In partnership with Marfa Dialogues/NY, Creative Time Reports recently published an article by artists Barbara Arrindell and Ruth Hardinger. In it, they “argue that natural gas is not a ‘bridge fuel’ to less hazardous energy sources, but a grave danger to communal resources and the global climate.”

An excerpt:

The gas and oil industry would like to craft a wholesome image of natural gas as a clean resource and a “nonfossil” fuel. Neither of these characterizations is accurate. Yes, gas does burn with a nice blue flame at the end user’s stove. However, getting that gas to the stove is seriously contaminating our air and water. This is because pumping it in means using high-volume, slick-water hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. Unbeknownst to many, the process has profound health and environmental impacts. Thanks to aged and faulty infrastructure, often built on the cheap and left unchecked for years, gas inevitably leaks on the way from wells to pipelines. Add up all the dangers along the way, and one will soon find that gas has a larger global climate impact than oil or coal.

Later in the article, the authors discuss how even a place like New York City is affected by the fracking that happens miles away:

When we mention fracking to people in New York City, they often ask if we’re concerned about a place upstate, as though we are protected because it happens so far away. Nothing could be further from the truth. The numerous risks associated with fracking for New York City residents include contamination of drinking water from the Delaware Catskill Watershed and exposure to radon, a radioactive gas known to cause lung cancer, from gas used for cooking. Since November 1, 2013, the Spectra pipeline, built by the Texas-based company Spectra Energy, has started pumping a mix of Marcellus shale natural gas that has the highest levels of radon in the United States from Manhattan’s West Village to the East 14th Street Con Edison plant, and to New Yorkers’ homes.

The Spectra pipeline is not the only recent danger New Yorkers face from the gas industry. The Rockaway Lateral pipeline, if approved, will run from underneath Brooklyn across Jamaica Bay and Rockaway Beach, threatening the ecosystem of Rockaway Bay. As we continue to develop natural gas, there will be more air pollution, contamination and impacts on food and the foodshed. With more drilling, there will be more waste and cuttings from drill sites, which trucks will be transporting to Long Island waste plants, likely resulting in spills and the contamination of Long Island Sound and the ocean beaches. Greater dependence on increasingly limited supplies of natural gas will also lead to much higher prices. The high levels of methane emissions unleashed by projects like the Spectra and Rockaway pipelines will contribute to accelerating climate change and attendant dangers like rising seas. In Manhattan we are standing in a cloud of methane from a leaky infrastructure, and the water around us is swelling.

Be sure to continue reading at Creative Time Reports.

Above image by Christy Rupp, Exploit/Exhale, 2010. Included in the Cooper Union exhibition “Emissions: Images from the Mixing Layer” as part of Marfa Dialogues/NY.

Presented as part of Carbon 14: Climate is Culture Performance Series with Cape Farewell Foundation, This Clement World is “a fiercely creative and charismatic tribute to our rapidly changing environment, as seen through the prism of Cynthia Hopkins’ deeply personal lens and wild cross-disciplinary style. Performed live with a 15-piece chorus and band, This Clement World blends outlandish fiction and original avant-folk songs with Hopkins’ own documentary footage from an Arctic expedition with Cape Farewell, infusing our global climate crisis with humour, poetics and urgency.”

This Clement World was written and composed by Cynthia Hopkins, directed by DJ Mendel, and designed by Jeff Sugg. It will run until February 2 at the Great Hall Black Box Theatre, in Toronto, Ontario.

Please visit the Theatre Centre for additional information and buy tickets here.

Be sure to also watch the teaser trailer on youtube.

Above photograph by Jeff Sugg

How do climate change and environmental issues relate to art? High Line Art set out to answer this question, investigating the intersection between art and the environment. High Line Art is the curated program of Friends of the High Line, which manages and oversees the High Line park. To explore artistic production and the environment, High Line Art curated a film series titled Solar that includes a selection of four videos by four individual artists: Rosa Barba, Camille Henrot, Basim Magdy and Neïl Beloufa. The videos featured in Solar, on view now at High Line Channel 14, spotlight the effect of humans on the environment through both realistic and futuristic narratives. With this film series, High Line Art emphasizes the importance of environmental activism in the arts.

Over the past four weeks, we facilitated weekly “panels” between the curator, Cecilia Alemani, and the four artists in Solar. Using the hashtag #SolarPanel, these interviews occurred over Twitter every week in four installments, highlighting one artist per week. These tweets were only fragments of the full interviews, which we posted on our Tumblr the following day accompanied by an artist profile and a summary of the artist’s video. Through this program, the public gained an opportunity to learn more about the four artists whose films are featured on a more interactive platform. The artists’ fascinating answers offer a unique perspective into the artistic inspiration, process, and themes manifest in their work.

To read the full interviews and artist profiles, follow the links below to the High Line Art Tumblr feature on each artist:
Rosa Barba, “Somnium,” (2011)
Camille Henrot, “Million Dollars Point,” (2011)
Basim Magdy, “Time Laughs Back at You Like a Sunken Ship,” (2012)
Neïl Beloufa, “Kempinski,” (2007)

Above photo by Timothy Schenck. Courtesy of Friends of the High Line. Rosa Barba, Somnium, 2011. Part of Solar, on High Line Channel 14. On view October 10 – December 4, 2013, on the High Line at West 14th Street.

The blog, “State of the Planet”, recently reviewed the Earth Institute and PostiveFeedback’s event, Art/Science Speed-Dating, where artists and scientists were brought together for quick conversations, and the hope of igniting “sparks” of inspiration for future collaborations.

The night began with a panel discussion, after which:

the crowd of approximately 25 artists and 25 scientists commenced speed-dating each other. After five minutes was up, it was time to switch seats to date another participant. Each dater met approximately a dozen counterparts.

During the dates, participants shared with one another work they had done on cell phones and tablets, and exchanged information, making plans to talk in the future. Daters everywhere were rapt in conversation, and you could see an occasional wild hand gesturing in excitement.

(Annea)Lockwood (a musician and composer) said she was struck by the generosity of the scientific community.

“Several of the people I met in the round robin offered information about infra- and ultrasound sources for my current project, from caterpillars to bioluminescent animals, or said they would talk with colleagues — I can’t wait to track down the data and listen.” It is clear that the event set the stage for future conversations among the artists and scientists.

At the end of the night, daters felt gratified and enlightened by the experience, but a little exhausted.

“Twelve five-minute dates back to back is a lot of socializing, but everyone said that the experience was more than worth it,” (Eli) Kintisch (writer, Science Magazine) said. During the final talk back, many even wished that they had more time.

Read more about the “fantastic” night at State of the Planet, and to learn more about the Earth Institute and PostiveFeedback check out their profile page.

Be sure to attend the Cape Farewell Foundation’s recently announced event: “Climate is Culture” and the video installation, DEEP TIME, by artists Melanie Gilligan and Tom Ackers.

Here is the flyer with more details:

For additional information please visit the Cape Farewell Foundation.

NRDC President Frances Beinecke writes about her conversation with Maya Lin — taking place tonight at TK — on the NRDC Switchboard blog:

Marfa Dialogues, Maya Lin, and Me: How Artists and Advocates Can Protect the Environment

I spend my days calling on lawmakers, community leaders, and concerned citizens to address the threat of climate change. Many of these conversations are fruitful, but there are times when field notes and policy blueprints fail to communicate the urgency of the climate crisis. Sometimes we need other ways to move and inspire people. Fortunately, we have a growing group of allies in this effort: visual artists.

On November 4, I will be speaking with Maya Lin about the role artists, advocates, and scientists can play in confronting climate change. During the event, which is part of Marfa Dialogues New York, we will explore the power of art to mobilize the public and the great potential for environmentally focused artwork to affect climate policy.

Maya has thought a great deal about the intersection of art and climate action. An NRDC trustee, she is a committed environmentalist who can talk policy details like a practiced wonk. But she is also an artist who brings a piercing intelligence and commanding aesthetic vision to her work.

Since Maya designed the Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial as a Yale undergraduate, she has been known for creating work that commemorates the past. Her latest memorial is called What is Missing? and it offers a haunting depiction of the animals, plants, and landscapes that are disappearing as a result of climate change. The piece is organized around a central website, where people share their memories of cherished places and species they remember being more abundant in an earlier time. It also uses scientific data and historical records to flesh out a picture of biodiversity in a changing world.

What is Missing? is a masterful combination of art, science, and advocacy. It conveys important information about climate change, but it also stirs deep feelings of loss and sadness, as well as awe at the beauty and resilience of our planet. It can speak to people who might never have called themselves environmentalists or who would never attend a climate rally, but are now moved to act on behalf of the places and animals Maya so vividly portrays.

Keep reading on The Switchboard, and visit the NRDC page here on marfadialogues.org for details about tonight’s discussion.

Italian tech publication Arshake reviews MD/NY partner IMC Lab + Gallery’s ongoing exhibition Climate Art: New Ways of Seeing Data:

Climate and climate change-related data lend themselves to becoming creative material for artists who process and visualize these issues through specifically designed softwares. Climate is both the subject and the object of the «Climate Art: New Ways of Seeing Data» exhibition presented by the IMC Lab + Gallery, a New York City-based organization that has been supporting artists since 2001. Collaborating artists explore imaginative uses of technology and combine the tangibility of objects with the intangibility of virtual space.

The choice of theme and the method of this exhibit reveal two very important aspects regarding the relationship between art, life and the technological world: the attention that art pays to climate change, its visualization through data collection and its organization in thematic mappings. Several artists have used the topic of climate as the subject for their work over the years, being that interest in this issue has increased exponentially with the ecological threat of global warming.

Read the rest of the article here, and to learn more about IMC Lab + Gallery and the exhibition, visit their profile page.

MD/NY partner Staten Island Arts’ ongoing exhibition Tattfoo Tan: New Earth MRE is profiled by Fast Company…

Tan greets guests for the opening of his latest work in a khaki shirt, cargo pants, and a flint striker on his belt loop. For someone who has spent much of the past two years training himself in disaster preparedness, Tan appears upbeat, and smiles warmly as he introduces guests to several large, military-grade cargo boxes of dehydrated food under a tarp.

These are meals Tan’s prepared himself, first by sneaking food waste from an undisclosed grocery store, cooking the ingredients, drying the results, and packaging them to last. “MRE” stands for Meals Ready to Eat, and Tan stores them in medical cases he bought from Iraq war veterans on eBay. He started building his collection of MRE’s in 2012, but for the next two months he’s showing them as part of his New Earth collection, a series of projects meant to raise ecological consciousness. By combining food waste issues with disaster relief, Tan hopes that his MRE’s, which recently won a Core77 design award, will help educate the public on multiple aspects of food security. He plans on teaching MRE classes himself at the local Port Richmond high school….

But as far as disaster preparedness goes, urban gardening and creative takes on freeganism are a far cry from the preppers hosting conferences on the apocalypse and stocking up on canned sandwiches. “That’s not my theory of preparedness. Preparedness is staying healthy, or understanding food that you could pick up from trees or plants that are edible,” Tan says. “I try to stay positive, not try to be a worst-case scenario person. For me, it’s not about the future but what we do now.”

Read the rest of the article here, and to learn more about Staten Island Arts and the exhibition, visit their profile page.

In preparation for Superhero Clubhouse’s premiere tomorrow (in partnership with PostiveFeedback and the Earth Institute at Columbia University), be sure to read this post on the Earth Institute’s blog: State of the Planet.

An excerpt:

As research continues to show how drastically Earth’s climate is changing, it is important to find effective ways to communicate these issues. One important and emerging form of communication is to discuss climate change by using art as a catalyst…. (Jeremy) Pickard (the artistic director of Superhero Clubhouse) noted that the public is constantly infiltrated with images and messages from the media, and artists are oftentimes the ones making the media; the public is surrounded by it. “Because art is everywhere, it has the responsibility to take into account how it can help us,” Pickard said. “The best art nudges us forward.”

The ubiquity of art certainly means that it has great potential to influence, and the advantage that theater has over other art forms is that it can be a uniquely personal experience for the audience. Those in the audience are directly involved in the art because they have the opportunity to react to what they have seen. According to Pickard, “When you have an audience in the room, you can engage with them and can talk to them immediately. It is very direct.” And that is exactly what Pickard does. A question and answer session with the performers and scientists that help inform the work often follows Superhero Clubhouse’s performances and allows a discourse to begin right away.

Nicole Davi, a postdoctoral researcher at Lamont-Doherty, agrees with Pickard that art and science are at an important crossroads, and she is a strong proponent for exploring the possibilities that this intersection has. Davi spoke about how scientists are trained to communicate to the world through written publications, which are for the most part very short. Davi explained that usually her goal is “to get as much information across with the least amount of words and with very little room for opinion or emotion.” This can make it challenging for the public to connect with scientists, but this play does a great job of doing just that. The production is a rare peek into how scientists collaborate and work together in the field, and lends a much more personal side to a largely impersonal area of study. Pickard believes that the only solution to climate change is through collaboration, and this story shows how that is possible.

“Don’t Be Sad Flying Ace” and “Field Trip: A Climate Cabaret” will have performances on Nov. 2 and Nov. 3 at the Theater at the 14th Street Y (344 East 14^th Street, between 1^st and 2^nd Aves). There will also be a special benefit performance with a reception and conversation with climate scientists at the evening performance on Nov. 2nd at 7pm.

Tickets may be purchased here.

For additional information about Superhero Clubhouse and their MD/NY event, please visit their profile page and check out their flyer below.

Tomorrow is the Carbon Tax Center’s “Panel: How Will A Carbon Tax Change Our Lives?” and if you’re going to be in New York, be sure to attend this important discussion.

The panelists include:

Denis Hayes: Author, organizer, activist. Chair of the Seattle-based Bullitt Foundation that advances sustainability in the Pacific NW. Former director of the U.S. Solar Energy Research Institute, co-founder and coordinator of Earth Day (1970).

Elizabeth Yeampierre: Attorney, organizer, activist. Founder and e.d. of United Puerto Rican Organization of Sunset Park (UPROSE), Brooklyn’s oldest Latino community-based organization. Spearhead of the NYC Environmental Justice Alliance (NYEJA). Former chair of USEPA’s National Environmental Justice Advisory Council.

Juliet Schor: Professor of sociology at Boston College. Author of four books, including “The Overspent American: Why We Want What We Don’t Need” (1999) and, most recently, “Plenitude: The New Economics of True Wealth”(2010). Co-founder of the Center for a New American Dream.

Tim DeChristopher: Activist, student at Harvard Divinity School. Co-founder of the civil disobedience environmental group Peaceful Uprising, recently (2013) released from federal prison for successfully hacking an oil and gas lease auction in wild redrock country. Profiled in the documentary film, “Bidder 70.”

Doors open at 6, the event will begin at 6:30 at the Rauschenberg Project Space, 455 W. 19th St.

Don’t miss it!

For additional information about the event, please visit the Carbon Tax Center’s profile page or check out the organization’s official website.

Tomorrow night October 30th at 7pm at the Rauschenberg Project Space, artist Eve Mosher will tell the story of her public art project titled HighWaterLine where she marked the ten feet above sea level line in lower Manhattan and Brooklyn with a baseball line marker over the summer of 2007. Little did she know when she conceived of this project that in 2012 Hurricane Sandy would pound the east coast with storm surges in some places beyond what anyone thought was possible.

Mosher receives many requests to fly to cities around the world to duplicate this project. Since this would be an impossible task, she has recently collaborated with ecoartspace to develop an ACTION GUIDE so that communities anywhere can learn about her work and now mark their own line using Mosher’s HighWaterLine as inspiration. The guide was developed for educators, nonprofit organizations and individuals, combining art and science to engage aesthetics while addressing environmental issues. In the guide, other waterline marking materials and examples are provided, as well as Mosher’s step-by-step process involved in developing and performing the project.

ecoartspace curator Amy Lipton will participate with Eve Mosher for this discussion. If you can’t join us in person please watch this 7 minute video with Eve discussing HighWaterLine.
Or download the HWL Guide for free here.

Thank you to Architectural Digest for reviewing Ballroom Marfa’s Quiet Earth for its AD Daily blog.

An excerpt:

Energy and water conservation are big concerns in Marfa, Texas, a small town that sits on the sweeping plains of the Chihuahuan Desert in the western part of the state. So it seems fitting that an exhibition organized by an arts nonprofit from the area would examine climate change…

The show is a study of quantities, in which pieces by renowned artists and architects reflect on the volume of our natural-resource consumption and, thus, our changing landscapes.

To see their highlights from the show and read the full review, visit Architectural Digest.

Be sure to check out these podcast episodes presented by Mary Miss/City as Living Laboratory in preparation for their event tomorrow.

Although there are a number of great recordings by Mary Miss at Culture Now, here are two of the most relevant to MD/NY:

1. Discussing Broadway 1000 Steps: City as Living Laboratory, an art installation whose goal is to “foster public understanding of the natural systems and infrastructure that supports life in the city. Through exploration of the Broadway corridor, viewers will become aware that nature is everywhere and in action at all times, that the city is an urban ecosystem, that innumerable numbers of small decisions over time have shaped the environment we inhabit today and that our decisions today (behavioral choices) will impact the future of all of nature.”

2. Describing the FLOW (Can You See the River) project. FLOW is landscape Artwork that “will reveal important and unique elements of the water system through a series of installations at stopping points along the river and canal, engaging residents and increasing awareness of the watershed and the role it plays in the city’s life.”

Finally, you should visit the Earth Institute at Columbia’s blog, “State of the Planet“, for posts by Mary Miss.

Hope to see you tomorrow!

In anticipation of Triple Canopy’s MD/NY events tomorrow (October 26th) and November 23rd, be sure to read Peter Fend’s exciting essay “This Can Happen Now”, which was previously published by the organization in May. Fend proposes to make an island off the coast of Somalia called Socotra into a “model of ecological development—beyond petroleum, beyond nuclear, beyond industrial farms, and full of healthy savage beasts.”

An excerpt:

Introduction

Socotra

Societies today depend on hydrocarbons—mostly coal, oil, and gas, which are becoming harder and more costly to extract. Energy companies want to extract all that can be found, whether from the Arctic, or tar sands, or deep offshore, or shale. They want to do this regardless of the fact that using fossil reserves causes global warming. But there are also renewable hydrocarbons, from living sources.

Off the coast of Somalia sits an island called Socotra, populated by 40,000 people and strange, beautiful plants and animals that exist nowhere else on earth. A territory of Yemen, Socotra was once the location of a Russian naval base, and now a US air base. In recent years, Socotra has become dangerous to approach by sea due to pirates. My proposal is to make Socotra into a model of ecological development—beyond petroleum, beyond nuclear, beyond industrial farms, and full of healthy savage beasts.

In Socotra, biological fuel, and then hydrocarbons, could be generated using the renewable resource of marine algae. Socotra receives a constant stream of cold, nutrient-rich water from Antarctic upwellings.

Additionally, the island is near the equator, and so the sun shines brightly almost every day. This combination yields unending bioproductivity. Fish thrive. Shellfish, on rocks and in pools, thrive. Birds thrive. So does seaweed—a variety of bladder kelp that normally can be found only in the polar and temperate waters of the Southern Hemisphere. The algae’s bladders float near the surface of the water; due to the sunshine, the bladders build tissue, and thus produce carbon, doing so at a faster rate than any other plant on earth.

I first recognized the potential of Socotra in 2010, while explaining an Antarctica-centered map of the world to someone in a newsroom in New Zealand. Given Socotra’s position on the globe, I could tell that its environment was ideal, and that its remoteness would enable its entire energy economy to become local, including its auto-fuel market. This island can change the game.

Ocean Earth

I am one of five stakeholders in Ocean Earth, a company registered in the US and New Zealand that has been researching new environmental technologies for decades. I propose that Ocean Earth stakeholders go to Socotra, in coordination

with ecological scientists, in order to build a hydrocarbon economy based not on petroleum but on biofuel—and not on any biofuel, but on biomethane. We could be the first to establish a methane economy. Moreover, Socotra could become the world’s first biology economy. The methane would come from seaweed and other biomass, not from fossil reserves. Because it has very few roads, very few inhabitants, very few cities (or villages), and a very rich biological base, Socotra could achieve market saturation, which is necessary for a successful conversion from fossil fuel to biofuel. One hundred percent of the vehicles, homes, and even aircraft could run on methane.

I founded Ocean Earth in 1980. Coleen Fitzgibbon joined me, and soon after so did Eve Vaterlaus, Wolfgang Staehle, Paul Sharits, Taro Suzuki, Bill Dolson, Joan Waltemath, and Jonathan Crary. Sharits, Fitzgibbon, and I decided to begin with satellite monitoring of global hot spots. We considered satellite observation a form of civil defense, or “Space Force,” a “well-regulated militia” alerting the public to dangers. In the next decade, major contributions came from Dolson, Staehle, and two newcomers, Ingo Guenther and Sante Scardillo. We began working primarily in Europe, where the firm could act on its New York corporate charter to produce and sell “media services“ (such as satellite imaging for mass media) and “architectural components” (such as earthworks, megastructures, and lightweight-architecture elements for eco-efficient cities).

Following many battles with government authorities, the company was re-formed in 1994 as Ocean Earth Development Corporation. In 2008, it was turned into a firm consisting of five director-stakeholders: myself, artist Eve Vaterlaus, and architects Kevin Gannon, Heidi Mardon, and Catherine Griffiths. Along with Bernie Dent, I am also the principal stakeholder in a subsidiary organization, Ocean Earth NZ Limited. The offshore techniques described in this proposal were developed by Griffiths, Vaterlaus, and Mardon, who in 1994 secured a site in New Zealand where we could implement our work with bladder kelp, which was the reason for Ocean Earth’s incorporation in that country. When I was invited to exhibit in New Zealand in 2008, I turned the occasion into a three-year collaboration with Mardon and others. We acquired substantial hands-on experience in growing and harvesting algae.

The goals of Ocean Earth are a revival of those defined by Leon Battista Alberti in his Ten Books on Architecture (1452).

(1) Clean air: hence, biomethane as the main fuel.

(2) Living waters: hence, structures to restore rivers and streams.

(3) Circulatory space: hence, buildings, pipes, and roads that interfere little with the native animals and plants, while allowing access.

(4) Defense: hence, gathering knowledge of incoming threats through the use of satellites.

We discovered Alberti more than one decade after Ocean Earth was formed, but all along, the company was addressing all four goals of architecture as Alberti defined them—what architects are supposed to do, but generally don’t at all. And these goals can now be pursued on the island of Socotra.

you can read the full essay here, and learn more about Triple Canopy on their MD/NY profile page.

On October 12, The IMC Lab + Gallery held an opening reception for “Climate Art: New Ways of Seeing Data.” The exhibition is curated by Isabel Walcott Draves, and features the work of established software artists Ursula Endlicher, Ben Fry, Aaron Koblin, Nathalie Miebach, Camille Seaman, and Karolina Sobecka. These artists seek to measure the immeasurable, using data to create visual representations of the impact of climate change on the Earth and its inhabitants.

For additional information about MD/NY and the IMC Lab + Gallery, please visit their profile page.

If you can’t join us here in Manhattan for this historic climate change summit, please join us via the above player for a live stream of Brian Lehrer’s discussion with …

– Physicist and visionary environmental scientist Amory Lovins

– Chief of Energy Finance and Planning for New York State Richard Kauffman

– Executive Director of the Energy Project for the BiPartisan Policy Center and long-time US senior energy policy maker Margot Anderson

– Guy Nordenson, the Princeton structural engineer and professor of architecture appointed by Mayor Bloomberg to the New York City Panel on Climate Change

On October 24th, the Center for NYC Affairs at the New School presents FOOD & CLIMATE CHANGE: Growing a Cultural Movement. As described by the Center for NYC Affairs:

“This forum aims to spur discussion and action among farmers, urban community leaders and innovators, designers, artists, policymakers, scholars and others who are engaged in developing effective and imaginative responses to climate change.”

The panelists include:

Linda Goode Bryant, founding director, Project EATS
Nevin Cohen, assistant professor, Environmental Studies and Sustainability Management Program, The New School for Public Engagement
Molly O’Neill, food writer; former New York Times food columnist
Fabio Parasecoli, coordinator, Food Studies Program, The New School; author of Bite Me: Food in Popular Culture
Radhika Subramaniam, director + chief curator, Sheila C. Johnson Design Center, Parsons The New School for Design
Joel Towers, executive dean, Parsons The New School for Design

Moderated by
John Rudolph, executive producer, Feet in 2 Worlds

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The event will take place at the Theresa Lang Community and Student Center Arnhold Hall, 55 West 13th Street, 2nd floor from 6-8pm

For additional information, please visit the Center for NYC Affairs’ profile page

MD/NY partner Concord Free Press’s new free book of photography is profiled in the New York Times …

After Hurricane Sandy swept through the region, people wandered the Rockaways like zombies, cloaked in blankets to protect against the mid-autumn chill. Families were left traumatized by homes reduced to skeletons. For weeks, the elderly and disabled, trapped in their apartments on high floors, waited for food and heat.

A year later, Gilles Peress, a photographer for the photo agency Magnum, is releasing a book that documents the devastation of “the powerful storm with the innocuous, neighborly name,” in the words of the book’s editor, Hamilton Fish. The difference between this book — titled “The Rockaways” — and many other photographic compilations of the disaster?

This one is free.

“Photo books are expensive to produce and expensive to buy, and they do tend to be sort of rarefied,” said Stona Fitch, the book’s publisher. “Our book is pretty much the exact opposite of that.”

Keep reading in the New York Times, and join us tonight from 6-8pm (October 18, 2013) for The Rockaways Launch Party at The powerHouse Arena, 37 Main Street (Dumbo) in Brooklyn, NY. More info on the Concord Free Press profile page.

Here are some images from the wonderful WATERWASH ABC event with Reverend Billy and the Earthalujah Choir on October 5. A big thank you to Lillian Ball for sending us these photos.

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For more information on the event, check out WATERWASH’s profile page.

On November 1st, four distinguished and provocative thinker-scholar-activists —Denis Hayes, Elizabeth Yeampierre, Juliet Schor and Tim DeChristopher –will discuss ways in which a U.S. carbon tax could transform Americans’ beliefs and practices regarding consumption, energy use and the natural world, and also re-connect the environmental movement to wild nature, community and diversity.

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Doors open at 6:00pm, light refreshments will be served. The panel begins promptly at 6:30pm at the Rauschenberg Project Space (455 W. 19th st, New York, NY).

To read more about the panel, please visit the Carbon Tax Center’s profile page

SOME HISTORY: Robert Rauschenberg and Social and Environmental Activism
By Julie Martin

When Robert Rauschenberg Executive Director Christy MacLear saw some early photos of a meeting in the large space at 381 Lafayette Street,  familiarly called the Chapel, she recognized it as the same room that had held the  2012 planning session for the upcoming Marfa Dialogues/NY.  Soon after, she contacted me wanting to know more about the images, and asked me to write about some of the events and projects that resulted from Rauschenberg’s involvement in and commitment to issues affecting both the individual and  the common good  that today is manifest in the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation and — this year — in Marfa Dialogues/NY.

The Chapel, as we called it back then, was actually half a chapel that was attached to the building that Bob bought in 1965, a former orphanage, whose place of worship  had been cut in half, with the resulting empty space leased to a parking lot. Not only did it function as Rauschenberg’s studio for several years, but it was the site of important announcements of projects that testify to his involvement in projects that went beyond art-making into the realms of social concern. In particular the Chapel played an symbolic role in his work with the foundation Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.).

Several strands of activities came together in the founding of  Experiments in Art and Technology. It began in 1960 when Rauschenberg met Swedish research engineer Billy Klüver in the garden of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, where Klüver was working with Swiss artist Jean Tinguely on Homage to New York, a large meta-matic drawing machine that was going to destroy itself during its performance. Always interested in collaborating, Rauschenberg contributed a work called Money Thrower to Homage to New York. As Klüver later described it in Art in America:

 Tinguely had asked people to contribute things to the machine and on the day of the performance, March 17, Rauschenberg showed up with a “mascot” for the machine which he called Money Thrower. It consisted of a small rectangular open metal box 2 1/2 x 4 x 10 inches which had heating element wires at the bottom of the box on which Rauschenberg had put gun powder. At each end of the top of the box was fastened a large spiral binding coil. The ends of the two coils were bent together and intertwined so they remained stationary. In the coils Rauschenberg had inserted 12 silver dollars. When the circuit was closed, the gun powder would ignite and free the coils from each other, flinging the coins into the audience as they sprang apart. Rauschenberg’s gunpowder exploded in the 7th minute of the machine’s self-destruction and the silver dollars were never found again. (Klüver, Billy with Julie Martin. “Four Difficult Pieces.” Art in America, July 1991)

Robert Rauschenberg, Money Thrower, 1960
Collection Moderna Museet
© Robert Rauschenberg Foundation / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY

ORACLE: AN ENVIRONMENTAL SOUND SCULPTURE

Soon after Homage to New York Klüver asked Rauschenberg if he had any ideas they could work on together. Klüver recalled, ”He asked me if it was possible to make an interactive environment, where the temperature, sound, smell, lights etc. could be affected by the person who moved through it. I began thinking about some possibilities, but … it proved impossible to achieve his original ideas for a multi-responsive environment.” (Ibid.) Rauschenberg then focused on a five part painting in which a radio would be located behind each panel and a viewer would be able to change the volume and speed of scanning between stations from a control console in front of the work. His idea was for a wireless control console and for the radios and to use the AM band, which was more varied and lively in those days. According to Klüver …

 Harold Hodges and I began work on a design where all five AM radios were mounted in a control console in front of the paintings. The speakers on the AM radios would be removed; and the output from each radio would be retransmitted by small AM transmitters to receivers, amplifiers and speakers mounted behind each painting. But the homemade AM transmitters that we built were unstable and operated on such a broad frequency band that they interfered with one another and generated a nightmare of noise. We quickly realized there was no way we could save this system. …(Ibid.)

At the end of 1962, Rauschenberg told me he was now thinking of our project as a five-piece sculpture. One of the pieces would be a staircase on which the “conductor” could sit and control the sound. He asked us to build the staircase to his specifications and he would take care of the other four pieces.

Harold Hodges and Rauschenberg at work on Oracle.
Photo Billy Klüver

We worked on the  technical equipment for Oracle for about three years before it was finished.  Harold Hodges built two complete systems which had to be discarded as technically unsatisfactory.  The third and last system in which the AM signals from the radios were transmitted using empty spots in the FM band, was built when the technology caught up with us at the end of 1964 and we found one of the first crystal-controlled fully transistorized wireless microphone systems, the Comrex system. We immediately bought four systems operating at four different factory-set FM frequencies. Now all we had to do was feed the signals from the AM radios into the FM Comrex transmitters and they would be sent wirelessly to amplifiers and speakers in each of the other four pieces.

Oracle at Leo Castelli Gallery, 1965  photo Rudy Burckhardt
Collection Centre Georges Pompidou
© Robert Rauschenberg Foundation / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY

Oracle was shown at Leo Castelli Gallery, opening May 15, 1965. Klüver described it thusly:

 In full operation, Oracle becomes an animated cityscape. The sculptures, using materials discarded from buildings and discovered on the sidewalks, are themselves as varied as sights from a busy city street. Since the units can be placed anywhere in relation to one other, any arrangement of the sculpture pieces in a room, leaves open the possibility of another arrangement. The sound too can be “rearranged” in ever changing bits of music, talk, and noise, loud, soft, clear or full of static. The sound from the five radios comes to you as it would on the streets of a city neighborhood on a hot summer day. To this is added the only constant in the piece, the rushing sound of water from the fountain. Oracle has no fixed visual or aural shape, but presents an open invitation to walk in. When you do, the experience is as changing and provocative as the city it is reporting on. (Klüver, Ibid.)

As Klüver worked with more artists in the early ’60s, he began to think broadly about the implications of his experiences and to develop his ideas on the importance for the artists to be able to work with quickly evolving technology;  the need to get his colleagues in the engineering community involved with artists, and the value that working with artists could have for engineers in their own work.

By 1966 I had as an engineer worked with Jasper Johns, John Cage, Bob Rauschenberg, Andy Warhol, Yvonne Rainer and others. I felt the growing need and interest in using the new technology on the part of the artist, and I knew from my own experience that scientists and engineers could get seriously involved with artists. Some of my first ideas were that engineers were material for the artists; that we were as useful to them as any other material they might use in the realization of an idea. …

Robert Rauschenberg and I were in his kitchen discussing these ideas. He insisted that artists and engineers must work together on a one-to-one basis.   Creating something new is the goal of an artist, and Bob knew instinctively that in working with an engineer or scientist a one-to-one collaboration was the only way to do get this done. As soon as he said it I knew that he was right. (Klüver, unpublished notes)

At the time of these conversations on the ideas of artist-engineer collaborations, an opportunity arose to put them into practice. An invitation from Sweden at the beginning of 1966 to participate in a Festival of Art and Technology was the catalyst for Klüver and Rauschenberg to launch a large-scale collaboration between10 New York artists – Rauschenberg with John Cage, Lucinda Childs, Oyvind Fahlström, Alex Hay, Deborah Hay,  Steve Paxton, Yvonne Rainer, David, Tudor,  Robert Whitman – and more than 30 engineers from Bell Telephone Laboratories  to create performances that incorporated the new technology. The artists and engineers had worked together for more than seven months when the trip to Sweden fell though and, in true American style, they decided to hold the performances in New York. They found the 69^th Regiment Armory at 25th Street and Lexington Avenue, and with the help of Senator Jacob Javits, a long-time supporter of the arts, obtained the Armory for a two week period in October that year. They began the final plans for the performances that they called 9 Evenings: Theatre & Engineering. This brings us to the first event  that took place in the Chapel, the building Rauschenberg had just recently moved into which was to be his home and studio for the next several years.

On September 29, 1966,  the artists and engineers held a “press briefing”  on the 9 Evenings that would take place  October 13 – 23, 1966 at the 69th Regiment Armory, home of the original 1913 Armory Show. The press conference was held in the Chapel.

Invitation to the Press Briefing on 9 Evenings: Theatre & Engineering, 1966.
Courtesy E.A.T. Archives

9 Evenings was highly publicized and the press briefing was well attended.  Fred McDarrah  covered the event for The Village Voice, and an article on Rauschenberg appeared in The New York Times Magazine on October 9, with the title “The Artist as Playwright and Engineer,” featuring the plans for the 9 Evenings.

9 Evenings took place at the Armory from October 13 to 23, 1966. The event was widely publicized, and more than 10,000 people attended the performances over the nine evenings, where each artist presented his or her work twice

Robert Rauschenberg, Open Score, 9 Evenings: Theatre & Engineering,
Frame Grab from 16 mm film. Courtesy E.A.T. Archives

The foundation Experiments in Art and Technology was founded soon after the artists and engineers decided to hold the performances in New York, and was officially incorporated on September 26, 1966. The founders were  two artists, Robert Rauschenberg and Robert Whitman, and two engineers, Billy Klüver and Fred Waldhauer, colleagues at Bell Telephone Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey. The impetus was the shared experiences they had had working on 9 Evenings. The general feeling shared by all the artists and engineers working on 9 Evenings was that the technical equipment developed for the performances should be shared with other artists, and perhaps even more importantly, that the positive  experiences they had working together should be made available to a larger group of artists  and  engineers.

In November 1966 the artists and engineers who had participated in 9 Evenings held a meeting at the Broadway Central Hotel for artists in New York City to explore possible artists’ interest in using the new technology. It was attended by 300 artists, engineers and other interested people. The reaction was positive to the idea of E.A.T. providing the artists with access to the technical world. Membership was opened to all artists and engineers, and an office was established in a loft at 9 East 16th Street in New York.

There was an immediate response to E.A.T. from artists and the art community. However, much of the early activities of E.A.T. were focused on reaching out to the engineering community and recruiting engineers and scientists who wanted to work with artists. These efforts were very successful and by 1968 E.A.T. had approximately 2000 artist members with 2000 engineers and scientists members signed on to help  with their projects. A matching system was developed, through which any artist who contacted E.A.T. with a technical question or project would be matched with an engineer who could work with him or her on the project.

At the basis of E.A.T. is the shared belief of the founders in the value of individual commitment  to his or her practice and their taking full responsibility for the work. The means of implementing these ideas in the artist-engineer relationship was through a one-to-one collaboration between the artist and engineer or scientist. While the initial request would come from the artist who wanted to make a work of art, the ideal collaboration would be one in which the two people would each work in their own professional capacity and that the final result would be something that neither of them had totally envisioned when they started. These ideas were articulated in the second newsletter E.A.T.:

Which now brings me to the third photograph taken in the Chapel and to Theodore Kheel,  a lawyer and labor mediator who played a key role in reaching resolutions of teacher, subway strikes in New York City in the 1960s and in particular, the  114-day long 1962-63 New York City newspaper strike.  Kheel was introduced to Rauschenberg and Klüver by collector John Powers, and Ted readily joined the board of E.A.T.

The founders of E.A.T. saw the organization acting as a catalyst to stimulate the involvement of industry and technology with the arts. E.A.T. worked to develop an effective collaborations between artists and engineers with industrial cooperation and sponsorship. To this Kheel added the idea of  the labor and political communities. He soon suggested the idea of a press conference to announce the partnerships that E.A.T. hoped to build, not only between artists and engineers and scientists, but with industry, labor and political figures with the goal of realizing artists’ projects. In preparation for the press conference, Rauschenberg and Klüver drafted what they called E.A.T. Aims and printed them on a background of blue sky with clouds.

E.A.T. Aims, 1967. Courtesy E.A.T. Archives

Envelope/Invitation to the E.A.T. press conference, October 10, 1967. Courtesy E.A.T. Archives

The press conference was held at Rauschenberg’s building and included a one day exhibition of 15 works of art incorporating technology in addition to a presentation in the Chapel, with speakers that included Senator Jacob Javits; John Pierce, Executive Director, Communication Sciences Division, Bell Telephone Laboratories; Herman Kenin, President, American Federation of Musicians; Warren Brody, MIT Science Camp; Ralph Gross, President, Commerce and Industry Association; and artist Robert Morris.

John Pierce, Executive Director, Communication Sciences Division, Bell Telephone Laboratories, speaks at the E.A.T. Press Conference, October 10 1967
Courtesy E.A.T. Archives

Theodore Kheel at the exhibition accompanying the E.A.T. press conference
Courtesy E.A.T. Archives

Rauschenberg, Marion Javits, Senator Jacob Javits and Billy Klüver with Rauschenberg’s Oracle at the exhibition accompanying the E.A.T. press conference
Courtesy E.A.T. Archives

The press conference was very successful, according to Klüver  “I remember  Bob and me having dinner at Max’s Kansas City waiting for the morning edition of The New York Times. Not only did our story appear on the first page of the second section, but in the all important placement “above the fold..” (Unpublished lecture)

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The second installment of Julie Martin’s essay will be published next week here on marfadialogues.org.

Parked on the block where Gallery Aferro, with the support of the Newark Arts Council, curated several shows with local Newark artists, the GhostFood truck served art patrons and the general public over 3 days (October 11-13).

The GhostFood truck debuted in Philly earlier in the week.

Read about it on newsworks.org

Beginning October 22, the Cooper Union School of Art and the Institute for Sustainable Design present EMISSIONS: Images from the Mixing Layer, featuring work by Coleen Fitzgibbon, Ruth Hardinger, Joe Lewis, Christy Rupp, and Rebecca Smith.

Coleen Fitzgibbon is an independent film and video director/producer on various documentary and experimental shorts, studied at Boston University’s School of Fine Arts, NYU’s Film Studies, and in 1973-4 graduated from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in film/video and the Whitney Independent Study Program/ISP. Her films and videos are shown at the New Museum, Museum of Modern Art and Anthology Film Archives in New York as well as film festivals, museums and galleries internationally (Rotterdam, Berlin, Oberhausen, Vienna Film Festivals; the Palais Des Beaux Arts, Brussels; Boda, Seoul, Korea and others). Fitzgibbon has also worked as an independent producer for various other directors and corporations (Mark Rappaport, Telecom Japan, AT&T Technologies, Sony, IBM and others). www.coleenfitzgibbon.com

Ruth Hardinger has a BA in Classical Studies, Magna Cum Laude, Hunter College, NYC, and was a recipient of an IIE Grant to Mexico, administered by the Fulbright Foundation. Her recent solo exhibitions include Sideshow, Creon, “In the Garden” at Lesley Heller Gallery, Washington Sq. Windows NYU, NYC.  Recent installations and group shows include the Whale Oil to Whole Foods, Catskill NY, Carriage Barn at Islip Museum, Collaborative Concepts in Garrison, Castle Gallery in New Rochelle, NY, MIC: Check at Sideshow and Kentler Fine Art in Brooklyn. She was an organizer for “Art and Activism against the Drill”, at Exit Art.  Her project in progress was accepted in the NYFA Fiscal Sponsorship Program.  The Museum of Modern Art Library, Artist Book Collection, Chase Manhattan Bank, and Edward Albee Foundation, are among public and private collections including her work.  Her on-going project with Sideshow Gallery, Culture Trashes Nature, is conversation with artists who take on environmental issues.  www.ruthhardinger.com

Joe Lewis, a nationally known artist, arts administrator, educator and author is dean of The Clarie Trevor School of the Arts,University of California, Irvine.  He has also served as deal fo the school of Art and Design at Alfred University, NY and the faculty of California Institite of the Arts (Calarts) while also administrating a public art program for the City of Los Angeles.  Lewis is the recipient of numerous awards including several National Endowment for the Arts grants, a Ford Foundation Fellowship and a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship.  Most recently, he was named Deutsche Bank Fellow in Photography by the New York Foundation for the Arts.  Lewis has written for Art in America, Artforum, and was a contributing editor for Artspace and a correspondent for Contemporanea.  His essay regarding the confluence of art, technology and society have been  published in anthologies and peer reviewed journals.

Christy Rupp, is an American eco-artist, born in Rochester NY, too young for Elvis, and too old for Barbie. Currently living & working in NYC and Saugerties.

She has received grants from Anonymous was a Woman Foundation, NY State Council on the Arts, National Endowment for the Arts, & Art Matters Inc. Her work has been visible recently in Florence at Palazzo Strozzi, Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, Museum of Art & Design  NYC, the Neuberger Museum, The Dorsky Museum, Lesley Heller Workspace and The New Museum in NYC. www.christyrupp.com

Rebecca Smith is a visual artist who lives in New York City and the Adirondacks.  She has three children.  She was educated at Sarah Lawrence College and the New York Studio School.  In 2012 Smith received an award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.  An exhibition of her sculpture will be mounted at The Virginia Museum of Fine Art, Richmond, Virginia in 2014.  Smith’s art alternates between steel sculpture and tape drawing installations.  She has exhibited both kinds of work nationally and internationally, including in exhibitions at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery; The Brooklyn Museum, NYC; The Hyde Collection, Glens Falls, NY and the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, Atlanta, Georgia.  Since 2005 her work has often dealt in themes related to climate change such as holes in the ozone layer (“Finger Touch” 2005 commission for Ebsworth & Ebsworth, Sydney, Australia): melting glaciers (“Blue Cage Sculptures” at Jeannie Freilich Gallery, NY, NY  2007 and, currently, carbon levels in the atmosphere. Selected solo exhibitions include shows at “Tape and Steel” at The Studio School, New York, NY (2010); “TarraWarra Catchment” at The TarraWarra Museum of Art, Australia (2005); “Rebecca Smith: The Ring Sculptures”at The Picker Gallery of Art, Colgate University, Hamilton, NY. www.rebeccasmithstudio.com

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There will be an opening reception on October 22 from 6-8pm and the exhibition will be on view until November 8 in the Great Hall Gallery at the Cooper Union (7 E. &th Street).

Read more about EMISSIONS and the Cooper Union Institute for Sustainable Design at their profile page.

OUR CLIMATE, OUR CITY, OUR FUTURE: HURRICANE SANDY ONE YEAR LATER

Community Conversations on Environmental Justice & Rebuilding
Focus: The Lower East Side

Oct. 29, 2013
6pm-8pm

University Settlement
184 Eldridge Street
New York, NY 10002

Community Conversations on Environmental Justice & Rebuilding
Focus: Brooklyn

November 6, 2013
6pm-8pm

Brooklyn Historical Society
128 Pierrepont Street
Brooklyn, NY 11201

There is an imminent and critical need for diverse communities, particularly communities of color, to acquire the capacity to plan and develop their neighborhoods in response to climate change and attendant disasters. In recognition of that need, the Center for Social Inclusion, in collaboration with the Pratt Institute Programs for Sustainable Planning & Development, will present a series of town hall community conversations at cultural institutions located in New York City neighborhoods most impacted by Hurricane Sandy – the Lower East Side, Brooklyn and the Rockaways. With presentations from architects, planners, artists, environmental activists and community leaders, the conversations will focus on recovery, adaptation, mitigation and planning in communities that are most vulnerable to the effects of climate change.

Read more about the Center for Social Inclusion and the Pratt Institute for Sustainable Planning & Development at their profile page

Snapshot from the Quiet Earth installation in New York City, featuring two of our former interns working on a Maya Lin piece.

A Devastating Chronicle of the Aftermath of Hurricane Sandy

The Rockaways—published on the first anniversary of Hurricane Sandy by the Concord Free Press—combines visceral photos by renowned photographer Gilles Peress (Telex Iran, Farewell to Bosnia) with the voices of residents of The Rockaways, one of the communities hit hardest by the superstorm. The CFP will distribute 3,000 copies of The Rockaways via independent bookstores, museums, and internet requests—for free—asking only that recipients donate to a Sandy-related aid organization, another charity, or someone in need. Then pass the book on to another reader so that he or she can give.

This generosity-inspiring book is a collaboration between the CFP, Kodak, Peress, and dozens editors, writers, and printers—all donating their time and talent.

Read more about The Rockaways and Concord Free press at their profile page.

ecoartspace presents Eve Mosher’s HighWaterLine ACTION GUIDE, the first in a series of ten art and ecology learning guides presenting replicable social practice public art projects.

In 2007, Mosher spent the summer marking the ten feet above sea level line throughout Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn to make visible for residents living along the coastline what scientists had been projecting as an increase in sea level in the next century. Little did she know when she conceived of this project that in 2012 Hurricane Sandy would pound the east coast with storm surges in some places beyond what anyone thought was possible.

With this 36-page guide we are inviting educators, organizations and individuals to replicate what Mosher did in New York City anywhere in the world, to tell her story and to mark a line as appropriate for each individual locale. In the guide, other waterline marking materials and examples are provided, as well as Mosher’s step-by-step process involved in developing and performing the project.

We invite you to click on the image below to download or view the PDF in DropBox and distribute freely, as well as create your own HighWaterLine in your communities and neighborhoods where climate change has and will be impacting your natural environment in the future. (via ecoartspace action guides)

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Monday, August 26, 2013

CONTACT
Nick Sifuentes, 310-866-1692, nick@berlinrosen.com

Marfa Dialogues/NY Releases Two-Month Schedule of Events Examining Climate Change Through Art, Activism and Science

More Than 30 Leading Cultural, Academic and Advocacy Organizations Involved in Interdisciplinary Project to “Spark a Citywide Conversation about Climate Change”

New York, NY – The Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, Ballroom Marfa and the Public Concern Foundation today released the calendar of events for Marfa Dialogues/NY, a two-month series of events beginning this October that will combine art, activism and science to bring together disparate audiences for a broader and deeper examination of climate change.

More than 30 of New York’s leading cultural and academic institutions are participating in Marfa Dialogues/NY, hosting a variety of events ranging from an installation on the High Line to a food truck that will provide an unconventional serving of foods vulnerable to climate change. The two-month calendar of events features a mix of environmental panels, live theatre, major art exhibitions, installations, community forums, musical performances and more – all accessible to the public and available via broadcast and digital media.

A calendar of events is available at www.marfadialogues.org. Program descriptions and dates from Ballroom Marfa and the original 18 partners are available below. More programs will be scheduled over the next several weeks as additional partners finalize their events and new partners join the project. Additional partners currently include BAM, WNYC, American Institute of Architects New York, the Judd Foundation, Creative Time, the Buckminster Fuller Institute, Hester Street Collective, Waterwash, EcoArtSpace, Dia Art Foundation, and Cape Farewell.

Marfa Dialogues was co-founded in 2010 by Fairfax Dorn of Ballroom Marfa, a leading contemporary arts center in Marfa, Texas, and Hamilton Fish of The Public Concern Foundation (PCF), a New York non-profit devoted to the advancement of public education around social and political topics. Marfa Dialogues was originally conceived as a symposium to broaden public exploration of the intersection of art, politics and culture. This year’s Marfa Dialogues/NY is made possible by a grant from the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation.

“Marfa Dialogues/New York is an effort to help broaden the public conversation around climate change,” said Hamilton Fish, President of PCF. “The special character of the project is that we engage artists and people from the creative community with journalists and scientists and other experts. The result is a more accessible public exploration of a complex but critical issue, and we reach a wider and more diverse audience.”

“We are thrilled to be able to expand the success and concept of the Marfa Dialogues from a small, rural artists’ haven to a large universe of diverse voices, audiences and culture,” said Fairfax Dorn, Executive Director of Ballroom Marfa. “Bringing the Marfa Dialogues to New York City has allowed us to connect perspectives and conversations on the issue of climate change, all the while creating an incredible web of remarkable partners with some of the nation’s most established cultural and academic institutions as well as with emerging organizations.”

“Our goal in supporting Marfa Dialogues/NY is to connect and amplify the voices in this city-wide conversation as people engage the issue of climate change through a cultural lens,” said Christy MacLear, Executive Director of The Rauschenberg Foundation. “Through Marfa Dialogues/NY we are not only carrying on Bob Rauschenberg’s commitment to the environment but also extending the discussion about climate change into new communities and inspiring innovative responses to this critically important issue.”

For the most current calendar of events and additional information about partners and programs, visit www.marfadialogues.org.

Ballroom Marfa
Oct. 15 – Nov. 30
Rauschenberg Project Space, 455 W. 19th Street
The Ballroom Marfa-curated visual art exhibition The Quiet Earth includes a major work by Robert Rauschenberg; architectural drawings of desert spaces by Donald Judd; works by Maya Lin, Amy Balkin and Hans Haacke and four large pyramid vessels by Agnes Denes in an exploration of human consciousness and our dialectical relationship with the planet.

Carbon Tax Center
Nov. 1, 2013
11 Hanover Square, 21st Floor, New York, NY 10005
Hosting a panel discussion to explore the implications of a possible U.S. carbon tax on the attitudes, beliefs and practices of Americans with respect to energy use, consumption and the natural world. The panel will feature individuals who are well versed in environmental history and advocacy from a variety of scientific, artistic and political backgrounds.

Gallery Aferro
Oct. 11, 6PM-10PM; Oct. 12, 12PM-6PM; Oct. 13, 11AM-4PM
Outside Gallery Aferro, 73 Market Street, Newark, NJ
Oct. 15, 6PM-8PM
Outside the Robert Rauschenberg Project Space, 455 West 19th Street, New York, NY
Presenting GhostFood, an installation and participatory performance by Miriam Simun and Miriam Songster that explores eating in a future of food scarcity and biodiversity loss caused by climate change. Traveling to several locations within the NY-NJ metro area, GhostFood will serve simulated taste experiences to the public out of a branded food truck. Simulations will center on the scents of foods threatened with extinction, employing a wearable headpiece to deliver the illusion of flavors that may soon be unavailable.

High Line Art
Ongoing Exhibition: Oct. 10 – Dec. 4, 5PM-10PM Daily
The High Line
Presenting Solar, an exhibition in video format featuring recent videos by acclaimed international artists who use their work to explore the spectacle of nature and the sense of cosmic stupor that captures humans when faced with the sublime vastness of our planet. Solar features works by Rosa Barba, Neil Beloufa, Camille Henrot and Basim Magdy.

Joe’s Pub at the Public Theater
Nov. 10, 7PM
425 Lafayette Street
Presenting Water Water Everywhere/Nay Any Drop To Drink, a multimedia song cycle performance by Nora York, an exploration of climate change and the world’s water supply inspired by George Fredric Handel’s Water Music. Using her unique form of compositional adaptation and appropriation, York will riff on Handel’s work with projected images from visual artists whose works engage water and the environment as a metaphoric landscape.

Mary Miss/City as Living Laboratory
Oct. 27, 12PM-4PM
Starting at Bowling Green – ending at 23rd St.
CaLL/WALKS, a program of BROADWAY: 1000 Steps, is a series of walks and panel discussions taking place along the length of Broadway between Bowling Green and 240th Street. The fall 2013 WALKS will afford artists an opportunity for preparatory dialogues with scientists and community representatives to bolster their vision, insights and creative thinking with technical and contextual information and feedback. Shifting Domains, a panel moderated by Suzaan Boettger, will examine the CaLL Framework as well as other artist strategies that are recasting the role of the artist as affective catalysts for social change.

Materials for the Arts
Ongoing Exhibition: Nov. 10AM-4PM; Open Studio: November 21, 6PM-9PM
33-00 Northern Blvd, Third Floor, Queens
In partnership with the NYC Center for Materials Reuse, MFTA is hosting “Waste Characterizations,” an analysis of the composition of donated items and volume of disposed waste. Findings from this study will result in an artists’ exhibit highlighting MFTA’s environmental impact and the value of reuse in NYC’s policies for climate change. To accompany the exhibit, a free public art workshop will be held to introduce the science of waste characterization and the concept of reuse to the NYC audience.

NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council)
Nov. 4, 6PM-8PM
The Jerome L. Greene Performance Space, 44 Charlton Street
Two of the leading voices on the issue of climate change—artist and honorary NRDC Trustee Maya Lin and NRDC President Frances Beinecke—will discuss the critical role artists, advocates and scientists play in addressing climate change, the role of art in mobilizing and educating the public, and the great potential for environmentally focused artwork to affect climate change policy. The discussion will use two of Maya Lin’s most recent projects, What is Missing? and Greenprint For the Future, as examples of collaborations to engage the public about climate change.

Pratt Institute: Center for Social Inclusion
Oct. 29, 6PM-8PM
University Settlement House, 189 Allen St. #1
In collaboration with Pratt Programs for Sustainable Planning and Development’s RAMP Initiative, the Center for Social Inclusion will present “Our Climate, Our City, Our Future: Hurricane Sandy One Year Later,” a series of workshops at museums throughout New York City on recovery, adaptation, mitigation and planning with communities post-Hurricane Sandy. The workshops will include presentations from architects, artists and community activists on neighborhood development and re-development in communities most vulnerable to the effects of climate change.

SculptureCenter
Nov. 10 – Jan. 27
44-19 Purves St, Long Island City
Presenting the first U.S. solo exhibition of Danish artist Tue Greenfort, whose interdisciplinary practice deals with issues such as the public and private realm, nature and culture. A series of public programs, including panels with experts, artist conversations, and community workshops will focus on the history of environmentalism in relation to art and ecology in the United States and New York City in particular. Greenfort’s exhibition and the discussions hosted around it will seek to uncover parallels between art and ecology, presenting notions of nature, wilderness and natural resources.

Socrates Sculpture Park
Ongoing Exhibition, Opening: Oct. 5, 12PM
32-01 Vernon Blvd, Long Island City
Introducing a series of green roofs atop shipping containers that have been an architectural staple within the park for over two decades. In collaboration with a team of horticulturalists at Plant Specialists, NY-based artist David Brooks will “green” three containers into works of art that explore New York City’s strategy to reduce its carbon footprint through green roofs. Also on view in the park will be tree wood by Toshihiro Oki architect pc, a Broadway Billboard by Wangechi Mutu, and the 2013 Emerging Artist Fellowship Exhibition, featuring 15 new commissions by emerging artists.

Triple Canopy
Speculations (On Nature) – Oct. 26, 3PM
Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, 381 Lafayette Street

Speculations (The Climate) – Nov. 23, 3PM
155 Freeman St., Brooklyn
Presenting two roundtable discussions as part of Speculations, the organization’s ongoing investigation of the future and the demands it makes on the present day. The roundtables will consider climate-change adaptation and mitigation from scientific and artistic perspectives and survey a range of viewpoints on ecology and nature. In addition to the roundtables, Triple Canopy will publish a book in which artists, writers, technologists, economists, activists, and ecologists have been challenged to propose visions of the future in creative forms.

Pending Events

Columbia University: International Research Institute for Climate & Society and the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory
Presenting Climate Past, Present and Future, an installation and panel discussion. Along with photographs for the 2014 Climate Models calendar, which brings scientists and their research into the public view, a panel of four climate scientists will discuss ways to make study of our climate and adaptation to it more accessible and understandable.

Columbia University: The Earth Institute
PositiveFeedback, an initiative led by The Earth Institute of Columbia University, will host two events bringing artists and scientists together. The first is an original play, Don’t be Sad, Flying Ace!, performed by Superhero Clubhouse, a sustainable collective of artists and advocates working at the intersection of environmentalism and theater. This educational play is inspired by Charles Shultz’ iconic beagle and features a dog that perches on his doghouse as waters rise around him. It incorporates leading climate science on topics like sea level rise. The second event will be the latest edition of PositiveFeedback’s “Art/Science Speed-Dating,” an event designed to bring artists and climate scientists together to determine if there are “sparks” for future interdisciplinary collaboration.

Cooper Union: Institute for Sustainable Design
Hosting Emissions/Admissions, a panel discussion bringing together artists and greenhouse gas experts to discuss the study The Preliminary and Extended Reports on Ground-Level Ambient Methane Levels in Manhattan, which examines the impacts of greenhouse gases. An exhibition of works examining these impacts will accompany the panel discussion.

IMC Lab & Gallery
Opening Reception: Oct. 11, 7PM-9PM; Ongoing Exhibition.
56 W 22nd St, 6th Floor
“Climate, Data, Art: Seeing Measurements in New Ways” is an exhibition showcasing the work of data artists on the subject of climate change. Data-driven art is part of a growing movement of artists focusing on the graphic side of data analysis. The pieces included will illustrate climate change data in creative and informative ways, blending media and art genres, communicating issues we cannot grasp through statistics and data tables alone. The exhibition will be curated by Isabel Draves, Founder of LISA (Leaders in Software and Art).

The New School: Center for New York City Affairs
Hosting Food & Climate Change: Growing a Cultural Movement, a forum examining how locally designed and developed sustainable food-oriented solutions can help communities respond to the challenges of climate change. The forum will feature a diverse range of leaders and innovators who have engaged in explorations of climate change and the tools needed to create a culture of sustainability.

Storefront for Art & Architecture
Exploring the universal yet differentiated qualities of the natural, global phenomenon of weather – especially the connection between contaminated air and our efforts to condition, or control, the air. MODU’s Weather (Un)Control will present/create an installation that relates the control of weather with its contamination in both outdoor and indoor environments.

Superhero Clubhouse
In partnership with Columbia University Earth Institute/PositiveFeedback, Superhero Clubhouse will present a double bill: Don’t Be Sad, Flying Ace! and Field Trip (A Climate Cabaret). Superhero Clubhouse is a sustainable collective of artists and activists working at the intersection of environmentalism and theater. Field Trip is a mash-up of camp and crusade, featuring original songs, dance, storytelling and poetry. Inspired by Charles Shultz’s iconic beagle and incorporating leading climate science, Don’t Be Sad, Flying Ace! is a delightful tour-de-force about resilience and adaptation.

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Marfa Dialogues / NY is an examination of climate change science, environmental activism and artistic practice happening this October and November, 2013 in New York City. A collaboration between the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, Ballroom Marfa and the Public Concern Foundation, Marfa Dialogues / NY will feature 18 Program Partners and a spectrum of exhibitions, performance, and interdisciplinary discussions at the intersection of the arts and climate change. www.marfadialogues.org

A trailer for the 1985 film that inspired the Ballroom Marfa-curated exhibition of the same name. More on the exhibition here. Quiet Earth opens at the Rauschenberg Project space on October 15, 2013.

In June 2013 the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation invited me (with @JoesPub at The Public) to present a concert as part of the Marfa Dialogues/NY on Climate Change. #MDNY Their invitation provided me an opportunity to start exploring the vast subject of water; I chose Handel’s Water Music Suite as my foundation. Here is the first song completed. I shot the video this summer on Martha’s Vineyard — check www.norayork.com for concert details. hint- it’s free!

Last year Hurricane Sandy hit where I live and work — New York City — devastating the whole North East. I was struck by what was right before my eyes. Water was everywhere, there were cars floating down the streets of lower Manhattan. Water brought the largest city in the USA to its knees. When the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation invited me (with Joes Pub at The Public) to present a concert as part of the fall Marfa Dialogues/NY event I was decided it was an opportunity for me to explore the vast subject of water.

I have a web radio show at ArtonAir.org called Love Crazy. What a great opportunity to begin thinking about the subject of water by creating a new radio show – on and about water.

Come listen here – a wide array of songs that drift from Ol Man River – Kerns/Hammerstein — sung by Paul Robeson to
The River by Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan’s High Water – and much more…

LOVE CRAZY “WATER WATER EVERYWHERE”

Stay tuned for more Love Crazy radio shows this fall where I will invite some of the project partners from the Marfa Dialogues/NY to tell us about there artistic practice.

About the Clocktower Gallery and ARTonAIR.org

Founded in 1972 by Alanna Heiss, the Clocktower Gallery is a legendary alternative art space for exhibitions, performances, long-term and site-specific installations, and artist residencies. Over its 40-year history, the Clocktower has presented formative work by some of the most important artists of our time, including Gordon Matta-Clark, Max Neuhaus, Lynda Benglis, Dennis Oppenheim, Vito Acconci, Nam June Paik, Charlotte Moorman, Laurie Anderson, David Tudor, Marina Abramović, and Christian Marclay, among many others. Today, the Clocktower presents a full program of exhibitions, performances, and residencies that honor the spirit of the alternative spaces movement by focusing on experimental, interdisciplinary, and intergenerational projects.
The Clocktower Gallery’s radio station is a free and searchable online cultural audio archive operating at www.ARTonAIR.org. Its 5,000 hours of diverse, indexed content –an unduplicated collection in any media– consist of non-commercial music, audio art, spoken word, cultural news, history and dialogue, and new media innovation. ARTonAIR’s mission is to excel as a globally accessible and technically innovative deliverer of content, through a traditional radio-style stream of hosted shows in a curated schedule and a searchable on-demand archive.
Together, the Clocktower Gallery and ARTonAIR.org function as a laboratory for experimentation, working closely and collaboratively with artists, musicians, curators, writers and producers to develop, realize and present innovative and challenging work in all media, ranging from installation to performance and from experimental music to radio theater. By engaging both the physical resources of its historical gallery space and ARTonAIR’s access to a broad and international online radio audience, the Clocktower is able to disseminate experimental work to numerous communities, and promote a rich cultural and social dialogue between artists, audiences, and institutions worldwide.

A letter to the editor from Fairfax Dorn and Hamilton Fish, from the July 25, 2013 Big Bend Sentinel:

To the many friends and supporters of the Marfa Dialogues in the high desert – We have exciting news: the Marfa Dialogues project is hitting the road and will be opening this fall in New York City with a series of programs on climate change and the arts that will expand on the symposium held in Marfa last September. It’s been our dream to build on the work we started here in 2010, and to export the Marfa Dialogues model of engaging the arts with social and political concerns to communities around the country.

With the support of our partners at the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation we have created a two-month long Marfa Dialogues calendar of events in New York, beginning in October. More than 20 leading New York cultural, academic and public interest institutions are participating in this city-wide public conversation around climate change. Like our Marfa project, but on a larger scale, the Marfa Dialogues/New York program will feature community forums, public panels, an exhibition curated by Ballroom Marfa at the Rauschenberg project space in Chelsea, an online magazine, public sculpture projects, theater performances, cabarets and film exhibitions – and in the enduring spirit of Marfa, we also have an environmentally conscious food truck as one of our program partners.

Through your participation as co-sponsors, audience members and supporters, the Marfa community has helped shape this initiative. We are hugely grateful for the collaborative efforts of Tim Johnson and Caitlin Murray of the Marfa Book Company; Robert and Rosario Halpern of the Big Bend Sentinel; Tom Michael and the staff at Marfa Public Radio; Farm Stand Marfa; Cochineal; Maiya’s; Rob Crowley, Gory Smelley; The Crowley Theater; Thunderbird Hotel and The Capri; Padre’s; Robert Potts of The Dixon Water Foundation; and to the Food Shark and chef Rocky Barnett for all of their amazing creations. Add to that all of the camera people, copywriters, graphic artists, publicists and the very long list of all of you who contributed so much to the success of our first two Dialogues.

Even as we are expanding the horizons of the Marfa Dialogues project, we will continue our established practice of producing a new Marfa Dialogues program every other year here in Marfa. So break out the new dress and press that shirt – the Marfa Dialogues will be returning to Marfa in the fall of 2014.

And with the Marfa Dialogues banner flying over New York this fall, we hope if you can you’ll join us there and be a part of the exciting schedule of climate change programs being organized across the city. In the next several weeks we’ll be posting more details about the calendar of events on ballroommarfa.org and our new website, marfadialogues.org.

With great appreciation to all,

Fairfax Dorn
Hamilton Fish, co-founders, Marfa Dialogues

For more information on Marfa Dialogues past and future, visit the  archive.

A few images from Ballroom’s recent trip to the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation in New York, where the next installment of Marfa Dialogues is taking shape. #MDNY

Executive Director Christy MacLear of the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation with Ballroom’s Executive Director Fairfax Dorn

Michael Pollan’s new book, Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation, is now available for purchase, and the self-described “nature writer who writes about this particular part of nature that we don’t think of as nature” is popping up all over the place, from The Colbert Report to the Field Lab.

In September of 2012 Pollan joined us here in Far West Texas for the second Marfa Dialogues symposium. He and Hamilton Fish had a sprawling conversation in front of a packed house at the Crowley Theater, the entirety of which is available for your viewing pleasure up above.