from being cut down. I won't go into great detail about the show,  
> that is on our website. But it is very interesting to us that people  
> stay for hours and read and watch and ask us questions. All this  
> work will become part of an 'archive' at Exit Art that will be  
> available to the public for research at Exit Art and in the future  
> an online database. FUture projects include The End of Oil,  
> Environmental Paintings, etc.
>
> Amanda's question: In this last week of discussion around "wired  
> sustainability" I'd like to see us address how we feel about being  
> techno-evangelists who care about the environment.  What does it  
> mean for us, as a community, to be ardent users and promoters of  
> technology while at the same time, trying to take care to have a low  
> (eco) footprint on the planet? is very much something we are also  
> thinking about. We recently acquired 2 acres of land in the  
> rainforest of Puerto Rico, El Yunque, and my partner, artist Papo  
> Colo, wants to establish an 'artists healing retreat' , not a  
> residency, where you come for one week to be healed. We are working  
> with people to set up an environment that will be 'off the grid', to  
> give artists and others the opportunity to be in this environment,  
> we are still at the very beginning stages of this.
>
> As a cultural center, I hope to take some of the ideas we discuss  
> here and put into practice in our space. For me the ultimate goal is  
> to get this information to the public, however we do that.
>
> Jeanette
>
> _______________
> Jeanette Ingberman
> Co-Founder/Director
> EXIT ART
> 475 Tenth Avenue
> New York, NY 10018
> 212 966 7745 x11
> http://www.exitart.org
>
>
> On Apr 24, 2008, at 12:05 AM, amanda mcdonald crowley wrote:
>> Hi all and thanks Renate and Tim for the opportunity to participate.
>>
>> In my brief intro, I mentioned that I am a lurker on a lot of  
>> media, technology and culture related lists, which have included [- 
>> empyre-] pretty much since its inception, so its kinda fun to be  
>> forced out of the closet in this way :)  I have to admit that  
>> Christina McPhee also attempted this a while back with less success  
>> than you guys, so here we go...
>>
>> The timeliness of the invitation as it related to Eyebeam's  
>> Feedback exhibition was obviously the draw.  It has been really  
>> inspiring to see this discussion kicked off by Renate and Tim in  
>> collaboration with Britta and Rebecca, who were exhibiting in the  
>> Feedback show, and to have included Stephanie Rothenberg, who with  
>> Jeff Crouse, presented their Invisible Threads project at Eyebeam  
>> this month.
>>
>> For Eyebeam, as we were developing the Feedback show, it was really  
>> important that we not do yet another eco-art exhibition.  With  
>> Feedback we attempted to inspire both artists and their audiences  
>> to action.  The show was curated by a research group that has been  
>> meeting at Eyebeam for about 20 months now.  In fact Rebecca Bray  
>> was the facilitator of that group from the get-go.  And Feedback  
>> was umbrella'd under the theme "Beyond Light Bulbs" developed by  
>> our sustainability research group -- the premise being that once we  
>> had changed our light-bulbs to carbon fluorescents what do we do  
>> next?  Affecting policy change, not just personal action, was an  
>> aim of the show.
>>
>> But we also now have an emerging (un)sustainable research group at  
>> Eyebeam.  The questions being posed there are around the  
>> (ir)relevance of thinking "green".  Where is the punk work when we  
>> are all being so serious about the environmental issues that we are  
>> currently facing? Where is the discussion about the fact that  
>> energy exists aplenty, it is just poorly distributed? And in  
>> America, where we work from, how to we begin to dissect the  
>> *extreme* industry that is emerging around the green movement?   
>> Here, Green Consumerism (a shockingly apt oxymoron) is in the  
>> process of becoming a core industry.
>>
>> In this last week of discussion around "wired sustainability" I'd  
>> like to see us address how we feel about being techno-evangelists  
>> who care about the environment.  What does it mean for us, as a  
>> community, to be ardent users and promoters of technology while at  
>> the same time, trying to take care to have a low (eco) footprint on  
>> the planet?
>>
>> So now I am going off to cook food -- all locally sourced -- and  
>> turn my computer off, for a while.
>>
>> Looking forward to connecting with you all, once I have eaten, to  
>> talk about projects that address these issues and to see if we can  
>> find a way to move forward after this discussion.
>>
>> Amanda
>>
>>
>> --
>> Amanda McDonald Crowley
>> executive director
>>
>> EYEBEAM
>> 540 W. 21st Street
>> New York, NY  10011, USA
>> T +1 - 212.937.6580 x223
>> F +1 - 212.937.6582
>> amc at eyebeam.org
>> www.eyebeam.org
>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> empyre forum
>> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
>> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre

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