Tag Archives: environmental sustainability

Back Water: film screening

May 16, 2020

Join us for an online screening, and conversation with Filmmaker Jon Cohrs, Heather Davis, and guests hosted by Amanda McDonald Crowley and Sarah Cook.

Back Water is available since May 5th on Apple TV and Amazon. We will send you a link to watch the film, and the zoom room link for the online discussion upon registration.

In the middle of New Jersey exists a strange landscape of wetlands and wildlife migrations, garbage dumps and the ruins of industry, toxic waste sites and a river that tells the story of a civilization’s new frontier. That is what seven young people have chosen to paddle through for 10 days, in canoes… A singular expedition, as romantic as it is political.

Media Release and more information about the film here.

Great review with background story in Design Exchange Magazine.

Director: Jonathan Cohrs

Consulting Producer: Cynthia Lowen

Camera: Derek Hallquist, William O’Mara, Elisa Giardina Papa, Andrea Masu, Jonathan Cohrs

Expedition Crew: Sara Jensen, Nicola Twilley, Patrick Southern, Jonathan Cohrs, Erin Tolman, Derek Hallquist, Gillian Cassell-Stiga, Michael Auerbach, Ryan Van Luit

Posted in News | Also tagged event, film, Heather Davis, Jon Cohrs, Sarah Cook, Urban Research |

Swale on Now This News

July 17, 2017

“This floating forest contains hundreds of edible plants.”

Lucy Biggers of Now This chats to Swale team members about the project while we were docked at Brooklyn Bridge Park!

Posted in News | Also tagged ArtTechFood, interview, Mary Mattingly, NYC, press, Public Art, Swale, Urban Research |

Agrikultura

March 14, 2017

SAVE THE DATE: Agrikultura opens on July 1, 2017 in Hyllie, Malmö, Sweden.

Kulturföreningen Triennal is delighted to announce that Agrikultura, an exhibition of public artworks, installations, meals, performances, urban interventions, mobile kitchens, and events to take place outdoors in Hyllie, Malmö, opening on July 1, 2017 and running until August 27, 2017.

The Agrikultura curators are Marek Walczak and Amanda McDonald Crowley. The project will be realized and installed on 8 hectares of the future “English Park” in Hyllie.

Some of the questions we wish to address with the project include: What is our present relationship to the land? How can we augment and redefine our cultural and emotional connection to a nature that we have over-extended? How can we re-engage with a nature we have pushed ever further from our lives?

Walczak and McDonald Crowley developed an open call for proposals. “We were honored to receive 120 submissions from artists from Sweden, Nordic Countries, and all across the globe. From that, we have shortlisted some 32 projects for possible inclusion in the event.”

While we are still finalizing the list of projects we are pleased to announce several:

OSS Holma Healing Garden: Juanli Carrión (ES/US) will work with citizens of the adjoining Holma neighbourhood to build a healing garden of medicinal plants.

Strange Harvest: Rainer Prohaska (AT) will establish a temporary cooking-lab where research will inform food experiments and cooking performance will take place.

Edible Carpet: Åsa Maria Bengtsson (SE) will build a rolling mat – a magic carpet – of salad greens and edible flowers planted in oriental patterns, that can be harvested for meals.

Cluster: Mary Mattingly (US) will build a forest edge landscape of edible plants.

Tree of 40 Fruit: Sam van Aken (US) will grow a single tree that grows 40 different varieties of stone fruit including peaches, plums, apricots, nectarines, and cherries; and one that grows 40 different varieties of apples.

Den Javla Marmeladfabriken: Helle Robertson (SE) will invite audiences to forage in the city for fruits, by knocking on the doors of neighbours and strangers, to collectively make jam, and build community.

A key goal for Agrikultura is to imagine sustainable solutions to food in cities. We will explore permacultural solutions – systems of agricultural and social design principles centered on simulating or utilizing patterns and features observed in Swedish ecosystems. Artists will work with city gardeners, youth groups, and citizens to reimagine urban landscapes taking into account ecological design and engineering, integrated water resource management, and sustainable landscape design to develop regenerative and self-maintaining habitats.

The opening will be held outdoors with food grown in the area, and the meal itself will be designed and realized by artists, where local food producers, chefs, and artists work collaboratively to develop a performative festive feast.

We aim to create a unique experience, that will not only be beautiful but that will engage our audiences in meaningful ways to think about what practical roles we might play in imagining the future of our food systems, in expansive, sustainable, and delightful ways.

We hope you can join us!

Marek Walczak, Amanda McDonald Crowley, and the Kulturföreningen Triennal team.

Agrikultura will be realized with generous support from Malmö Kulturstödet, Kulturförvaltningen; Kulturnämnden Region Skåne; and Malmö stad.

Posted in exhibitions, festivals, News, Projects, public art / commissions | Also tagged Agrikultura, ArtTechFood, Public Art |

Interview about Swale in am New York

July 20, 2016

Swale, Mary Mattingly‘s most recent massive undertaking – a public artwork, and floating food forest, is due to open at Concrete Plant Park in the Bronx on Saturday July 23, 2016, where it will dock for a month before moving on to other locations around New York Waterways. I’m working with Mary and her team to curate public programs at our docking locations, and caught up with Meredith Deliso of am New York to talk about the project on Mary’s behalf.

Posted in News | Also tagged ArtTechFood, interview, Mary Mattingly, press, Public Art, Swale |

Swale Kickstarter

April 26, 2016

I’ll be working with Mary Mattingly and her AMAZING team on her SWALE project this coming summer.

I’m excited to let you know that we JUST launched a Kickstarter campaign for Swale.

Swale is a public floating food forest in New York City. In the summer of 2016, people will be able to visit a barge growing edible, perennial plants, and even harvest food.

If we meet our fundraising goal, we will be ready to launch in June.

Here is a link: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1152620801/swale

We’d be so thrilled if you might be able to get involved in the project, even in a small way. And we’d also be grateful if you could share this link with your friends and colleagues.

With Swale, we want to ask, what if healthy, fresh food could be a free public service, and not just an expensive commodity? It’s important that this project happens on NYC’s water for several reasons:

It can move! We can visit different boroughs and the areas surrounding the city.
Alongside rain water, we can utilize the river water, purify it, and grow food with it.
You might know that all waterways are actually a form of commons: In New York’s case, they are overseen by many agencies, but not owned by anyone in particular, which is one of the reasons we have launched Swale on the water. It isn’t yet legal to grow public food in public spaces in New York City, but on a floating island… well, we’re pushing the boundaries of public space!

Swale is working on several different fronts at the same time.

1. We are co-creating a floating food forest.

2. We are working with community groups in each place we are able to dock, to establish permanent food forests on NYC’s publicly owned land.

3. We are working towards galvanizing enough support to advocate for policy change; for a city where public food is incorporated into the urban plan.

Reinforcing water as a commons also gives us more of a chance to look after them. We believe that the more we look after our common spaces, the more that they look after us.

Follow along as we develop our docking schedule: http://www.swaleny.org

Mary’s built an amazing team, and A Blade of Grass have provided her with a fellowship to begin the process : but its going to take YOU to help us make it REAL…

Please join us on the journey!

Amanda, Mary, and the SWALE team!

Posted in News | Also tagged ArtTechFood, Mary Mattingly, NYC, Public Art, Swale |

FERMENT YOURSELF, with Ferment Lab

September 5, 2015

As part of STWST48, I will be co-hosting a Sunday Brunch with artist Agnieszka Pokrywka of Ferment Lab, local farmers and food activists aboard the Eleonore in Linz Harbour.

During the Ferment lab’s august residency at Station Messschiff Eleonore, artist Agnieszka Pokrywka seeks local farm produces for fermentation and holds workshop with Linz locals to observe the process of fermentation. She notes the information hidden in micro life of bacterias and further reapplies the fermentative process to consider the macro culture of our societies.

During her two weeks’ residency, 14 raw vegetables are jarred and matured over time. The Sunday brunch serving the fermented vegetables brings together the artist with cultural worker/curator Amanda McDonald Crowley, local farmers, food activists and pubic members to engage in dialogues about food, tech, bacteria and cultures. In the program are also: fortunetelling based on study of personal bacterias, changing the taste of bread by the thoughts thought during kneading the dough, and possibly other oddities. All of these in the surrounding of balloons pumped up by yeast feed on sugar.

BIO:
Agnieszka Pokrywka (PL/FI) is a multimedia explorer interested in participatory, collaborative and open source practices while digging into topics of fiction, unconventional storytelling and interactive, networked narratives. Her current activities are conducted mostly in connection with Pixelache, a transdisciplinary platform for experimental art, design, research and activism in Helsinki where she embodies different roles too.

STWST48 Curation: Shu Lea Cheang and Franz Xaver

Posted in News | Also tagged ArtTechFood, conversation, fermentation, talk |

Mary Mattingly: Flock House Project: Omaha

March 13, 2014

Mary Mattingly: Flock House Project: Omaha

Mary Mattingly’s Flock House Project: Omaha, was a city wide workshop and exhibition developed during her residency at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, in Omaha, Nebraska.

What if migratory homes with autonomous systems for rainwater collection and food production were the building blocks of the city of the future? Inspired by patterns of global human migration and pilgrimage, the Flock House Project is a group of mobile, sculptural, public habitats and self-contained ecosystems that are movable, modular, and scalable.

This multi-phase project was part fantastic and part practical. It kicked off in Omaha on March 13, 2014, with an exhibition of Mattingly’s work at the Bemis Center. The exhibition included selected works from her Island (2009-2011), Anatomy of Melancholy (2007-ongoing), Second Nature (2006), Nomadographies (2009-2011), House and Universe (2013); and Wearable Portable Architecture (2011) bodies of work, as well as new works for her Tools series made at the Bemis Center. The centerpiece for the exhibition was one of the three portable structures from her 2012 Flock House Project, New York City.

Mary Mattingly: Flock House Project: Omaha exhibition brochure.

Unlike traditional exhibitions, however, the spaces also served as the artist’s active research hub while she was in residence at the Bemis Center, offering a space where she engaged the local community to develop plans for, and fabricate, new mobile living systems to be installed outdoors at both the Bemis Center in the Old Market and at Carver Bank in North Omaha. Omaha artists were then invited to occupy these living systems in order to promote and implement a broader integration between Omaha’s creative and urban design communities.

At a time when urban populations are faced with environmental, political and economic instability, dislocation and relocation become increasingly important to consider and reconcile. Addressing these themes and concerns, Mattingly first presented three Flock Houses across New York City during the summer of 2012. Her intention is to choreograph Flock Houses throughout urban centers across the United States. By constructing them, she seeks to enhance community-based interdependence, resourcefulness, learning, curiosity and creative exploration. Interactive community programs, workshops, lectures, performances and narrated tours focusing on Omaha’s history, current surroundings and future opportunities occurred throughout the summer. By engaging in a direct dialogue with Omaha’s history of community and innovation, the Flock House Project provided local residents and visitors with an opportunity to ponder the future of urban living.

During May 2014 a series of design/build workshops was held to develop a local iteration of her Flock House Project. Omaha residents had an opportunity to consider just how our urban landscape might look in the decades to come.

Mary and I talked with Justin Pazera of KMTV about the project.

Two Flock Houses were installed over summer in Omaha’s Old Market district and at Bemis Center’s Carver Bank location in North Omaha. To read about the process and about the participants’ experiences, visit the Tumblr account here.

For a listing of Old Market Flock House projects, click here.

For a listing of Carver Bank Flock House projects, click here.

Gallery Installation Shots:

Flock House Omaha design build:

Flock House Project: Omaha was developed through Design/Build Workshops in May 2014. During the workshops, the following people worked alongside Mattingly to create and install both the Old Market and Carver Bank Flock Houses:
Travis Apel: Artist/Organic Gardener/Builder
Dwayne Brown: Architect /Writer for Edible Omaha
Denise Chapman: Carver Bank Artist-in-Residence/Performer
Devel Crisp: Carver Bank Artist-in-Residence/Performer
Matt Cronin: Gardener/Community Activist
Tricia Custer: Video Production/Artist/Gardener
Angela Drakeford: Artist
Chance Frank: Artist/Gardener
Matt Freeman: Community Gardener
Cynthia Gehrie: Artist/Gardener
Neil Griess: Artist/Urban Activist
Catherine Harrington: Gardener/Builder/Cook
George Hewitt: Artist, Post Hurricane Katrina Rebuild Volunteer, Furniture
Dr. David J. Hibler, Sr.: Gardening, Community Activism
Maya Jeffereis: Bemis Center Artist-in-Residence/Installation/Sculpture/New Media/Performance
John Kerner: Architect/Artist
Jennifer Keys: Drawing/NAACP
Kim Reid Kuhn: Artist/Urban Activist/Teacher
Peter Langwith: Artist/Community Activist/Sustainable Living
Kayla Meyer: Landscape Architecture
Christina Narwicz: Artist/Gardener
Linn Norton: Art Education
Sarah O Donnell: Bemis Center Artist-in-Residence/Sculptor
Katie Parker: Bemis Center Artist-in-Residence/Sculptor
Dessi Price: Graphic Designer
Terri Sanders: Great Plains Black History Museum
Dr. Daniel Schober: Heath/Nutrition
Tyler Swain: Trash/Recycle Artist/Tinkerer/Construction
Travis Thieszen: Bemis Center Artist-in-Residence/Sculptor
Susan Thomas: Arts/Omaha Creative Institute
Liz Thrash: Gardener/Hobbyist

About Mary Mattingly:
Mary Mattingly is a New York City-based artist whose work has been supported by 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, among others. Mattingly has been featured in Art in America, Artforum, Dwell, China Business News, The New York Times, New York Magazine, Financial Times, New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, and the Village Voice. Mattingly’s efforts have also been covered by BBC News, MSNBC, Fox News, and on Art21’s New York Close Up series.

The artist merges performance, sculpture, architecture and photography to address issues of home, migration, cartography and living systems. She creates photographs and sculptures that depict future and obscure landscapes, makes wearable sculpture, “wearable homes,” and ecological installations. Her work has been exhibited at the International Center of Photography, the Seoul Art Center, the Bronx Museum of the Arts, the New York Public Library, deCordova Museum and Sculpture Park in Massachusetts and the Palais de Tokyo. Mattingly participated in smARTpower: an initiative between the U.S. Department of State and the Bronx Museum of the Arts as artist-ambassador to the Philippines.

Posted in exhibitions, Projects, public art / commissions | Also tagged Bemis Center, Exhibition, Flock House Omaha, Mary Mattingly, Omaha, Urban Research, workshops |

FEEDBACK

March 13, 2008

FEEDBACK

feedback_arrows_logo
The title for FEEDBACK, an exhibition conceived and curated by Eyebeam’s Sustainability Research Group, refers to the self-correcting mechanisms by which systems—in this case, ecological—respond to the influence they exert on their environments.

Numerous projects in the exhibition addressed energy consumption, production and harvesting: A visitor entered the exhibition through Fluxxlab’s Revolution Door, a modified revolving door that harnesses and redistributes human energy. Mouna Andraos’ The Power Cart is a mobile unit that delivers alternative power to people on the street, and Jeff Feddersen’s installation The Off-Grid Outlet is a solar-powered AC outlet and 12V DC power port destined for the Brooklyn restaurant Cafe Habana. Building on existing urban infrastructure, Andrea Polli’s Queensbridge Wind Power Project investigates how clean, renewable wind power might be integrated into the landmark architecture of the Queensboro Bridge.

FEEDBACK also featured the winners of the Eco-Vis Challenge, a two-part juried design competition to raise environmental awareness through creative data visualization projects.

A series of short video-documentaries by Jason Jones of the Brooklyn artists’ collective Not An Alternative, commissioned especially for FEEDBACK, documents the making of each of the displayed projects, providing insight into the creative process. These videos were screened in the main gallery, and are available on Eyebeam’s website.

FEEDBACK

Curators: Amanda McDonald Crowley, Liz Slagus, Paul Amitai, in collaboration with Eyebeam’s Sustainabilty Research Group
Exhibition designers: Fluxxlab
Videographer: Jason Jones, Not An Alternative

Project and artist websites:
Andrea Polli, The Queensbridge Wind Power Project
Annina Rüst, eRiceCooker
Brooke Singer, Superfund365
Eve Mosher, HighWaterLine
Fluxxlab (Jennifer Broutin and Carmen Trudell), Revolution Door
Forays (Geraldine Juárez and Adam Bobbette) Edible Excess
Green Map® System, Green Map® Icons
Leah Gauthier, Sow-In
Michael Mandiberg, The Real Costs
Mouna Andraos, The Power Cart
Preemptive Media, Area’s Immediate Reading (AIR)
Rebecca Bray and Britta Riley, DrinkPeeDrinkPeeDrinkPee
Roger Marvel Architects, Govenors Island Project
The Living (David Benjamin and Soo-in Yang), Living City
The Studio for Urban Projects, Strange Weather
Timm Kekeritz, VirtualWater and WaterFootprint
Fred Beneson, CommitteeCaller
Natalie Jeremijenko, The Environmental Health Clinic
Sustainable South Bronx
SolarOne
Not an Alternative

Feedback Press Release: PRFeedback030408FINAL.

: FEEDBACK installation shot

: Fluxxlab, Revolution Door

: Carmen Troudell, Ayah Bdeir, Addie Wagenknecht

: Brook Singer, Superfund 365

Video interview with Amanda McDonald Crowley about FEEDBACK workshops

Posted in exhibitions, Projects | Also tagged art + science, art + technology, Exhibition, Eyebeam, Feedback, NYC |

Sustainability Research Group

July 3, 2006

Eyebeam Sustainability Research Group

As a cultural worker and curator, I am equally interested in providing contexts for artists to produce new work and research as I am in curating exhibition programs.

Eyebeam art and technology center had a brief to provide critical contexts for artists and technologists to produce, and present new works and new research. Responding to the work being undertaken by artists at Eyebeam, I facilitated the establishment of the Eyebeam Sustainability Research Group in 2006. Initially managed by Rebecca Bray as part of a research internship, it comprised residents, fellows, alumni, and staff at Eyebeam. The structure was very loose and various artists used it as a platform to individually and collectively undertake research, develop projects, programs and exhibitions. As examples, in 2007 Michael Mandiberg, Brooke Singer, and Paul Amitai led an effort to establish an Eco-Vis Challenge; in 2008, Andrea Polli used the Group as a platform and to convene monthly discussions related to her research; the significant exhibition FEEDBACK was collectively conceived by the group in 2008; in 2011 resident artist Stefani Bardin used the group structure to convene conversations and around her research in the area of Food and Emerging Media, as well as a series of XLab Salon dinners. Projects were not specifically curated, rather the research themes at Eyebeam became factors in the selection process for fellowship and residency programs at Eyebeam, and the research structure provided a rich context to produce work. Occasionally larger collaborative public programs also emerged from the group.

Further information about artists, projects, and programs related to this research topic can be found at Eyebeam Sustainability Research Group.

Posted in creative research, Projects, residency programs | Also tagged art + science, art + technology, Eyebeam, NYC, Research, residency program |

Adelaide Festival 2002

February 2, 2002

Adelaide Festival 2002

I was a member of the creative team (artistic directorate) responsible for developing program for the Adelaide Festival 2002.

Peter Sellars was the Artistic Director for the Festival. Associate Directors were: Angharad Wynne-Jones, Jonathan Parsons, Amanda McDonald Crowley, Lynette Wallworth, Waiata Telfer, Catherine Woolcock, Karl Telfer, Gay Bilson, Bridget Ikin.

The Festival was collaboratively programmed around the themes of Environmental Sustainability, the Right to Cultural Diversity, and Truth & Reconciliation.

Our intention was that the Festival be: “an opportunity to return to a primary experience of the function of art and culture. Putting the art back into culture, when culture functions as the imaginative space of society that actively engages in the issues and concerns of the day, celebrating the intangible, spiritual, epic nature of life. Fundamental to this function is process — in which artists and audiences contribute and participate — so that a point of performance or exhibition is experienced as one of many interfaces along a cultural journey. Debate is an essential component of this process because the discussion of ideas, the exchange of information and expertise, creates imaginative space for art, culture and society to combine meaningfully, and makes work that is in constant dialogue with its audiences.”

The Adelaide Festival of Arts, established in 1960 is acknowledged as one of the world’s great arts festivals. 40 years on, our culture and our community are vastly more diverse, and new technologies and new demographics open fantastic new possibilities for wider and deeper levels of participation. “Dynamic and different, Adelaide Festival 2002 was about more than simply buying a ticket, taking your seat and waiting to be entertained. It was about embarking on someone else’s journey only to realise that it is your journey too, about being moved to act and respond.”

In truth while the Festival was wonderful and exhilarating, the journey was not an easy one. Peter Sellars was obliged to resign from the position of artistic director only four months before the Festival opened, and the decision of the associate directors to continue to realise the program was not straight forward. Already in an interview in the local newspaper, the Adelaide Advertiser in May 2001, Peter was quoted as saying “One of the things I’m sticking by is that this will be a festival of seeds and not trees . . . you will see the trees in 2010.” There were, in fact a number of outstanding programs. And there are a number of key legacies that the Festival arguably influenced, including: the establishment of a significant Film Festival in Adelaide; Indigenous welcomes are now standard at cultural events in Adelaide; the central square in Adelaide now has dual naming… Many of these things may have happened with time. I feel certain, however, that we also sowed some seeds for change.

Information is available for conVerge: where art and science meet, a program I co-curated for the Festival. I also have documentation of renaming project, Tarndanyungga, undertaken by a group of artists on the last night of the Festival. Little remains of the online presence for the Adelaide Festival 2002.

You can view the Festival Program from the image below:

You can view the Festival Program as a PDF here.
Or on issuu here.

Posted in festivals, Projects | Also tagged Adelaide, Adelaide Festival 2002, cultural diversity, Festival |