NEW PROJECT . . . Dear Harbor Radio . . . New Bedford, MA . . . July – November 2019 . . . a nomadic bike-powered interspecies love letter writing and recording studio . . . Part of Local Ecologies: an inter-campus initiative focused on place-based practice shared between three UMass campuses. The interrelated programming, which will include public talks, course offerings, and new project development, emphasizes contemporary artistic perspectives on ecological sites, from the postindustrial Merrimack River and New Bedford regions to the evolving urban ecologies of Boston and environs.
Water Support Group
Saturday, November 19th 7 PM – 9 PM
Location: The Water Bar, 2516 Central Avenue, NE, Minneapolis, MN, 55418
Join Plotform (Jane D. Marsching + Andi Sutton) in a storytelling event that paints a portrait of the challenges facing Minnesota waters with a focus on empathy, activism, and change. Invited guests will share personal stories of water crisis, failure, challenge, solution, and connection from across the state and from a myriad of perspectives and communities. The event, a cross between an AA meeting and a Moth Story Hour, will amplify the work of water activists and advocates as well as individuals reflecting on current challenges to promote a vibrant understanding of the interconnected issues of water, ecology, place, community, policy, and behavior. Culminating in a facilitated group dialogue, it will be accompanied by a sing-a-long of water quality data from a select Twin Cities waterway as well as video projections of local waters and watery beings who inhabit them.
Water Dance Party 9 PM
Stay after Water Support Group to to smooth (or sharpen) the edges and effects of the evening’s stories by dancing to selections from Plotform’s growing song archive, Songs for Water. From Tina Turner to 50 Cent, Sam Cook to Joan Jett, the Highwaymen to the Pixies, the playlist uses popular music to narrate our human relationship with water: floods, metaphors, pollution, pop, and more. What better way to be together in the mourning, reflection, rage, and celebration the evening’s stories inspire?
EXHIBITION
Emergent Ecologies Art Exhibit
NYC Emergence: Kilroy Metal Ceiling, 4/30-5/21/16
Featuring over 70 wild artists
Emergent ecologies are being fastened into place with new rivets and cyborg articulations. Amidst collapsing systems, unruly assemblages are flourishing and proliferating in unexpected places. Microbes that become emergent diseases—by finding novel exploits, pathways of transmission, or modes of existence—can quickly transform dominant political strategies, economic systems, or agricultural practices. Emergences can also figure into collective hopes. When a forest is clear-cut by loggers or destroyed by a volcanic eruption, emergent plants are the first to sprout.
Rather than be a static exhibit, that will stay the same from the opening and closing dates, our project will involve playing with the “hap” of what happens. Happiness, in the Old English sense of the word, means having “good hap” or fortune. We will be conducting experiments with happiness and glass, breaking down boundaries (and constructing new ones) to see what ecological communities might emerge.
OPENING: Saturday, April 30th, 6pm till very late
6-8pm “The Elephant Museum” (Juan Olivares)
6:30pm “Mutant Fruit Fly Exchange” (Eben Kirksey)
7pm “Exciting Pressure Release” followed by “OS Fermentation” (Cary Peppermint & Leila Nadir, EcoArtTech)
8:30pm “Bipolar Flowers” (Adam Zaretsky)
9:30pm “I Hate America And America Hates Me” (Cheto Castellano)
more events: find out on the FB Emergence invite page
Featuring works by Krisanne Baker, Steve Barrett, Tarsh Bates, Peter Bauer, Vaughn Bell, Karin Bolender, Rogan Brown, Cheto Castellano, Alonso Cedillo, Sophia Chao, Atom Cianfarani, Tatiana Czekalska + Leszek Golec, Montserrat + Natalia Cabezas Diaz, Krista Dragomer, J. D. Doria, Anna Dumitriu, Grayson Earle, Regina José Galindo, Grace Glovier, Kathy High, Jeff Hoelle, Susan Hoenig, Henry Horn, Ellie Irons, Antonia Isaacson, Maca Jimenez, Sharon Kallis, Anja Kanngieser, David Khang, Katie King, Eben Kirksey, Michael Klingler, Cody Kohn, Lian Lian, Lenore Malen, Matsya, Jane Marsching, Mary Martin, Alex May, Laura McLauchlan, Leila Nadir, NEOZOON, Juan Olivares, Lissette Olivares, Terreform ONE, Alexandra Palocz, Cary Peppermint, Anne Percoco, Angela Petsis, Praba Pilar, Deanna Pindell, Peter Richards, Coco Rico, Christy Rupp, Sin Kabeza Production, Annie Sprinkle + Beth Stephens, Polly Stanton, Anna-Sophie Springer + Etienne Turpin, Andi Sutton, Vandra Thorburn, The Natural History Museum (Not an Alternative), Greg Umali, Anuj Vaidya, Maria Whiteman, Amanda Yates, Adam Zaretsky.
…………………………………………………………………….
PERFORMANCE
Stories of Warning, Stories of Care
Friday 4/29 4-6, Saturday 4/30 5-12, and other times to be announced
Join (or find) us at the exhibition NYC Emergence for a peripatetic performance, recorded and available via a downloadable podcast throughout the exhibition, that will happen both before, during, and after the exhibition. Intended for the interstices of the exhibition space and time, we invite you to read a story of warning, care, or protection to riparian habitats around the world. Activated by passages from A Library for Warning and Protection and images of watery beings around the world from An Archive of Watery Beings: Twenty-first Century, your stories will become part of podcast available for all to download and listen to.
……………………………………………………………………..
EVENT
Stories of Warning, Stories of Care on and to the Mystic River & Stitching the Shore
October 2015
with Mare Liberum and invited guests
…………………………………………………………………….
EXHIBITION
Stonehill College Carol Calo Gallery, “Down to Earth,” curated by Candice Smith-Corby and students
October 2015
…………………………………………………………………….
EXHIBITION
System: ECOnomies
January 24 – March 30, 2013
Opening Reception: Thursday, January 24, 6-8pm
808 Gallery, Boston University
System: ECOnomies presents the work of individual artists and collaboratives who consider themes of sustainability—environmental, cultural, or economic—through the invention or investigation of ecological systems or micro-communities. The exhibition examines the feasibility of sustainable solutions on small scales and the value of working within modest and minimal means. Through art practices that also connect with interdisciplinary research and DIY activism, the selected artists propose different methodologies and models—from a large-scale inflatable beehive to a self-sustaining urban habitat—that address issues of environmental awareness and responsibility. Viewers will have the opportunity to broaden their own ideas about sustainability and the environment by directly engaging with several of the artists’ projects through events, workshops, and performances that invite collaborative action and dialogue.
Participating artists include Kim Beck, Center for PostNatural History, Amy Franceschini, Mary Mattingly, Jaimes Mayhew, Maria Molteni/Colette Aliman, Plotform, and Marina Zurkow.
article in Boston Art Underground by Samantha Burgoon, March 20, 2013
article in Take Part, online journal, by Amy Dufault, March 2013
article in BU Today by Erin Thibeault, January 2013
…………………………………………………………………….
EVENT
Stitching the Shore
Wednesday, March 6th, 6:30 PM
808 Gallery, Boston University
A public event by Plotform as part of Alternative Visions/Sustainable Futures
Hello friends! We hope you join Jane Marsching and I in a participatory event we’re organizing at BU. Come on out for a collaborative crochet session to stitch floating salt marsh islands before they’re deployed in the Boston Harbor. This workshop – for veteran and inexperienced crochet stitchers alike, will result in community crocheted connective tissue between our prototype salt marsh modules. Bring old cotton sheets and clothes to make recycled crochet yarn. Bring questions, thoughts, and dreams about our coasts, our weather, and climate change. Join us as we stitch these marsh cozies and weave together our fears and dreams for our communities and imagine a future Boston protected by a blanket of salt marsh.
…………………………………………………………………….
EVENT
Bottle Island Design
Tuesday April 9, 8:30am
Thacher Montessori School, Milton, MA
An education event by Plotform
At Thacher Montessori School we worked with 1-3 grade children to think about the connections between recycling, climate change, materials, our city, flooding, islands, marshes, and art. Students used their finger weaving projects, duct tape, and water bottles gathered from the school to make small islands that could float the crochet edging for Marsh Radio Island. Students designs ranged from flowers to jet packs, abstract shapes to Hogwarts Castle, a football to an Xwing fighter, all of which can float in the water and be the basis for a salt marsh flotant.
|
|
Future events:
Weather Report for a Salt Marsh
Marsh Island Radio needs a weather report! Can we imagine together what information a salt marsh would like to know about the weather? Do our local salt marshes care about humidity, tides, lunar cycles, storms, wind warnings? What about water quality? How can we aid them in protecting our shoreline neighborhoods by preparing them for daily atmospheric and aquatic conditions? In this workshop for 3rd – 5th graders, we will learn together about how salt marsh plants flourish and function in their ecosystem, develop a means of communicating to the plants, and record a weather report to be played on the pirate radio station Marsh Island Radio. Ideal age: 3-5 graders date: TBA