[-empyre-] writing from Buffalo: Coalesce Lab / BioArt and Food

[Kathy High]

Hi Amanda and everyone!

Amanda - Thanks for mentioning NATURE Lab and the work going on at The
Sanctuary for Independent Media (mediasanctuary.org) The Sanctuary¹s
mission is to use art and participatory action to promote social and
environmental justice and freedom of creative expression.  Celebrating our
10th year anniversary this year, we have developed a very local presence
in North Troy - a community that is part of the post-industrial complex
left over from the height of its heyday - with brown fields, river
pollution, food deserts, abandoned houses and lots and a low income
economy. We have adopted many of the abandoned lots on this one block and
- as Amanda said - have turned them into thriving gardens and compost
sites. Now we are rehabbing an old building we purchased for cheap for a
DIY NATURE Lab community bio educational center in tandem with a local
biomaker group of scientists who call themselves BioPalette. So the lab
will help facilitate the work going on in the gardens and teach people to
do soil and water testing with DIY kits, analyze ph levels, site examples
of urban biodiversity and more! NATURE Lab stands for "North Troy Art,
Technology and Urban Research in Ecology.² We will keep you updated on
this new project as we will hopefully - some day - offer an artist
residency program where people can come to use the lab, and the
lots/gradens to further their own food, field, animal or other bio type
projects!

For my own art work, I am luckily on sabbatical this year and am diving
deeper into the gut biome with a project I am calling (as an umbrella)
³Gut Love². I spent a month as an artist in residence at Will dePaolo¹s
gut biome lab at the University of Southern California, LA, CA. The lab
team was amazing there and we did a lot of crazy projects together. So
look out for more info on fecal microbial transplants in the near future!
At present this topic is big in the media - but it is amazing to think
ecologically about our body¹s systems and with whom we cohabit in terms of
bacteria, yeast, fungi - which is also directly related to FOOD! Other
artists also thinking/working on this bacterial/microbial front include
Anna Dumitriu from UK, Tagny Duff from Canada, Kira O¹Reilly now in
Finland, and Adam Zartsky from US! I know there are many others. Š Please
see the great exhibition ³Gut Instinct² that was curated by curated by
Charissa N. Terranova and David R. Wessner through the NYC Sci/Art Center.
http://www.sciartcenter.org/gut-instinct.html

I have loved reading all these entries and learning about everyone¹s
current and past works. Some of my favorite people in the world have
posted with this discussion! Thanks for bringing it all together Amanda!!!
With deep respect and many thanks to you all, Kathy High

 

On 3/24/16, 1:29 PM, "Amanda McDonald Crowley"
<empyre-bounces at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au on behalf of
amandamcdc at gmail.com> wrote:

>----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
>Hi Renate and all,
>
>On Mar 24, 2016, at 9:13 AM, Renate Terese Ferro wrote:
>
>> I am struck at this morning, as I get ready to participate in an Art
>>and Biology
>> workshop
>
>
>Excited to hear that you are in Buffalo for the launch of Paul Vanouse's
>Coalesce Lab initiative. I can't wait to get up there myself at some
>point!
>
>I'm sorry that I have been slow to respond these last few days. I have a
>seriously ill cat at the moment and we've been spending a lot of time
>going back and forth to the veterinary hospital. Perhaps poignant to this
>discussion is that he has serious issues with his Gastro Intestinal Tract
>- we're not sure what just yet, or even whether it is treatable or
>terminal. So I've been a bit distracted, but remaining hopeful.
>
>I will leave it to Nicole to respond about WFiM. But I think you'll find
>links to both the exhibition and the non-profit from her web site.
>
>I can speak a little to the Bio-Art / lab and food question though.
>Bioart is a term I am not especially fond of, but I won't go into that
>here, because it certainly has some currently in this specific area of
>practice.
>
>Interestingly, right at the moment I am working on finalizing a report
>I've been doing, undertaking research for Kathy High on the numerous
>bioart labs that are being established across the globe, to help her and
>The Sanctuary for Independent Media as they establish their NATURE Lab
>program and activities in Troy, New York.
>http://www.mediasanctuary.org/naturelab
>
>One of the things that is so exciting about the NATURE Lab project for
>me, is that it is part of an integrated series of projects and spaces
>established by The Sanctuary including media labs; Collard City Growers -
>an urban food project; the L Lot - a bio remediation project... So food,
>art and biology will definitely figure centrally in the programs they are
>developing. It is very grass roots, locally engaged, has a strong
>community focus, is deeply concerned with issued of access, and also a
>integrated emphasis on art and creative practices. Incidentally, Kathy
>also mentioned that she has been lurking and enjoying the conversation
>when we last spoke - perhaps this might prod you into contributing a
>small post about the project (and your work more generally) Kathy? ;)
>
>Suzanne Anker runs an entire course on food projects in the bio-art world
>at SVA in New York: http://bioart.sva.edu/food-projects-in-bio-art/
>Anker has also established a bioart lab at SVA
>http://www.suzanneanker.com/bio-art-lab/
>Additionally food systems certainly figure significantly in Anker's own
>work as well. 
>
>In 2012 I organized an exhibition at CalIT2 Gallery at the University of
>California, San Diego. Titled CONSUME, several of the projects in the
>show specifically looked at biology, art, and food systems
>http://publicartaction.net/consume/
>
>I included Beatriz da Costa's "Dying for the Other" a video triptych
>juxtaposing the lives of breast cancer research mice and a human
>(herself) suffering from the same disease. The piece was part of the
>series of work she was developing towards the end of her life called "The
>Cost of Life". Another work in the series was called "The Life Garden"
>which was an anti-cancer medicinal and demonstration garden, that we
>installed at Eyebeam when da Costa was in-residence there.  - and food
>and health certainly featured as a key element in that body of work.
>http://bdacosta.net/
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beatriz_da_Costa
>
>Brandon Balangee's "Committed", "Dedicated", and "Tears of Ochún"
>projects respond to the global crisis of fisheries worldwide but more
>specifically the unraveling of the food chain in the Gulf of Mexico
>following the 2010 BP Deep Horizon oil spill. Brandon actually also
>worked with Nicole Caruth out in Omaha to exhibit the other significant,
>and very beautiful installation that is part of that body of work, titled
>Collapse. Documentation of the full series is here:
>http://brandonballengee.com/collapse-the-cry-of-silent-forms/
>
>Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr project - Tissue Culture and Art Project's
>Remains of Disembodies Cuisine - documents a performance Œfeast¹ of tiny,
>semi-living frog steaks that were grown for almost three months in
>bioreactors, with video made in collaboration with Jens Hauser. The
>installation played on the notion of different cultural perceptions of
>what is edible and ironically offered the possibility of eating meat
>without killing animals, creating a victimless meat. However it also
>provided a serious critique of current methods of tissue culture which
>require the use of animal-derived products as a substantial part of the
>nutrients provided to the cells, so not so "victimless" after all.
>http://tcaproject.org/
>
>And for those on the list who don't know, Oron and Ionat were also key
>players in the establishment of possibly one of the first bio-art labs,
>SymbioticA - a lab that provides artists and researchers a space to
>engage in wet biology practices in a biological science department.
>http://www.symbiotica.uwa.edu.au/
>
>And Stefani Bardin, who we heard from earlier in this thread about her
>mapping project with Marina and the NYU research group might also be
>interested to pipe back into the conversation briefly to talk a little
>about her M2A project, which is currently installed at the Cathedral of
>St John the Divine here in NYC in an exhibition curated by Kirby Gookin
>and Robin Kahn titled "The Value of Food".
>http://www.stjohndivine.org/programs/vof/about/exhibition I wouldn't
>describe M2A as a bio-art project per se, but it is a project that
>resulted in a very interesting art-science collaboration between Stefani
>and a gastroenterologist, Bradon Kuo.
>
>So these are a few examples of work that I think really deeply address
>this question of cross disciplinary collaboration, and also our food
>systems; and many are also taking a deep look at food justice and social
>justice issues more broadly.
>
>best
>
>Amanda
>
>
>
>
>
>--
>Amanda McDonald Crowley
>Cultural Worker / Curator
>http://publicartaction.net
>
>@amandamcdc
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