In Habit work-in-progress


Ecosomatics on the Open Field

 Olive Bieringa Gulf Oil meditation SEEDS|Earthdance

Olive Bieringa Gulf Oil meditation SEEDS|Earthdance. photo: Brune Castos

The BodyCartography Project will present a week-long collaborative classroom on “ecosomatics” in the Flat Pak House as part of Walker Art Center’s Open Field programming.

“This collaborative classroom will function to implicate our very cells/selves in how we interact with and understand the environment. It will create the conditions for a new model of transdisciplinary learning across systems and as a result imagine alternate futures in relationship to the issue of sustainability through behavioral re-patterning.

“We will begin each day with a simple movement practice to open up our awareness to ourselves, the group and our environment. A local scientist will facilitate daily sessions with different environmental foci.  Together we will pursue somatic research as a first person embodied science, utilizing ones own body as a tool for understanding emergent properties of whole systems, developing empathy and rewilding ourselves and those around us.

“The week will be facilitated by Olive Bieringa with scientists John Schade (Ecosystem Ecologist  St. Olaf College, Biology and Environmental Studies), Bonnie Ploger (Behavioral Ecologist, Department of Biology & Artist in Residence, Center for Global Environmental Education, Hamline University Environmental Education, Hamline University), Ben Jordan  (Biologist, Harvard University) and Bryce Beverlin II (Biophysicist, University of Minnesota Physics Department).”–BodyCartography Project.

ecosomatics schedule
What is ecosomatics?


If pigs could fly


ZER01 does Mariachi

I often say that the 01SJ Biennial – I’m the artistic director – is multidisciplinary and medium agnostic. I’m not sure I ever thought that meant we would be programming at a mariachi festival.

This weekend, however, I’m very excited about some programming that ZER01 is presenting at the “T-Mobile San Jose Mariachi & Mexican Heritage Festival Presented by Target.”

Pilar Aguero-Esparza and H. Dio Mendoza

Pilar and Dio are San Jose-based artists, and based on the Mariachi Festival’s thematic focus on the Mexican village, I asked them to construct out of recycled materials a tri-partite, temporary “home” for ZER01 and its artists during the festival.


Admission free, toga required

Fight! Fight! Fight! Brooklyn vs. Queens vs. Bronx vs. Manhattan in Duke Riley's Those About to Die Salute You

Those About to Die Salute You, a battle on water wielded with baguette swords and watermelon cannon balls by New York’s art dignitaries, will take place on Thursday, August 13, 2009 at 6 pm in a flooded World’s Fair-era reflecting pool in Flushing Meadows Corona Park, just outside of the Queens Museum of Art. Various types of vessels have been designed and constructed by artist provocateur Duke Riley and his collaborators: the galleons, some made of reeds harvested in the park, will be used to stage a citywide battle of the art museums in which representatives from the Queens Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, Bronx Museum of the Arts, and El Museo del Barrio will battle before a toga-clad crowd of frenzied onlookers.”

via Queens Museum of Art

“For the Queens Museum, Mr. Riley proposed a naval battle reminiscent of naumachia, a type of bloody sea battle conducted in basins, lakes and amphitheaters to entertain Roman emperors like Caesar, Nero and later, Napoleon in Paris. More lavish than regular gladiator games, these boat battles were sometimes saved for moments when the restless or hungry masses needed placating, historians say. Mr. Riley says he appreciated the sentiment, as the world suffers through an economic downturn.

“The artist also found a parallel in the 1920s economic decadence of the “Great Gatsby” era when the park in Queens was a coal ash heap. He offered to build his boats using Phragmites australis, a wheat-like reed that is choking out the biodiversity of the park’s lakes and nearby wetlands because it can tolerate the ashy pollutants still seeping underneath.”

via WSJ


Bollywood in Times Square

I want a flash mob.

via flavorwire


Cloud Turn – a performance

Cloud Turn

Aniccha Arts premieres Cloud Turn the performance component of The Weather Vein Project. Cloud Turn reflects on current and future capabilities of human weather manipulation, a power one could consider to be Godlike. Aniccha Arts, renowned for their originality, brings detailed, sinuous, and percussive Indian based dance movement integrated with their highly manipulated media style. This performance is constructed with content from workshops conducted at various locations throughout the Twin Cities as well as from the blog at http://wecanchangetheweather.org.

Tickets

Tickets: Adults: $12; Students (with ID): $10
Dates: 7:30 p.m., Friday, June 5, – Sunday, June 7, 2009
Venue: Pillsbury House Theatre, 3501 Chicago Avenue S., Minneapolis, MN 55407
Box Office: (612) 825-0459; http://pillsburyhousetheatre.org

Credits

Director: Dipankar Mukherjee; Lead Artist: PramilaVasudevan; Performance Media and Technology: Jennifer Jurgens; Audio Installation: Mike Westerlund; Lobby Installation: Mark Fox; Lighting Design: Mike Wangen; Graphic Design: Ryan Michlitsch; Photography: Jeff Ferguson; Stage Manager and Costume Designer: Romina Takimoto;  Dance Collaborators: Sarah Beck-Esmay, Chitra Vairavan

The Weather Vein Project


Aniccha Arts, led by Pramila Vasudevan, and driven by Mark Fox, Jennifer Jurgens, and Mike Westerlund present the Weather Vein Project. This project consists of a blog, workshops at various performance and educational locations, a performance at the Pillsbury House Theatre (June 5-7, 2009), and an installation at the Weisman Art Museum (July, 2009).

Support

The Weather Vein Project is a commission of Northern Lights’ Art(ists) on the Verge program with the generous support of the Jerome Foundation. Additional support provided by the McKnight Foundation, the Weisman Art Museum, Minneapolis College of Art and Design, and Pangea World Theater.


Shop ‘n’ Mix


Matt Roberts and the Mobile Performance Group performed at the 1st 01SJ Biennial/ISEA2006 Symposium and made a great impression. Below is a clip from one of their latest roving public art projects, an interactive shopping cart. Very cool.


Join the Gratitude Guerilla Action Walk on May 24th!

Gratitude Guerilla Action is a walking “Thank-You”  being performed in various cities as a simple, non-dogmatic gesture of gratitude and a reminder of our collective good fortune. An elegant iridescent balloon with the words “thank-you” printed in white is carried by participating walkers as they experience the sublime peacefulness that results from giving gratitude to no one in particular.

Lead by artist Krista Kelly Walsh with start up support from Forecast Public Art, the Gratitude Guerillas have taken 762.2 steps, given away 900 balloons, and hosted 64 walks in four cities!

I was lucky enough to participate in one of these walks last summer. It was dusk and it had been raining all day with the clouds clearing just long enough to form a striking sunset to reflecting the slick sidewalks. I will admit public performance art is not always something I am comfortable with but after a few moments if felt more like meditative practice than an attention grabbing gesture. It was truly amazing how just the tiniest bit of consciousness of gratitude for the world around you grows into an overabundant rush of appreciation for all that we take for granted in our everyday lives.

If you are in the twin Cities metro area I encourage you to take the time to walk with Krista. This will be the first of two actions that are planned for 2009. In the spring , a “thank-you” Balloon Give-a-Way on Como Lake in St. Paul and A Sunset Walk on Raspberry Island

MAY 24TH 4-7PM COMO LAKE ST. PAUL, MN
(Rain date MAY 25TH 4-7PM)
see the web site for further information and weather updates:  http://www.gratitudeguerilla.webs.com/


Public/Private in “Pay Attention”


Improv Everywhere goes to Russia

I’m sorry, I just love these experiments with art in public places by Improv Everywhere.


If the Shua fits…

Shua Group test

“If you’re near Federal Hill [in Baltimore] on Sunday afternoon, and 200 people simultaneously drop to their knees and begin crawling on the ground, you might think that you’re witnessing a mass, public-spirited search for a lost contact lens.

“You’d be completely wrong, but also kind of right. Public Moves Federal Hill has nothing to do with locating a tinted disc roughly the size of a fingernail. But the community art project has everything to do with seeing the world from a sharper, more focused point of view.

“‘Hopefully, this will encourage both the people participating and accidental observers to open their senses to what’s happening around us,’ says Joshua Bisset, 34, who is organizing the event with his wife, Laura Quattrocchi.

“‘That’s really one of the purposes of art. If I’m in a gallery looking at a painting, and then go outside, I’m flooded with details about my surroundings that I hadn’t noticed before. If people see this work, and a day later, see a kid scrambling down Federal Hill, they might look at it in a new way. One of our goals is to show how everyday movement is inherently aesthetic and can be transformed into art.'”

via Baltimore Sun
Public Moves Federal Hill
Shua Group

Compare Shua’s intervention to Francis Alys’ When Faith Moves Mountains (2002).

Francis Alys, When Faith Moves Mountains

“On April 11, 2002, five hundred volunteers were supplied with shovels and asked to form a single line at the foot of a giant sand dune in Ventanilla, an area outside Lima. This human comb pushed a certain quantity of sand a certain distance, thereby moving a sixteen-hundred-foot-long sand dune about four inches from its original position.”

via Artforum

It also reminds me of one of my favorite public performances, Frozen Grand Central by Improv Everywhere.


Gratitude Guerilla Action

Krista Kelley Walsh, a 2008 Art(ists) on the Verge recipient, is organizing a Gratitude Guerilla Action Sunday Oct 19th Phalen Park, St. Paul 10-5.

Gratitude Guerilla is a public art action currently done in City Parks and walking paths in St. Paul Mn…. because there is so much to be thankful for and when we are aware of our appreciation we are more likely to take care of what we have.


Projection and puppetry under the bridge

On Monday night, Oct. 13 (and Oct. 14 + 19), Andrea Steudel, one of our Art(ists) On the Verge grantees, along with Kyle Loven and Elise Langer put on a short, outdoor projection/puppetry performance with support from Minneapolis Art on Wheels and Ali Momeni. Bring a blanket and your curiosity.
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=94572140536

Under the 3rd Avenue bridge

Under the 3rd Avenue bridge

Where

Under the 3rd Avenue Bridge, St. Anthony Main, East Bank
100 Main St. SE
Minneapolis, MN

When

Monday, October 13, 2008
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Sunday, October 19, 2008
8:00pm – 8:30pm