Kelley Meister
b. Houston, TX
Lives and works in Minneapolis, MN
Biography
Kelley Meister (ze/hir) is an interdisciplinary artist who uses drawings, sculpture, and time-based art to build transformative experiences and environments that encourage empathy through a shared emotional experience or exploration. For AOV11, Meister joins visual observation and data collection with a 100-mile bicycle ride between nuclear power plants in Minnesota throughout July, August, and September 2021. Hir work is documented at hotzone.kelleymeister.com. Get to know Kelley Meister: check out this Q&A ze did here.
Artist Statement
I am an interdisciplinary visual artist who builds transformative experiences that encourage empathy through a shared emotional exploration. My work primarily utilizes drawing, hand-made objects, digital media, site-specific installations, and socially engaged, participatory events that overlap and intersect. Over the last decade, my work has focused on shared worldwide issues, such as climate change and nuclear war, in order to investigate empathetic responses that emerge from global threats and existential fear. Through my work, I seek an antidote to this fear.
Over the course of the extended AOV11 fellowship, the world shifted in unexpected ways. Fear and uncertainty became ever-present in my life, beginning with watching the shelves rapidly empty in stores. I knew my work had something to offer to this moment, but for much of the fellowship period, I felt paralyzed by fear and corresponding grief. Eventually, last winter I found a new working pattern, one that was slower, more introspective, and deeply personal.
For the culmination of my AOV project, I launched a long-term investigation of the 100-mile stretch of land and water between the two nuclear power plants in Mni Sota, so-called Minnesota, at Prairie Island and Monticello. This includes a sculptural component of windsocks that call attention to the wind that moves particulates, smoke, dust, pollen, seeds, insects, and more through the 100-mile space. The wind disperses what is here, while also depositing small artifacts from along its route. These windsocks were installed at various points throughout the 100-mile HOT ZONE area throughout the month of September 2021.
Additionally, I created a participatory online platform that explores our proximity to nuclear waste through data collection; drawing and visual observation; bicycle rides and other mobile endeavors; environmental radiation monitors; and connections between people. Audiences are invited to submit drawings and photographic observations to the website hotzone.kelleymeister.com.
At an informal gathering, others were invited to join me in looking closely at the ecosystem in a small oak savanna lying adjacent to the Haha Wakpa / Gitchi Ziibi / Mississippi River. Guided by a small zine that I created that included drawing prompts, we carefully observed plants and small creatures of the habitat, created a document of their lives in that location on that date, and added our observations to the website.
My goal is for this work to bring new awareness to our environment and to the delicate microcosm around us. Many people are surprised to hear that there are two nuclear power plants just outside the Twin Cities. By taking time to look closely at the ecosystem along the river, this work opens up space for deeper observation and contemplation of our future.
A.P. Looze, Heart Strings: A Beading Ritual
A.P. Looze
Lives and works in Minneapolis, MN
Biography
A.P. Looze (they/them) is a multi-disciplinary artist who surrenders to the unknown and believes in the healing power of the divine. For AOV11, Looze expanded upon a practice derived through the pandemic by creating a month-long immersive ceremony that illuminates ancestral, descendant, and earth wisdom channeled through the medium of a flower: the rose. Get to know A.P. Looze: check out this Q&A they did here.
Artist Statement
The core of my creative process is devoted to healing and self-actualization. I play and research alone, in a room or in nature, unlocking the secrets, tricks, and mysteries of materials, myths, grief, ecology, ancestry, and the cosmos. I use a diverse set of artistic practices to draw connections between themes. Art making is a multi-dimensional pilgrimage for me, in which I risk losing the safety of the familiar for the sake of new learning.
I am invested in making rituals and work that can be a common meeting ground with and for others who are also seeking to uproot violent histories, who are recovering from the cultural plague of narcissism, who are invested in building a post-white supremacy reality.
I want to contribute to a world that values love and connection, treats art making as sacred practice, and contributes to the emotional, psychic, and physical well-being of myself, others, and the earth.
Heart Strings: A Beading Ritual (2021) is a month-long contemplative and embodied ritual conducted both in solitude and with others intended to foster connection to the body and the earth using specific parts of the rose.
In the formless days of the pandemic, I began stringing rosehips. It turned into a private ritual: first soaking the rosehips to soften them, and then ending the day by stringing them onto strings of various lengths. Prayers, mantras, and songs came to me through this mundane act, and I was moved to tears, thinking of my lineage, my body, our collective body, the hardship of the pandemic, and the trauma and genocide this country was founded on. I was tending to the sacred work of grief. Without realizing it, I had recreated an ancestral practice that was made clear to me later while researching the rosary.
Before the 59-bead rosary was indoctrinated into the Catholic church, rosaries were strung to be whatever length people found necessary. Before Catholicism, prayer beads were strung from gathered flowers and seeds in honor of the mother goddesses of Paleolithic and pre-Christian times.
Stringing rosehips has brought me in closer contact with my ancestors who prayed down toward the earth to honor the goddesses of the land who provided them with life. When I string these beads, I am reminded of the deep and atrocious violence the Catholic church has inflicted upon so many cultures and people, the way crosses were hammered into the ground as a means to seize land from indigenous people. With each bead, I carry forth the intention of being a better steward to this land and its first peoples, and I thank the wisdom of the rose itself.
For Heart Strings, I brought my materials into a solitary backyard studio in my neighborhood. I combined days of stringing beads alone, with days open to practice with others. I invited people to sit with me and shared instructions about how to string the rosehips, then let the beading itself guide the interaction. I asked how people connect to time, ancestors, or descendants. Participants could either take the rosehips home with them or leave them in the space. As the strings accumulated, I hung them in the studio, creating an installation inspired by the month of shared creation and reflection.
Candice Davis, Slave Schedule Peripherals
Candice Davis
b. 1996, San Antonio, TX
Lives and works in Minneapolis, MN
Biography
Candice Davis (she/her) is a conceptual artist working primarily in digital media, installation, and performance, with a focus on engaging audiences with social issues. For AOV11, Davis engages an interest in genealogy through continued work on an online search tool that would allow Black Americans to search through Slave Schedules–lists that prior to 1870 serve as the primary means for documenting Black people, namelessly and as property. Davis‘ fellowship period has also included a host of adjacent artistic projects, all of which explore non-empirical visual representations of historical and genealogical research.
Artist Statement
My conceptual practice holds a mirror to White violence and complacency. I primarily focus on digital media, installation, and performance as a means of witnessing the trans-generational experiences of marginalized people. As a Black woman in the United States, I recognize my existence as the result of centuries of displacement, trauma, exploitation, and propagation for the benefit of Western capitalism. My work explores an identity formed by generational survival of and resistance to imperialism.
My process relies on research and examination of the past as a framework for critiquing the present. I prioritize the meaningful way that visualization and tactility can help make generational experiences of the disenfranchised more visible and intellectually accessible. The archives and history of Black people are integral to my practice. I source physical and visual materials from the archive and use them in my work as a means of bringing them back into the present. I mimic the way that, when retold, histories that exist exclusively in an oral tradition, are fluid and become integrated into personal memory rather than remaining distant and stagnant. By visually showcasing parallels between issues of transgenerational relevance, I create a more easily identifiable link between the experiences of my diasporic contemporaries and those of their ancestors.
Through my work in personal genealogy and family history, I have learned to consider how the hierarchy of a physical or evidential archive within Western culture excludes people who have been marginalized. In a country like the United States, where history is highly reliant on documentation, people of color often fall victim to poor documentation by a racist government. To limit the genealogical search process to only the parameters under which the original documents were created poses a particular challenge for historians of color. And to limit the interpretation of these records to that which is purely empirical tends to disregard the emotionality and nuances of their context and impact.
In 2018, I began prototyping a search engine that would allow Black Americans to search through Slave Schedules. Prior to 1870 the primary means of documenting Black people was namelessly, as property, on these Schedules. The proposed search tool would allow users to filter through digital transcripts of the Slave Schedules using parameters of age, gender, and racial identity [Black or Mulatto], in order to identify the slaveowners of slave ancestors, unnamed on the documents. The advantage of identifying an ancestor’s potential slaveowners may point towards additional information about the slaveowner’s family and plantation. Knowing a potential slaveowner’s name helps researchers begin to unpack name origins, helps with the identification of other primary documents, and reinforces accountability for slavery by implicating beneficiaries by name. The goal is to share the code through open source developing websites for others to use as a basis for their own similar database creation.
The Art(ists) on the Verge fellowship period has facilitated a host of adjacent artistic projects, all of which explore non-empirical visual representations of historical and genealogical research. The first of these projects was the digitization of family photos and documentation of oral histories. The second project, 1900 Columbus: Artist Working with Archive, was an installation and publication surrounding the visual storytelling of histories related to location. The final interpretive projects from the fellowship period were part of a larger examination of methods of memorial for ancestors. Exhibited under the title I Was Born With A Silver Spoon in Your Mouth, this series of projects maintains a focus on the penultimate goal of realizing the Slave Schedule Search while acknowledging that within the realm of historical research there are limitations to what quantitative records can represent. This is especially so when those records were created in a context of oppression and trauma.
Spring Howl Telethon 2021
Northern Lights.mn announces the Spring Howl Telethon, a live televised variety show produced by Northern Lights.mn partner Minnesota Community Network Channel 6 (MCN6) to support Northern Spark and Northern Lights.mn programming.
Featuring:
John Gebretatose of HUGE Improv Theater and Blackout Improv as host!
26BATS! as house band!
Ifrah Mansour as Spring Howl poet!
Sami Pfeffer as the Telephone Operator!
A reprise of the 2013 Northern Spark Kazoo Band led by Scotty Reynolds!
Guest stars!
Spring Howl is free to attend and will be broadcast live on May 21, 2021, 7:30 – 9 pm on MCN6 and the Northern Lights.mn Facebook page.
Spring Howl Telethon
May 21, 2021, 7:30 – 9 pm
FREE to watch live!
Watch: Minnesota Community Network Channel 6
Watch: Spring Howl Event Facebook page
RSVP to our FaceBook event to get frequent updates on the line up!
Register now on Eventbrite and make an early donation to be eligible for door prizes drawn throughout the event.
Including:
- A cocktail kit from Crooked Waters distillery or Du Nord Craft Spirits
- A $100 gift certificate to Solo Vino Bottle Shop in St. Paul
- A year of beans from Big Watt Coffee
- A year of beer from Fulton Brewery
- More to come!
Spring Howl Telethon supports the artistic programming of Northern Lights.mn, the producers of the beloved Northern Spark festival, Illuminate the Lock and Art(ists) on the Verge fellowship among other projects.
Marina Zurkow and Paul Paradiso, Flight
“Flight explores the notion of “air” through both poetic and practical views.”
Flight
Flight explores the notion of “air” through both poetic and practical views. The custom data-driven application animates a vision of what populates the proximate airspace using data at real-time and averaged time scales. Airplanes and satellites on schedules, up-to-the-minute weather and air pollution conditions, current highway traffic, voluntarily reported bird sightings, less credible but nonetheless “real” databases for UFOs, year-end birth and death data, and the inclusion of extant but undocumented bats and less desirable birds such as pigeons and starlings compose the world of Flight. A second layer of text information appears periodically that displays snippets of the current local news, in which the words “air” and “flight” are central.
Flight will be projected on the west facade of the Hyatt Regency by Mall of America® from 5 pm to midnight, beginning Monday, January 29.
Marina Zurkow and Paul Paradiso
Marina Zurkow and Paul Paradiso worked on Flight using data, animation, and custom software, to realize difficult environmental intersections. Zurkow has worked on Anthropocene problems since 2006, using a wide variety of media; Paradiso is an interactive and multi-media software developer and technology designer. He specializes in interactive software and hardware, content and data management and control systems for exhibitions.
Illuminate South Loop
Flight is part of Illuminate South Loop, a three-day event at Bloomington Central Park (8100 33rd Avenue South) in Bloomington’s South Loop District from February 1 – 3, 2018. This creative placemaking initiative focuses on leveraging the power of the arts, culture and creativity to engage the community.
Pramila Vasudevan: Dancebums, Emily Gastineau, Pedro Lander
“How can we be true to ourselves, while putting our best face forward? Especially when we’re hiding inside puffy parkas. “
Pramila Vasudevan curates Dancebums, Emily Gastineau, Pedro Lander
For Illuminate South Loop, Pramila Vasudevan has curated new work by DaNCEBUMS, Emily Gastineau and Pedro Lander. She writes: “These choreographers have unique voices and performative responses made of humor, critique, invention, and alarm. I am interested in how these artists can fill a viewer with emotion, questions, and a desire to move. I look forward to how their works will materialize at Illuminated South Loop.”
Each performance is approximately 20 minutes and all 3 will be performed in succession at 6 pm Thursday, February 1, and Friday, February 2 only.
DaNCEBUMS, Superfaux
Thursday and Friday, 6:55 pm – 7:15 pm
Superfaux is a precursor. A substance to kickstart something bigger. With this piece we’re only going skin deep and getting inspired by camouflage – disruptive coloration, concealing coloration, disguise, and mimicry.
How can we be true to ourselves, while putting our best face forward? Especially when we’re hiding inside puffy parkas. Known for our bombastic and energetic performances, this winter DaNCEBUMS will be blending into nature and pretending to be what we’re not. Not all risks look like virtuosity and strength. Sometimes they just look pretend.
This dance is highly self-aware. It watches itself, delights in contradictions, and tries to turn from real to fake and back again.
Created and performed by Kara Motta, Eben Kowler, Karen McMenamey Music by Eric Mayson
Emily Gastineau, The Claque (for Astroturf)
Thursday and Friday, intermittently, 6:15 pm – 7:25 pm
claque
a. An organized body of persons who, either for hire or from other motives, band together to applaud or deride a performance and thereby attempt to influence the audience (esp. in French opera houses ca. 19th cen.)
b. A form of extortion
c. A group of people hired to heckle a performer or public speaker
d. A group of sycophantic followers, fawning admirers, flatterers, or legacy hunters
e. A slap in the face or on the cheek
“It is no longer possible to regard the tear as an unmediated production of interiority, an expression of the secrets of the soul, or even a sign of emotion’s presence (either prior or imminent) in the subject. … [Tears demand to] be read and interpreted, for not only are they not pure expressions of the feeling self, they are fundamentally not to be trusted.” – Eugenie Brinkema
See also: rieurs (laughers), pleureurs (criers), chatouilleurs (ticklers), bisseurs (encore-ers)
“Emotion’s just so terrifying the world refuses to believe that it can be pursued as discipline, as form.” – Chris Kraus
See also: shill, laugh track, professional mourning, cheerleading, payola, astroturfing
Performers: Anat Shinar, Alys Ayumi Ogura, Justin Spooner, Charles Campbell, Beth Erickson, Kaya Lovestrand, Alison Hoyer, Linden Baierl, Emily Michaels King, Elle Thoni
Pedro Lander with Zoe Cinel, Masc4masc
Thursday and Friday, 6:15 pm – 6:35 pm
The blurred concept of masculinity that the Football industry upholds bleeds into all areas of society and affects all people. Toxic masculinity is rooted in misogyny, taught from a young age to children, negatively impacting female-identified, male-identi
Masc4masc will manifest as an installation on the performer’s body. Pulling from concrete imagery as well as abstract ideas. What does gender exploitation and oppression look like in a moving installation? We wish to share, through performance and visual creation, the specific ways in which these concepts are perpetuated and instilled in the public imagination.
Curator and Artists
Pramila Vasudevan is a choreographer and interdisciplinary artist and the founding Artistic Director of Aniccha Arts (2004). She is the Director of Naked Stages, an emerging artist fellowship for performing artists and also a teaching artist with Upstream Arts. She is a recipient of the 2017 Guggenheim fellowship and 2016 Mcknight Award for choreography.
DaNCEBUMS is a dance band working collaboratively and non-hierarchically in Minneapolis. Dubbed “the best dance party in town,” their work straddles the arty and the party – existing between precise technique and a casual pop sensibility. They perform in theaters, bars, music venues and parties.
Emily Gastineau is an artist who investigates contemporary spectatorship through performance, choreography, writing, and organizing. Her work has been presented locally and nationally as part of the performance duo Fire Drill. She is currently based between Minneapolis and Amsterdam, while studying at DAS Choreography, Amsterdamse Hogeschool voor de Kunsten.
Pedro Pablo Lander is a Minneapolis based, Venezuelan performance artist. Currently a teaching artist with the Pillsbury House Theatre and with Upstream Arts. Zoe Cinel is a multimedia artist and curator from Florence, Italy. She sees art as a platform for dialogue. Zoe is currently pursuing her Master in Visual Studies at the Minneapolis College of Art a Design.
Illuminate South Loop
Vitamin D is part of Illuminate South Loop, a three-day event at Bloomington Central Park (8100 33rd Avenue South) in Bloomington’s South Loop District from February 1 – 3, 2018. This creative placemaking initiative focuses on leveraging the power of the arts, culture and creativity to engage the community.
Robin Schwartzman, Duck Duck What?
“. . . playfully reveals the demographics of those visiting the South Loop during the week of the Super Bowl 52.”
Duck Duck What?
Duck Duck What? plays off of a game that if you grew up in Minnesota, you probably called Duck Duck Gray Duck, but if you grew up in any other state, you’d call Duck Duck Goose. Borrowing from the idea of the scoreboard, participants can hit a giant button to vote for Gray Duck or Goose. The piece will keep track of all the votes throughout the duration of the event and playfully reveal the demographics of those visiting the South Loop during the week of the Super Bowl 52.
Robin Schwartzman
Robin Schwartzman creates playful, large-scale public art. She is best known for her installations featured at Northern Spark, the Walker Art Center and the Indianapolis Museum of Art, to name a few. Schwartzman’s obsession with play has led her to take inspiration from amusement parks and miniature golf around the world.
Illuminate South Loop
Duck Duck What? is part of Illuminate South Loop, a three-day event at Bloomington Central Park (8100 33rd Avenue South) in Bloomington’s South Loop District from February 1 – 3, 2018. This creative placemaking initiative focuses on leveraging the power of the arts, culture and creativity to engage the community.
Plus/And, Way Station Warming House
“Teahouse guests . . . enter to find a rich and warm environment for meeting fellow travelers and Minnesota residents.”
Way Station Warming House
Way Station Warming House is a temporary cafe and transit shelter at a light rail station, giving visitors to the Minnesota winter a place to warm themselves and enjoy the diverse culture and rich hospitality of our state. Way Station Warming House transforms a standard construction trailer into a cafe that serves free hot drinks in the tradition of Somali Community. Teahouse guests, whether festival-goers or light rail passengers, enter to find a rich and warm environment for meeting fellow travelers and Minnesota residents. When the teahouse is open, it will present regular programming by the Somali Museum of Minnesota, including storytelling, poetry, and music. The nearby Minnesota Valley National Wildlife Refuge will teach about migratory birds, navigation by stars, and our rivers. Ceramic artist Anna Metcalfe has also created a limited edition of handmade ceramic cups that will be sold as fundraiser for the Somali Museum of Minnesota. Way Station Warming House is a celebration of the people moving to and through Minnesota, the way our lives are all warmed by our neighbors, and the spirit of giving that we encounter every day.
Plus/And
Plus/And is a collaboration between artists Amanda Lovelee and Emily Stover, designing tools and spaces that drive culture and behavior to adapt to our evolving world. Our projects are sustainable, joyful, art-based experiments with measurable outcomes, focused on creating change wherever we go.
Illuminate South Loop
Warm Welcome Teahouse is part of Illuminate South Loop, a three-day event at Bloomington Central Park (8100 33rd Avenue South) in Bloomington’s South Loop District from February 1 – 3, 2018. This creative placemaking initiative focuses on leveraging the power of the arts, culture and creativity to engage the community.
Alyssa Baguss, Vitamin D: A Pep Rally for Spring
. . . a good old fashioned pep rally to raise your winter weary spirits and plead for spring to return to the 45th parallel.
Vitamin D
Locals and guests from warmer climates are invited to experience a good old fashioned pep rally to raise your winter weary spirits and plead for spring to return to the 45th parallel. Vitamin D: A pep rally for spring will be an evening of pagan pageantry including cheerleaders chanting, drum corps rituals and a spirit raising grand finale. Get your very own sign of spring and imbibe in a little UV light therapy. Vitamin D will wake up your senses and cheer in the best part of Minnesota: Spring.
The evening will consist of two hours of over the top pep rally-like entertainment to cheer in spring and say farewell to winter. Upon arrival, pick up signs of spring foam finger mitts to cheer in the season and gather around light therapy box campfires to ward off the winter blues. The program will include a warm up by Insphyre fire jugglers, pep rally band performances by Minnesota Brass, Twin Cities Brass, the Minnesota Vikings SKOL Line and a spirit squad appearance by Kennedy High School to cheer you up. The Richfield High School Marching Band will close the event with a spirit raising finale.
Alyssa Baguss
Alyssa Baguss’s practice explores drawing processes, large works on paper and interactive and participatory public programming. She is a visual artist and arts program director, who works out of Minneapolis, Minnesota. Alyssa is a 2015 & 2017 recipient of the Minnesota State Arts Board Artist Initiative Grant. Her work has been exhibited in the Twin Cities and regionally, including Burnet Gallery, Soo Visual Arts Center, Minnesota Museum of American Art, Rosalux Gallery and at the Rochester Art Center as a part of the Jerome emerging artist series in 2017.
Performers
Insphyre Performers
Insphyre Performance is highly known for their fire shows and light shows. They have been creating unforgettable and transformative experiences across the globe since 2007.
Kennedy High School Cheer Team
The Kennedy High School Cheer Team is comprised of 9-11th grade students who cheer throughout the school year for the JFK football, basketball and hockey teams.
Minnesota Brass
Minnesota Brass shares a unique passion for the live performing arts by producing ensembles and events, rooted in the drum and bugle corps tradition, that challenge our members to reach their full potential while inspiring our audiences.
Richfield High School Marching Band
SKOL Line
Not your typical drumline, the Skol Line uses a variety of rhythms and visuals, incorporating rock and roll drumming alongside drum corps style, endearing them to Vikings fans of all ages.
Twin Cities Brass
Bringing the grandeur and excellence of European-style brass bands to the heart of Minnesota. Promoting leadership and inspiration for younger generations and enriching lives through music.
Illuminate South Loop
Vitamin D is part of Illuminate South Loop, a three-day event at Bloomington Central Park (8100 33rd Avenue South) in Bloomington’s South Loop District from February 1 – 3, 2018. This creative placemaking initiative focuses on leveraging the power of the arts, culture and creativity to engage the community.
Goodspace Murals, I Am a Water Protector
… collaboratively painting large-scale water protector murals inspired by a youth-centered trip led by Indigenous Roots and MN350 to Standing Rock …
For Northern Spark 2017 GoodSpace Murals with MN350 and Indigenous Roots invited the audience at the Commons to paint. “We will be collaboratively painting large-scale water protector murals inspired by the youth-centered trip led by Indigenous Roots and MN350 to Standing Rock in fall 2016.” No painting experience or expertise necessary- we’ll walk you through the steps. After Northern Spark the murals – painted by you! – will be installed all over town to remind us of the role that we play in protecting our water.
Local Mexica group Kalpulli Yaocenotxli will open our space with a blessing at the beginning of the night and will rejoin us at sunrise as we raise 4 of the murals (with your help!) to meet the sun. We will also be joined by the Bohemian Press Print Collective who will be live-screenprinting water protector prints. Mural painting will happen all night.
I Am a Water Protector was part of Climate Rising Collaboration (CRC), a set of projects that paired artists with organizations that work directly on issues concerning energy, environmental justice and climate change. Festival artists and staff worked together to find connections while the organization lent its resources and expertise to help each project reach its zenith. CRC was generously supported by the McKnight Foundation.
Artists
Since 2012, Greta McLain and Candida Gonzalez have been working together as GoodSpace Murals to create community artworks that focus on the power of the process as well as the product. Through art-making they highlight the significance of free expression and the power of the visual voice!
Team Credits
MN350
Indigenous Roots
Kalpulli Yaocenoxtli
Bohemian Press Print Collective
Links
Water Bar & Public Studios, Anthropocene Water Stations
Water Bar & Public Studio is a bar that serves free local tap water.
Thirsty? Fill up your water bottle at one of three Anthropocene Water Stations created by Water Bar & Public Studio. These stations are spread throughout the festival, each one featuring a drinking water selected to illuminate connections between land, water, and society in the anthropocene epoch. Pick up a free publication created by Water Bar artists and scientists.
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Water Bar & Public Studio is a bar that serves free local tap water. It’s also an art space and incubator of collaborative projects on water, place, and environment. Led by artists Shanai Matteson and Colin Kloecker of Works Progress Studio, Water Bar works with a diverse network of partners, including other artists, science researchers, environmental advocates, and our neighbors in Northeast Minneapolis and across the state of Minnesota.
In addition to our storefront taproom and public studio, we bring our pop-up Water Bar to other places and communities, working with local organizations to create projects that build relationships with and in place.
Water Bar & Public Studio is an artist-led Public Benefit Corporation. We sustain our storefront space and community programs by providing creative services to other businesses and organizations, through strategic partnerships with nonprofit organizations and government agencies, and investment from others who value what we’re building together.
Links
Preston Drum, Traffic Jam Scene
Imagine a world where we aren’t isolated beings…
Cars jam the highway, you’re running late and every radio station seems to be playing commercials—the commute can be a real drag! Feeling trapped by your routine? Why not band together with the other drivers and manifest an escape? Imagine a world where we aren’t isolated beings sitting in tin cans wasting time and fuel but rather creative entities embarking on a mission to save the world! Join us for Traffic Jam Scene, commissioned for Northern Spark 2017 and appearing at the upcoming Jamestown ArtSpark Festival (Jamestown, ND) in August, is an interactive installation where you can take in an original superhero action flick from the comfort of our custom built cardboard cars. You and the other drivers play the most important role in this scene as you return to the real world ready to lighten your carbon footprint. All ages are welcome to this traffic jam turned drive-in movie theatre, though parental guidance is suggested. Show times are not set. Presentations run on a loop. Traffic fines doubled when workers are present.
Watch the movie trailer for Traffic Jam Scene:
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Preston Drum’s multimedia work explores notions of memory and performance through non-linear storytelling. His interactive installations often frame the audience as a participant in the art. He has been exhibited throughout the country at venues such as Jonathan Ferrara Gallery, The Minneapolis Institute of Art and The Walker Art Center.
Nick Barsness is an aspiring filmmaker currently studying Cinema Production at Minneapolis Community Technical College. He has collaborated with Preston Drum on a previous installation and video called “Living Room Scene” that was recently on exhibition at Kolman and Pryor Gallery in Minneapolis, MN. His influences include the auteurs Ingmar Bergman and Francis Ford Coppola. He’s currently crafting a noir inspired screenplay called, La Mano Nera, a story of three characters in 1960’s Los Angeles.
Links
Cedarside Coalition, BUILD•NO•BORDERS
… environmental genocide and the urgency of including the voices of immigrant and POC communities…
BUILD•NO•BORDERS was an environmentally responsive installation and ritual for Northern Spark 2017 that invited the community to reflect on climate change, environmental genocide and the urgency of including the voices of immigrant and POC communities. Cedarside is a community-based collaboration using arts to educate and connect.
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The Cedarside Coalition consists of Ayano ‘Ace’ Jiru, Sha Cage, Khadra Figi, Jayanthi Kyle, Hassan Hassan, EG Bailey, Fayise Abrahim, Uche Irogebu, Truthmaze, Akiko Ostlund, Roza Brooks, Zania Coleman
Links
Rachel Breen and Nickey Robare, Behind the Seams
How did your t-shirt get made? Who sewed your jeans? How many miles did the raw cotton travel from the field to the factory to the mall?
The garment industry is the world’s second largest contributor to climate change and employs millions across the globe for incredibly low wages. Behind the Seams, presented at Northern Spark 2017, created a pop-up garment factory in the streets of Lowertown, where participants could watch garment workers – paid a fair minimum wage of $15/hr – sew re-purposed t-shirts. While they wandered the factory floor, they chatted with the garment workers about climate change, “fast fashion,” and labor standards.
After visiting the factory, enter the boutique and choose a personal commitment to help change the garment industry. Before you leave, select a shirt from the boutique and “pay” with your commitment, joining fellow Northern Spark attendees in creating a more just and environmentally friendly garment industry.
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Nickey Robare has been sewing and creating unique fashion since childhood. After making a commitment to sew all her own clothing, she started The Fashion Ration, an alterations and tailoring business. Offering body positive and queer friendly sewing services, Nickey wants to help everyone embrace their truest selves through fashion.
Rachel Breen investigates social justice issues through drawing, installation, performance and public art projects. Experimentation with mediums and processes is a core aspect of her studio practice. Her main tool is a sewing machine. She is a Professor at Anoka Ramsey Community College where she teaches painting and drawing.
Links
Sara Fowler, Ben Moren and Tyler Stefanich, Collective Action, in conversation
“More than anything, we felt it was really important to make real connections with people face-to-face, rather than just wandering around the festival having an individual experience, but figuring out how to activate this collective experience where people are really doing things together in physical space.”
Assistant Curator Elle Thoni sat down with Sara Fowler, Ben Moren and Tyler Stefanich, the artist team behind Collective Action!, Northern Spark 2017’s festival-wide game.
ELLE: So, to begin, your team is coming to the game designing table from a variety of artistic backgrounds. What are they?
BEN: Well, I come from visual arts and multimedia art, combining filmmaking, performance, software development… so kind of all the pieces you would need. I do lots of work that centers on interaction, but not necessarily with the classic parameters that make a game a game.
SARA: I’m trained and work professionally as a graphic designer and an illustrator. I’m a freelancer and do most of my work within the arts in some capacity. I also like to give some of my practice to activism, supporting environmental efforts with my professional background.
TYLER: And I come from visual arts as well, doing installation as well as performance. I’ve worked for awhile in design and more technical web design for nonprofits. Now I manage an experimental game lab in Los Angeles.
ELLE: So when you came together to design a game, what was important to you? What kind of experience did you want people to have?
SARA: So awhile ago, Ben and I stumbled upon these amazing books, an encyclopedia of games from the New Games Foundation. They are group games, essentially, but a lot of them are non-competitive and have a strange performativity to them. Thematically, they’re very geared towards anti-war, because that was a major cultural sentiment at the time of publication, but overall the focus of these games is problem solving together. These game encyclopedias were a major influence for us in thinking about a Northern Spark festival-wide game.
ELLE: So with that, describe the game, Collective Action!
SARA: (Laughing) We need an elevator pitch!
BEN: I’ve got it. So the game, Collective Action!, invites you to visit one of the six game stations around the festival. When you arrive, you login to the Collective Action! website on your smartphone, which puts you into a digital queue with other potential players at a game location. When you get to the front of the queue, you and other audience members will be called up into the play area to perform some kind of action together, which will give you, your team and your festival neighborhood points.
There’s lots of different actions for each location, some of them might relate to water rights, some of them may relate to environmental justice or other Climate Chaos | People Rising topics. For example, you and others from the audience might be invited up to be a rainstorm or imagine what a future water filtration system might look like. Be a glacier that’s calving off into the sea and become icebergs and drifting away from each other. So the actions are meant to be thematic but open, so that you and other people can come together and figure out how you might embody them together.
ELLE: Sounds like fun! So, with how sophisticated digital platforms have become, why did you go back to old-school collaborative improvisation games and have people create scenarios with their bodies as well as with each other, as opposed to interacting primarily with a web interface?
SARA: So that’s something that we talked about a lot in the beginning: the difference in those different approaches. When we were first proposing this project I think it was right smack in the middle of pre-election season, so everything that we were talking about felt very urgent in addressing these issues. More than anything, we felt that it was really important to make real connections with people face-to-face, rather than just wandering around the festival having an individual experience, but figuring out how to activate this collective experience where people are really doing things together in physical space. I think also one of the things that I’ve been grappling with post-election is this feeling of helplessless, how can I get involved in my community or take actions that seems overwhelming in some way. So I envision these actions that we’ve put together as being an entry point into community engagement, so giving people a window into that or – permission to act, in a way.
BEN: Yeah. Permission to act or permission to talk to your neighbor. Or talk to other people in a city that you might not necessarily engage with on a daily basis. Climate change is a big issue and one of the ways that we’re going to have to deal with it is by getting outside of our bubbles.
SARA: And climate change is huge, right? It’s everything, all over the world. We are not scientists, but we’ve done a lot of research around this project and it’s just infinite. Climate change can feel really large as an individual and finding your way into that space, I think can be really intimidating. And so we’ve sampled all of these like… bits from how climate change impacts different parts of the world. I really like that our project can be that sampling and that someone can say, “ah yes, I’m really interested in the way that fish and mangroves interact with the tide, that’s my entrypoint into learning more about climate change. Like making it less preachy. I think a lot of language around climate change is the same things that we’ve heard over and over again but this is taking a broader view.
TYLER: Yeah, I think this issue about language is also often a problem with climate change games. You usually don’t need to participate in these types of games to know what the messaging is or the lesson it is trying to teach you. I think our game diverges from this problem, the work we’ve done so uses strategies of embodiment and reenactment of these ideas down to an individual level. We also decided against a purely digital experience, avoiding any “techno-optimism” or “solutionism” and really bringing it to a personal level.
ELLE: You’re processing it through your body in real time –
BEN: With each other.
ELLE: Yeah. We’re bombarded with so much information these days, and you’ve named your game Collective Action! for a reason and you’re asking people to do these small actions together. But what does collective action look like for you?
SARA: I think, for me it means looking at the big picture. I think, speaking from personal experience, it’s really easy to get bogged down in individual experience and not see very far into the future. And I think what our game is asking people to do is really consider the implications of our daily actions on the entire world and the future of our planet, which is huge, but I hope that the way we’ve presented this game will give you a step into that consideration.
TYLER: It’s about the small daily activities that might not have short-term gain, but a long-term benefit. I’ve been living in California during the time of a multi-year drought and during that time, everybody has started conserving water. I don’t know the percentages, but we actually hit the extreme goal of water saved. People put in desert cactuses instead of grass. In a place like Los Angeles that is big and sprawling with varying degrees of wealth, everybody still delivered on their promise – collectively. And… it wasn’t a burden for people. Really. To just use a little bit less water.
BEN: Yeah. And along with that, I think there’s a big difference for me trying to get out there and do an action and not having a feedback loop vs. a city trying to do that entire thing together. When you’re neighbor is also ripping up their yard or turning off their water – doing whatever they can do to chip in – it helps you do it too. And feel like you’re a part of something. Like, we’re all in it together. Cause we are.
ELLE: Yeah. And Tyler I like how you say it wasn’t a burden, because the same action done individually might feel like a burden. But collectively you’re a part of a team and that has its own gratification and reward.
BEN: And with the game, that’s something we’ve been hoping for, is bringing that same kind of gesture into it. Maybe it’s intimidating to get up there and be a heat wave by yourself but if you get 10 other people from the audience to try it with you this act becomes really fun.
ELLE: So how do people play the game? What should do to be ready to play the game?
BEN: Come to one of the six Collective Action! locations: The Commons, West Bank, Little Africa, Rondo, Little Mekong or Lowertown. Once you get to one of those locations, look for our project, on that project there will be a url to go to and click SIGN UP. And then show up to one of those locations and you’ll be ready to go!
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For a sneak preview of Collective Action!, visit http://www.collectiveaction.info.
Collective Action! avatars, illustrated by Sara Fowler