[-empyre-] March 2016: FOOD/TECH/ART

[Renate Terese Ferro]

Welcome to March 2016 on –empyre soft-skinned space:
FOOD/TECH/ART Moderated by Amanda McDonald Crowley (Au, US) and Renate Ferro (US) with invited discussants
March 3rd Week 1: Stefani Bardin (US), Marina Zurkow (US), Hernani Dias (ESP)
March 11th Week 2: Shu Lea Cheang (TWN, US, FR), Amy Lipton (US), Mary Mattingly (US)
March 17th Week 3: Nicole Caruth (US), Leila Nadir US(), Jodi Newcombe (AU)
March 24th Week 4: Natalie Jeremijenko (AU, US), Shilpa Rangnekar (IN)

 
Welcome to the March discussion, ART/TECH/FOOD
For our discussion on Art/Tech/Food, our hope is to identify and discuss projects and research that to bring biologists, environmentalists, food activists, and molecular gastronomists, together with artists to deliver urban agricultural strategies, bio-generative art, and potentially even open source software and hardware
solutions that address our food systems.

We are especially interested in a discussion of projects and programs that undertake a critique of the commercialization of food production, where contemporary consumption is more likely to be watching people prepare food on television than spending time in the kitchen. Our observation is that where discussion does happen it is often either inside the food justice movement, with little cultural context; or in an art context, where discussion of policy, food justice, or broader cultural context of food production is almost entirely absent. Food is either designer-sexy, or a social justice issue, but rarely both. And there has been
little exploration of the historical and contemporary trade routes of food and how they affect our cultural landscape.

 
This month of March 2016 we invite the –empire subscriber list to discuss these issues in our soft-skinned space with our distinguished group of weekly guests. Looking forward to it. Biographies are listed below. 

 
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Moderator’s Biographies:
Amanda McDonald Crowley (AU, US) is a curator and cultural worker who specialize in creating contemporary art and new media events and programs that encourage cross-disciplinary practice, collaboration and exchange. This kind of programming might best be described in terms of practice-based, creative research leading to a range of outcomes understood in terms of both traditional and non-traditional curatorial outputs – exhibitions, residencies, public programs, festivals, and participatory programs. Amanda's work has largely been at the intersection of art + technology, and her experience and interests often revolve around working with artists and groups who have a research based practice. In her curatorial work, she is interested in developing platforms to generate dialogue, bringing together professionals and amateurs from varied disciplines, and creating space for social change and audience engagement.
 
Most recently, a key curatorial research focus has been around the topic of food + art, as evidenced by recent curatorial projects, including the exhibition food nostalgia, currently on view at Radiator Gallery in Long Island City, NYC; Circuit of the Senses, a celebratory meal and participatory event conceived by artist
Emilie Baltz at the Bemis Center in Omaha, Nebraska in 2014; GastroLabs, a program series developed with New Media Scotland for the Edinburgh Science Festival 2014; and the exhibition CONSUME at Gallery gallery at calIT2 at the University of California, San Diego in 2012.

She has previously held positions as Executive Director of Eyebeam art + technology center in New York City – recognized internationally as a model for collaboration and innovation in art + technology; executive producer for ISEA2004 (International Symposium for Electronic Arts 2004) held in Tallinn, Estonia and Helsinki, Finland, and on a cruiser ferry in the Baltic sea; Associate Director of the Adelaide Festival 2002 in Australia, and in this position she was also co-chair of the working group that organized the exhibition and symposium ‘conVerge: where art and science meet’; and Director of the Australian Network for Art and
Technology (ANAT) where she made significant links with science and industry by developing a range of residencies and masterclasses for artists in settings
such as science organizations, contemporary art spaces and virtual residencies online.
 
Amanda has been a subscriber on the -empryre- list since its inception in 2002
http://publicartaction.net
 

Renate Ferro’s (US) creative work resides within the areas of emerging technology, new media and culture. She is currently working on
a food centric project called The Rum Cake Brigade in solidarity with the peace activist Mary Anne Grady Flores. Her artistic work has been featured most
recently at the Nanyang Technological University (Singapore), The Freud Museum (London), The Dorksy Gallery (NY), The Hemispheric Institute and FOMMA
(Mexico), and The Janus Pannonius Muzeum (Hungary). Ferro is a Visiting Associate Professor of Art at Cornell University.  She has been on the moderating team of -empyre- soft-skinned space since 2007 and is currently the managing moderator.
 

Biographies
 
Stefani Bardin (US) explores the influences of corporate culture and industrial food production on our food system and the environment. She works with neuroscientists, biologists, engineers and gastroenterologists to ground her research in the scientific world. These investigations take the form of single and multi-channel videos, immersive and interactive installations as well as tools for measuring and/or mediating these influences. Her work has been written about in Wired Magazine, Scientific American, Art21, Forbes, New York Magazine, The Huffington Post and The Village Voice. Upcoming and recent exhibitions include the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, Montreal Biennale for New Media Art at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Montreal, Bronx River Art Center, Asia
Triennial in Manchester, Flaherty NYC at Anthology Film Archives, Creative Time Summit, Sheila C. Johnson Design Center at Parsons and Eyebeam Art Technology Center.   She is based in New York and teaches in ITP and  Food Studies at NYU and Food + Design at Parsons/New School.
 
 
  

  Nicole J. Caruth (US) is a writer, curator, and art education advocate. Her writing has appeared in a range of publications including ART news, C Magazine, Gastronomica, Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art, Public Art Review, Walker Art Center Magazine, and the Phaidon Press volumes Vitamin
  D2 and Vitamin Green. She is the founding editor of Art21 Magazine (est. 2013). Currently, Nicole is the artistic director for exhibitions and
  public engagement at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts.

  
 Shu Lea Cheang  (TWN, US, FR) is an artist, filmmaker, networker; Shu Lea constructs networked installation and multi-player performance in participatory impromptu mode. She drafts sci-fi narratives in her film scenario and artwork imagination. She builds social interface with transgressive plots and open network that permits public participation. Engaged in media activism for two decades (the 80s and 90s) in New York City, Cheang concluded her NYC period with the first Guggenheim Museum web art commission/collection BRANDON (1998-1999).  Since her relocation to Eurozone in 2000, she has been staging large-scale performative works in collaboration, founding collectives as cross-disciplinary research platforms and taking on installation art projects.   Currently
situated in post-crash BioNet zone, Shu Lea takes on viral love, bio hack in her current cycle of works.
http://mauvaiscontact.info

 
Hernani DiasHernani Dias (ESP) is a designer and early became interested in 3 things: drawing, assemble / disassemble mechanisms and spelunking. studied
analytic photography, design and graphic arts. worked as a designer in Tomar where he started his own studio. lived 3 years in Porto before went to Lisbon working on some well known advertising agencies. in 2006 moves to Barcelona, by love. also gets involved with ecodesign and later with electronics and physical computing. was a founding partner, graphic designer, creative director and production manager. has won several awards of design,
 

Natalie Jereminjenko (AUS, US) is an Associate Professor in the Visual Art Department, NYU <http://steinhardt.nyu.edu/faculty_bios/view/Natalie_Jeremijenko> and affiliated with the Computer Science Dept. and Environmental Studies program. In 2014 VIDA Art and Artificial Life International Awards Pioneer Prize was
awarded to Natalie Jeremijenko “for her consistently brilliant portfolio of work over the past two decades.”  (a prize only awarded once before to
Laurie Anderson). She was also granted Most Innovative People award in 2013, most influential women in technology 2011 <http://www.fastcompany.com/women-in-tech/2011/brainiacs/natalie-jeremijenko>, one of the inaugural top young innovators by MIT Technology Review and 40 most influential designers Jeremijenko directs the Environmental Health Clinic <http://environmentalhealthclinic.net/farmacy/>—facilitating public and lifestyle experiments that can aggregate into significant human and environmental health benefits.

Lipton Arts is an online endeavor by Amy Lipton (US) who has 25 years of professional experience working in the contemporary art world. Lipton Arts initial project was a pop-up gallery exhibition titled Being There <http://www.liptonarts.com/being-there/>, which took place at Elga Wimmer Gallery in Chelsea during February-March 2014. Since closing her SoHo, NY gallery in 1996, Lipton has been an independent curator and co-director of
ecoartspace, a non-profit organization that creates opportunities for addressing environmental issues through the arts. Lipton curates exhibitions
for museums, galleries, sculpture parks, environmental centers and in the public realm. She writes for books and publications, organizes panel discussions and lectures on art and its relationship to the natural environment. Her curated museum exhibitions include; Ecovention: Artists Transform Ecologies at the Contemporary Art Center in Cincinnati, OH; Imaging the River at the Hudson River Museum in Yonkers, NY and Body, Line, Motion at the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art, SUNY New Paltz. Recent gallery exhibitions include Beyond the Horizon at Deutsche Bank 60 Wall Gallery, New York City and
It’s the End of the World as We Know it (and I Feel Fine) at Ramapo College Galleries, Mahwah, NJ. Her curatorial public art project BiodiverCITY was part
of the 5 x 5 Project in Washington D.C., presented by the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities and the National Cherry Blossom Festival in 2012. Her
public art projectTRANSported took place in May 2013 in conjunction with The New Museum’s, Ideas City Festival and Arts Brookfield at the World Financial Center Plaza and at Sara D. Roosevelt Park in New York City.

 
Mary Mattingly (US) creates sculptural ecosystems in urban spaces. She is currently working on a floating food forest for New York called “Swale” and recently completed a two-part sculpture “Pull” for the International Havana Biennial with the Museo National de Belles Artes de la Habana and the Bronx Museum of the Arts. Mary Mattingly’s work has been exhibited at the International Center of Photography, the Seoul Art Center, the Brooklyn Museum, the New York Public Library, deCordova Museum and Sculpture Park, and the Palais de Tokyo. With the U.S. Department of State and Bronx
Museum of the Arts she participated in the smARTpower project, traveling to Manila. In 2009 Mattingly founded the Waterpod Project, a barge-based public
space and self-sufficient habitat that hosted over 200,000 visitors in New York. In 2014, an artist residency on the water called WetLand launched in
Philadelphia. It is being utilized by UPenn's Environmental Humanities program. She also recently installed a partially under water bridge in Des Moines. She
has been awarded grants and fellowships from the James L. Knight Foundation, Eyebeam Center for Art and Technology, Yale University School of Art, the Harpo Foundation, NYFA, the Jerome Foundation, and the Art Matters Foundation. Her work has been featured in Aperture Magazine, Art in America, Artforum,
Art+Auction, Art News, Sculpture Magazine, China Business News, The New York Times, New York Magazine, Financial Times, Le Monde Magazine, Metropolis
Magazine, New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, the Brooklyn Rail, the Village Voice, and on BBC News, MSNBC, Fox News, News 12, NPR, WNBC, New York 1, and on Art21's New York Close Up series. Her work has been included in books such as the Whitechapel/MIT Press Documents of Contemporary Artseries
titled “Nature” and edited by Jeffrey Kastner, Triple Canopy’s Speculations, the Future Is... published by Artbook, and Henry Sayre’s A
World of Art, 8th edition, published by Pearson Education Inc.
 
 

Leila Nadir (US) works as an artist, critic, and creative writer to explore evolutions of food, ecology, community, media, and memory. In collaboration
artist Cary Peppermint, shecreates participatory situations that facilitate recovery from a cultural memory disorder they call "industrial
amnesia," bringing endangered environmental practices into poetic visibility, feeling-perception, and simple acts of everyday life. Their projects have been supported by Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, Center for Land Use Interpretation, NY Foundation for the Arts, NY State Council on the Arts, Franklin Furnace, and numerous academic fellowships. Leila earned her PhD in English from Columbia University, is an Andrew Mellon Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow of Environmental Humanities, and currently teaches at University of Rochester as Lecturer of Sustainability and Environmental Humanities. She spends most of her time in the kitchen, and is currently writing a childhood memoir about the colorful marriage of her Afghan father and Slovak-American mother, including their
frequent fights about food. More info: ecoarttech.net

Jodi Newcombe (SU) founded Carbon Arts following an international career as an environmental economist and sustainability consultant. Her work on
natural resource management and policy design, green technology and low-carbon urban design inform her work with the creative sector. Carbon Arts generates and evaluates creative models for engaging society in imagining and shaping a more sustainable future. Straddling the arts, economics, science, and technology, our projects foster innovation and dialogue between disciplines and the public as a means to address
contemporary environmental challenges. We do this through targeted and timely public art commissions, events, workshops, exhibitions and research. We work with forward-thinking governments, businesses, artists and designers to inject creative talent and thinking into decision-making and to reach broad audience.

Shilpa Rangnekar (IN) is an Indian conceptual artist working with a multidisciplinary approach for socially engaged art and research
practices. She is particularly interested in observations of everyday life and associated behaviors, which either comes out in the form of utilitarian Art, food performances or very expressive and engaging community oriented projects. She has post graduated from Hyderabad Central University in
2008 with MVA in Painting and holds a BFA in Painting from M.S.U, Baroda (2005). Since 2010, Shilpa has been working as a coordinating artist for
Sandarbh Artist Residency- a context for experimenting with artistic processes, and exploring new modalities of viewership and public participation in art.
Arts Network Asia, the Asia Europe Foundation and Trans Europe Halles generously supported one of her recent project Equilibrium. She has
participated in residency programs in Germany, South Korea, and India and recently at the Bemis Center for Contemporary arts in USA.
Rangnekar lives and works in Jaipur, India.
shilparangnekar.com
theprojectequilibrium.wordpress.com
 
 

Marina Zurkow (US) is a media artist focused on near-impossible nature and culture intersections. She uses life science, materials, and technologies – including food, software, clay, animation, mycelium, and petrochemicals (when necessary) – to foster intimate connections between people and non-human agents. Recent solo exhibitions of her work include bitforms gallery in New York; Chronus Art Center, Shanghai; the Montclair Art Museum, New
Jersey; Diverseworks, Houston; her work has also been featured at FACT, Liverpool; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Walker Art Center,
Minneapolis; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington D.C.; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Wave Hill, New York; National Museum for Women in the
Arts, Washington D.C.; Borusan Collection, Istanbul;  01SJ Biennial, San Jose; Brooklyn Academy of Music; Museum of the Moving Image,
New York; Creative Time, New York; The Kitchen, New York; Ars Electronica, Linz, Austria; Transmediale, Berlin; Eyebeam, New York; Sundance Film
Festival, Utah; Rotterdam Film Festival, The Netherlands; and the Seoul Media City Biennial, Korea, among others. Her public art engagements
have been supported by Creative Time, New York; LACE, Los Angeles; Montclair Art Museum, New Jersey; The New Museum’s Ideas City, New York; Northern Lights, Minneapolis; The Artist’s Institute, New York; 01SJ Biennial, San Jose, California; Rice University, Houston; Boston University; University of
Minnesota, Minneapolis; and Baruch College, New York. Zurkow is the recipient of a 2011 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship. She has
also been granted awards from the New York Foundation for the Arts, New York State Council for the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation, and Creative
Capital. She is on full time faculty at NYU’s Interactive Technology Program (ITP) in Tisch School of the Arts, and lives in Brooklyn, NY. She is represented by bitforms gallery.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 


Renate Ferro
Visiting Associate Professor
College of Architecture, Art and Planning
Department of Art
Tjaden Hall 306
rferro at cornell.edu