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• MAP NEWS CAN NOW BE FOUND ON FB, INSTAGRAM AND TWITTER

  
  

  Links can be found on our Homepage. See you on Social Media!

   

  
  

• ART + SCIENCE RENDEZVOUS

  
  

  March 8, 2016 - art + science rendezvous

  March 30, 5:30 - 7:30 PM

  University of North Texas, Denton

  Organized by the Texas Humanities, Art, Technology and Science network for their spring meeting on March 30 at the University of North Texas. 

   

  The art + science rendezvous is a discussion forum that fosters interdisciplinary networking.The University of North Texas is partnering with Leonardo to bring students and community members face-to-face with five panelists who will discuss their work in art + science. Janeil Engelstad will present MAP projects and programs and the importance of diversity and equity in this work. 

   

  Panelists include:

   

  JD Talasek, Director of Cultural Programs of the National Academy of Sciences and creator and moderator for the monthly DASER (DC Art Science Evening Rendezvous) salon held at NAS. He is currently on the faculty at Johns Hopkins University, and he is the Art and Design Advisor for the National Academies Keck Futures Initiative (NAKFI) based in Irvine, CA.

   

  Janeil Engelstad initiates interdisciplinary collaborations to produce multi-form projects that address social and environmental concerns. She is the Founding Director of Make Art with Purpose (MAP), an organization that produces international projects in art, science, design and architecture and she is an Associate Artist at the Social Practice Art Research Center, University of California, Santa Cruz.

   

  Ira Greenberg, Director of the Center of Creative Computation and professor of computer science and engineering at Southern Methodist University. 

   

  Marco Buongiorno Nardelli is a computational materials physicist, a composer, flutist and a member of iARTA at the University of North Texas. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and of the Institute of Physics, a founding member of the AFLOW Consortium and a Parma Recordings artist.

   

  Ruth West, Director of xREZ Art + Science Lab at UNT. Her work envisions a future in which art-science integration opens new portals of imagination‚creative expression‚ invention‚ knowledge‚ and communication across cultures to create solutions for our most pressing global problems. 

   

   

   

  
  

• THE ART OF CONNECTING WORLDS

  
  

  February 28, 2016 - MAP’s Janeil Engelstad launch international project questioning aspects of socially engaged art with MAP Affiliate Artist, Architectural Historian and Assistant Professor, MIT Art, Culture and Technology Program, Azra Akšamija at MIT as part of Trans Cultural Exchange conference. The Art of Connecting Worlds brought together a range of international cultural practitioners - artists, curators, cultural producers and arts administrators - to identify aesthetic and ethical parameters, methodologies and tools for an emerging transdisciplinary field that Akšamija and Engelstad identify as the “Art of Connecting Worlds.” Practitioners working in this field produce new forms and methods for contemporary art and cultural institutions in order to foster mutual understanding between cultures, empower local communities, and cultivate coexistence on a global scale. They critically engage the discourse of contemporary art, creating new opportunities for learning and knowledge sharing and embracing interdisciplinarity by utilizing design and technology. Local and global concerns are addressed through critical responses and creative solutions. The aim of this project is to produce several that investigate how these practices hybridize art and design with science and technology to produce an impact both in and beyond the world of art that will culminate in a book edited by Akšamija and Engelstad.

   

  
  

• DANCE EXCHANGE AND MAP @ BILLY EARL DADE MIDDLE SCHOOL

  
  

  November 9, 2015 Maryland based Dance Exchange helps MAP kick off 2015-16 Arts Based Leadership Program at Billy Earl Dade Middle School during anti-bullying week. Through this movement and story telling workshop the students explored the resistance, what it means to resist and the different ways that we resist. The student’s reflections that were put into movement included:

   

  "When I need to resist, I breathe."

   

  "When I feel anger, I stomp and it is released."

   

  "Resistance can be honoring who you are and where you come from."

   

  "If you listen to a story that is sad you will dance at a sower pace."

   

  MAP's Arts Based Leadership Program, which was founded in the winter of 2015, connects 6th - 8th grade girls with artists, writers, business leaders, wellness experts and other professionals to support the development of self-esteem, creative thinking skills, holistic health, team building and joy. We are honored to be back at Dade for the 2015-16 school year, working in partnership with the school's administration and the Boys and Girls Club to offer dynamic programming that lifts all the participants and collaborating organizations up. The kick-off workshop led by Dance Exchange was made possible by support from Southern Methodist University's "Ignite Arts Dallas" Initiative on Community Engagement. 

  
  

• HOW A POEM SAVED A FOREST

  
  

  September 8, 2015 - A beatiful article in yes! magazine tells how a poem and a friendship saved an old growth forst of redwoods. Written as a poem, this article illuminates what happens when two opposing sides come together in a "zone of yes".

  http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/make-it-right/one-poem-that-saved-a-forest

   

  Image: courtesy of yes! magazine 

  
  

• JUST EAT IT

  
  

  August 25, 2015 - Filmmakers and food lovers Jen and Grant dive into the issue of waste from farm, through retail, all the way to the back of their own fridge. After catching a glimpse of the billions of dollars of good food that is tossed each year in North America, they pledge to quit grocery shopping cold turkey and survive only on foods that would otherwise be thrown away. In a nation where one in 10 people is food insecure, the images they capture of squandered groceries are both shocking and strangely compelling. But as Grant’s addictive personality turns full tilt towards food rescue, the ‘thrill of the find’ has unexpected consequences.

   

  Featuring interviews with TED lecturer, author and activist Tristram Stuart and acclaimed author Jonathan Bloom, Just Eat It looks at our systemic obsession with expiry dates, perfect produce and portion sizes, and reveals the core of this seemingly insignificant issue that is having devastating consequences around the globe. Just Eat It brings farmers, retailers, inspiring organizations, and consumers to the table in a cinematic story that is equal parts education and delicious entertainment.

   

  For more information, including educational guides and screening locations and times: http://www.foodwastemovie.com

  
  

• CONFEDERATE MONUMENTS

  
  

  August 10, 2015 -  MAP affiliate artist Lauren Woods' "Drinking Fountain#1" featured in article in D Magazine promoting the idea of turning Confederate Monuments into art pieces that "transforms them into teaching opportunities". To read: http://frontrow.dmagazine.com/2015/08/lets-turn-our-confederate-monuments-into-collaborative-art-spaces/

  
  

• HONORING SREBRENICA

  
  

   

  July 11, 2015 - Honoring Srebrenica and remembering the Bosnian War

  MAP affiliate artist Azra Akšamija's 2008 project, "Monument in Waiting," illuminates part of the history of the Bosnian War. Akšamija researched 250 of the more than 1,200 Bosnian mosques that were destroyed or damaged during the War (1992-95). As a part of the research for this project, Akšamija collected individual stories from the war. The details of these stories inspired a narrative kilim, designed by Akšamija and woven by women war victims in Sarajevo.

  To see images from and read about this project in detail visit Akšamija's project page.

   

  Image: Monument in Waiting (2008), Azra Akšamija

  Photo: Alicia Guirao/Factum Arte

  
  

• THE CARETAKER

  
  

  June 29, 2015 - Monday, June 29th is the National POV Broadcast of MAP affiliate project iNation's short film The Caretaker. The Caretaker is a portrait of two women who are outsiders in the place they call home. Haru is a 95-year-old Japanese-American migrant who was interned during World War II. Joesy is an undocumented worker from Fiji who cares for her.

  Check here for local broadcast times: http://www.pbs.org/pov/tvschedule

  
  

• OPINION

  
  

  May 30, 2015 - MAP's Director Janeil Engelstad publishes op-ed piece in the Dallas Morning News about the importance of arts education and how it has made a difference in a Dallas middle school.

   

  The dismal news coming from Dade Middle School in recent months may be technically accurate, but it doesn’t paint a complete picture of the Dade that I know.

  When I think about Dade, I see the many dedicated students who show up day after day and, despite the chaos of food fights, leadership changes and police pepper-spraying of unruly students, give their all to their education. I think of committed faculty members like Shirlie Whitted-Atkins and Lance Williams who give 150 percent to students by staying after school and even showing up on weekends to help with tutoring and community programs. I think about the committed group of parents and faculty members who meet regularly to craft solutions to problems at the school, problems that stem from the students’ poverty.

   

  For this past year, my organization — Make Art with Purpose, or MAP — has partnered with Dade to produce arts education projects that uplift students by providing them with meaningful, creative activities that foster learning and positive change. Having developed arts education programs for over two decades, I have seen time and time again the positive impact that these programs have on youth. At-risk students who have access to the arts in or out of school earn better grades, have higher rates of college enrollment and are more civically engaged, according to The Arts and Achievement in At-Risk Youth, a 2012 study by the U.S. Department of Education and the National Endowment for the Arts.

   

  To continue reading: http://www.dallasnews.com/…/20150529-janeil-engelstad-at-da…

   

  Image: mural detail

  
  

• TRANSLATING CULTURE II

  
  

  Translating Culture: Community Voices at the Dallas Museum of Art II

  Launches May 15

   

  An outgrowth of MAP 2013: Creative projects that restore and preserve the environment, promote social justice and advance human knowledge and well-being, Translating Culture II is a bi-lingual Spanish English smart phone tour to works of art in the permanent collection of the Dallas Museum of Art (DMA). Our collaborative partners for this project include the Center for Creative Connections at the Dallas Museum of Art (C3) and students from the Architecture Cluster at Skyline High School. Over the fall and winter the students worked with MAP and C3 staff to create this dynamic guide.On Friday, May 15 the guide will launch at DMA Late Night. From 8: 00 - 9:00 PM the students will be at stations, throughout the museum, in front of the different works of art that they selected to interpret, with computers where visitors can access the tours.

  Come out and have some fun with MAP an Skyline at the DMA!

  Image: sneak peak of Smart Phone tour image for Windsor settee

   

  1770-1785, Decorative Arts And Design, American Art Galleries - 18th Century, 4th Floor. At this tour stop you will learn how the Windsor settee came to be i nth collection of the DMA and the imagined journey to Dallas from 18th century New England.

  
  

• HAPPY EARTH DAY

  
  

  April 22, 2015 - Thank you to all of the creatives, scientists, environmentalist, nature lovers and volunteers who care for our planet.

   

  Image: Using a microscope to examine soil samples and learning about the importance of dirt to our eco-system at the Bio Bus, Earth Day Festival, Union Square, New York City

  
  

• MAP IN NYC

  
  

  April 18, 2015 - MAP is in New York City, launching the NYC production of "Dialogues on Race" in collaboration with Design Ignites Change, New York High School of Art and Design, AIGA/NY and Shillington design school.

  In NYC we are partnering with the AIGA (American association of graphic designers) Mentoring program, where professional designers work with design students from the High School of Art and Design. Nearly twenty teams are designing posters that will be posted in various formats throughout the city later this year. Like Dallas, the NYC "Dialogues on Race" will also include a round table discussion with the participants and community members about the issues and concerns connected to Race, raised through this project.

  The kick-off of Dialogues on Race" in New York City has been made possible by generous support from World Studio and ExposureNY.

   

  Image: Janeil Engelstad talks to the proejct participants

  
  

• AUDREY LORD - POETRY AND SOCIAL CHANGE

  
  

  April 2, 2015 - April is National Poetry month in the States. Throughout the month we will be posting on poetry and art and social change, in some combination, or another . . .

   

  "Poetry is an absolute necessity of our living because it delineates . . . it the beginning of that process by which we insure the future because we know so much more than we understand. We must first examine our feelings for questions, because all the rest has been programmed. We have been taught how to understand, and in terms that will insure not creativity, but the status quo.

  If we are looking for something which is new and something which is vital, we must look first into the chaos within ourselves. That will help us in the directions that we need to go--that's why our poetry is so essential, is so vital. Now whether poetry has the responsibility to effect social change . . . it doesn't really matter. As we get in touch with the things that we feel are intolerable, in our lives, they become more and more intolerable. If we just once dealt with how much we hate most of what we do, there would be no holding us back from changing it. This is true with any kind of movement. This is the way in which the philosopher/Queen, the poet-warrior leads.

   

  Hammond, Karla. "An Interview with Audre Lorde." American Poetry Review March/April 1980: 18-21.

  
  

• CONVERSATIONS

  
  

  March 28, 2015 - Taking a break from his week long residency at TCU in Fort Worth, Ologwagdi talked with Janeil Engelstad / MAP this week about his decades long work as an artist - activist in Panama. One of Panama’s leading indigenous artists and a longtime veteran of the country’s labor and social protest movements, Ologwadi is also a member of El Kolectivo.

   

  As Peter Szok writes in an article for ARC (http://arcthemagazine.com/…/panama-protests-ologwagdi-and-…/), that El Kolectivo's "agenda is satirical and loosely leftist, [yet] members differ on many questions, including the merits of Panama’s military period (1968-1989), perhaps the most divisive issue in national politics. They debate whether the regime was inclusive or repressive and whether its social-economic reforms were truly meaningful; however, they all agree on culture’s importance. Amidst a galloping but highly inequitable economy, soaring skyscrapers, scandals and urban disruptions, they insist that literature, music and painting offer a means for reflection and for possible national redemption. Leading this movement is Armando Díaz Rivera (Ologwagdi), whose own trajectory mirrors the circuitous path of counterculture in Latin America and the rise of this provocative and doctrinally fluid movement."

  Ologwadi, in conversation with MAP's Janeil Engelstad, said that for art and activism to have an impact people "need to hug the whole tree - it's not enough to address the branches."

   

  At The Wild Detectives in Dallas, South African artist Marcus Neustetter (http://www.marcusneustetter.net), who has been in residence at University of Texas, Dallas for the past week presented his collaborative project, Sutherland Reflections to a full house. Neustetter posted questions throughout his presentation, including, what is his and our role and position in society, how do we use capital assets in public art to speak or connect to society, and how do artists take responsibility for these questions?

  In the upcoming weeks look for Ologwadi and Marcus Neustetter's projects on MAP's website.

  Image: (r to left) Marcus Neustetter, Janeil Engelstad and Roger Malina

   

  
  

• MAP PRESENTS

  
  

  March 21, 2015 - MAP and the Arts and Technology program, University of Texas, Dallas are pleased to present Johannesburg based artist, cultural activist and producer, Marcus Neustetter at

  Wild Detectives, 314 W Eighth St, Dallas, TX 75208

  Wednesday March 25, 7:00 PM

  (214) 942-0108

  The program will include a presentation of Sutherland Reflections Project, produced in collaboration with Bronwyn Lace, which aims to create a community driven experience for participation, artistic interventions and creative spectacle. The artists and scientists’ intention is to address the current attitude and relationship between the seeming “distance” of the disadvantaged communities in Sutherland and the international neighboring telescopic observatory. Now 6 years old the project sees annual engagements with the community resulting in permanent land-art, kite-flying spectacles, museum displays, memorial sites and most recently the creation of a full feature film and book together with the Africa meets Africa project.

   

  Born 1976 in Johannesburg, Marcus Neustetter, reflects critically and playfully on his context through his art and collaborative projects. His strategy has been to pro-actively create, play and experiment to build opportunities and experiences that investigate, reflect and provoke. Mostly process driven, his production of art at the intersection of art, science and technology has led him to work in a multi-disciplinary approach from conventional drawings to permanent and temporary site specific installations, mobile and virtual interventions and socially engaged projects internationally.

   

  Image: courtesy of Marcus Neustetter

  
  

• THE DOSTI MUSIC PROJECT

  
  

  March 12, 2015 - The Dosti Music Project - A month-long experiment in border-bridging collaborative creation, involving Pakistani, Indian, and American musicians.

  The Dosti Music Project brings together ten musicians from Pakistan, India, and the U.S. for a month-long (February 23-March 21, 2015) residency and tour. The U.S. Embassy in Pakistan organized and sponsored the program produced by Bang on a Can’s Found Sound Nation, which invites four Pakistanis, four Indians, and two U.S. musicians from a wide variety of traditions, including Sufi singing to electronic beat-making to Appalachian fiddling, to collaboratively write, record, and perform original music, re-invent traditional music, and develop new projects that will make a positive impact on communities locally and internationally. Dosti, which means friendship in both Urdu and Hindi, transcends political barriers through cross-cultural musical collaboration.

  Residency: February 23-March 7, 2015 at Atlantic Center for the Arts, New Smyrna Beach, FL

  Remaining Tour Concerts:

  March 13 at 7pm. Tigermen’s Den, New Orleans, LA

  March 15 at 8 & 10pm. Snug Harbor, New Orleans, LA

  March 18-21. South by Southwest, Austin, TX

  Through the process of sharing, listening, and collaborating, the Dosti musician delegates will model a creative, cooperative, and egalitarian cultural exchange between India, Pakistan, and the United States – a positive template that can transform the dynamics of cross-national discourse and people-to-people interaction. By providing musicians from India and Pakistan the infrastructure for collaboration and integration, Dosti creates a unique opportunity to reconnect musical traditions and re-link the politically fractured South Asian subcontinent. By facilitating the project in the U.S. and including American musicians, the U.S. participates as capacity-builders and as equal partners, establishing a model of cultural interaction that can positively impact diplomatic and political discourses.

  The cultures of India and Pakistan are deeply interconnected, but creating opportunities for people-to-people contact can be challenging. Yet music has always served as a binding force in South Asia. Bollywood is wildly popular on both sides of the border, just as ghazal singers attract audiences on both sides of the border. Indians and Pakistanis have an immense shared cultural experience upon which to build new collaborations – the Dosti Project provides a space for that to happen.

  
  

• VOICE OF IMMIGRANTS

  
  

  March 8, 2015 - New Radio Show in Malta produced by African Media Association of Malta launches Tuesday, March 10

  After fleeing mortal threats in Somalia, a radio journalist found himself languishing in Malta. He's decided to settle in and is starting a radio program for the many other Somalis there in limbo.

  To hear story on NPR's Weekend Edition: http://www.npr.org/…/in-malta-journalist-makes-a-bridge-bet…

  
  

• WHERE DID WE COME FROM?

  
  

  March 5, 2015 - This past weekend MAP participated in the inaugural For the City: The Dallas Festival of Ideas, presented by The Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture in partnership with The Dallas Morning News. Questions explored included what does the next century look like for Dallas as a physical city? A cultural city? An innovative city? A political city? An educated city? For more information and images visit MAP’s FB page:

  https://www.facebook.com/pages/Make-Art-with-Purpose/211579438899592?sk=wall

  
  

• MIGRATION NOW!

  
  

  February 5, 2015 - Migration Now! Exhibition at University of Washington (Seattle) School of Social Work explores migration issues

   

  The exhibit features visual art addressing social justice and immigration issues such as deportation, the hazards of border crossings, the separation of families, the rights LGBT individuals, and the economics of detention. Migration is a lens through which we can interpret contemporary society—a focal point around which so much turns: race and culture, gender and sexuality, class and representation, economics and the environment, harsh treatment and open arms.

  For More Information and to view the exhibition on line: http://socialwork.uw.edu/node/4337

   

  Peace Migrates by Ernesto Yerena

  
  

• DIALOGUES ON RACE CONTINUES

  
  
  January, 26 2015 - MAP announces partnership with New York City based design firm World Studio to produce national program "Dialogues on Race" 
  
  MAP is pleased and honored to announce a partnership with World Studio and their program "Design Ignites Change" to expand "Dialogues on Race" throughout the country. A project and program that MAP initiated in Dallas in 2014, with support from the Embrey Family Foundation, this partnership will help us to expand and grow the program in ways that would not otherwise be possible. Our collaborative goal with World Studio is to expand the project to 25 cities in the upcoming year.
  
  Stay tuned for details and how organizations, schools, artists, designers and others can participate.
  
  Image: Dialogues on race community discussion at UTD Central Trak, Jan 22, 2015
  
  

• HAPPY NEW YEAR - MAKE ART IN TAIWAN

  
  

  January 6, 2014 - OPPORTUNITIES TO CREATE ENVIRONMENTAL ART IN TAIWAN

  1. National Museum of Marine Science and Technology

  2015 International Marine Environment Art Project in Keelung, Taiwan

  “Paradise: Sustainable Oceans”

   

  Artists from all countries are invited to send a proposal for a site-specific outdoor sculpture installation that will be interactive and raise awareness about protecting our marine environment, and in particular relate to the Badouzi community of Keelung City, Taiwan. Badouzi, located at the port of Keelung, is on the northeast coast of Taiwan and opens to the Pacific Ocean. It is a fishing village where most of the people traditionally make their living from the sea. The island of Taiwan was originally called “Formosa”, meaning beautiful island, by the Portuguese explorers who first came there in 1544 and sailed around the lush green unspoiled tropical island. The Eastern coast of Taiwan retains more of this feeling of paradise even in this time of ocean acidification, global warming and increasing pollution. By striving to reverse current conditions and improve the environment we hope to attain an ecological paradise with sustainable oceans. The NMMST is a newly opened museum with exhibitions and programs about marine science and technology and a popular tourist destination in Keelung, Taiwan.

   

  Deadline for proposals: February 20, 2015

  For more information: nmmstartproject@gmail.com

  National Museum of Marine Science & Technology website:

  http://www.nmmst.gov.tw/enhtml/index

   

  2. Artists from all countries are invited to send a proposal for a site-specific outdoor sculpture installation that will raise awareness about the need to conserve and protect our environment. Artworks should relate to environmental issues in Cheng Long, a small village near the southwest coast of Taiwan. Environmental conditions in the Cheng Long area are fragile: the soil is becoming saltier making it difficult to grow crops or other plants, and there is a lack of clean fresh water for plants, animals and people. This is a low-lying coastal area, and the land in Cheng Long area is sinking more each year due to over pumping of the underground aquifer, increasingly severe typhoons and rising seawater caused by global warming.

   

  Deadline for Entries: January 16, 2015

  For more information: https://artproject4wetland.wordpress.com/about

   

  Image: ChengLong Wetland and the ChengLong village during the dry season

  
  

• TIERRA FIRME

  
  

  December 29, 2014 - Border artists Sarah Westrup and Analise Minjarez travel the Texas-Mexico frontier investigating ideas of place and identity in the MAP supported project, "Tierra Firme." Through artistic engagement that includes producing community workshops and interviewing artists about their how the border influences their work, Westrup and Minjarez are providing a valuable, creative investigation and response to life in politicized and contested territory.

   

  Follow their project @tierra.firme on Instagram or tierrafirmeproject.tumblr.com to share in their journey from El Paso to McAllen, Texas

  
  

• DIALOGUES ON RACE ROUNDTABLE

  
  

  December 19, 2014 - Dialogues on Race Roundtable, Thursday January 22, 7:00pm

   

  CentralTrak

  800 Exposition Ave

  Dallas, Texas 75226

  Make Art with Purpose (MAP) in collaboration with UTD CentralTrak presents Dialogues on Race Roundtable, a conversation with artists, cultural producers and community leaders about concerns connected to race that were explored in MAP’s Dialogues on Race billboard and mural project. The discussion will include short presentations by the artists that designed the billboards and contributions by community leaders and advocates connected to the themes of the billboards and murals. Participants include: Christopher Blay and Gerardo Robles, together they designed a billboard that drew inspiration from the killing of young African American men in cities and towns across the country. Rebecca Carter and Daryl Ratcliff, together they designed a billboard inspired by our common human genome, which traces back to Africa. Jin-Ya Huang and Thania Dominguez McElory, together they designed a billboard that addressed the fact that when a person undergoes an organ transplant, race is not an issue. Morheshin Allahyari and MAP Director Janeil Engelstad, together they designed an electronic billboard that comments on the fact that when you type the words People from the Middle East into Internet search engines the search engine often recommends derogatory content. Community participants include: Roberto Corona, Community Outreach Coordinator, Embrey Human Rights Program, Southern Methodist University; Alia Salem, Executive Director  of the DFW chapter of the Council on American –Islamic Relations, Suzy Miller, Executive Director of Donate Life Texas, and Alpha Thomas South Dallas Community Organizer. Other participants will be added over the upcoming weeks.

   

  MAP developed and produced Dialogues on Race in response to the racial tension in cities around the United States, including Dallas where conversations on racial equity and justice are happening in city government led initiatives, in the media and at grassroots community organizations. As Dallas citizens demonstrate in solidarity with people around the United States to bring attention to police violence and the killing of black men, MAP and CentralTrak aim to make a meaningful, artist led contribution to this dialogue.

   

  Dialogues on Race is supported by the generosity of the Embrey Family Foundation

   

  Image: Rebecca Cater and Daryl Ratfliff for MAP

  
  

• LIVING VIRTUALLY IN IRAN

  
  

  Dec 1, 2014 - MAP affiliate artist Morehshin Allahyari talks to Global Voices about Iranian Censorship and virtually keeping in contact with life in Iran:   http://globalvoicesonline.org/2014/11/29/morehshin-allahyaris-art-on-iranian-censorship-will-soon-be-out-of-this-world

   

  Image: GIF from from the video “In Mere Spaces, All Things Are Side By Side”, copyright by Morehshin Allahyari.

  
  

• INNOVATIVE SHELTER FOR THE HOMELESS IN VANCOUVER

  
  

  November 28, 2014 - It rains 200 days out of the year in Vancouver B.C. Finding places to keep dry during the rain is a constant challenge for the homeless population. The Vancouver based advertising agency Spring and grassroots advocacy group RainCity Housing, which provides progressive services to the homeless have adapted transit seats to provide a place where homeless people can lay down and stay dry. Equipped with a pop-up “roof,” the benches serve as seating during the day for those waiting for the bus to arrive. At night, the front lifts up and out to create an overhang, creating a rain free space. On the back of each bench is a sign that reads, “Find a home here,” with the address for RainCity Housing.

  
  

• HAPPY THANKSGIVING

  
  

  November 27, 2014 - "The essence of all beautiful art, all great art, is gratitude.” 

  — Friedrich Nietzsche
  
  HAPPY THANKSGIVING FROM ALL OF US AT MAP

  
  

• DIALOGUES ON RACE

  
  

  November 25, 2014 - STAY TUNED FOR MAP HOSTED, NATION WIDE, COMMUNITY DISCUSSIONS

  
  

• JANEIL ENGELSTAD GIVES TEDX TALK

  
  

  November 20, 2014 - Watch Janeil Engelstad's TEDx "The Evolution of Public Art: From Individual Expression to Community Transformation" posted at: http://youtu.be/p4TQmnbjzRg

  
  

• TRANSLATING CULTURE CONTINUES

  
  

  October 25, 2014 - MAP's collaborative program TRANSLATING CULTURE at the Dallas Museum of Art (DMA)

   

  In 2013, as a part of the first MAP tri-annual, "MAP 2013: Projects that restore and preserve the environment, promote social justice and advance human knowledge and well-being" MAP co-produced "Translating Culture . . . Community Voices at the DMA" with the Dallas Museum of Art and the Hispanic outreach organization AVANCE to produce the first bi-lingual, Spanish-English, guide to the museum. Based on the success of this program, MAP is again partnering with the DMA and the Architecture Cluster at Skyline High School to produce a bi-lingual smart phone tour.

   

  Honoring local knowledge and ideas, in contrast to the “expert knowledge” that is transmitted from the museum as a part of its professional interpretation responsibility, opens up possibilities for the exchange of new information and dialogue about the DMA’s collection. It is a step as part of the democratization of museums and gives credence to views that have historically been overlooked and undervalued.

   

  Photograph by Janeil Engelstad

  
  

• HISTORIC LABOR LEADER DOLORES HUERTA VISITS MAP

  
  

  October 21, 2012 - LABOR LEADER / CIVIL RIGHTS ACTIVIST DOLORES HEURTA VISITS MAP MURAL AND MAP STUDENTS

  With César Chávez, Dolores Huerta co-founded the National Farmworkers Association, which later became the United Farm Workers (UFW). Huerta has received numerous awards for her community service and advocacy for workers', immigrants', and women's rights, including the Eugene V. Debs Foundation Outstanding American Award, the United States Presidential Eleanor Roosevelt Award for Human Rights and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. As a role model to many in the Latino and wider community, Huerta is the subject of many corridos (ballads) and murals.

   

  Students participating in MAP's summer mural program at Billy Earl Dade Middle School included a portrait of Huerta in their mural "Together We Stand, Divided We Fall." In Dallas to help get the vote for the upcoming mid-term elections, Huerta stopped by Dade Middle School where she visited with several students, was serenaded by the band and talked about the importance of voting to ensure health care and rights for all.

   

  MAP thanks Sara Mokuria for organizing this historic visit.

  
  

• SMOG EATING VACUME CLEANER

  
  

  Oct 19, 2012 - Dutch designer Daan Roosegaarde has developed an "electronic vacuum cleaner" that can remove smog from urban skies and is working with the mayor of Beijing to use the technology in a new park in the city. To read an interview with the designer in dezeen magazine and see a movie that demonstrates the technology:

   

  http://www.dezeen.com/2013/10/21/smog-by-studio-roosegaarde

   

  Image: Courtesy DEZEEEN.COM

  
  

• MAP CONTINUES AT DALLAS VIDEOFEST

  
  

  October 18, 2014 - TONIGHT MAP SCREENING Tomáš Rafa's (SK.) "WALL OF SPORTS 2012" at DALLAS VIDEOFEST

  6:15 PM at Angelica Film Center / Mockingbird Station

   

  Rafa has been organizing the painting of walls that separate Slovakia's Roma communities from white communities. Found throughout the country these concrete walls act as both physical and psychological barriers between the two groups of people. For The Wall of Sports 2012 Rafa and volunteer artists worked with residents of the Roma community living outside of the town of Secovce to paint a 220 meter wall that divides the village from the local elementary school. The Municipality of Secovce as well as local residents help to support the project, a cooperation between local government and the arts to create positive community development. Project support from the Slovak Ministry of Culture.

   

  Image: Still from "Wall of Sports 2012" by Tomáš Rafa

   

  
  

• PRISON PHOTOGRAPHY IN BRAZIL

  
  

   

  OCT 17, 2014 - Milcho Pipin’s Unique Portraits from a Brazilian Prison Follow a Four-Decade Media Shut-Out

   

  "Photographer Milcho Pipin went into the Central Penitentiary of the State of Paraná, in Curitiba, Brazil. It’s a fairly sizable prison with nearly 1,500 prisoners.”Despite frequent overcrowding problems and precarious infrastructural condition, this penitentiary is by no means the worst in Brazil,” says Pipin. From within this tough institution, Pipin wanted primarily to “capture expressions of male and female prisoners and to understand and share their feelings,” he says.In collaboration with Dr. Maurício Stegemann Dieter, a criminology specialist, Pipin produced the series Locked Up."

   

  To read an interview with Pipin and Dieter: PrisonPhotography.org

   

  Photographs: Courtesy by Milcho Pipin, PrisonPhotography.org

  
  

• PROJEKT KARVAN

  
  

  OCT 16, 2014 - MAP AFFILATE ARTIST"S OTO HUDEC and DANIELA KRAJCOVA'S "PROJEKT KARAVAN" SCREENING TONIGHT AT DALLAS VIDEO FEST as a part of WORLD WIDE SHORTS, ANGELICA FILM CENTER, 7:00 PM

  Daniela Krajčová and Oto Hudec working with Roma Gypsy youth in villages throughout Slovakia. "Projekt Karavan" is a co-presentation of MAP - Make Art with Purpose and is supported by the Embassy of the United States in Bratislava, Slovakia.For more information: http://videofest.org

  
  

• WATERWASH AT BRONX MUSEUM

  
  

  Oct 15, 2014 - Join ecological artist Lillian Ball for a discussion about the WATERWASH® ABC project and how its native wetland plants mitigate increased storm water pollution. Participants can also enjoy a rowboat ride along the Bronx River.

  Reserve NOW for free bus transportation: info@waterwash.org

   

  The event will continue at the Bronx Museum of the Arts for a free 4:00 pm screening of BRONX RIVER WATERWASH . The 49 minute film, directed by Jean Marie Offenbacher, chronicles the creation and maintenance of WATERWASH ABC and the transformation of a polluted riverside wasteland into a community wetland/grassland park. Following the documentary screening, there will be a reception with locally grown food at the Bronx Museum of the Arts, 1040 Grand Concourse at 165th St.

   

  Bus reservations & more information at: info@waterwash.org

  Manhattan pickup 1:30, 14th Street & 8th Ave to WATERWASH ABC

  WATERWASH ABC pickup 3:30, 1055 Bx River Ave to Bronx Museum. Return to Manhattan from Bronx Museum at 6:00 pm.

   

  Image courtesy of WATERWASH

  
  

• THE NEW SOUTH DALLAS

  
  

  Oct 14, 2014 - MAP's co-production video THE NEW SOUTH DALLAS screens tonight at the South Dallas Cultural Center as a part of Dallas Video Festival

  3400 S Fitzhugh Ave, Dallas, TX 75210, 7:00 - 9:30 PM

   

  Throughout the summer of 2013, teens from the South Dallas Cultural Center's Summer Arts at the Center program and youth from the Soul Children's Theater Company (SCT) met in workshops lead by SCT Artistic Director Tara Youngblood. Exploring the impact of gentrification in South Dallas, the teens and tweens took walks through their neighborhood, interviewed South Dallas residents, had group discussions and wrote a script for a mini-documentary, which they also filmed and edited. The film shines a new light on how gentrification is changing the face of South Dallas and gives the young filmmakers a public, civic platform to express ideas and opinions about what is happening in their neighborhood.

  
  

• HOMECOMING AFTER DEATH

  
  

  October 13, 2014 - homecoming after death: an islamic cemetery in austria

  Can an Islamic cemetery be more than a burial ground for Muslims in the West? 
  
  MIT Program in Art, Culture and Technology Panel Discussion
  Monday,Oct 20, 6-8pm
  Bartos Theatre 
  (e15-070)
  wiesner building
  20 ames street
  cambridge, MIT Program in Art, Culture and Technology
  Free and open to the public
  
  Panelists will explore the many ways in which Islamic funerary architecture can contribute to nurturing pluralism and community in places where Muslims are a minority. Panelists will examine how the construction of an Islamic cemetery, in Altach, Austria, winner of the 2013 Aga Khan Award, can enable cultural pluralization and the establishment of Islamic communities in Europe. Funerary architecture, more than any other form of religious architecture, ties the collective memory of a group to a specific territory on an emotional and cultural level.
  
  Azra Aksamija, MAP affiliate artist and Class of 1922 Career Development Assistant Professor, MIT
  
  Bernardo Bader, Architect and Principal of Bernardo Bader Architekten
  
  Eva Grabherr, Director, Center for Immigration and Integration, Vorarlberg, Austria
  
  Nasser Rabbat, Aga Khan Professor; Director, Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at MIT
  
  Image: Prayer Room. Copyright AKAA, Marc Lins

  
  

• EBOLA AND ART IN LIBERIA

  
  

  October 4, 2014 - Amid Ebola Crisis, Liberian Youth Art Program Thrives

   

  An article in One.org details how the Accountability Lab is helping children in Liberia to helping children understand the importance of transparency, accountability and personal responsibility through art. The current Ebola challenges make this more important than ever. If kids grow up to be citizens and leaders of integrity, who understand their rights and responsibilities, they can solve problems on everything from healthcare to education. The key is to engage them creatively around these issues in fun ways they understand.

   

  For more information and to read more of this article: https://www.one.org/us/2014/10/07/amid-ebola-crisis-1-liberian-youth-art-program-thrives

   

  Image; Students of the Liberia Visual Arts Academy following completion of an Accountability Arts Class pose in front of their clasroom. LIVArts Director Leslie Lumeh at far left in orange shirt.

   

  
  

• ENGLISH KILLS PROJECT

  
  

   

  September 22, 2014 - NYC based Artist Henry G. Sanchez's ENGLISH KILLS PROJECT, which examines Newtown Creek's is featured in "Where is the Bio in Bio-Art?".

   

  English Kills is a 3.5-mile long estuary forming part of the border between Brooklyn and Queens in New York City. Channelization made it one of the most heavily used bodies of water in the Port of New York and New Jersey and thus one of the most polluted industrial sites in America containing years of discarded toxins, an estimated 30 million gallons of spilled oil and raw sewage from New York City’s sewer system.

   

  Saturday Sept. 27th: "Where is the Art in Bio-Art?"

  time: opening reception 6-8pm

  where: Flatiron Gallery, School of Visual Arts, 133/141 W. 21st street, NY, NY, till Oct. 18th

  http://www.sva.edu/about-sva/galleries/flatiron-gallery

   

  To view INTO ENGLISH KILLS, which examines the variety of life in Newtown Creek's "heart of darkness" by Sanchez: http://vimeo.com/75261127

   

  Image: Courtesy Henry Sanchez

  
  

• CONGRATULATIONS TO MAP FRIEND RICK LOWE

  
  

  September 17, 2014 - MAP congratulates Rick Lowe on winning the MacArthur Genius Award. Taking the leap from the studio to the neighborhood long before the term Social Practice was coined Rick and his team have been creating positive social change with Project Row Houses in Houston and work around the globe for over two decades.

   

  More on this year's MacArthur Awards: http://www.npr.org/2014/09/17/349120236/meet-the-2014-winners-of-the-macarthur-genius-grants

   

  To hear Rick Lowe speak about his work and Social Practice Art along with artist Vicki Meek and artist / MAP Director Janeil Engelstad in a panel organized by UTD / Next Topic: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQG0-SGoYsU

   

  Project Row Houses website: http://projectrowhouses.org/

   

  Image courtesy Project Row Houses

  
  

• DESIGN SCHOLARSHIPS FOR MINORITY YOUTH

  
  

  September 16, 2014 - MAP congratulates World Studio and AIGA for reaching $1 million millstone in scholarships to minority students in design over the past 20 years. About the program, Mark Randall, principal at Worldstudio said, “When we launched the program almost twenty years ago it was hard to imagine a milestone of one million dollars. Over the years it has been rewarding to see many of our scholarship winners go on to do great things and have real impact in the profession. We look forward to continuing our support for the next generation of diverse and socially-minded talent.”

   

  To read about the program: http://blog.worldstudioinc.com/1-million-milestone-with-the-2014-15-worldstudio-aiga-scholarship-winners/

   

  For more information, to see the work of the 2014-15 scholarship winners and to apply next year: http://www.aiga.org/worldstudio-scholarship

   

  Image: Design by Sadie Red Wing, 2014-14 Worldstudio AIGA scholarship recipient

  
  

• JANEIL ENGELSTAD ON FIRESTARTERS

  
  

  September 10, 2014 - Arts and Seek posts Janeil Engelstad's 2013 Pecha Kucha at the Nasher Sculpture Center on the theme "Firestarter"

   

  From Youtube: Artist Janeil Engelstad begins with her inspirations drawn from nature and traces her experiences as an artist and fire-starter working toward social change. In her activism and founding of the organization Make Art With Purpose, she has used art installations and projects to engage younger artists and build community.

   

  To view: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kph6P-hzu6Y

  
  

• REPORT FROM KENYA

  
  

  September 7, 2013 - Many of Kenya’s graffiti artists have become a voice for social change, using their art to push boundaries and to make statements about the country’s political elite. Journalist Lenny Ruvaga reports from Nairobi on how these artists are addressing social issues and government corruption throughout their art:

   

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ehuIXueZvs

   

  Image: Sprayforchange.com

  
  

• WHAT IS MISSING?

  
  

  September 5, 2014 - Artist MAYA LIN's foundation "What Is Missing?" blends art and science to raise awareness about the global loss of biodiversity and natural habitats. The mission of What Is Missing? is to create, through science-based artworks, and awareness about the current species extinction crisis, caused by the actions of mankind. More information about the project can be found on the Foundation's website: www.whatismissing.net

   

  To read an interview in the New York Times, T Magazine with Maya Lin about the Foundation and her recent environmental site-specific work on exhibit through Oct 4 at the Parrish Art Museum: http://tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/07/03/maya-lin-interview-platform-memorial-parrish-art-museum/?module=Search&mabReward=relbias%3Aw%2C%7B%221%22%3A%22RI%3A10%22%7D

   

  Parrish Art Museum: www.Parrishart.org

  
  

• REPORT FROM BRAZIL

  
  

  September 3, 2014 - On August 29th, MAP affiliate artists Cynthia Mulcahy and Robert Hamilton in conjunction with the cultural center C4 Biblioteca Parque da Rocinha and area residents realized an action in the streets of the Rocinha favela community in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Invited community residents, area school children and environmental and cultural workers participated in a wildflower workshop at the cultural center led by Hamilton and Mulcahy. Workshop participants assembled packets of seeds containing the wildflower Lupinus texensis, one of over two hundred species of lupines, a genus of flowering plants found throughout North and South America as well as parts of North Africa and the Mediterranean.

   

  Packets assembled in the workshop contained seeds of the rare "Alamo Fire" Lupinus texensis, a variety of lupine originally discovered in southern Texas in 1988 and subsequently bred to produce an intense red color in contrast to the well-known blue lupine variety, commonly known as the Texas Bluebonnet. Afterwards workshop participants offered seed packets to Rocinha community members, a simple action, a gift of wildflower seeds on a Friday winter afternoon.

  Image: Rocinha favela, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, photograph courtesy of Cynthia Mulcahy and Robert Hamilton, 2014

  
  

• ART IS OUR LAST HOPE

  
  

  Phoenix Art Museum

  October 1 to November 2, 2014

   

  On the occasion of the exhibition Paulo Bruscky: Art Is Our Last Hope at the Phoenix Art Museum, Vanessa Davidson and John Held Jr. are co-curating a contemporary mail art exhibition entitled Focus Latin America. Centered around the theme “art is our last hope,” the curators seek to revive dialogue about the challenges facing artists living in Latin America and the utopian projects they have historically undertaken to fuse artistic practice with social engagement. Created in 1983, Bruscky’s artwork Art Is Our Last Hope was envisioned as a billboard piece consisting solely of those five words. How have art and life in Latin America changed since he issued that proclamation? What meanings does this notion engender in Latin America in the 21st century?

   

  Artists are invited to submit work exploring the themes of utopia, dystopia, and the grey areas in between with a special focus on Latin America. Mail art, artistamps, artists’ books, and other artworks that can be mailed and relate to these themes are encouraged.

   

  Postmark Deadline for Participation: September 1st, 2014

  For more information: http://www.phxart.org/exhibition/bruscky

   

  Image: Paulo Bruscky, Pelos Nossos Desaparecidos (For Our Disappeared), 1977 © Paulo Bruscky

  
  

• AND THEN I WHIRLED AT THE SOUND OF

  
  

   

  July 24, 2014 - "And then I whirled at the sound of" an exhibition produced by Janeil Engelstad reviewed by Byran Erickson in this weeks edition of Art and Seek. The article nuclides interviews with several of the participating artists. This is the last week of "And then I whirled at the sound of" at Oil and Cotton in Dallas,exhibition closes July 27. From the review:

   

  "Oil & Cotton, the Dallas-based community arts organization is showcasing experimental sound art in a new exhibition. Janeil Engelstad curated “And then I whirled to the sound of” to show the breadth and depth of the field. It features artists across the spectrum of experience  . . .

   

  Read more at: http://artandseek.net/2014/07/22/make-some-noise-sound-art-at-oil-cotton

   

  Image: Delhi, India location for filed recording by Janeil Engelstad that is featured in sound art exhibition "And then I whirled at the sound of" at Oil and Cotton in Dallas. Image courtesy of Delhi City Wallpapers

  
  

• BALDWINS NIGGER RELOADED

  
  

  August 14, 2014 - Baldwins Nigger RELOADED through August 22 at Institute of International Visual Arts (Iniva) Rivington Place, London

   

  In the 1969 film Baldwin's Nigger, American author James Baldwin and comedian Dick Gregory discuss the black experience in the United States relating it to the Afro-Caribbean experience in Britain. The provocations in the film highlight the danger in separating identities from their specific histories; universalizing experiences leads to erasure and the inability to communicate across difference.

   

  Artist and curator Barby Asante and the sorryyoufeeluncomfotable collective re-contextualize the film through artworks, interventions, performances, DJ sets, workshops and film screenings, the group sets-up contemporary conversations that ‘map out' themes such as identity, race and legacy, allowing a re-animation of histories, through collaborative artistic practices, reimagining the possibilities of tomorrow.

   

  See the exhibition, rent the film, become enlightened and engage in the conversation and work for racial equity and justice in the US and beyond

   

  For more information: www.iniva.org

  
  

• ART & THE ENVIRONMENT IN EAST-CENTRAL EUROPE

  
  

  Special Issue of ArtMargins: Art and the Environment in East-Central Europe produced by Janeil Engelstad
  
  Over a year in the making "Art and the Environment in East-Central Europe explores artists and projects at the convergence of art, ecology and the environment from Poland south to the Balkans.
  
  From Janeil Engelstad's introduction:
  
  "Art and the Environment in East-Central Europe is an editorial project born from interviews and other forms of interaction with artists and cultural producers concerned, in one way or another, with the idea and the material reality of what goes by the name of the "natural environment." In the different pieces collected within this project, the term "environment" unfolds into a broad variety of concepts and artistic practices that do not, and should not, become homogenized. A survey rather than a deep investigation Art and the Environment in East-Central Europe includes a wide range of art and ideas connected to ecology, sustainability and the nexus between environment, art, and political action, from the perspective of the following participants: Barbara Benish, Nina Czegledy, Maja and Reuben Fowkes, Oto Hudec, Tamás Kaszás, Attila Nemes, Marjetica Potrč, Rudolf Sikora, Matej Vakula, Kasia Worpus-Wrońska, and Jana Želibská. The project, which stretches across ARTMargins print journal (#3.2. 2014) and ARTMargins Online, investigates pronounced, and so far largely unnoticed, environmental accents within nonofficial art practices in the countries of the former Eastern Bloc, including escapism, redefinitions of public space, permaculture and romantic views of the natural world.
  
  Two central temporal axes emerge: first, the period of the Cold War, when environmental pressures in parts of Eastern Europe mounted inexorably and prompted some artists to develop art practices that variously reflected on these pressures; and second, the post-1989 era with its specters of globalization and global warming posing another, even more far reaching, threat. As far as the period of the Cold War is concerned, the social and political climate during the 1960s and 1970s encouraged certain artists, and not just in Western Europe, to engage with . . . "
  
  To read more and see the projects featured: http://www.artmargins.com/index.php/art-and-the-environment-in-east-central-europe-introduction

   

  Image:

  Kasia Worpus-Wrońska , Park Krajobrazowy Beskidu Śląskiego

  
  

• MAP MURAL UPDATE

  
  

  July 29, 2014 - MAP SUMMER MURAL PROGRAM AT BILLY DADE MIDDLE SCHOOL DALLAS UPDATE

  The talented students at Billy Dade Middle School having been continuing work on their mural (see July 9 post) about the history of racial justice and activism in the US. The mural is also a call to fellow students to celebrate and honor their shared humanity. Image: Mural detail, Harriet Tubman, (c) Make Art with Purpose, Inc.

   

  
  

• THE DRAWING SHED

  
  

  July 22, 2014 -Led by visual artist / directors Sally Labern and Bobby Lloyd, the drawing shed is a multi-form project that engages with issues of resilience, resistance, commonality and displacement. Both artists are interested in the edges of spaces and their ‘shadows’ as well as the objects – art and otherwise – whose resonance is changed by interaction. Both explore ideas that interrogate ‘the edges’ of (often contested) places and communities, working with the unseen, the debris and the dis lodged. Using mobile studios the drawing shed delivers socially engaged projects in East London and beyond, working with communities experiencing high levels of social exclusion. Established in 2009 the mobiles form a central platform for Labern+Lloyd’s creative practice and are at the heart of the drawing shed. These three mobile studios – the drawing shed, ClayOven and PrintBike - live in the drawing shed’s two garages on The Drive housing estate E17, from where the artists currently run socially engaged projects both on the local estates, in the YMCA and across London. Through these mobile projects the drawing shed is able to go to where people are rather than waiting for them to arrive.

   

  As part of the Be Creative Be Well (BCBW) Well London program, the drawing shed took a strategic community development role to develop catalytic projects and access to training that could support behavior changes for local residents. The resulting real changes in the well-being of individuals created the foundations for community led projects by a ‘Delivery Team’ of residents who then set up a new community group (‘…Ask Freda’) to continue and sustain this grassroots development. The Drawing Shed wove creativity and well-being through a community cohesion approach to supporting a healthier community. The Drawing Shed has also set up a teenage Girls Estate Based Theatre project supported by partnership organizations as part of the Communities Against Gangs, Guns and Knives, building on the positive vision and aspirations of the girls, the families and the community.

   

  For more information: www.thedrawingshed.org

  
  

• REPORT FROM WARSAW

  
  

  July 20, 2014 - IN WARSAW - Photography exhibitions throughout Poland's capital celebrate the 25th anniversary of the fall of the end of communism and remember the communist era. The Revolutions of 1989, which took place in Eastern Europe and brought about the end of communism in the region, began in Poland and continued into Hungary, East Germany, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia and Romania. In Poland a variety of factors led to the end the Socialist government including a failing national economy and the labor strikes at the Lenin Shipyard in Gdańsk the early 1980s and the leadership of Lech Wałęsa and the Solidarity movement, which persisted during the brutal period of marital law in that followed the strikes. The photography exhibitions in Warsaw document these events as well as scenes from everyday life in the communist era.

  
  

• ARTISTS SUPPORT UKRAINE

  
  

  July 18, 2014 - ARTISTS SUPPORT UKRAINE Artists Support Ukraine is an art initiative aimed at turning the attention of international public towards the current situation in Ukraine. Engaging artists and cultural workers from all over the world to make a statement in order to support peace and freedom, stand against military aggression, propaganda and injustice. #supportukraine For more information: http://www.artistssupportukraine.com/ Artists Support Ukraine has been initiated by Kadygrob_Taylor Platform for Contemporary art. MAP salutes the people fighting for freedom and peace in the Ukraine and those who have been injured and lost their lives. We offer condolences to the families and friends of the dead as well as to the people who lost loved ones and colleagues on Malaysia flight 17, which was shot down over Eastern Ukraine yesterday.

  
  

• ART IN TRAIN STATIONS

  
  

  July 17, 2014 - BANSKÁ ST A NICA Contemporary / Cultural Centers in former and curent train stations in Slovakia

  Over the past several years cultural producers, artists and curators throughout Slovakia have been taking over train stations and turning them into art centers that host everything from exhibitions to artist's residencies to concerts to plays. These art centers play a vital role in the cultural life of the region and attract audiences from all aspects of the community. Many of them still function as a community. MAP Director Janeil Engelstad collaborated with Stanica Žilina-Záriečie, located in Žilina, Slovkia on her project, Voices From the Center. Stanica Žilina has an excellent website that is a program guide, news site and archive (http://www.stanica.sk/en/).

  Last week MAP was at BANSKÁ ST A NICA Contemporary located in the UNESCO World Heritage town of Banská Štiavnica in Central Slovakia. Founded and directed by husband and wife team and artists Svätopluk Mikyta and Zuzana Bodárová, BANSKÁ ST A NICA hosts one of the leading artist's residencies in the country. Wiith the mission to support artists creating a new body of work the residencies are fully funded. Additionally, BANSKÁ ST A NICA has a robust publication program having partnered on books with artists from around Europe. The sublime and generative atmosphere at BANSKÁ ST A NICA includes rotating art work, a small book shop and plenty of studio space. For more information: http://www.banskastanica.sk/en/c/about/

  
  

• PROJEKT KARAVAN IN SLOVAKIA

  
  

  July 14, 2014 - MAP was on location this past week to visit MAPaffiliate artists Oto Hudec and Daniela Krajčová. The pair have been traveling throughout Slovakia over the past few weeks producing arts education summer camps for Roma youth through their Projekt Karavan. This outreach is a valuable contribution to the Roma community, which lack resources and live in challenging circumstances due to their minority status in Slovakia and other European countries.

   

  One of the primary goals of the project is to help the participants tell their story, talk about their identity or what is important to them through video, animation and other mediums. The work is then presented at different locations in the country - everything from community centers, to festivals, to galleries. Daniela and Oto are making an effort to reach Slovaks outside of the liberal art going community who might have a lesser view of the Roma. Additionally, the participants learn about video, performance, animation, story telling / communication, drawing while having fun and working in teams.

   

  MAP will bring work from this project to the US in a touring exhibition, which is in development for late 2014 / 2015. To view Project Karavan videos from this work visit:

  http://vimeo.com/user23241832 

  
  

• MAP SUMMER MURAL PROGRAM

  
  

  July 9, 2014 - MAP Summer Mural Program.

  MAP has pretty much been on hiatus from our BLOG, but we are busy producing programs and visiting MAP affiliate artists and their projects around the globe.

  Time to catch up.

  In Dallas we are producing a mural program with generous support from Embrey Family Foundation in partnership with Dallas Faces Race and Billy Earl Dade Middle School. Since early June students have been meeting Monday - Thursday mornings, creating a mural with muralist and teaching artist Ashley Durham and community activist Alpha Thomas.

  The program began with brainstorming exercises, led by MAP Director Janeil Engelstad that helped the students to select people, text, stories and colors connected to the theme of racial justice, racial equity and African American and Hispanic History. Each participant wrote text and/or an image that represented their idea. These ideas were fine tuned and then combined into a comprehensive design that expresses a unified message and vision. The attached images show part of the process and where we are now.

  Deep gratitude to MAP personnel, to Embrey Family Foundation and for the participating students / young artists for making this happen.

  Stay tuned for more updates as we are back to blogging and ready to share . . .

  
  

• MAP 2013 CATALOG

  
  

   

  Please join us to celebrate the release of the MAP 2013 catalog, The Workbook at the beautiful SODA Bar Lounge and Cabana on the roof of the NYLO Hotel on Tuesday, June 24 from 6:00 - 8:00 PM.

   

  MAP 2013 Catalog Release Party

  Tuesday, June 24, 6:00 - 8:00 PM

  Rooftop SODA Bar Lounge and Cabana

  NYLO Hotel

  1325 S Lamar Street, Dallas, 75215

  phone: 214-421-1080

  cash bar

  
  

• FIND YOUR WAY

  
  

  June 12, 2014 - Find your way (aka Navigating Queens Plaza Transportation Hub at Street Level) Saturday, June 14, 11am, NYC. Come join performer, dancer, creative thinker and activist Lise Brenner in getting lost, and then (probably) happily found. Find your way is a treasure hunt for special places identified by neighborhood residents, discovered by you using your native animal cunning -- i.e. no maps, no cell phones, no GPS trackers.

   

  Where: Court Square Park fountain, across the street from the Citicorp Building, 44th Drive and Jackson Boulevard, Long Island City (take the E, M, 7 or G subway lines) Rain or Shine! Free, but please RSVP to info@ilandart.org

   

  Presented by iLAND www.ilandart.org as part of the 10th Anniversary iLANDing Laboratories

  
  

• AND THEN I WHIRLED AT THE SOUND OF

  
  

  June 8, 2014 - AND THEN I WHIRLED AT THE SOUND OF

  Experimental Music, Field Recordings, Sound Art

  Curated by Janeil Engelstad

   

  Oil and Cotton

  Creative Exchange of Dallas

  837 W. 7th Street. Dallas, Texas 75208

  June 12 – July 27, 2014

  Opening reception July 12, 2014 5:00 – 7:30 PM

   

  Sound installations, listening stations with headphones and pieces broadcast intermittently throughout Oil and Cotton AND THEN I WHIRLED AT THE SOUND OF includes local and international sound artists as well as artists who work with sound in addition to other mediums

   

  Martin Back

  Iris Bechtol

  Rebecca Carter

  Joel Chadabe

  Janeil Engelstad

  Jeff Gibbons

  Helen and Newton Harrison

  Oto Hudec

  G Monet

  Carolyn Sortor

  Randy Thurman

  Charles Underriner

  Roberto Zanata

   

  In conjunction with AND THEN I WHIRLED AT THE SOUND OF Oil and Cotton is producing a sound art summer camp for youth, June 9 – June 13. Led by Charles Underriner the camp will include sessions on Deep Listening by Janeil Engelstad. Additionally, the youth will create a sound piece to be included in the exhibition.

   

  For more information: www.oilandcotton.com

   

  Image: Sea Grass Moving in Wind, Cabrillo Highway, California, 2012, by Janeil Engelstad

  
  

• PICTURING SUSTAINABILITY

  
  

  June 5, 2014 - 
First Exposures mentee photographs
Adolph Gasser's parking lot, across from 181 2nd St.
San Francisco, CA
. Opens tonight 6:30 - 9:00 PM

. Picturing Sustainability is a guerrilla style art show of photographs exploring themes of sustainability presented in a slideshow, wheatpaste posters and zine formats. The wheatpastes will remain after the opening. The slideshow and zines will only be on view tonight only at the opening reception.



   

  Photograph by Erik Auerbach

  
  

• IN SOLIDARITY

  
  

  May 9, 2014 - In solidarity with the democratic protest movement in Turkey, ZKM Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe Chairman Peter Weibel and colleagues have joined with Turkish choreographer Erdem Gündüz in silent protest against Prime Minister Erdogan: they marked their advocacy of human rights and the freedom of speech for a period of fifteen minutes.

   

  Erdem Gündüz is one of many creative individuals in the field of culture, who, each in his own way actively participates in the revolts currently taking place in Turkey – such as a couple who danced the tango on Taksim Square, or the musician who played the piano for hours in the midst of demonstrators and police.

   

  All those who wish to participate in the silent protest are cordially invited to convene on the ZKM forecourt each Friday at 2 PM CET.

   

  For more information: http://on1.zkm.de/zkm/e/

  
  

• MAP IS HONORED

  
  

  May 3, 2014 - MAP 2013 program "Translating Culture . . . Community Voices at the DMA is featured in Association of Art Museum Directors "Next Practices in Art Museum Education" The foundation of Translating Culture was a series of workshops that took place twice a week in June and July of 2013 , where eleven members of the Dallas chapter of AVANCE learned about the DMA’s collections. Working independently, in pairs, and as a group, the participants wrote their personal interpretations about a work of art of their choice. Their texts, along with images of the selected art, will be included in a Spanish and English printed guide for visitors. The printed guide launched at the DMA as a part of MAP 2013.

  Next Practices in Museum Art Education Guide:

  https://aamd.org/sites/default/files/document/AAMD%20Next%20Practices%20in%20Art%20Museum%20Education.pdf

   

   

  
  

• MAP AT BETTER BLOCK BIRTHDAY

  
  

  April 24, 2014 - MAP SUNDAY, APRIL 27
  12-10pm Pop-up shops, galleries and existing businesses
  6-10pm Performers and Market in the PEOPLE'S PLAZA
  
  MAP at BETTER BLOCK BIRTHDAY in partnership with Team Better Block and Oil and Cotton
  
  On Sunday, April 27th we will celebrate the 4th Annual Better Block at the intersection of 7th and Tyler and Davis. A major focus of the project is to demonstrate the positive impact of creating a public plaza at the intersection of Kings Highway and Tyler Street. The plaza will function as a shared use space for the community to hold markets, performances and events. In addition to creating an outdoor communal space, the plaza will also improve safety at this dangerous intersection. Many of these plans, ideas, and dreams came from Matej Vakula's MAP 2013 project Manuals for Public Space in collaboration with Oil and Cotton and members of the Oak Cliff community.
  
  The intersection of King's Highway and 7th Street will be shut down and THE PEOPLE'S PLAZA will be built. In the center of the intersection we will install Instrument for Listening, a large Megaphone sculpture and sound piece made by artist Oto Hudec and teenagers from Oak Cliff in collaboration with MAP 2013. The megaphone loops recordings of community members, including dancers, artists, journalists, mothers, teachers, musicians, and business owners, sharing stories, opinions and dreams.

   

  For more information inlcuding schedule of events: https://www.facebook.com/events/298653420283473/?ref=ts&fref=ts

   

  Image: Map for transforming public space around the intersection of Tyler and Davis in Oak Cliff in Matej Vakula's MAP 2013 Manuals for Public Space workshop at Oil and Cotton, Dallas, 2013

  
  

• IMMIGRANT NATION LAUNCH

  
  

  April 22, 2014 - MAP 2013 partner Immigrant Nation, a groundbreaking interactive documentary film series and online storytelling hub is launched this week at Ellis Island.This first-of-its-kind multimedia project is designed to capture, share, and spread personal migration stories—your stories—in powerful new ways.
  www.immigrant-nation.com Immigrant Nation's new bilingual (English/Spanish) story hub is live! Watch stories, upload your own, download educators materials, and share the news.
  
  For more information including live events in NYC / Ellis Island:
  
  Facebook:
  https://www.facebook.com/immigrantnationproject
  Twitter: https://twitter.com/iNationProject
  Tumblr: http://inationproject.tumblr.com/
  Watch films on Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/channels/ination

  
  

• "KNOTTY NEST" UPDATE

  
  

  April 21, 2014 - A MAP 2013 legacy project, "Knotty Nest" is a seating area and shade canopy designed by Los Angles based Greenmeme (Freya Bardell and Brian Howe). Made of repurposed materials (from a decommissioned Greenmeme public art piece in Long Beach, CA) the piece sits in the new natural dye garden at University of North Texas.
  
  The idea for a seating area was initiated by artist and UNT lecturer, Lesli Robertson. Her students produced the piece in collaboration with Greenmeme this past October as a part of the kick-off for MAP 2013. Recent additions to the garden include pathways and spring plantings. In the fall the students will harvest the plant and create natural dyes to be used in their fiber work. This multi-purpose green space also functions as gathering space for students, faculty and visitors to the UNT campus.

  
  

• PUBLIC SPACE SYMPOSIUM AT MIT

  
  

    April 16, 2014 - The MIT Program in Art, Culture and Technology (ACT) and the MIT Center for Art, Science and Technology (CAST) present Public Space? Lost & Found, a two-day symposium and accompanying exhibition to celebrate the living legacy of artist and educator Antoni Muntadas and collectively redefine ideas of public space and its multiple functions. Convening scholars, artists, architects, and planners from MIT and beyond, the symposium will engage contemporary critical discourses and practices on public space.
  

   

   

  For more information: http://act.mit.edu/projects-and-events/events/public-programs/public-space-symposium/

   

  Image: Jakub Hałun, Takeshita Street in Tokyo, 2010

  via Wikimedia Commons

  
  

• YEARS OF LIVING DANGEROUSLY

  
  

  April 14, 2014 - Groundbreaking documentary film series about climate change: "Years of Living Dangerously" airs on Showtime. Watch the first episode by clicking on link below. Taking the climate issue mainstream with the purpose to drive more government action "Years of Living Dangerously" illustrates the far-reaching impact of climate change today (not off in the elusive future) on people and communities. The project's website includes a "Take Action" link.

   

  To watch: http://www.nrdconline.org/site/R?i=ZusH60IyjoRi7-MKrk4l1A

  
  

• CURE VIOLENCE

  
  

  April 10, 2014 - Conceived by video artist Lincoln Schatz, Cure Violence is a video portrait of Chicagoans committed to ending gun violence.

  Schatz created the work in conjunction with Cure Violence, an Illinois nonprofit dedicated to working with community and government partners to reduce violence. Traveling through the greater Chicago area, including the neighborhoods most plagued by violence, Schatz and his team captured statements from the Cure Violence network of violence interrupters, outreach workers, and community members. Cure Violence is intended to increase awareness, incite social action, and provide a platform for discussion.

   Cure Violence grew out of a chance meeting between Lincoln Schatz and Cure Violence Illinois Executive Director Dr. Gary Slutkin at Pop!Tech in Camden, ME.

   Support for this project was provided by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and CISCO IBSG

   To view a vide from CURE VIOLENCE: http://lincolnschatz.com/cure-violence-portrait-of-an-epidemic

   Image: Lincoln Schatz, video still from CURE VIOLENCE, © Lincoln Schatz

  
  

• REBECCA CARTER AT RE GALLERY

  
  

  April 9, 2014 - MAP affilate artist REBECCA CARTER at RE gallery + studio, Sleep architecture and the dream house through 04/20/14
  
  To read Janeil Engelstad's review of the exhibition: http://eutopia.us/rebecca-carter/
  
   

  
  

• THE POLLINATION PROJECT

  
  

  March 29, 2014 - The Pollination Project
  
  The Pollination Project believes in the power of ordinary people to do extraordinary things. They make $1,000 seed grants to individual change-makers every day of the year. For more information: http://thepollinationproject.org/

  
  

• CODE YELLOW

  
  

  March 26, 2013 - "CODE YELLOW: Caution-Crisis-Critique" curated by Janeil Engelstad, Greg Metz, Kael Alford, Mona Kasra, Max Schich and Laray Polk.

   

  March 28 – April 26, University of Dallas, Visual Arts Building. Reception: March 28, 6:30–8:30 pm.

   

  April 12 – May 17 at CentralTrak, 800 Exposition Ave., Dallas. Reception: April 12, 6:30–10 p.m.

   

  A curatorial exercise exploring systems of real and perceived warnings. Six curators investigate how contemporary society visually registers and address concerns of vulnerability, struggle and crisis. Whether through direct or indirect action, humor, irony, or empathy via documentation, data, graphic depiction, media manipulation and social engagement.

   

  Janeil Engelstad: "Zone of Resistance" – Tomáš Rafa, Rudolf Sikora, Václav Vašků and Jana Želibská"

   

  Kael Alford: "Perceived Threat: The Texas Survivalists – Spike Johnson" and "Optic Nerve – by the women of Resolana, a program of Volunteers of America Texas, co-curated by Jennifer Mcnabb.

   

  Mona Kasra: "NØTABLESELFLES$$AFFECT" – Andrew Blanton

   

  Greg Metz: "Caveat Emptor" – curated selections by Kayla Escobedo, Trenton Doyle Hancock, gary panter, marian Henley and Mike Presley

   

  Laray Polk: "Mazar, Texas" – David Cotterrell

   

  "Max Schich: "Creepy Figures" – Didier Sornette

   

  for more information: ah.utdallas.edu or call 972-UTD-ARTS."

   

  
  

• WHEN THE LANDSCAPE WAS QUIET AGAIN

  
  

  March 24, 2014 -

  "When the Landscape is Quiet Again: North Dakota's Oil Boom," an exhibition of photographs by Sarah Christianson

   

  San Francisco Camerawork

  February 12 - April 19. T

   

  This exhibition examines how the scars from previous oil booms are healing, what new wounds are being inflicted, and who is safeguarding the land in order to answer the question on everyone's mind: what will locals be left with this time —when the landscape is quiet again.

   

  Panel Discussion: "What the Frack?!"

  Thursday, April 10 from 6:00 - 8:00 pm

  with Sarah Christianson and participants from Earth Justice and The Sierra Club.

   

  Image: Sarah Christianson; Natural gas flare from oil well adjacent to cattle pasture, White Earth River Valley.

  
  

• CESAR CHAVEZ

  
  

  March 20, 2014 - Director Diego Luna discusses his film "Cesar Chavez" and how he hopes to add pressure to the current US discussion on immigration reform in a recent issue of the Stanford Daily

   

  " . . . this film can contribute by adding to the current pressure for immigration reform. When the public leaves the theater, people can ask themselves about how the food gets to their table: What’s behind that . . . "

   

  To read article: http://www.stanforddaily.com/2014/03/10/director-diego-luna-discusses-cesar-chavez-in-an-exclusive-interview

   

  Image: Cesar Chavez, 1974

  
  

• UKRAINE FROM THE FRONT LINES

  
  

  March 7, 2014 - Tomáš Rafa - UKRAINE - From the front lines
  
  In this important and compelling video MAP affiliate artist, Tomáš Rafa, interviewed protesters in the Ukraine, giving them the opportunity to explain why there were there and what they were fighting for: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TW7nGsWzxl0&feature=youtu.be
  
  Rafa has been videotaping anti-government protests and the rise of nationalism throughout Central and Eastern Europe for his project, "New Nationalism" viewed in the projexts link of this website

  
  

• HEALING DESIGN IN BRAZIL

  
  

  March 4, 2014 -

  Healing Design In Brazil - DC Comics Superhereos used in to help kids through cancer treatment

   

  "Superheroes are lending a helping hand to a hospital in Brazil that takes care of kids fighting cancer.

   

  Batman, Superman, the Green Lantern and Wonder Woman are just some of the friendly faces taking on chemotherapy treatment alongside kids at the A.C. Camargo Cancer Center in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

   

  The hospital teamed up with advertising agency JWT Brazil to transform part of the children’s ward into the new Hall of Justice. JWT’s client is Warner Brothers – the owner of DC Comics, which allowed the hospital to put its characters to use.

   

  For starters, the young cancer patients are handed customized comic books that show Batman, Superman or their favourite hero undergoing similar treatment. The heroes have to fight off cancer, just like the kids, and they rely on a “superformula.”

   

  To read more: http://globalnews.ca/news/623040/childrens-cancer-wing-transforms-into-superhero-ward-offering-superformula-chemotherapy

  
  

• MY IMMOVABLE TRUTH

  
  

  February 28, 2014 - Last weekend to experience My Immovable Truth: a Dallas lineage at the African American Museum through March 1
  3536 Grand Ave, Dallas, TX 75210
  (214) 565-9026
  
  Produced as a part of MAP 2013, this exhibit begins to manifest the history of several African-American Dallas residents who openly identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and same gender-loving people. Their tangible memories unfold as art, documents, photographs, video, objects and words that reference complex and active lives. This is a multi-generational story of spiritual and political courage that has had to address racism within the dominant Dallas LGBT community and homophobia/transphobia within parts of the African American community. These archive collaborators have fought battles on the most vulnerable of personal fronts as well as within corporations, bars, churches, on the streets and through a variety of art forms. This exhibit brings into public view just a few of their stories, fragments of a much larger history. The truth represented here is enduring, shifting, immovable, and vital. This is history, all our history, and it forms a powerful lineage that commands recognition.
   

  
  

• IMMIGRANT NATION UPDATE

  
  

  February 24, 2014 - Immigrant Nation, presented as a part of MAP 2013, wins 2014 MacArthur Foundation Documentary Grant. MAP was honored to be present and produce this important project in Dallas in Collaboration with The MAC and the Immigrant Nation team.

   

  Immigrant Nation's short film "The Mayor" will be screening at the 21st annual San Diego Latino Film Festival, March 13 - 23, 2014. . For more information: http://www.sdlatinofilm.com/

   

  
  

• DEVELOPMENT, WHO BENEFITS?

  
  

  February 19, 2014 -  A new short satirical film, "There You Go," written by Oren Ginzburg and narrated by actor and comedian David Mitchell tells the story of how tribal peoples are being destroyed in the name of ‘development'. Produced by Survival International, the film is a part of their campaign to help tribal people around the world remain on their land.

   

  To watch this short two-minute film: http://www.survivalinternational.org/thereyougo

  
  

• DESIGNS TO ELIMINATE CELLPHONE E-WASTE

  
  

  February 17, 2014 - New Trends in Responsible Cellphone Design are Not Just Smart—They’re Kind.

   

  An article in YES! by Chris Sweeney, looks at the work of Ted Smith and others who are working to eliminate the negative impact of cellphone e-waste from the manufacturing stage through to recycling. To read: http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/the-human-cost-of-stuff/smart-phone-why-its-time-for-a-kind-phone

  
  

• SOMETHING BEAUTIFUL

  
  

  February 12, 2014 - SOMETHING BEAUTIFUL, a collaborative exhibition between Preservation LINK, Inc. and MAP - Make Art with Purpose

  J. Erik Jonsson Central Library , 1515 Young Street, Dallas, TX, Feb 12 - April 30, 2014
  
  Working with young people, ages 10 – 16, from the Dallas neighborhood of Highland Hills, Preservation LINK produced a two-week long summer camp designed to increase the youth’s personal and community awareness. Using photography, the students increased their knowledge and understanding about the aesthetics of visual arts while also engaging in activities and discussions around self-image, culture, education, and social responsibility. Students critiqued, produced, and shared digital photographic works as expressions of their personal narrative and aspirations. Several of the photographs from "Something beautiful" are currently on view on the main floor of the Dallas Central Library. 
  
  Originally created as a part of MAP 2013 and exhibited at the Lamar Street Festival as a part of MAP 2013 we are pleased to present this important work in partnership with photographer / teaching artist, David Herman and Preservation LINK, Inc. and the Dallas Public Library.

  
  

• THE SOCHI PROJECT

  
  

  Feb 10, 2014 - The Sochi Project: An Atlas of War and Tourism in the Caucasus, DEPAUL ART MUSEUM Chicago, IL

  January 9 – March 23, 2014

   

  Photographer Rob Hornstra and journalist Arnold van Bruggen documented the changed region around Sochi, a former Soviet resort on the Black Sea, which is hosting the 2014 Winter Olympics. The extraordinary photos, together with interviews and films, record a complicated mix of parallel realities as a massive but temporary international event descends and disappears.

   

  From the project text:

   

  "Sochi is the Florida of Russia, but cheaper. It is famous for its subtropical vegetation, hotels and sanatoria. People from all over the Soviet Union associate the coastal city with beach holidays and first loves. The smell of sunscreen, sweat, alcohol and roasting meat pervades the air. Nothing happens here in the winter. But that's about to change. The Winter Games are coming to town."

   

  For detailed information on The Sochi Project: http://www.thesochiproject.org/

   

  DePaul Art Museum: http://museums.depaul.edu/

   

  Image:© Rob Hornstra, courtesy Flatland Gallery, NL/Paris The Sochi Project: An Atlas of War and Tourism in the Caucasus (Aperture 2013)

  
  

• TREE FESTIVAL IN BANGALORE

  
  

  February 6, 2014 - BENGALURU TREE FESTIVAL brings together ecologists, artists, researchers, technologists, homemakers, professionals, adults and children in dialogue to celebrate the rich natural heritage of Bangalore's trees.

   

  February 8 and 9, 2014

  Bangalore, INDIA

   

  Once known as the "Garden City," massive urbanization and unplanned expansions, have led to mindless, socially inconsiderate, ecologically unfriendly and inefficient infrastructure throughout Bangalore. In the process, the city has lost many of its precious avenue trees and parks, while development continues unabated.For centuries the city of Bangalore has shared a unique relationship with its majestic and diverse trees. Local communities like the Tigalas have historically been involved in the development and maintenance of the city’s green cover. Other local and migrant communities have connected to trees for sacred purposes, community and religious identities. Post Indian Independence, many naturalists, enthusiasts and officials, ranging from Javaraya to Marigowda and many more worked hard to expand the glory of the Garden City that Bangalore was turning out to be. All these histories have have left their stamp on the city’s unique culture and complexion.

   

  As citizens and tree-enthusiasts from Bangalore, many professionals, including artists, have come together to propose a tree festival that explores and celebrates the deep meaning that trees hold for the people of this region with the objective of preservation and change.

   

  For more information: http://neralu.in

   

   

  
  

• A SAD MORNING EVERY MORNING

  
  

  February 4, 2014 - Syrian composer Kinan Azmeh took “a time of silence,” refraining from writing music for one year as he questioned “the role of the artist, the role of music, if music can stop a single bullet at any time . . .” Interviewed by John Hockenberry for The Takeway, Azmeh talks about his recent composition written for the Syrian people, A Sad Morning Every Morning as well as his commitment to being pro-active and composing and playing music that has the potential to that inspire people to change. For the interview and to hear an excerpt from A Sad Morning Every Morning: http://www.wnyc.org/radio/#/ondemand/345431

   

  Image: A man looks at a painting depicting a map of 'bleeding' war-torn Syria, part of an exhibition titled 'The Syrian Museum' on show in Dubai, on November 29, 2012. (KARIM SAHIB/AFP/Getty)

  
  

• SINS OF NATIONAL LOVE

  
  

  February 2, 2014 - MATEJ VAKULA "Sins of Nationalist Love"

  Šafárikovo Square, Bratislava, Slovakia, a project of Space Gallery

  through March 2, 2014

   

  MAP affiliate artist, Matej Vakula's "Sins of Nationalist Love" is a critical look at the lack of Slovakia's examination of it's klero - fascist history. Vakula positions that this lack of reflection helps to underpin the rise of clerical fascism in contemporary Slovak society.

   

  During WWII, clerical fascism was a political system in the Slovak territory led by Slovak President and Roman Catholic Priest, Jozef Tiso. At the end of the war Tiso was convicted for war crimes and executed. Today, Slovak society, including some members of the Christian clergy, is becoming more nationalistically radicalized, invoking and glorifying this historical character along with the Fascist historical period. Many extreme neo-fascists organizations are organizing viscous physical attacks on people of color (e.g. the Roma), members of the LGBT movement, and people who might appear to them as having liberal worldviews. Recently, for the fist time since WWII, a political party representing these ideas, together with ideas of National Socialism won regional elections in Slovakia and polls are showing that these candidates have a chance to score seats in the Slovak Parliament.

   

  "Sins of National Love" is made of two LED panels with alternating text, taken and slightly altered from the Lord's Prayer:

  "Father, forgive us our guilt"

  "Do not lead us into temptation again"

   

  The composition of the LED panels is reflects the symbol used by the infamous militia forces of the clerical-fascist Slovak State from WWII, Hlinka's Guards, inspired by the German SS forces. The political party that represents the ideas of Neo-National Socialism, is calling for the re-creation of similar militias - with the mandate to "protect the proper citizens from the improper" - wearing uniforms that eerily replicate many details of the uniforms of the WWII fascist militias.

   

  Image: Matej Vakula, "Sins of Love", LED panels, 2014

  
  

• GYRE - THE PLASTIC OCEAN

  
  

  January 29, 2014 - Anchorage Museum, Anchorage, Alaska, Feb 7 - Sept 6, 2014

  A flip-flop discarded in Thailand finds its way to Hawaii, and a bottle cast off from a tsunami in Japan becomes Alaska’s beach litter. In a culture dependent upon the modern convenience of plastic, throwaway products of consumption are affecting oceans and shrinking our world as we all become connected through our trash. A unique art and science exhibition, Gyre: The Plastic Ocean, brings the problem into perspective. On view Feb. 7 through Sept. 6, 2014, the exhibition explores the complex relationship between humans and the ocean in a contemporary culture of consumption.

   

  Today, plastic packaging finds its way into the hands of artists via our ocean biosphere. Some, such as Judith Selby Lang and Richard Lang, whose work is featured on the MAP website - www.makeartwithpurpose.net - take an almost archaeological approach to collecting and curating bits of plastic trash while fashioning it into works of art. Others, such as Anne Percoco, collect materials to create community-based work that is often tactile and playful. More than 25 artists from around the world explore these ideas from multiple perspectives in Gyre.

   

  Thought-provoking interpretive panels along with films and interactive displays examine ocean science and include the work of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration researchers, National Geographic filmmakers and others. Showcased is a 2013 expedition by artists and scientists to document and collect trash along Alaska beaches. These varied viewpoints reveal the far-reaching effects of our new plastic ocean and the innovative ways we can work to reclaim it as a natural environment.

   

  For more information, including a description of the GYRE / Anchorage Museum expeditions, visit: http://www.anchoragemuseum.org/galleries/gyre

  
  

• LIVING LANDSCAPES . . .

  
  

  January 24, 2014 - "Living Landscapes, Connected Communities: Culture, Environment and Change Across Asia"

  edited by Justine Vaz and Narumol Aphinives.

   

  ACROSS ASIA, people are coming to terms with the impacts of globalization and its accompanying social, economic, and environmental transformations. This compelling study examines biocultural diversity – the ways different communities interact with their surroundings, drawing upon local knowledge, shared values, and cultural heritage as they negotiate change. In an ambitious and pathbreaking regional research project, some of Asia’s leading public intellectuals visited five communities – Kali Code (Indonesia), Tasik Chini (Malaysia), Biwako (Japan), Batanes (The Philippines) and Khiriwong (Thailand) – in order to better understand local responses to contemporary challenges. Through analytical essays, personal reflections, poetry, music and dance – and beautifully illustrated throughout by powerful images – Living Landscapes, Connected Communities encourages us to broaden our understandings of people’s changing relationship with nature to encompass essential elements of spirituality, identity, belonging, and wellbeing.

   

  For more information: http://arecabooks.com/product/living-landscapes-connected-communities-culture-environment-change-across-asia

  
  

• 2014 MASTERMIND AWARDS

  
  

  January 20, 2014 - Dallas Observer Masterminds 2014 (11 photos)

  MAP Director Janeil Engelstad was honored for her contributions to art and culture in Dallas in 2013 with the Mastermind award along with artist and South Dallas Cultural Center manager, Vicki Meek, artist and Director of UTD CentralTrak, Heyd Fontenet, Dallas Video Festival founder and Director, Bart Weiss, Cara Mía Theater Co. Artist Director David Lozano, and Jeff Swearingen and Bren Rapp of Fun House Theater and Film.
  
  Engelstad shares the Matermind award with the many people and organizations that made MAP 2013 possible.
  
  Article in the Dallas Observer:http://blogs.dallasobserver.com/mixmaster/masterminds_1 
  
  ​Photo: Janeil Engelstad with fellow matermind Heyd Fontenet by Pamela Miller

   

  
  

• AQUA - CULTURE

  
  

  January 15, 2014 -  AQUA-CULTURE curated by Henry G. Sanchez at The MAC Dallas, through March 1, 2014

   

  Participating Artists: Brenda Perry, Shrimp Boat Projects – Zach Moser & Eric Leshinsky, Irene J. Klaver, Henry G. Sanchez

   

  AQUA-CULTURE, a group exhibition curated by Henry G. Sanchez featuring Zach Moser and Eric Leshinsky of Shrimp Boat Projects, Brenda Perry, Irene J. Klaver and Henry G. Sanchez, showcases artist initiated projects that contribute to the widening discussion of the issues surrounding the uses, management and engagements with water sources, water ways and water bodies. The participants of this exhibition produce work by employing interdisciplinary practices and participatory forms of social engagement and collaboration with a philosophical inquiry into exploring an inter-relationship with a more aquatic-centric culture. By combining non-art related expertise with the expertise of the artist, the exhibition allows viewers to reframe, experience and re-imagine complicated local and global water issues.

   

  In Brenda Perry’s Sky Water the artist exchanges the “studio artist” role for that of an airplane pilot in an attempt to induce rain in the drought stricken area of the Rio Grande of El Paso. Through explorations of wonder and elements of speculative methodologies Perry is willing to upend viewers expectations of the artist as scientist while re-imagining the potentialities of water retention and inducement.

   

  Since 2011, the collaborative artist team Zach Moser and Eric Leshinsky of Shrimp Boat Projects have committed themselves to the daily task of piloting a commercial shrimp boat and harvesting catches as members of the local seafood economy and labor force. For the AQUA-CULTURE exhibition, Shrimp Boat Projects calls attention to the depletion of fresh water into Galveston Bay with their Fill the Bay from the Faucet campaign. This new initiative aims to find alternative sources for fresh water, which have been diverted and consumed throughout the state, by inviting the DFW public to literally donate their well and drinking water in designated sites around Dallas. The donated fresh water will be poured into the Bay at the close of the exhibition to alleviate its freshwater deficit.

   

  ENGLISH KILLS is the Brooklyn,New York bio-remediation project of Henry G. Sanchez. He collaborates with the biologist Dr. Sarah Durand and with two community organizations to experiment with constructing man-made wetlands in a walled in industrial river called Newtown Creek. Made from recycled tires, clean landfill and saltmarsh grass, the constructed inter-tidal zones are meant to duplicate its former wetlands and act as filters for the contamination caused by sewage pipe overflows. Sanchez’s installation presents the current ecological status of English Kills, a tributary of Newton Creek, as a distressed but surprising habitat for a wide variety of wildlife in an urban landscape.

   

  River as Bridge to Environmental Imagination is the work and vision of Dr. Irene J. Klaver. As the Director of the Philosophy of Water Project at theUniversity ofNorth Texas, Dr. Klaver has contributed substantial literature and theory relating to the ethos and culture about our relationship to water. In this exhibition Dr. Klaver collaborates with the artist Brian O’Connor on a meditation and exploration of flood detention ponds along theTrinity River. Photographic and material evidence becomes a focal point of the installation to discuss and visualize how these places can become sites of “engagement and encounters” with the public and amongst the local communities that seeks the same.

  
  

• SEVENTEEN HUNDRED SEEDS

  
  

  January 11, 2014 - SEVENTEEN HUNDRED SEEDS

  Epitome Institute, San Antonio, Texas January 11-February 1, 

  Opening: January 11, 6-9 pm

  
An archive from the "Seventeen Hundred Seeds" project, which can be viewed on MAP's project link documents 's urban farming / community engagement project produced in Dallas in 2012. Seventeen Hundred Seeds placed emphasis on the social elements of a community coming together to notice the potential within. The gathering of people to not only connect with nature but each other was the “art” and the ultimate successful the project. Produced in the busy heart of the Oak Cliff neighborhood of Dallas, off a well-traveled car and pedestrian street, Seventeen Hundred Seeds offered a daily tableau of the farmer's life of tilling and seed planting, weeding and watering, and finally harvesting and sharing.



   www.epitomeinstitute.com

  

Image: Seventeen Hundred Seeds, Robert Hamilton and Cynthia Mulcahy

  
  

• GLOBAL MAPPING

  
  

  January 10, 2014 - 

   

   

  HELEN MAYER HARRISON & NEWTON HARRISON

  GLOBAL MAPPING at RONALD FELDMAN FINE ARTS

  31 Mercer Street, New York, New York

  January 11 - February 8, 2014

   

  The Harrisons’ work is a prime example of the potential of ecoart to create knowledge that promotes cultural change.

  Ruth Wallen, Leonardo XLV, no. 3, 2012

   

  MAP affiliate artists Helen Mayer Harrison & Newton Harrison are the first recipients of the Corlis Benefideo Award for Imaginative Cartography, presented at theAnnual Meeting of the North American Cartographic Society (NACIS) on October 9, 2013 in Greenville, South Carolina. Ronald Feldman Fine Arts will exhibit, Global Mapping, an overview of the life-long work of Helen Mayer Harrison and Newton Harrison, pioneers of ecologically-oriented art, whose visionary proposals have influenced long-term public policy in the United States and abroad. For more than forty years, the Harrisonsʼ expansive practice, realized in collaboration with experts from other disciplines and often commissioned by government and art institutions, has been to map out specific geographical areas at ecological risk to encourage public discourse and community involvement. Their impassioned works serve as both a meditation on global ecology and also as a futuristic vision, often with proposals for environmental change and recovery.

   

  The Harrisonsʼ mapping - on large wall panels and synthesized with aerial photographs and narrative text of Socratic reasoning - dominates the exhibition space. The artworks are selected from large-scale installations of projects from the early seventies to the present. Similar in appearance to the wall panels, a floor panel allows the viewer to walk on a topographical map of the Sierra Nevada mountain range, a work from Force Majeure, the Harrisonsʼ current on-going series which addresses the effects of global warming on an unprecedented scale. Earlier works, From The Lagoon Cycle (1974-1984), Law of the Sea Conference from the 1976 Venice Biennale, and Baltimore Promenade (1981), focus on watershed restoration, agricultural and forestry issues,and urban renewal, as well as providing a history of the Harrisonsʼ engagement with the topic of global warming. Reflecting the Harrisonsʼ international perspective and the scale of their research, the exhibition includes projects that study the eco-systems of large bodies of water from around the world: the Sava River in former Yugoslavia, the Yarkon River in Israel, and the Salton Sea and the Bays at San Francisco in the state of California. Their titles often incorporate visual metaphor to define and unify the large geographical areas under consideration: A Vision for the Green Heart of Holland, Peninsula Europe, Greenhouse Britain, and Tibet is the High Ground.

  There will be a reception Saturday, January 11: 6 - 8. Gallery hours are Tuesday - Saturday, 10 - 6. Monday by appointment.

   

  Image: Sierra Nevada, 2011 (installation view south gallery) aerial photograph, digital mapping, pastel, oil, and ink 42 feet long x variable width

  
  

• LAST CHANCE . . .

  
  

  January 8, 2014 - IN DALLAS OVER THE NEXT WEEK? LAST CHANCE TO EXPERIENCE OTO HUDEC"S MAP 2013 PROJECT "INSTRUMENT FOR LISTENING" at BELO GARDEN

  through Thursday, January 16

  (http://www.belogarden.com/contact

   

  The giant megaphone designed and built by Hudec (SK) consisted of three main phases: building a sculptural form, which serves as tabula rasa, a space for expression; working with teenagers from the Dallas neighborhood of Oak Cliff to create a pattern that reflects their life and the life of Hispanic community in their neighborhood; and interviewing community members, including dancers, artists, journalists, mothers, teachers, musicians, and business owners, to capture stories, opinions and dreams in the most objective, documentary way. The fourth, symbolic phase of the project is directed towards the listener, hearing the interviews from the megaphone, which are transmitted through an audio system inside of the sculpture.

  
  

• HAPY NEW YEAR FROM ALL OF US AT MAP

  
  

  A collective effort, MAP would not be possible without you. Artists, organizations, partners, collaborators, supporters, co-creators, audience and friends, you help us realize our vision. Thank you. 

  
  

• TRANSLATING CULTURE

  
  

  December 20, 2013 - 

   

  Visiting the Dallas Museum of Art?

   

  Be sure to visit the front desk and pick up the "Translating Culture . . . Community Voices at the DMA" guide booklet. The guide takes DMA visitors on a bi-lingual (Spanish - English) tour of pantings, sculpture and installations

  in the DMA's permanent collection, all selected by community members from AVANCE. The booklet includes short text by each of the project participants, illuminating their selected work of art from their point of view and experience.

   

  The "Translating Culture . . ." program was created by MAP - Make Art with Purpose in partnership with the Dallas Museum of Art's Center for Creative Connections and AVANCE as a part of MAP 2013. This is one of our MAP 2013 Legacy Projects - exhibitions, programs and projects that have a positive impact in North Texas well into the future.

   

  MAP thanks the DMA's Center for Creative Connections, AVANCE, the participating community members and Harold Simmons Foundation for making this project possible.

  
  

• INTERNATIONAL MIGRANTS DAY

  
  

  MAP partner Embrey Human Rights Program at SMU is celebrating International Migrants Day with Pueblo Sin Fronteras and other community organizations on DECEMBER 18 from 6:00 - 9:00 PM, meeting behind the Dallas ICE Detention Center, on the Corner of Express Row and Empire Central Pl
  
  The program includes:
  
  - a candlelight service to honor the lives of fallen migrants, to meditate on those who are in the journey and face human rights abuses
  
  - a press conference
  
  - the recognition of local leaders and individuals who have been champions of service, advocacy, and activism.
  
  - music, poetry, and song

  
  

• INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS DAY

  
  

  DEC 10, 2013 INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS DAY

   

  ACCESS to CULTURE IS A BASIC HUMAN RIGHT.

   

  In collaboration with Azra Akšamija MAP is producing initiatives that examine the role of cultural heritage throughout the world. Through Akšamija's project,

  "Museum Solidarity Lobby" [MSL], which was exhibited in the exterior lobby of the Dallas Holocaust Museum as a part of MAP 2013, the public was invited to actively engage in this examination. MSL (currently at 1:1 STOPOVER at the Museum of Contemporary Art Ljubljana, Slovenia through January 12, 2014) is a system that creates empathy with threatened heritage worldwide, while critically reflecting on the role and relevance of the museum for civil society today.

   

  The system is open to public participation and operates though spatial, activist and discursive forms of lobbying. MSL is motivated by the acute crisis of cultural institutions as many museums and cultural institutions worldwide (e.g. Sarajevo, Budapest, Belgrade, Ljubljana, Lichtenstein, Eindhoven), have been closed or are victim to diverse political and economic pressures.

   

  What if a civil society has no access to its cultural institutions? What is a nation without its museums, art galleries, archives and libraries of record? What happens to cultural heritage, if no institution is there to preserve it? What needs to be preserved at all, and who decides that? The Museum Solidarity Lobby investigates how this global crisis of the museum informs and is informed by politics, and how culture may affect the state-­‐building processes, or perhaps the nature of government itself.

   

  Image: Azra Akšamija, Museum Solidarity Postcard from Day of Museum Solidarity (Image: Jewish Museum, Hohenems, Austria)

  
  

• AN UNREAL DREAM

  
  

  An Unreal Dream: The MIchael Morton Story on CNN
  December 5, 9 p.m. PT/ET
   

  An Unreal Dream, which screened as a part of MAP 2013 this past October (in partnership with Dallas Video Festival) tells the story of Michael Morton who was wrongfully convicted of murdering his wife. 
  
  Locked away in Texas prisons for a quarter century, he has years to ponder questions of justice and innocence, truth and fate. Though he is virtually invisible to society, a team of dedicated attorneys spends years fighting for the right to test DNA evidence found at the murder scene. Their discoveries ultimately reveal that the price of a wrongful conviction goes well beyond one man’s loss of freedom.
  
  If you missed it at MAP 2013 tune into CNN to see this important and powerful film.
  
  For more information: http://www.anunrealdream.com/

  
  

• ONE DAY PROJECT THROUGH DEC 1

  
  

  This is the last week for VAL CURRY and ROBERT DAVID REEDY's "ONE DAY PROJECT" through December 1
  AT RO2 ART as a part of MAP 2013
   

  Inspired by the concepts of Cradle to Cradle design, The One Day Project investigates the material possibilities hidden within local waste streams in Dallas. Interested in natural and industrial systems and processes, Curry and Reedy believe that there is a potential for nature and industry to be complementary aspects of a balanced and profitable system. The artists began by exploring methods to enhance and establish sustainable equality within their creative practice. After researching corporate waste management policies and touring local landfills, they found a corporate waste stream that they could circumvent: Starbucks. They collected Starbuck’s trash that was destined for the landfill and started to explore the material possibilities hidden within that waste. 
  
  For more information: http://www.ro2art.com/one-day.html

  
  

• MAP 2013 CONTINUES . . .

  
  

  MAP 2013 at Eastfield College Main Gallery 
  through December 6
  
  Rebecca Carter, James Reed, Carolyn Sorter and Matej Vakula. Each of these artists invites us to consider the built and natural environment - how we use space, the rules thatgovern the use of space and how we advance our thoughts and ideas around environmental and social concerns in public space. If you are in the DFW area and have not yet made it out to Eastfield College to see this exhibition, it is worth the trip. A chance to experience and engage with intelligent work that activates political and social dialogue during a time that is marked by disillusionment over ineffective systems of government and other power structures that are not addressing our most pressing concerns.
  
  Image: Matej Vakula viewing James Reed, "Agents of Change"

  
  

• MAP 2013 AT THE READING ROOM

  
  

  MAP 2013 at The Reading Room 
  Reading in Unison 
  Sunday, Nov 24, 5:00 PM
  
  A group reading from pertinent essays about social action art and exhibition of printed matter from MAP 2013 projects and exhibitions.
  
  It was originally planned that this would be the culminating event for MAP 2013. However . . . 
  
  One of the benefits of not being a brick and mortar institution is the ability to adapt to changes on the ground, produce projects that take longer to develop than planned and to extend dates. Thus, over the upcoming weeks and into 2014 a few additional MAP 2013 projects will continue and others will launch. 
  
  Stay tuned . . . 
  
  A group with new reading glasses and books in Bredjing Refugee Camp, Darfur - a location for an upcoming MAP program.

  
  

• MAP 2013 PRESENTS "WHITE LIGHT WHITE HEAT"

  
  

  MAP 2013 presents WANDA DYE's "WHITE LIGHT WHITE HEAT" a site-specific light installation at BATH HOUSE CULTURAL CENTER
  
  FRIDAY, NOV 22, 7 - 9 PM through Sunday NOV 24
  
  
  "White Light White Heat" is a site-specific light installation by Wanda Dye created in partnership with MAP – Make Art with Purpose and the Bath House Cultural Center for MAP 2013: Creative projects that restore and preserve the environment, promote social justice and advance human knowledge and well-being.
  
  After a series of conversations with the Bath House Center, MAP invited Dye to create a light installation that responded to The Bath House Cultural Center’s need for a lakeside light source that provides the beloved local water fowl safety from the nocturnal coyote. In response to this gesture, Dye proposed a light installation that provided the waterfowl a lighted place to rest and at the same time doubled as an abstract light intervention. Dye utilized her design and art background to create an elegant work, seven slender lights of varying heights, that utilized re-purposed PVC pipe, re bar and energy efficient LEDs. Through geometry, composition and color the installation is a conversational gesture to the existing Wildlife Water Theater, (a public art commission installed on the lake in 2001 by artists Frances Bagley and Tom Orr). The informality of the slender light elements, via swaying and leaning, reflects the structure of the fowl feathers Dye found on site, as well as the forms and movements of the various reeds and grasses existing along the lake's banks.

  
  

• CHANGE OF DATE

  
  

  CHANGE OF DATE
  
  SCAB PROGRESSIVE DINNER is now Sunday, DEC 8, 5 - 8 PM
  . . . we don't want you walking in freezing rain!
  
  THREE COURSES PREPARED BY MARK WOOTTON OF THE GARDEN CAFE & THREE SHOWS CURATED BY AND FEATURING WORKS FROM SCAB 
  
  HOMELAND SECURITY
  
  A show of Eli Walker and Kelly Kroener's permanent collection paired with a first course of Sautéed Collard Greens with Roasted Sweet Potato & Reduced Balsamic
  
  THE UNION
  
  A sound and video based installation by Kyle Evans hosted by Joshua von Ammon and Frank Darko paired with an entree of either Braised Short Ribs on Cauliflower Purée with Bourbon Glazed Baby Carrots & Fried Spaghetti Squash OR
  FM1410's Wild 'Shrooms over Black Beans & Swiss Chard
  
  THAT THAT
  
  A showcase of the most recent works from the members of SCAB curated by Samantha McCurdy and Alex DiJulio as well as a dessert of Panna Cotta with Berries
  
  PURCHASE TICKETS: http://www.eventbee.com/event?eid=118501724

  
  

• IMMIGRANT NATION AT THE MAC

  
  

  i-nation at THE MAC Sunday, Nov 17 at 2:00
  
  Come out and participate - tell your story - or the story of your ancestors - which will become part of a community mural.
  
  Short film screening by academy award winning director Theo Rigby and a talk back that includes Bill Holston from Human Rights Initiative and Roberto Corono, Community Outreach Coordinator, Embrey Human Rights Program, Southern Methodist University.

  
  

• S.C.A.B. PROGRESSIVE DINNER

  
  

   

  TICKETS ON SALE FOR S.C.A.B. PROGRESSIVE 
  DINNER, FOR MAP 2013 - NOV 23, 2013
  
  For MAP 2013's closing weekend, S.C.A.B (Socialized Contemporary Artists Bureau) is producing Progressive Dinner, a project that hi-lights hospitality and the value of DIY artist's communities to urban development. Three S.C.A.B. associated spaces will present a program that includes a three-course meal designed and prepared by Chef Mark Wootton of the critically acclaimed Garden Cafe. Members of S.C.A.B. will open their live-work spaces as a forum for sharing, exchanging and discourse concerning the future of DIY and its roles and responsibilities within communities. Each of the three spaces will present an exhibition, host one course of the meal, and direct a conversation about art advocacy, including dialogue about how artists create systems of support and rely upon non-traditional resources to sustain their practice and community engagement.
  
  The evening will begin in Expo Park at That That Studio hosted by Samantha McCurdy and Alexander DiJulio. From this location, guests will take a charter bus to the Cedars neighborhood where the project and dinner will begin at Homeland Security, the home and artist's run gallery of Kelly Kroener and Eli Walker. The guests will then walk to Union and Pariah Productions, the live - work space of Frank Darko and Joshua von Ammon, for the dinner's main course, served al fresco, accompanied by a video screening. This is followed by a bus ride back to That That Studio for desert/after-party.
  
  Name: MAP 2013 S.C.A.B. Progressive Dinner Bus Tour 
  Link: http://www.eventbee.com/event?eid=118501724

  
  

• MAP 2013 CONTINUES . . .

  
  

  T IS WITH GREAT HONOR THAT MAP 2013 is partnering with THE MODERN ART MUSEUM of FORT WORTH to present:
  
  HELEN AND NEWTON HARRISON, artist's talk
  Tuesday, November 12, 7:00 PM
  Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth:http://www.themodern.org/events/2013-11/2013-11-12
  
  Among the leading pioneers of the eco-art movement, the collaborative team of Newton and Helen Mayer Harrison (often referred to simply as “the Harrisons”) have worked for almost forty years with biologists, ecologists, architects, urban planners and other artists to initiate collaborative dialogues to uncover ideas and solutions which support biodiversity and community development.

  
  

• MICK LORUSSO AT PEROT MUSEUM OF NATURE AND SCIENCE

  
  

  SATURDAY NOVEMBER 9, 10:00 - 2:00 PM

   

  Mick Lorruso's Biodiamond Energy Presents “Electro-Microbe” is a workshop installation hosted by the Perot Museum of Nature and Science in which participants help assemble and feed Microbial Fuel Cells that power the light for a DIY computer microscope. This webcam microscope magnifies living samples of the same bacteria found in the MFCs onto a computer screen, which is contained within a miniature theater space. Using a live-footage editing program, participants combine quotes and imagery with the scenes of bacteria, thereby creating the digital “silent film” called “Electro-Microbe”. By the end of the workshop, participants project different versions of the movie “Electro-Microbe” onto a large screen, where they can further intervene the footage with spontaneous shadow puppet performances. The results of the workshop are recorded and made available for future screenings. Ultimately, Biodiamond Energy’s microbial laboratory-theater playfully suggests possible symbioses between microorganisms, humans, and technology that may become integral to a post fossil fuel future.

  
  

• MAP 2013 AT NASHER SCULPTURE CENTER

  
  

  Saturday, Nov 9, 2:00 PM

   

  Moderated by Janeil Engelstad featuring Vicki Meek, Matej Vakula and Frances Whitehead.

   

  Each artist will give a presentation about their work that will explore questions arising from artists working in the community, such as:

   

   

   1. How have the role of art, artist and audience been resituated?

   2. What is the potential for art to create civic sites for public discourse and expression?

  3. How do projects such as MAP 2013 facilitate the empowerment of the population to be actors in their own development? 

  4.  What is the potential for interdisciplinary practice to contribute research and knowledge production that supports positive social and environmental change?

  5. What is the artist’s responsibility for creating conditions in which cultures can exchange on an equal basis? 

   

   

  Image: Frances Whitehead "Data Cloud Map"
  
  

• FLOW: RIVER TO SEA

  
  

  MAP 2013 opens "FLOW: RIVER TO SEA" by BARBARA BENISH at Trinity River Audubon Center, Dallas 
  Opening celebration, Saturday, November 9, 11 - 2 PM
  
  "Flow: River to Sea" is a permanent, public, teaching garden designed for the Trinity River Audubon Center as a part of Barbara Benish’s on-going project about the connectedness of inland lives and communities to the world’s oceans. 
  
  The opening includes craft projects for kids, an artists talk, nature hikes and chances for kids to meet native animals, including homing pigeons and box turtles.

  
  

• MAP 2013 AT PEROT MUSEUM OF NATURE AND SCIENCE

  
  

   

  Thursday, Nov 7, 7:00 - 9:00 PM

  featuring the University of North Texas Art and Science Collective: Lesli Robertson, Amie Adelman, and Ruth West

   

  "Weaving the Future: Explorations in Fibers, Community and Virtual Connections"

   

  At the intersection of art and technology, "Weaving the Future" combines the materials of textile fibers with innovative social platforms tied to community participation. Art and science faculty from the University of North Texas (UNT) will collaborate with visitors to the Perot Museum of Nature and Science in hands-on, interactive workshops that will also exist, in real time, across social media.

   

  Using thread, the UNT team and workshop collaborators will create a community artwork that will emphasize the applicability of the handmade to technology. Throughout the workshops, digital images and dialogues of the experiences will be posted to public sharing platforms, including rePhoto and Facebook, creating a virtual record of the creative process and the community of people engaged in the project. Existing across time and platforms, "Weaving the Future" will be instantaneously available to the public, broadening the reach of the project to the wider global community and bridging art and social media with the aim of expanding notions of authorship, community, and engagement.

   

  Image: Amie Adelman, Linear Motion II, Breckenridge Fine Arts Center, 2011, 10' high x 22' wide x 19' deep, stretched thread

  
  

• MUSEUM SOLIDARITY LOBBY

  
  

  Azra Akšamija - Museum Solidarity Lobby

  MAP 2013 at Dallas Holocaust Museum - Center for Education and Tolerance, through November 24

  What if a civil society has no access to its cultural institutions? What is a nation without its museums, art galleries, archives and libraries of record? What happens to cultural heritage, if no institution is there to preserve it? What needs to be preserved at all, and who decides that? Through an interactive installation in the lobby of the Dallas Holocaust Museum the Museum Solidarity Lobby investigates how this global crisis of the museum informs and is informed by politics, and how culture may affect the state-building processes, or perhaps the nature of government itself.

   

  Image: Museum Solidarity Lobby - installation in progress, Dallas Holocaust Museum, photograph by Azra Akšamija

  
  

• WORDS / SWORDS

  
  

   

  JIN-YA HUANG in collaboration with Human Rights Initiative of North Texas (HRI), MAP 2013 Project 'WORDS / SWORD"

  Installed in the HRI lobby through November 24

  Opening reception November 4, 2013 7-9 PM

   

  Through WORDS/SWORDS, Jin-Ya Huang is visually telling the stories of Dallas - Fort Worth area immigrants that are seeking legal assistance for domestic abuse and political asylum. The project raises social awareness about an issue, immigrant abuse that receives limited coverage by the media. Huang’s process included meeting with the project participants, listening and gathering information, and then interpreting their stories through abstract photographs and words. The images of the participant’s stories of struggle and survival are the centerpiece of the installation at HRI’s offices.

   

  Image: Jin-Ya Huang, "Break the Pattern" color photograph, 2013

   

  
  

• ONE DAY PROJECT

  
  

  Val Curry and Robert David Reedy


  ONE DAY PROJECT


  RO2 Art, 110 North Akard, Dallas 


  Opening reception, Nov 2, 7- 9 PM



  In collaboration with RO2 Art, the One Day Project is being presented as a part of MAP 2013.

   

  Inspired by the concepts of Cradle to Cradle design, The One Day project investigates the material possibilities hidden within local waste streams in Dallas. Interested in natural and industrial systems and processes, Curry and
Reedy believe that there is a potential for nature and industry to be complementary aspects of a balanced and profitable system. The artists began by exploring methods to establish sustainable equality within their creative
practice. After researching corporate waste management policies and touring local landfills, they found a corporate waste stream that they could circumvent: Starbucks. They collected Starbuck’s trash that was destined for the landfill
and started to explore the material possibilities hidden within that waste. Through the persistence of trial and error, they discovered that the paper waste could be pulped and then cast into simple geometric objects which function as repurposed vessels.

  
  

• THE NEW SOUTH DALLAS

  
  

   

  A short film about the gentrification of South Dallas by Soul Children's Theater / South Dallas Cultural Center,produced in partnership with MAP 2013

  NOVEMBER 2, 2013 3:00 PM - 4:30 PM

  The Dallas Public Library, Central (Main) branch

  Room: Community Showcase, 1st floor

  film followed by a community discussion about the impact of gentrification on whole communities

   

   

  Throughout the summer of 2013, teens from the South Dallas Cultural Center’s Summer Arts at the Center program and youth from the Soul Children's Theater Company (SCT) met in workshops lead by SCT Artistic Director Tara Youngblood. Exploring the impact of gentrification in South Dallas, the teens and tweens took walks through their neighborhood, interviewed South Dallas residents, had group discussions and wrote a script for a mini-documentary, which they also filmed and edited. The film shines a new light on how gentrification is changing the face of South Dallas and gives the young filmmakers a public, civic platform to express ideas and opinions about what is happening in their neighborhood. The film will be screened at The Dallas Public Library, followed by a community discussion about the impact of gentrification.

   

  Opinions expressed along the way:

   

  “It’s process that starts out with subtle changes - a store here and a house there and by the time people realize what’s happening they can no longer afford to live in their houses.”

   

  “I think it’s a good thing. If you don’t build better houses how are you going to keep an area populated?”

   

  “What’s happening in South Dallas, it’s like breaking up a forest over a hedge.”

   

  “It’s good to change the community for something better, but still, it takes away memories.”

   

  “It’s wrong. Everybody likes South Dallas the way it is.”

  
  

• MAP 2013 CONTINUES

  
  

  with "Instrument for Listening" by Oto Hudec, Belo Garden, 1014 Main Street, Main Street, Dallas Opening reception November 2, 11:00 AM

  includes a performance by Alegre Ballet Folklórico and a megaphone craft project for kids

   

  Historically, the megaphone has been a tool for people to express their opinions, their wishes and their needs. Instrument for Listening is inspired by this function, but focuses on people who are on both sides of this tool – the ones listening, as well as the ones who are speaking. The project consists of three main phases: building a sculptural form, which serves as tabula rasa, a space for expression; working with teenagers from the Dallas neighborhood of Oak Cliff to create a pattern that reflects their life and the life of Hispanic community in their neighborhood; and interviewing community members, including dancers, artists, journalists, mothers, teachers, musicians, and business owners, to capture stories, opinions and dreams in the most objective, documentary way. The fourth, symbolic phase of the project is directed towards the listener, hearing the interviews from the megaphone, which are transmitted through an audio system inside of the sculpture.

  
  

• ARTISTS WORKING AROUND THE WORLD

  
  

   

  FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 1, 6:00 - 8:00 PM

  OIL AND COTTON, 837 W 7th St, Dallas, TX 75208

   

  This MAP 2013 family program features Morehshin Allahyari (Iran, lives and works in Dallas), Azra Akšamija (Bosnia Herzegovina, Oto Hudec (Slovakia) and Katt Lissard (USA, works in Lesotho and USA). Join is for an evening of food, drink, artist’s talks, family art workshops and more produced in partnership with our friends at Oil and Cotton.

   

   

  Women from Malealea wearing traditional Basotho blankets. Photograph by Katt Lissard for The Winter/Summer Institute

  
  

• MAP 2013 IN THE NEWS

  
  

   

  Melissa Gonzalez, Manager of the Center for Creative Connections Gallery at the Dallas Museum (DMA) of Art writes about her MAP 2013 experience of Robin Kahn's "The Art of Sahrawi Hospitality" in the DMA Blog:

   

  http://dmaeducatorblog.wordpress.com/2013/10/25/friday-photos-the-art-of-sahrawi-hospitality

   

  Photograph: Nadjet prepares tea by Melissa Gonzales

   

  
  

• MAP 2013 PROGRAM TIME CHANGE

  
  

   

  Susan Plum's Luz y Solidaridad -Light and Solidarity at LAtino Cultural Center is now at 4:00 PM today, Saturday, October 26, 2013. Come out to see a poetic, performance ritual that honors the murders of young women in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico since 1993 and shifts the energy towards healing and change.

  
  

• ART AS A SOCIAL WORMHOLE

  
  

   

  MAP is partnering with The Reading Room and OccuLibrary to present "Art As Social Wormhole" Kick-off as a part of MAP 2013.

  
Sunday, October 27 from 4 to 6 pm


  The Reading Room, 3715 Parry

   

  

Art As Social Wormhole is a reading group organized by Carolyn Sortor as a part of her collaborative project OccuLibrary. Readers are invited to parse classic and recent texts on aesthetic issues relating to art's potential to speak to or influence social or political realities. The group will determine the syllabus as well as the frequency of meeting dates. 



   

  For more information: occulibrary.tumblr.com.



   

  Image: Apple by Carolyn Sorter

  
  

• SUSAN PLUM AT MAP 2013

  
  

  MAP 2013 and Latino Cultural Center present

  Susan Plum's Luz y Solidaridad -Light and Solidarity

  DÍa De Los Muertos Festival

  October 26, 4:00 PM

  www.dallasculture.org/latinoculturalcenter

   

  Houston based artist Susan Plum created Luz y Solidaridad -Light and Solidarity a performance-ritual in response to the murders of young women in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico since 1993. The project began as a call-to-action, asking people to light a votive candle with the intention of bringing light to murdered daughters and solidarity to their mothers. Over 400 people responded and sent Plum photographs of candles being lit with the intentions.

   

  The performance begins with ritualists beckoning the audience into a sacred space with the sound of an Aztec wind whistle. This is followed by the rhythmic tapping of brooms, breaking up the negative energy that is on the Earth, after which several other brooms sweep the negative energy upward. The powerful sound of the ancient bullroarers continues to propel the energy toward the cosmos, transmuting the heaviness into light. Using instruments with roots in ancient indigenous traditions this ritual is a humble act of compassion and empowerment.

   

  Image: Luz y Solidaridad by Susan Plum

  
  

• REWORK / MAP 2013

  
  

  October 23, 2013 - MAP 2013: RE WORK: Case Studies in Adaptive Reuse and Urban Revitalization at RE GALLERY, 1717 Gould Street

  OCTOBER 25- November 10

  Opening Reception Oct 25, 7 - 9 PM

   

  MAP 2013 and RE gallery + studio present: RE WORK: Case Studies in Adaptive Reuse and Urban Revitalization is an exhibition of select projects demonstrating re practices in architecture and urbanism. These practices include adaptive reuse, retrofitting, re-purposing and revitalization within the greater Dallas – Fort Worth area and beyond. Included in the exhibition are diverse practices, ranging from design/build teams, to a full service architecture firm, to planning partnerships. The specific projects are being hi-lighted because of their environmental consciousness to preserve and sustain, rather than raze or build anew.

   

  RE WORK includes: Cunningham Architects, Mark Martinek - Modern Construction, Wanda Dye - RE gallery + studio, and Team Better Block.

  Curated by Wanda Dye, Owner/Director RE gallery + studio

  Image: RE gallery + studio by Wanda Dye

  
  

• MAP 2013 TALK

  
  

  MAP 2013 Artist's Talk

  Carolyn Sorter will talk about her multi-form project

  OccuLibrary at Eastfield College Gallery, Mesquite, Texas

  Wednesday, October 23 2:00 PM

   

  Most Occupy camps had a library tent. Shortly before the nationwide demonstrations on Nov. 17, 2011, police in cities across the U.S. evicted the camps, and the libraries were largely demolished. In New York alone, over 3,000 books were destroyed. The OccuLibrary began as a project to create various reincarnations of these libraries using aesthetically-informed strategies. Engaging, even alluring means are used to increase awareness toward empowering information. OccuLibrary incarnations are in various media, and each is shaped by the collaborators who desire to co-create it.

   

  Image: OccuLibrary Digital Collage by Carolyn Sorter, 2013

  
  

• MAP 2013 UPDATE

  
  

  OCTOBER 20, 2013 - Rebecca Carter's "Signage Works" is live on KERA's

  Art and Seek - www.artandseek.net

   

  Art and Seek, a website produced by KERA PUBLIC MEDIA, reports on arts, music and culture throughout North Texas and beyond. As a part of MAP 2013, for the first time in the site's history, Art and Seek is is also an exhibition space presenting signs from Rebecca Carter's MAP 2013 project, "Signage Works" each day on it's banner of rotating images. Though "Signage Works," Dallas based artist Rebecca Carter worked with students in her classes at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth and Eastfield College to create signs about ideas or concerns that they want to communicate to the public.

   

  Cheers to KERA and the Art and Seek staff for helping us to realize this virtual part of MAP 2013. Special thanks to Art and Seek Director, Anne Bothwell for her vision and support.

   

  Image: Kate Barbee + Rebecca Carter, "Grandma's Pies" 2013

  
  

• MOREHSHIN ALLAHYARI AT MAP 2013

  
  

   

  MOREHSHIN ALLAHYARI AT MAP 2013

  Censorship and Propaganda – in the US and Abroad

  Saturday, Oct 19, 6:00 - 8:00 PM


  CentralTrak, 800 Exposition Ave. Dallas, TX 75226 



   

  Growing up in Iran, Morehshin Allahyari learned about censorship from an early age - constantly reminded by her parents not to share stories of the life that they lived inside of their home; from owning a VHS player to not praying. 

Living a double life inside and outside of the home became a normal component of her daily activity; continually going back and forth between prescribed norms, rules, and different layers within herself. Later in life, as a writer and artist, coping with censorship became harder and more problematic. Allahyari began to understand the many negative influences of censorship on her work and practice.

In the United States, the experience of censorship is perhaps not as apparent in daily life. But recent events, such as the revelation of spying by the US National Security Agency (NSA) and censorship in war journalism have raised questions about freedom of expression and privacy in the United States. 

In "Censorship and Propaganda – in the US and Abroad" Allahyari has created a participatory performance piece that raises questions and awareness about censorship, the involvement of governments in the flow of information and our access to information that governments work to suppress. The piece includes a community discussion about the role and influence of the citizen watchdog and censorship by the governments in our lives; from the Middle-East to the United States.



   

  Image:"Censorship and Propaganda" by Morehshin Allahyari

  
  

• H U G AT MAP 2013

  
  

  October 17, 2013

  MAP 2013 presents:

  H U G - a performance installation by Julie Troost
  Lamar Street Festival, Dallas 
  October 19, 3:00 PM
  Produced with support from Matthews Southwest
  
  Groups embracing in public spaces surprise people walking by. The negative memories of personal and community conflict are healed by a simple gesture of compassion. MAP is honored to present the Dallas premier of H U G a deeply poetic work that touches the Soul.
  
  For information on how you can participate by submitting reflection / memory of trauma or conflict:https://www.facebook.com/hugperformance

  
  

• THE TENT IS RAISED!

  
  

  October 15, 2013 - MAP 2013 and The Art of Sahrawi Hospitality

  Robin Kahn & The National Union of Women from Western Sahara

  Produced in partnership with RO2 Art and Downtown Dallas, Inc.

  Open Oct 16 - 20 12:00 Noon - 6:00 PM

  Reception Wednesday, October 16, 6:00 - 8:00 PM, rain or shine!

  Tea, sweets, music, dancing and an artist's talk by Robin Kahn.

   

  We raised the tent today - in pouring rain - (dOCUMENTA 13 deja vu), it is looking good - come on out Dallas for a unique, fun and powerful project like no other!

   

  At MAP2013, The Art of Sahrawi Hospitality raises a typical Sahrawi tent designed, sewn in the camps and installed in Main Street Garden park in Dallas by a group of young Sahrawi women who were born in the camps. The tent will function as a center of social activity this week where families meet as a group or with friends to relax together, drink tea and enjoy each other’s company. With the women in charge of this domain, hospitality becomes the catalyst for social engagement providing a welcoming sanctuary.

   

  Photo: by Janeil Engelstad

  
  

• MAP 2013 IN THE NEWS

  
  

  October 14, 2013 - 106 Pieces of Public Art Hit Dallas this week, including MAP 2013! Read about it in Peter Simek's article "Your Guide to the 106 New Works of Public Art You Can See in Dallas This Weekend" in D Magazine's Frontrow

   

  Including: Morehshin Allahyari, Rebecca Carter, Robin Kahn, James Reed and Julie Troost

   

  http://frontrow.dmagazine.com/2013/10/your-guide-to-the-106-new-works-of-public-art-you-can-see-in-dallas-this-weekend

   

  Image: Julie Troost, "H U G" for more information about the Dallas presentation of H U G: https://www.facebook.com/hugperformancehttps://www.facebook.com/hugperformance

  
  

• AN UNREAL DREAM

  
  

  October 13, 2013 -  The MAP 2013 screening of AN UNREAL DREAM: The Michael Morton Story, "carries the day" at Dallas Video Festival. Bart Weiss, Artistic Director of Dallas Video Festival gave a well deserved shout out to the film in his Sunday morning round-up:

   

  "The second documentary to carry the day was An Unreal Dream: The Michael Morton Story, another tale centered around a wrongful conviction, this time of a man all but forgotten for over twenty-five years, and finally exonerated with the help of his parents and a small but fiercely dedicated team of lawyers. Award-winning director Al Reinert (For All Mankind) directed this amazing documentary, examining the full implications of the loss of not just one man's freedom, but the miscarriages of justice that threaten the very system under which we live."

   

  Cheers to the team that made AN UNREAL DREAM it was an honor to partner on the presentation of this powerful and important film as a part of MAP 2013.

   

  
  

• MAP 2013 OCT 12 EVENTS

  
  

  MAP 2013 OCTOBER !2 EVENTS

   

  LIVING CONDITION, "BILL'S STORY, SCREENING AT THE DALLAS VIDEO FEST, ALAMO DRAFT HOUSE, RICHARDSON

  3:00 PM, FOLLOWED BY A PANEL DISCUSSION WITH ARTISTS DEE HIBBERT-JONES, NOMI TALISMAN AND GEUSTS NOAH SIMBLIST, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF ART AT SMU AND COMMUNITY ACTIVIST ESTRUS TUCKER

   

  AN UNREAL DREAM: THE MICHAEL MORTON STORY 4:00 PM

  DALLAS VIDEO FEST

   

  An Unreal Dream: The Michael Morton Story –In 1986 Michael Morton’s wife Christine was brutally murdered in front of their only child, and Michael was convicted of the crime and in prison for a quarter century. Though he was virtually invisible to society, a team of dedicated attorneys spent years fighting for the right to test DNA evidence found at the murder scene. Their discoveries ultimately revealed that the price of a wrongful conviction goes well beyond one man’s loss of freedom. Directed by Al Reinert. Produced by Marcy Garriott, John Dean and Al Reinert.

   

  MAP 2013 AT EASTFIELD COLLEGE

  3737 Motley Drive

  Mesquite, Texas 75150-2099

  972-860-7100

  OCT 12 - DEC 6

  OPENING RECEPTION, OCT 12 6-9 PM

   

  REBECCA CARTER, "SIGNAGE WORKS"

  JAMES REED "AGENTS OF CHANGE"

  CAROLYN SORTER "OCCULIBRARY"

  MATEJ VAKULA "MANUALS FOR PUBLIC SPACE"

  
  

• STATE OF THE ARTS

  
  

   

  State of the Arts and MAP 2013

  Dallas Museum of Art

  Thursday, October 10

  7:30 p.m., Horchow Auditorium

   

  KERA host and executive producer Jeff Whittington will moderate a dynamic discussion that explores the creative process and the current cultural landscape.

   

   

  Lecture tickets are $5. Purchase your ticket online or by phone at 214-922-1818. After 3:00 p.m. on the day of the event, tickets can be purchased on-site at the Visitor Services Desk: http://dma.org/Events/Lectures/index.htm

   

  Christopher Blay

  Artist; instructional assistant and curator, The Art Corridor Galleries

   

  Janeil Engelstad

  Artist; founder, MAP - Make Art With Purpose

   

  Stephen Lapthisophon

  Artist; visiting assistant professor of drawing, University of Texas-Arlington

   

   

  
  

• AGENTS OF CHANGE AT MAP 2013

  
  

  OCTOBER 7, 2013 - This morning Social Sculptor and Practice Based Researcher James Reed produced an Agents of Change workshop at Eastfield College as a part of MAP 2013. The workshop included an investigation of Social Sculpture and "Agency", time for deep listening and reflection, group discussion about concerns connected to Climate Change and using the AoC methodology and kits as a part of a reflection and engagement process. 

  
  AOC has been developed from the inquiry of Joseph Beuys (Expanded Concept of Art) and Shelley Sacks (Director of the Social Sculpture Research Unit into developing 'New Organs of Perception'.
  
  The workshop ended with the students sharing their experiences and providing feedback about the morning's activities. 
  
  Things heard:
  
  " I appreciated the opportunity to be more open. I discovered that everything that I do is a choice. I have a choice of how to act and respond in the world."
  
  "Having the opportunity to work outside helped me to think more clearly"
  
  "Now I understand that I can create more space for myself to be . . . "
  
  "We are the future. It is up to us to Act Now"

   

  Image: Agetns of Change headed out to Eastfield College's Pond by Janeil Engelstad

  
  

• MAP 2013 IN THE NEWS

  
  

  OCTOBER 6, 2013 -  The art group as activists: MAP 2013 and its passionate plan, by Charissa Terranova

   

  MAP 2013 is layered and multi-faceted — and, frankly, it promises a handsome social payoff for people simply interacting in the name of art and for good causes. MAP is an acronym that stands for Make Art with Purpose and, like cartography that unfolds in space to provide orientation and direction, it is a constellation of events from Oct. ober 1 through Nov. 24. The brainchild of photographer and social-activism artist Janeil Engelstad, MAP 2013 boasts 40 events and upwards of 60 artists and speakers who take footing in some 32 sites around the Dallas and . . .

   

  To read more: http://fdluxe.dallasnews.com/2013/09/the-art-group-as-activists-map-2013-and-its-passionate-plan.html/#sthash.lvTkSZsd.dpuf

   

  Photo: MAP Director Janeil Engelstad by Nan Coulter

  
  

• MAP 2013 OPENED . . .

  
  

   

   . .   WITH REBECCA CARTER'S SIGNAGE WORKS AT EASTFIELD COLLEGE

   

  MAP 2013: Creative projects that restore and preserve the environment, promote social justice and advance human knowledge and well-being, October 3 - November 24, 2013 Working with students in Fort Worth and Mesquite, Rebecca Carter has designed signs that express messages connected to social and/or environmental themes that are relevant to the project participants. The signs will be put up throughout the greater Dallas – Fort Worth area and be produced as an on-line project for KERA Arts & Seek during MAP 2013. Collaborators include Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth and Eastfield College

   

  Image: BRANDON BATTEE (Eastfield College) + REBECCA CARTER, SIGNAGE WORKS exhibited on Eastfield College's Electronic Sign System, in the mix with Advertisements and College News

  
  

• THE ART OF SOCIAL PRACTICE

  
  

   

  THE ART OF SOCIAL PRACTICE A CONVERSATION

  THE DALLAS CONTEMPORARY

  THURSDAY, OCT 3, 7:00 PM

   

  Panel Discussion featuring Janeil Engelstad / Make Art with Purpose, Rick Lowe / Project Row Houses and Vicki Meek, Artist and Curator. Moderated by Greg Metz, Professor of Art, University of Texas, Dallas.

   

  Modern society and technology have made it very easy for the average individual to experience art passively without careful contemplation or necessary productive reaction. Many have combated this by developing artwork that aims to inspire more active social engagement. During the month of October Dallas will premiere the work of three renowned ‘Social Practice’ artists: Janeil Engelstad, founder of MAP - Make Art with Purpose / MAP 2013 and two ‘Nasher Xchange’ Artists Vicki Meek, independent curator and cultural critic, and Rick Lowe, creator of the widely successful ‘Project Row Houses’.

   

  CentralTrak brings these artists together for one night only, through the gracious hosts of The Dallas Contemporary and DCU (Dallas Contemporary University), for a panel discussion that promises to be both lively and informative.

   

  Image: Billboard from Peace Signs by Janeil Engelstad and Vanessa Acuna

   

  For more information: http://www.centraltrak.net/nexttopic

  
  

• MAP 2013 BIKE PROGRAM

  
  

  MAP 2013 artist Brennen Bechtol is restoring 10 made to order vintage bikes.

   

   

  For a $500 donation to MAP, you can order a custom made to measure vintage bike from the 1970s or 1980s in the style of your choice, cruiser, road bike, etc. The bikes are restored with new tires, seat, components, powder coated MAP Orange and affixed with MAP decals. The bike comes with a MAP 2013 catalog and pocket guide. Funds raised through this program will be used to produce free bike repair programs for youth.

   

  For more information e-mail: info@makeartwithpurpose.net

   

  The MAP 2013 Bike Project was developed to help activate conversations about the future of bike transportation in the city of Dallas. A rapidly growing city that is developing its urban center, Dallas is the only major city in the United States without on-street bike lanes. As local bike advocacy groups, such as Bike Friendly Oak Cliff promote bike riding and are working with the City of Dallas to develop a Bicycle Advisory Working Group, MAP will use its bikes and programs to support these efforts. Throughout MAP 2013 there will be bike tours of the various MAP exhibition and project locations and free bike repair clinics for youth. MAP panel discussions and community conversations include dialogue about the development of bike infrastructure and bike culture in private and public urban planning.

   

  Image: MAP 2013 Bike, detail, Brennen Bechtol

  
  

• GLOW

  
  

  GLOW 2013, Santa Monica, California, Sept 28,  7PM - 3AM

  Re-imagining Santa Monica Beach as a playground for thoughtful and participatory artworks.

   

  Glow is the first all-night art event in the United States that emphasizes the commissioning of original artwork. Glow projects invite active audience engagement and exploration and constantly surprise in their unexpected placement in spaces and times not normally reserved for fine art.

   

  For more information: http://glowsantamonica.org/

  
  

• THANK YOU

  
  

  Sept 20, 2013 - THANK YOU TO EVERYONE WHO GOT UP AND GAVE TO MAP YESTERDAY AS A PART OF NORTH TEXAS GIVING DAY. YOU HELPED US TO RAISE OVER $1000 FOR MAP PROGRAMS. WE ARE GRATEFUL.

   

  Illustration: MAP's Pangea, by Oto Hudec (http://fishisflying.blogspot.com/)

  
  

• GET UP AND GIVE

  
  

  HELP MAP MAKE POSITIVE CHANGE September 19! 
  
  MAP - Make Art with Purpose is taking part in Get Up and Give! North Texas Giving Day. Every donation of $25 or more will be matched if you donate to MAP through donorbridgetx.org, North Texas’ online resource.
  
  On Thursday, September 19, please visit:
  https://www.donorbridgetx.org/npo/460641239
  anytime between 7 AM and Midnight to make a donation.
  
  Your tax-deductible donation will support MAP's production of arts and culture programs that: enhance civic engagement through participatory projects, for multi-generational groups; produce opportunities for artists, scientists, cultural institutions, government agencies and other individuals and organizations to engage, collaborate, build relationships and increase cross disciplinary understanding; reach communities that are traditionally underserved; and engage communities as partners, inviting them to participate as stake holders, decision makers, and collaborators in the production of arts education, arts based learning and interdisciplinary projects that help to solve some of the world's most pressing problems while creating a more vibrant, equitable society.
  
  PLEASE GIVE ON SEPT 19 - THANK YOU!

  
  

• 2013 AGA KHAN AWARD FOR ARCHITECTURE

  
  

  September 11, 2013 - AGA KHAN AWARD for ARCHITECTURE awarded to MAP affiliate artist Azra Akšamija working with Bernardo Bader Architects on the design of an Islamic Cemetery in Vorarlberg, the westernmost state in Austria, where over 80% of the population is Muslim.

   

  Finding inspiration in the primordial garden, the site is delineated by roseate concrete walls in an alpine setting, and consists of five staggered, rectangular grave-site enclosures, and a structure housing assembly and prayer rooms. The principal materials used were exposed reinforced concrete for the walls and oak wood for the ornamentation of the entrance facade and the interior of the prayer space. The visitor is greeted by and must pass through the congregation space with its wooden latticework in geometric Islamic patterns. The space includes ablution rooms and assembly rooms in a subdued palette that give onto a courtyard. The prayer room on the far side of the courtyard reprises the lattice-work theme with Kufic calligraphy in metal mesh on the ‘qibla’ wall.

   

  The Aga Khan Award for Architecture is given every three years to projects that set new standards of excellence in architecture, planning practices, historic preservation and landscape architecture. Through its efforts, the Award seeks to identify and encourage building concepts that successfully address the needs and aspirations of societies across the world, in which Muslims have a significant presence.

   

  For more information about the Islamic Cemetery, the four other winning projects and the AGA KHAN award visit: http://www.akdn.org/architecture

   

  Image: Prayer Room, Islamic Cemetery, 2012

  
  

• SUMMER TIME

  
  

  September 8, 2013 - MAP partner, FIRST EXPOSURES exhibition "Summer Time" Intersection for the Arts, San Francisco, Sept. 11-21 Opening Reception Wednesday, Sept. 11 from 6-8pm.

  
  This summer First Exposures' students were asked to photograph what summer means to them while thinking about the Five W's project at Intersection for the Arts. Each student had to take into account the who, what, where, when and why of their images using their own unique visions. The resulting images plus a selection of the handmade books that First Exposures' students created last spring for their "Comfortable in Your Own Skin project will be on view.
  
  Photo: Rebekka Williams, age 17

  
  

• RENEWABLE FUTURES

  
  

  September 6, 2013 - RENEWABLE FUTURES

  
  OPEN NORTH Network Launch Meeting and Conference
  Riga, Latvia September 6-7, 2013
  
  ... designing more accessible routes towards sustainable culture and into the sector of creative industries ...
  
  Open North is a new network initiative that aims to support sustainable culture development in the North European region by fostering open innovation in art and culture and providing accesible routes into the sector of creative industries. 
  
  The Open North Launch Meeting will take place on September 6 - 7, 2013 in the emerging RIXC Innovation Lab space and outdoors in Riga Spikeri Creative Quartier. The Launch Meeting will gather together artists, cultural operators and other creative producers from Riga and Liepaja / Latvia, Kaliningrad and St Petersburg / Russia, Tallinn / Estonia, Copenhagen / Denmark, Stockholm / Sweden, and Mons / Belgium.
  
  The intent of the meeting is two fold. The first is to launch OPEN NORTH Creative Network and Think Tank for facilitating both -- development of strategies and policies for open innovation in creative industries in the region at large. And the second is to work out models and tactics for providing artists, cultural organizations and other creative producers with accessible routes into the sector in particular.
  
  For more information: 
  http://facebook.com/rixcriga
  http://renewable.rixc.lv/
  http://twitter.com/rixcriga
  http://vimeo.com/rixcriga
  http://rixc.lv/

  
  

• MAP 2013 SNEAK PEEK

  
  

  Septmeber 4, 2013 -  SCIENCE EXPERIMENT UNDERWAY AT MAP HEADQUARTERS FOR MICK LORUSSO"S BIODIAMOND

  ENERGY PROJECT. MAP Intern extraordinaire Kat Burkett and Janeil Engelstad set up Mick Lorusso's Microbial Fuel Starter Culture in preparation for his MAP 2013 project, Biodiamond Energy. The project will be produced at the Perot Museum of Nature and Science as a part of MAP 2013. Composed of creek water and sediment the culture is "fermenting" in a bucket outfitted with felt, electrodes, wire and more. As you can see, it takes quite a bit of concentration to prepare this experiment, posing the question, just how many artists does it take to prep for a science project?

  
  

• FELLOWSHIPS, INSTITUTO SACATAT BRAZIL

  
  

  September 2, 2013 - The INSTITUTO SACATAR, BRAZIL announces new fellowships

  
  The INSTITUTO SACATAR operates a residency program for creative individuals in all disciplines at its estate on the Island of Itaparica in the Bay of All Saints, across from the city of Salvador, Bahia, Brazil.
  
  FELLOWSHIPS 2014 IN DANCE AND CHOREOGRAPHY
  Program in partnership with Dance/USA Philadelphia for dancer/choreographers based in the USA. 
  Deadline: 16 September 2013
  
  LADCA CULTURAL EXCHANGE INTERNATIONAL FELLOWSHIP 2014
  Program in partnership with the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs for artists living in the Los Angeles County. 
  Deadline: 14 October 2013
  
  UNESCO-ASCHBERG BURSARIES FOR ARTISTS PROGRAM 2014
  Program in partnership with UNESCO-Aschberg with bursaries offered in creative writing, visual arts and music composition, for artists from 25 to 35 years of age, born and living in Africa, the Middle East, Asia, Russia, the former Soviet Republics, Australia, New Zealand and/or the Pacific Islands. 
  Deadline: 14 October 2013
  
  For more information:http://www.sacatar.com.br/site/ing/noticias.asp
  
  Image: The Egungun ceremony in Itaparica, Bahia, Brazil

  
  

• INTERVIEW WITH JANEIL ENGLESTAD

  
  

  August 30, 2013 - JANEIL ENGELSTAD interviewed by Melissa Nelson for the Dallas Museum of Art blog, DMA Canvas.

  
  In the interview Engelstad talks about working with the DMA over the summer on their MAP 2013 program, Translating Culture…Community Voices at the DMA. Twelve members of the Dallas chapter of Avance spent nine two-hour sessions at the DMA, during which they learned about the Museum’s collections and wrote their personal interpretations and connections about an artwork of their choice to be included in a printed tour for visitors in Spanish and . . .
  
  to read more visit:http://dmaeducatorblog.wordpress.com/2013/08/27/community-connection-make-art-with-purpose
  
  Image: Rosy shares her insights about an 18th-century European painting during a group exercise early in the program. Photograph by Janeil Engelstad

  
  

• MICK LORUSSO AT MACHINE PROJECT

  
  

  August 23, 2013 - MICK LORUSSO at MACHINE PROJECT in LOS ANGELES

  Thursday, August 29th, 8:00 pm

  (MAP 2013 Sneak Peek)

   

  Mick Lorusso will be at Machine Project in Los Angeles come speaking about his work with Microbial Fuel Cells (MFCs). This work will be part of MAP 2013 in collaboration with Perot Museum of Nature and Science, where Lorusso will demonstrate his process on Nov 9.  MFCs contain bacteria that have the ability to release a small current of electricity while they decompose organic matter. After the talk at MAchine Project, Lorusso will give a short demonstration on how to set up a simple MFC, using only basic materials like mud and sugar.

   

  For more information: http://machineproject.com/archive/events/2013/08/29/collaborations-with-electricity-producing-bacteria-mick-lorusso

   

  Image by Mick Lorruso

  
  

• OCEAN AWARENESS STUDENT CONTEST

  
  

  August 21, 2013 - Ocean Awareness Student Contest

   

  The goal of this contest is to inspire creativity and critical thinking about important issues impacting the ocean. Each year, From the Bow Seat has an idea and encourages students to explore this idea in any of three formats: art, essay or advocacy. Each pillar involves both research and creativity. The 2014 contest will focus on Plastics Pollution in the Ocean, a topic which easily lends itself to collaboration across disciplines. Students can participate in the contest individually or in groups and contest winners can win up to $1500 plus an additional $1500 for their high school art or science department.

   

  For more information: http://www.fromthebowseat.org/

   

  Image: Courtesy From the Bow Seat

  
  

• 1700 SEEDS IN RIO DE JANEIRO

  
  

  August 18, 2013 - Seventeen Hundred Seeds in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

   

  Robert Hamilton and Cynthia Mulcahy's project, Seventeen Hundred Seeds is in full bloom at the recently opened Rocinha Public Library in Rio de Janeiro. Rochina is Brazil’s most populous single favela community. The library is the government's first ever public building in a favela. As twenty-five percent of the Rocinha favela’s population is 14 years and younger, the majority of people who check out books at library are between the ages of 6 and 14. During the week of August 19, Mulcahy will be talking with Rocinha youth about urban growing.

   

  The library's roof garden is home to sunflowers blooming from seeds that came from Hamilton and Mulcahy's original 1700 Seeds project in Dallas, Texas.

   

  For more information visit Seventeen Hundred Seeds project page

   

  Image: Seventeen Hundred Seeds at the Rocinha Public Library, Brazil. Courtesy Seventeen Hundred Seeds.

  
  

• LIGHT MY FIRE

  
  

  August 14, 2013 - MAP Director, Janeil Engelstad is participating in a Pecha Kucha to mark the Texas Sculpture Association's 30th Anniversary, Saturday, August 17 from 1:00 - 3:00 PM at The Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas. Titled, "Light My Fire" the event has an eclectic and interesting group of speakers. For more information and to purchase tickets: TXSculpture.com

  
  Image: Shamana of Peguche apprentice preparing a sacred fire, Gary A Scott

  
  

• WATERWASH ABC

  
  

  August 12, 2013

  Paloma McGregor and Dancers, "Building a Better Fish Trap"
  Dance performance on floating stage in the Bronx River. 
  Friday, August 16, 6:00 – 8:00 PM
  Viewed from WATERWASH ABC, designed by Lillian Ball.
  
  WATERWASH ABC reduces the pollution flowing into the Bronx River from the ABC Carpet store’s 120,000 square foot flat roof. Every time it rains, water spills into the Bronx River’s east bank where it mixes with pollutants that eventually flow into the river. New York based artist and environmentalist Lillian Ball and a team of engineers designed a WATERWASH wetland and marshland park, behind the ABC Carpet building from recycled glass, native grasses and plants that filter the runoff.
  Upcoming cultural events at WATRWASH include Paloma McGregor’s “Building a Better Fishtrap”. The daughter of a fisherman and a public school teacher, McGregor is a choreographer, writer, teacher and co-founder of Angela’s Pulse, which creates collaborative performance work rooted in building community and telling under told stories. “Building a Better Fishtrap” addresses water, memory and home, while explore intergenerational exchange and environmental interactions.
  
  WATERWASH ABC Wetland Park in conjunction with Bronx River Alliance. Entrance Gate at Bruckner Bridge near Bronx River Ave. Hunts Point Subway #6 train
  
  
  For more information: bronxriver.org
  
  Image: WATERWASH ABC by Lillian Ball

  
  

• ART AND LABOR

  
  

  August 1, 2013 - Rights, Demands, and Radical Reimaginings: Art and Labor in the US, 5 week course given by Arts Writer and Playwright Alexis Clements, Begins August 27, Brooklyn, New York

   

  In the past century, artists working across disciplines have undertaken a variety of efforts to not only get paid a decent wage for their creative work, but also to gain access to services and protections that workers in other sectors have long enjoyed. Some of those artistic unions, guilds, associations, and collectives still exist or have echoes now, while many are struggling or long gone. Today, many artists are wondering what approaches they can take to resolve the long-standing difficulty of accessing capital through art-making.

   

  Over 5 weeks, the course will take a critical look at the connections between the arts and labor in the US. We'll examine and discuss some historic and contemporary efforts across artistic disciplines to organize around and/or revolutionize arts and labor. We'll also look at bigger questions about what it means to classify a variety of artistic activities as labor, as well as radical viewpoints that either reject art as a form of labor or view the arts as a space to test out labor practices that could impact all of society.

   

  For more information and to register: http://www.skillshare.com/Rights-Demands-and-Radical-Reimaginings-Art-and-Labor-in-the-US/1897267250/2048204098?refId=7276291&utm_campaign=teacher-referral&utm_source=ShortUrl&utm_medium=teacher-referral

   

  Image: Spring 2013 strike by members of the San Francisco Orchestra. Photo by Deborah Svoboda/KQED. 

  
  

• KIM ABELES, TIME-LINE-SPACE

  
  

  August 1, 2013 - Kim Abeles' video, Time-Line-Space, shown in the window of TRACTIONARTS, August 3rd - August 16th, from twilight to midnight.

  821 Traction Ave, Los Angeles, CA

   

  Time-Line-Space was created by Kim Abeles (whose project frugalworld, is featured on MAP's website) to embed in the floor of the library entrance at the Robert F Kennedy Community Schools, the historical site of the Ambassador Hotel. It shows the people passing over the same spot through time. Flanking the video are 60 dioramas, castings, photographs and drawings about the site. The installation is a permanent public artwork commissioned by the Los Angeles Unified School District for the new school designed by Gonzalez-Goodale in 2010.

   

  For more on the RFK Community Schools installation please download the PDF available at this link: http://tractionarts.org/pages/artists/Kim_Abeles/time_line_space_S.pdf

   

  Image: Still from Time-Line-Space by Kim Abeles

  
  

• WHERE IF NOT US?

  
  

  July 26, 2013 - "Where If Not Us? Participatory Design and Its Radical Approaches"

  Graham Foundation, Chicago, through August 24, 2103

   

  Focusing on the work of seven U.S.-based community design architects and planners and their projects, the exhibition presents the findings of a multi-year research project of visual research by architect Mathias Heyden and artist Ines Schaber. Rarely documented and not yet comprehensively researched, the participatory design movement—a socially engaged architecture and planning practice that cultivates citizen involvement and empowerment—began in the 1960s and grew out of a common concern to democratize design by actively involving all stakeholders. Thousands of projects have been realized throughout the U.S. in the past 50 years by community design centers and professionals who advocated for those without representation in the development process.

   

  For more information: www.grahamfoundation.org

   

  Image: Mathias Heyden and Ines Schaber, Selma, Revisited with Henry Sanoff, North Carolina, 2010

  
  

• E.G. CRICHTON AND MAP 2013

  
  

  July 24, 2013 - San Francisco based artist E.G. Crichton was in Dallas last week to begin work on her MAP 2013 project, which is connected to her international work with LGBT historical archives. In Dallas, Ms.Crichton met with Gay and Lesbian African Americans, in a group meeting and then individually. the meetings centered on their life experiences, a history that has often been marginalized with the greater Africa nAMerican community as well as the greater LGBT community, where African Americans continue to experience discrimination.

   

  Through these meetings the collaborators on this project shared objects, pictures, poetry and documents. Over the next few months they will work wit hMs. Crichton to shape this material into an archive that will be exhibited as a part of MAP 2013.

   

  Image: LGBT African Americans at a community rally to to voice their objections to City Councilwoman Vonciel Hill’s anti-gay comments concerning an HIV prevention billboard, June 2013. Photo courtesy of Dallas Voice

  
  

• BUDDHIST TEMPLE MADE FORM RECYCLED GLASS BOTTLES

  
  

  July 15, 2013 - Near the Cambodian border, four hundred miles from Thailand’s capital, Bangkok, Wat Pa Chedi Kaew temple or “the Temple of a Million Bottles has been built by Buddhist monks. The monks, who began saving bottles in 1984, encouraged the local authorities t osend them more and they now have nearly 20 buildings made from glass bottles. The buildings include: the main temple over a lake, prayer rooms, a water tower, a hall, tourist bathrooms, a crematorium and several small bungalows. The mosaics of Buddha are created with recycled bottle beer caps. In total there are about 1.5 million recycled bottles in the temple, and the monks are intending to construct more buildings. “The more bottles we get the more buildings we make,” said Abbot San Kataboonyo in a recent article in the The Telegraph.

   

  Photograph by Mark Fischer, courtesy of grist.

  
  

• BUSTER SIMPSON / / SURVEYOR

  
  

  July 11, 2013 - PARTICIPATE IN BUSTER SIMPSON // SURVEYOR at the FRYE ART MUSEUM SEATTLE, WA through OCT 13, 2013

   

  BUSTER SIMPSON // SURVEYOR is the first retrospective survey of work by Seattle artist, and Pilchuck co-founder, Buster Simpson, a pioneer in the field of urban environmentalism. For more than four decades, Simpson has been the ecological and social conscience for neighborhoods and cities in constant states of transition and renewal. His site-specific, agitprop, and process-driven art has surveyed the problems, scrutinized the context, and presented new frames of reference to provide local solutions for global issues.

   

  PARTICIPATE: The Frye Art Museum is seeking proposals from individuals and organizations to propose content for one or more 14” x 14” cubby in conjunction with the exhibition. Your cubby can act as a resource center, present challenges, solutions, products, take-a-ways, and interactives that engage museum visitors of all ages on the themes outlined below. The museum wants to stimulate dialogue, create a place of exchange, reflection, and action. Proposals that add a distinctive voice to the ecological dialogue in BUSTER SIMPSON // SURVEYOR will be especially considered. Examples of possible themes: Conservation of resources, environmental health, over-population, resource depletion, pollution, recycling, up-cycling, composting, protecting, foraging, and promoting “eco” or “green” movements. Proposals to further the well-being and sustainability of our communities. Ideas to explore the links between natural ecology and social ecology. Proposal should include the following: Individual, group and/or organization name. Main contact information, phone, and email. Your cubby should include a theme that relates to the exhibition. Describe the content of your cubby. Be specific. Let the museum know if your cubby content includes any organic materials and how the materials will be contained. Outline or sketch the materials and how they will fit into one or more 14” x 14” cubby.

   

  Deadline Submission due to cubbycontent@fryemuseum.org by Monday, July 22 (5:00pm PST). Proposals are reviewed on a first come, first served basis until cubbies are filled. Please include Cubby_Content_Proposal_[Name] in the subject line. Accepted proposal will receive $150/cubby.

   

  For more information: www.fryemuseum.org

   

   

  Image: Small scale bioremediation from "Hudson River Purge" a media and sound-bite friendly agit-prop sculpture. Simpson dramatically addresses the problem of acid rain with giant limestone antacid tablets which neutralize the pH of the Hudson River.

  
  

• CRAYOLA SETS UP RECYCLING PROGRAM

  
  

  July 5, 2013 - A group of students from Sun Valley Elementary School in San Rafael, California were so concerned about the environmental impact of the markers they were throwing out they created a Change.org petition asking Crayola to take create a recycling program for their products. Last month Crayola agreed to not only to take their markers back, but to use them to create a liquid fuel source.

   

  The students' campaign, titled Crayola: Make Your Mark!, gathered more than 90,000 signatures. The students were part of a “Green Team,” led by advisor Land Wilson, that launched the campaign after deciding it was one of the best ways that their group could have a positive impact on the environment.

   

  For more information about the Crayola Colorcycle Program:

  http://www.crayola.com/colorcycle.aspx

   

  
  

• MAP AT THE DALLAS MUSEUM OF ART

  
  

  July 2, 2013 - MAP in residence at the Dallas Museum of Art (7 photos)

  In collaboration with DMA’s Center for Creative Connections MAP will produce a summer program that includes workshops with participants from AVANCE to develop a bi-lingual (Spanish / English) visitor’s guide, audio tour and/or other material that illuminates the collection from the point of view of the community. The work produced through this project will be launched and celebrated at a public event at the DMA in November 2013.

   

  Photo: Bety in front of the painting she is selecting for the final project

  
  

• MUSICIANS UNITED TO SAVE BRISTOL BAY

  
  

  June 21, 2013 - Bristol Bay in Alaska is one of the richest wild fisheries remaining in the world. Approximately fifty percent of all wild fish caught in North America come from Bristol Bay, including the great majority of the world’s sockeye salmon, which spawn in the headwaters of the many rivers that drain into the Bay. Bristol Bay is home to several thousand Native Alaskan families living largely by subsistence, depending upon the Bay, its rivers and forests to survive. Native Alaskans are among the only native peoples in North America who are still living where they have always lived. In Bristol Bay, members of the Yup’ik people have lived along these rivers for over 10,000 years.

   

  Now a British-Canadian gold and copper mining consortium wants to build what would be the world’s largest open-pit mine next to the headwaters of the rivers where the salmon spawn. No open-pit mine in the world has ever operated without causing serious and often permanent environmental destruction to the surrounding area and beyond.

   

  Musicians United to Save Bristol Bay are working to stop this mine.

   

  For more information and to submit a comment to the Environmental Protection Agency: http://www.musiciansunited.info/home.html

   

  Photo: bristol Bay, courtesy NRDC

  
  

• MAP 2013 KICK-OFF EVENT, SNEAK PEEK

  
  

  June 13, 2013 - SNEAK PEEK  of bike prototype, by Brennen Bechtol, for the MAP 2013 BIKE PROGRAM.Dallasites, come out to Craft & Growler on Tuesday, June 25, from 6:00 - 9:00 PM for the MAP 2013 kick-off event to see the bike, have a craft beer and support MAP!

   

  MAP 2013 KICK - OFF EVENT, TUESDAY, JUNE 25, 6:00 - 9:00 PM, CRAFT AND GROWLER

  3601 Parry Avenue

  Dallas, TX 75226

  (214) 402-9585

  MEET MAP 2013 ARTISTS and PARTNERS, PREVIEW THE BIKE PROTOTYPE FOR THE MAP BIKE 2013 BIKE

  PROGRAM, ENJOY CRAFT BEERS, CIDER AND ROOTBEER on DRAFT 10% of sales benefit MAP 2013

  
  

• HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH FILM FESTIVAL

  
  

   

  HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH FILM FESTIVAL AT LINCOLN CENTER, NYC, THROUGH JUNE 23.

   

  Human Rights Watch is one of the world’s leading independent organizations dedicated to defending and protecting human rights. We work tenaciously to lay the legal and moral groundwork for deep rooted change and fight to bring greater justice and security to people around the world. Through our Human Rights Watch Film Festival we bear witness to human rights violations and create a forum for courageous individuals on both sides of the lens to empower audiences with the knowledge that personal commitment can make a difference. The film festival brings to life human rights abuses through storytelling in a way that challenges each individual to empathize and demand justice for all people.

   

  For schedule, description of films and more: http://ff.hrw.org/about

   

  Image: Still from "The Act of Killing" (Indonesia

  
  

• THE BAREFOOT ARTIST

  
  

   

  June 17, 2013 - ARTIST LILY YEH, WHOSE PROJECT DANDELION SCHOOL IS FEATURED ON MAP'S WEBSITE, IS THE FEATURE OF A NEW DOCUMENTARY FILM SCREENING WEDNESDAY, JUNE 19 AT PHILADELPHIA MUSEUM OF ART, 7:00 -9:00 PM

   

  For more information: http://www.philamuseum.org/calendarEvents

  
  

• BARBARA BENISH MAKES MAP 2013 SITE VISIT

  
  

   

  June 15, 2013 - Barbara Benish makes site visit to Trinity River Audubon Center for her MAP 2013 project, a permanent, public, teaching garden about the connectedness of inland communities to the world’s oceans. The garden will open to the public during MAP 2013 and include multi-generational community, educational events. — at Dallas, Texas.



   

  Image: Barbara Benish (left) and MAP Director, Janeil Engelstad at Trinity River Audubon Center overlook with proposed site for teaching garden in the rear. Photo by T Hanson

  
  

• OTO HUDEC AND MAP 2013

  
  

  June 14, 2013 - Slovak artist Oto hudec is in residence at CentralTrak in Dallas where he has begun construction on a giant megaphone for his project, "Instrument for Listening." Over the next six weeks, Hudec will record the stories of Latino teenagers living in Oak Cliff, with a focus on how these young people are carrying on and/or changing the traditions of their elders, issues connected to immigration and community stories. The giant, over-sized megaphone, which will broadcast the participant's ideas and stories will be installed in various public sites throughout Dallas in October and November as a part of MAP 2013. Partner organizations include: Oil and Cotton, University of Texas Dallas and Downtown Dallas Inc.

   

  Image: "Instrument for Listening" photo by Janeil Engelstad

  
  

• MAP 2013 KICK-OFF

  
  

  June 12, 2013 - MAP 2013 KICK - OFF EVENT

  TUESDAY, JUNE 25, 6:00 - 9:00 PM

  CRAFT AND GROWLER

  3601 Parry Avenue

  Dallas, TX 75226

  (214) 402-9585

  MEET MAP 2013 ARTISTS and PARTNERS

  PREVIEW THE BIKE PROTOTYPE FOR THE

  MAP BIKE 2013 BIKE PROGRAM

  ENJOY CRAFT BEERS, CIDER AND ROOTBEER

  on DRAFT 10% of sales benefit MAP 2013

  
  

• MAP ARTISTS IN PRAGUE BIENNALE

  
  

  June 9, 2013 - Congratulations to MAP - Make Art with Purpose artists, Matej Vakula, Daniela Krajčová and Tomáš Rafa. Their work has been included in the Prague Biennale. The work in the Biennale can be viewed in the projects link on the MAP website.

  Running from June 6 - September 15, 2013 the 6th edition of the Prague Biennale which presents an overview of current artistic tendencies in both Central Europe and worldwide. The exhibition is based in the functionalist railway station from 1936, designed by Karel Caivas and Vladimír Weiss. Located in the vibrant district of Žižkov, it was declared a national monument in March 2013.

   

  For more information: http://www.praguebiennale.net/

   

  Image: Train station interior by Karel Caivas and Vladimír Weiss, 1936 

  
  

• RESISTANCE IS FUTILE

  
  

  June 7, 2013 - RESISTANCE IS FUTILE ISEA 2013 OPENS IN SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA

   

  ISEA 2013 is an international symposium of electronic art and ideas taking place in Sydney, Australia, June 7 - 16. ISEA 2013 will showcase media artworks from around the world, thought-provoking speakers and discussions, experimental incursions into the extensive and diverse practice of electronic media arts and provide a platform for the lively exchange of future-focused ideas.

   

  ‘Resistance is Futile’

   

  Digital art has moved from the margins to become part of the fabric of everyday life. At once ubiquitous and unnoticed, resistance to electronic art has proven futile — it now lies embedded in the heart of our contemporary cultures. The symposium events will infuse Sydney’s social, digital and physical infrastructure.

   

  For more information including a program of events visit the ISEA 2013 website: http://www.isea2013.org/

  
  

• INTIMATE SCIENCE

  
  

  June 1, 2013 - INTIMATE  SCIENCE opens at Art Center College of Design

  Pasadena, California

  May 31 - August 28, 2013

  Organized by Andrea Grover

   

  Intimate Science is about contemporary artists conducting projects in scientific or technological domains. Unlike their earlier counterparts, today's artists initiating research in natural or physical sciences are less dependent on access to professional laboratories or industrial environments. Intimate Science examines how networked communication and open source culture have contributed to the shift from artists aiding science to 'doing' science, and the impact this imparts on the way scientific knowledge is acquired, used and shared.

   

  The most recent manifestation of artists working at the intersection of art, science and technology demonstrates a distinctly autodidactic, heuristic approach to understanding the physical and natural world. Intimate Science features artists who are engaged in non-disciplinary inquiry; they aren't allied to the customs of any single field, and therefore have license to reach beyond conventions. This kind of practice hinges on up-close observation, experiential learning, and inventing new ways for the public to participate in the process. And through their engagement with "intimate science," a more knowledgeable public might well be able to influence what research is supported and adopted by the larger culture, and the walls of science can become more transparent.

   

  For more information: http://williamsongallery.net/intimatescience

   

  Image: Markus Kayser, "Solar Sinter"  (2011)

  
  

• VIDA 15.0

  
  

  May 30, 2013 - VIDA 15.0, Art and Artificial Life International Awards. 

  
  VIDA 15.0 is now accepting submissions for this year’s awards. They are looking for artistic projects that offer innovative perspectives on life by using the latest technology and cutting-edge scientific knowledge. 
  
  VIDA the Art and Artificial Life International Awards founded in 1999 by Fundación Telefónica, was created with the mission of supporting creative endeavors in this singular field by rewarding the pioneering efforts of artists. At a time when the concept of life finds itself once again in uncharted territory, a wide range of artistic initiatives attempt to illustrate and explore this phenomenon, examining its impact on our collective consciousness and how it affects the cultural, technological and social mindset. Over the past decade, VIDA has welcomed a variety of interdisciplinary projects that respond to this situation and brought them together in a single forum. Using formal strategies that push the boundaries between existing practices, these projects offer new perspectives that force us to reconsider our pre-existing notions of life and artificial life.
  
  VIDA 15.0 supports excellence in artistic research into artificial life. Projects that win a VIDA Award must be capable of expressing the complex organization of life systems and the hybrid nature of life. The VIDA jury will evaluate artistic projects that meet these criteria and, more importantly, will select those projects that challenge our current understanding and definition of life. 
  
  First Prize: 18,000 euros; 
  Second Prize: 14,000 euros; 
  Third Prize: 8,000 euros. 
  Seven honorary mentions will also be awarded to projects chosen by the jury from among the finalists.
  
  Deadline for submissions: July 31, 2013
  
  For more information and to apply:http://vida.fundaciontelefonica.com/
  
  Image: "May the Horse Live in Me" AOO/Art Orienté Objet: Marion Laval-Jeantet y Benoît Mangin (France) VIDA 14 - Tercer premio

  
  

• THE DALLAS PAVILION

  
  

  May 23, 2013 - MAP IS PART OF THE THE DALLAS PAVILION

  THE 53rd VENICE BIENNALE 2013

  SITUATED in the GIARDINI opposite the AMERICAN PAVILION

  THURSDAY 30 MAY – SATURDAY 1 JUNE at 11:00-14:00

   

  The Dallas Pavilion explores the relation between the pervasive global image of the city and the art spaces that produce culture to consider how location is embedded in the thinking and creative output of Dallas artists, curators, educators, museum directors and critics. The Dallas Pavilionincludes 23 galleries, museums, project spaces and other arts organizations situated across Dallas to produce a unique interpretation of the cultural life of the city.

  
  

• SHIP TO SHORE

  
  

  May 21, 2013 -  Public art event produced by MAP partners S.S, Palo Alto and University of California, Santa Cruz to raise awareness on our ocean’s environment Seacliff State Park Aptos, California Free and Open to the Public May 22, 2013, 10 AM - 1 PM

   

  The event kicks off with a beach clean up with Save Our Shores at 10 AM in Aptos, in front of the Snack Shack at Seacliff. The public will gain knowledge about plastic pollution and help clean the shore around the ship. Students from UCSC have created fun activities for children to help them understand how our daily waste habits are hurting marine life, and ultimately, us.

   

  Step down to the beach at 10 AM to see "belly sculptures" collecting trash on the beach, handmade kites flying in the sky, ride a fish bike, join a parade and help clean the beach. UC Santa Cruz's Public Art Class with Associate Professor Dee Hibbert-Jones. Come fly a kite, ride a fish-bike, join the parade and clean our beaches.

   

  For more information visit: www.artmill.eu.

  
  

• EAR TO THE EARTH PRESENTS INSECT MUSIC

  
  

  May 20, 2013 -  The once-in-17-years emergence of periodic cicadas in the New York area is going to happen this spring. And David Rothenberg's new CD and book titled Bug Music has been released.

   

  It's a major occasion and to celebrate Ear to the Earth ha: invited Dan Mozgai, cicada expert, to speak about the periodic cicadas' mating habits; they are hosting the world premiere of Richard Robinson’s 30-minute film Song of the Cicadas and invited a panel, moderated by Robert Krulwich, founder of Radiolab, to discuss the film. Pauline Oliveros, David Rothenberg, Timothy Hill, and Garth Stevenson will come together to perform with the sounds of insects.

   

  Insect Music

  Wednesday, May 22, 7:30 PM

  Judson Church, Washington Square South, New York, NY

   

  For more information: http://www.eartotheearth.org/insectmusic_overview.html

  
  

• JANEIL ENGELSTAD IN CONVERSATION ABOUT MAP

  
  

  May 17, 2013 - MAP Founding Director, Janeil Engelstad talks about the founding of MAP and MAP 2013 in an interview by Joshua von Ammon on "Conversations in the Void" an art / culture program in Dallas, Texas.

  
  To view the interview: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35lJioBYzJ0

  
  

• MAP ON THE GROUND IN SLOVAKIA

  
  

   

  May 13, 2013 - Amnesty International Brings Awareness to the use of Cluster Munitions with the help of Slovak artist Oto Hudec

   

  On May 7 the Slovak chapter of Amnesty International erected a booth, designed by Oto Hudec, in front of the Presidential Palace in the city of Bratislava. Volunteers had planned to hand out popcorn from the booth; a reference to cluster munitions, which when deployed releases many small bombs, like popcorn (popcorn is the US military’s slang name for cluster munitions). This popcorn however, had a peaceful purpose.

   

  Cluster munition, which spreads over a wide area, is prone to indiscriminate effects, especially when used in heavily populated areas. Unexploded bombs often kill or maim civilians after a conflict has ended.

   

  The action in Bratislava was intended to bring awareness to the Slovak Republic’s recent consideration of signing the United Nations “Convention on Cluster Munitions” and the use of cluster munitions in general. Currently 73, of the 111 states that have signed the United Nations Convention on Cluster Munitions, have ratified it as binding. Other countries that have not ratified the treaty include the United States, Russia, China, Israel and Syria. Unfortunately, the Slovak presidential office banned the selling of popcorn on the square, so the role of the kiosk was strictly as an information booth and a place to instigate a conversation with the public.

   

  Photo: Amnesty International Booth, Bratislava. Designed by Oto Hudec, Photo by Oto Hudec

  
  

• MAP ON THE GROUND IN BUDAPEST

  
  

  May 11. 2013 - ARTISTS OCCUPY LUDWIG MUSEUM

   

  Beginning this past Thursday, and lasting throughout the weekend, more than 30 artists are occupying the Ludwig Museum in Budapest, Hungary. They are demanding transparency in the selection process for a new director and the Ludwig's independence from Fidesz, the right-wing party that currently governs Hungary. Barnabás Bencsik, the Ludwig's current director, who has been endorsed by the museum's foundation, is battling to retain his position against Fidesz-backed Júlia Fabényi.

   

  The protesters signs include: “Forum – collaboration for contemporary art”, “Free Ludwig” and “Professional coordination”. The artists are also protesting to hold forums about the recent changes that the national government has made in Hungarian visual arts, which have resulted in the closure of galleries and drastic cuts in support for artists and curators.

   

  For more information: http://www.budapesttimes.hu/2013/05/10/nationalism-is-stifling-culture/

  
  

• . . . HOW IS IT TOWARDS THE EAST?

  
  

  May 6, 2013 - . . . 'how is it towards the east?' at Calvert 22 Foundation, London

   

  Taking its title from William Morris's News from Nowhere, ‘...how is it towards the east?’ is a month-long exhibition comprising talks, workshops, screenings and new commissions at Calvert 22.Fostering conversations around how histories are written and recorded in print and on screen ‘..how is it towards the east?’ critically examines modes of self-organisation and the traces of Eastern European and Russian immigration in the East End of London. Several works in the exhibition provide the audience with opportunities to look at how our stories and the stories of others shape and influence ourselves and the greater world.

   

  For more information: http://calvert22.org/exhibitions/show/458/how-is-it-towards-the-east

  
  

• (...) KETSIN!

  
  

  May 4, 2013 - (...) KETSIN! Art from Kyrgyzstan, Evgeny Boikov & Farkhad Tursunov

  The Basement Shoreditch Town Hall, London

   

  The small, landlocked and arrestingly beautiful Kyrgyz Republic has seen two revolutions in the space of just five years. The country’s first president, Askar Akaev, was overthrown in what became known as the ‘Tulip Revolution’ on 24 March 2005. The second so-called ‘People’s Revolution’, on 7 April 2010, replaced Akaev’s successor Kurmanbek Bakiev with an interim acting president, Roza Otunbaeva. In both cases, ‘(Akaev) (Bakiev) Ketsin!’ was chanted by street protesters.

   

  Two of the Kyrgyz Republic’s internationally renowned artists, Evgeny Boikov and Farkhad Tursunov, capture the multiple meanings and emotions attributed to both events. Their work variously sees 2005 and 2010 as revolution committed to freedom and democratization, or as the mere arbitrary rule of the marauding crowds, or, again, as initiated by the governments of Russia and the United States. In both cases and in less than twenty-four hours individuals’ lives were turned upside down and their emotional beings flung from feelings of euphoria and hope to grief or shame or resignation.

   

  Image: "Kinematics of Protest" from a series of graphics based on photos taken during the two revolutions in Kyrgyzstan in 2005 and 2010 by Evgeny Boikov

  
  

• MAP ON THE GROUND IN LONDON

  
  

  MAP IS ON THE GROUND IN LONDON
  
  Businesses have come together, in a UK nation wide initiative, inspired by HRH Prince of Wales, to promote sustainable living. Titled "Be The Start" -http://www.bethestart.org/ - the venture's "aim is to make sustainable living second nature". The campaign is being promoted in places such as Tube posters, social media and print advertising. Throughout the month of May, the "Be the Start" website posts daily, "inspirational" tips for living a more sustainable life. Tips that are promoted by select businesses and NGOs. The website's "stravel" challenge invites us to document our journeys by bike, foot and public transport with rewards and prizes as motivation.
  
  Sustainability communication has been a marketing tool in the US for the past several years: Coca-Cola turning its cans white to support polar bears and arctic research with the Arctic Home Campaign; and the Two Sides, "No Wonder You Love Paper" advertisements running in magazines such as Inc. (http://twosidesus.wordpress.com/2013/04/29/two-sides-no-wonder-you-love-paper-ad-runs-in-inc).
  
  It is easy to be cynical when businesses co-opt green messages to increase their market share and improve the perception of their brand. Yet, is there some benefit to be achieved when sustainable communication is used? Can campaign's like "Be The Start" really encourage change, on any level and in a meaningful way? Can it lead to action? What is the value of challenges such as "stravel"?
  
  We want to hear you opinion. Visit our FaceBook page to comment: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Make-Art-with-Purpose/211579438899592?sk=wall

  
  

• AMAZON OUR LAND

  
  

  May 1, 2013 - AMAZON OUR LAND

   

  The launch of the CD "Amazon Our Land" by young musicians from the band Backyard Drums. From the Afro-Indigenous community of Cabelo Seco (between the Amazonian Rivers Tocantins and Itacaiúnas in Brazil, the musicians are advocating for a sustainable Amazon, which sales of the CD benefit. The musicians refuse to step onto any stage that is funded by the multinational mining company Vale, which is presently devastating their ancestral Amazonian land.

   

  The complete CD (with a booklet in Portuguese, Spanish and English) is be available: riosdeencontro.wordpress.com

  
  

• TWICE OUT OF PARADISE, CENTRE NATIONAL DE DANCE, PARIS

  
  

  Jeanne Bloch's " Twice Out Of Paradise" at Centre National de Dance, Paris, France April 24 & 25.

   

  Through experimentation in dance, both technical and artistic, "Twice Out Of Paradise" speaks of our commitment to idealism by examining how our societies seize ecological themes.

   

  Jeanne Bloch has been working both as an artist and a Sustainability specialist. She worked over 14 years as a Sustainability advisor to international organizations and global companies on issues such as fair trade, child labor, community empowerment, sustainable consumption, global warming and corporate responsibility. The same issues and questions about ethics and economy drive her work as a performer/choreographer artist. For more information: http://www.jeannebloch.com/

   

  Image from Twice Out Of Paradise

  
  

• THE POWER OF WORDS

  
  

  April 20, 2013 - Nelson Mandela’s inspirational words part of Times Square Arts Spring 2013 Season

   

  THE POWER OF WORDS (MIDNIGHT MOMENT), an animated film compilation of Nelson Mandela’s inspirational words, honors his peaceful vivion of the future. NABIL ELDERKIN, ANDREW VAN DER WESTHUYZEN & GREGORY STERN

  April 1-30, 11:57pm every night 42nd-47th Streets, between Broadway & 7th Avenue. Electronic billboards & newspaper kiosks throughout Times Square. Times Square Alliance's public art program provides today's largest platform for innovative contemporary visual and performing arts and an installation from Brooklyn-based artists on Duffy Square.

   

  Image: Courtesy of NelsonMandela.org

  
  

• BLACK TICKET FILMS, NEW DEHLI

  
  

  April 18, 2013 - NEW DEHLI BASED BLACK TICKET FILMS EXPANDS THE FIELD OF TRADITIONAL ENVIRONMENTAL FILMMAKING

   

  Black Ticket Films makes documentaries,that tell stories about sustainable lifestyles through grassroots, community-driven initiatives. In a recent interview in The Hindu, Black Ticket Films co-founder Sushmit Ghosh commented, “When Rintu Thomas and I founded our company, Black Ticket Films, one of our core focus areas was (and remains) to constantly challenge the way we tell our stories. So ‘form’ for us is as important as ‘content.’ We’re constantly mixing media and using high-definition live-action, still photographs, archival video, graphics, music, and text to build on our stories. Quite a few well-known film theorists and academics in India have asked us why our documentaries look so glossy, almost like advertisements – and in my response, I’ve always wondered why shouldn’t a documentary ‘look good’.”

   

  To view their award inning films, often - 30 minutes in length visit: http://vimeo.com/user9329174

   

  Image: Still from "It's a Good Life" by Black Ticket Films

  
  

• EARTH CHRONICLES PROJECT

  
  

  April 15, 2013 - EARTH CHRONICLES PROJECT AT SANTE FE ART INSTITUTE

   

  EARTH CHRONICLES PROJECT is an exhibition, film, poetry workshop and other programs that are inspired by the documentary film of the same name. It features diverse artists and creative individuals who share a passionate relationship to their cultures and the environment. The documentary and exhibition will be at the Santa Fe Art Institute April 15 to May 17, 2013.

   

  For more information: http://sfaiblog.org/2013/03/14/earth-chronicles-project-the-artists-process-new-mexico

  
  

• ROBIN KAHN INTERVIEW IN CURRENT ISSUE OF IBRAAZ

  
  

  April 10, 2013 - Robin Kahn, whose project "Dining in Refugee Camps: The Art of Sahrawi Cooking" is a part of MAP is interviewed in the current edition of Ibraaz. Ibraaz is the leading critical forum on visual culture in North Africa and the Middle East. Initiated by the Kamel Lazaar Foundation, it was launched at the 54th Venice Biennale as an online publishing platform. Ibraaz now publishes edited readers in print and runs public programmes at institutions across the globe.

   

  To read the article: http://www.ibraaz.org/interviews/61

   

  Image: Robin Kahn's installation at dOCUMENTA (13)

  
  

• SOCIETY FOR ECOLOGICAL RESTORATION

  
  

  April 9, 2013 - Society for Ecological Restoration (SER), 5th World Conference on Ecological Restoration

  October 6 - 11, 2013 Madison, Wisconsin

   

  Submissions from restoration practitioners, researchers, artists and advocates addressing any aspect of ecological restoration are welcome. Proposals due May 1, 2013. SER is also accepting applications for a limited number of scholarships available to help facilitate the attendance of undergraduate, graduate, and PhD students. The deadline for applications is May 15, 2013.

   

  For more information: www.ser2013.org

  
  

• PLANETARY PEACE FORUM

  
  

  April 7, 2013 - On Wednesday, April 10 The Shift Network is hosting a 60-minute teleseminar council call, six respected and celebrated peace pioneers will share the leading edge of peace work in the world today and how you can be involved. They will look clear-eyed at the strife in the world today and illuminate how we can build even more momentum towards a peaceful, thriving culture on planet earth.

   

  For more information: http://theshiftnetwork.com/PlanetaryPeaceForum

  
  

• SMU SEEKS DIRECTOR FOR ART & URBANISM CENTER

  
  

  April 5, 2013 - The Meadows School of the Arts at SMU, Dallas is seeking a Director for the new Center for Art and Urbanism, set to launch in the fall of 2013. In a cultural moment defined by the mutual recomposition of the arts and the city, the SMU | Meadows Center for Art and Urbanism will work in Dallas’ urban landscape to produce projects and research that investigate and intervene in the processes by which today’s cities and today’s art practices are transforming one another. The Center will expose students to innovative forms of site-specific and community-engaged art-making, championing artists that approach the encounter of the arts and the city with a commitment to transdisciplinarity and social justice.

   

  For more information: https://access.smu.edu/psp/ps/EMPLOYEE/HRMS/c/HRS_HRAM.HRS_CE.GBL?Page=HRS_CE_HM_PRE&Action=A&SiteId=1

  
  

• VIDEO CONTEST / WIND POWER

  
  

  April 1, 2013 - VIDEO CONTEST / AMERICA WIND ENERGY ASSOCIATION

   

  America Wind Energy Association (AWEA) is looking for videos about wind power.

   

  Grand Prize: $1,000, or a VIP trip for one person to WINDPOWER 2014 in Las Vegas (valued at $2,100), including airfare, hotel and conference passes

  2nd Place Prize: $500, or an iPad, or free registration for an upcoming AWEA seminar of your choice and a complimentary hotel room

  3rd Place Prize: $250

  4th, 5th, and 6th Place Prizes: $100 each

   

  Deadline April 21

  For more information: http://powerofwind.com/blog/post/why-i-like-wind-power-video-contest_1

  
  

• DANCE AS A CASTALYST FOR CHANGE

  
  

  March 30, 2013 - MAP partners Lise Brenner and Paul Nagle along with Judy Hussie- Taylor and Edward Henkel "Dance as a Catalyst for Change" talk at 92nd Street Y, School of the Arts, Harkness Dance Center, NYC, Friday, April 5, 8:00 PM

   

  Come out and here Lise Brenner talk about how thinking like a choreographer is relevant to "just about everything."

   

  For more information: http://www.92y.org/Uptown/Event-and-Class-Listing/Events/Classes-for-Adults/Dance-Performances-and-Events/Dance-Performances-and-Events/MovementTalks-with-Edward-Henkel-1.aspx

  
  

• MAP 2013 IN THE NEWS

  
  

  MARCH 27, 2013 - 

  Art and Seek, a program of KERA the Dallas - Fort Worth NPR station, has a piece on MAP 2013 today that really gets to the heart of the project. The audio piece runs four times today, twice during Morning Edition and twice during All Things Considered and the written piece is on-line, both can be accessed at:

   

  http://artandseek.net/2013/03/27/map-a-new-public-art-festival-in-dallas-this-fall/

  
  

• 2013 TRANSCULTURAL EXCHANGE CONFERENCE

  
  

  March 25, 2013 - 2013 Conference on International Opportunities in the Arts

  presented by TransCultural Exchange October 10–13, 2013

   

  Boston University will host TransCultural Exchange's 2013 Conference on International Opportunities in the Arts, October 10-13, 2013.

   

  TransCultural Exchange’s fourth biennale Conference on International Opportunities in the Arts is the forum for practicing artists and related professionals, including:

   

  • Extensive networking opportunities and social events.

  • Portfolio reviews with funders, curators, gallery owners, residency directors and critics.

  • 50 panels with topics ranging from cultural diplomacy to paid residencies.

  • Workshops on marketing, grant writing and copyright law.

  • Visits to Boston’s attractions, including MIT's Art and Architecture program.

  • Gallery receptions, concerts and readings.

  More than half of TransCultural Exchange’s Conference attendees receive direct, tangible results - including sales, exhibits and artist-in-residency program invites.

   

  Scholarships available, applications for scholarships due April 1. For more information: http://www.transculturalexchange.org/conference_2013/overview.htm

  
  

• INDIAN ARTIST AABID SURTI STARTS NGO TO CONSERVE WATER

  
  

  March 21, 2013 - The distinguished Indian painter and author, Aabid Surti has founded an NGO, Drop Dead, to conserve water. "I read an interview of the former UN chief Boutros Boutros Ghali,” Surti recalled in a recent interview, “who said that by 2025 more than 40 countries are expected to experience water crisis. I remembered my childhood in a ghetto fighting for each bucket of water. I knew that shortage of water is the end of civilized life.” To help people in New Delhi conserve water Surti spends Sundays helping to fix leaky faucets, one apartment complex at a time.

   

  To read more about Surti's story and Drop Dead: http://www.propoor.org/news/?n=68119

   

  Drop Dead's Facebook Page: http://www.propoor.org/news/?n=68119

  
  

• CALL FOR ESSAYS

  
  

  March 19, 2013 -  The Web of Life Foundation (WOLFoundation.org) is issuing the first call for essays for its 2013 essay competition. WOLFoundation is dedicating to stimulating new thinking in the field of sustainability and socio-environmental issues. Within this context, the theme of this year's essay competition is "An Aspirational Future".

   

  Essays should be up to 2,000 words of prose in any non-technical style (including fiction) and are meant for a general readership.From the Guidelines: "Any and all views on the specified theme are welcome and encouraged. We would like to see entries that address all perspectives creatively. Just avoid giving us tired ideas that have been hashed out many times before."

   

  The winning essay will receive a cash prize of $1,500 and $500 is awarded to the second placed entry. Submissions should be addressed to submissions@wolfoundation.org. Closing date for submissions is September 30th, 2013. Guidelines for submissions can be found at http://www.wolfoundation.org/guidelines/

   

  A book of collected essays from the 2011 competition (published in collaboration with Cultura 21) is now available for purchase ($7 + p&p. No sales tax.). Enquiries to submissions@wolfoundation.org

  
  

• PORTRAYING AND SEEING THE ROMA IN A DIFFERENT LIGHT

  
  

  March 13, 2013 - Šymon Kliman’s photo project, “Beautiful People” presents portraits and stories of the Roma that move beyond the stereotypes often portrayed in the media. Kliman writes about the project, “To me Roma are beautiful and proud people, whose culture and identity have been almost systematically destroyed by several regimes in the recent history of Central Europe. The people in my photographs live in the worst possible conditions just outside of the town Kezmarok, in Velka Lomnica, Slovakia. 2.000 people live without water supplies and canalization. But despite the slum-like conditions, their houses are always clean and tidy. And every one has at least one set of nice clothes for special occasions. When I portrayed them, I asked them to show themselves in the way that they want to be seen.”

   

  Kliman is putting together a book of his images that will also include text about each of the people photographed and essays about issues connected to the Roma by noted authors. A portion of the proceeds raised from selling the book will be donated to “Dive Maky,” a non-profit that helps Roma children with their education and career.

  For more information and to help support the publication of the book – and receive the book, postcards and original photos in return – visit:

  http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/beautiful-people--2

   

  Image: Photograph of Lukaš Oračko by Šymon Kliman, from the series “Beautiful People”

  
  

• GIRL RISING

  
  

  March 11, 2013 - Girl Rising promotes the education of girls around the world in a powerful documentary film. Investing in girls’ education globally supports economic growth, non-violent political participation, increases women’s health and   smaller and more sustainable families. Girl Rising, a recent film directed by Academy Award nominee Richard Robbins showcases the strength of the human spirit and the power of educating girls to change the world.

   

  For more information, to view the trailer, to host a screening in your community visit: www.girlrising.com.

   

  
  

• EXPO 1: NEW YORK - ROCKAWAY CALL FOR IDEAS

  
  

  EXPO 1: NEW YORK - Rockaway Call for Ideas

   

  In an effort to foster the creative debate on urban recovery after Hurricane Sandy, MoMA PS1 and MoMA’s Department of Architecture and Design are calling out for ideas to create a sustainable waterfront.

   

  Artists, architects, designers, and others are welcome to present ideas for alternative housing models, creation of social spaces, urban interventions, new uses of public space, the rebuilding of the boardwalk, protection of the shoreline, and actions to engage local communities.

   

  Twenty-five selected proposals will be presented publicly in the press and social media and on-site in a series of live presentations and lectures organized by MoMA PS1 in its temporary relief and cultural VW Dome 2 in Rockaway Beach during April 2013.

   

  A jury including curators Barry Bergdoll, Klaus Biesenbach, Peter Eleey, Pedro Gadanho, Niklas Maak, Hans Ulrich Obrist, and other influential architects, urban planners, and designers will make the selection from the open call.

   

  SUBMITTING

  Submit an idea in the format of a short video no longer than three minutes, using the following form, by March 15, 2013

   

  For more information and to submit an idea:

  http://www.momaps1.org/news/view/89

   

  Image: Rockaway, courtesy MoMA 

  
  

• JANEIL ENGELSTAD AT EASTFIELD COLLEGE MAIN GALLERY

  
  

  March 7, 2013 - Nation: Morehshin Allahyari and Janeil Engelstad, Eastfield College Gallery, March 4 – April 5 Reception: Friday, March 8, 6 – 9 p.m.

   

  What does it mean to be from somewhere? How do our bodies and minds identify with place? Nation explores these ideas by bringing together the work of Morehshin Allahyari, an Iranian born artist whose work The Romantic Self-Exiles 1 re-constructs identity through the memory of her Tehran – real and re-imagined; and Janeil Engelstad, an artist and founder of MAP - Make Art with Purpose, whose multi-form project, Voices From the Center reveals how identity is influenced in the midst of social and political transformation. (www.voicesfromthecenter.net)

   

  Eastfield College - Gallery 219

  3737 Motley Drive

  Mesquite, TX 75150

  972.860.7100 phone

   

  Image: "Slavin", Bratislava, Slovakia, gilcée print, 16" x 24", Janeil Engelstad, 2007/2013

  
  

• CARLAN TAPP AT SANTA FE ART INSTITUTE

  
  

  March 5, 2013 - As the United States continues to lower its dependency on coal, coal companies have turned to China. Currently, there are 4 daily trains each with over 100 cars of coal being railed from Wyoming to British Columbia where it’s shipped to China. For every 500 miles a train travels it loses up to 0.6 tons of coal dust per car polluting communities, ranches and agriculture. Coal cars can’t be covered because of spontaneous combustion. A proposed expansion (permits are pending) will increase the number of trains per day to 18. This expansion will also create a new mega mine in Montana and new shipping terminals in WA, OR and CA. For three weeks in January and February 2013, Carlan followed the entire train route from Wyoming, where the route begins, to the Pacific Northwest proposed port in Bellingham, Washington, documenting the people and places along the way.

   

  Lecture & Exhibition Opening

  Monday, March 11, 2013

  6pm @ SFAI

  $10 general | $5 students/seniors

   

  The China Express Exhibition

  March 12-April 5, 2013

  9am – 5pm, free

   

  Santa Fe Art Institute

  1600 St. Michaels Drive, Santa Fe, NM

   

  For more information: http://sfaiblog.org/2013/02/15/tapp

   

  Photograph by Carlan Tapp,"For over 3,500 years, 175 generations, the Lummi have lived, raised their families, celebrated, held ceremonies, died and are buried here.  The proposed terminal at this location includes an 80 acre coal storage area placed upon a Washington state designated burial site and ancestral village.

  
  

• DAY OF MUSEUM SOLIDARITY – MARCH 4

  
  

  March 3, 2012 - MAP partner cultureshutdown.net is producing an international cultural awareness campaign. This campaign is in response to the acute crisis affecting major cultural institutions in Bosnia-Herzegovina. On October 4, 2012, after 124 years of existence, the country’s National Museum (Zemaljski Muzej) closed down due to the government’s failure to secure legal status and adequate funding. Six other state-level institutions, including the National Art Gallery (Umjetnička Galerija BH) and the National and University Library (Nacionalna i Univerzitetska Biblioteka BH) are also about to become permanently inaccessible. The safety of precious artifacts and heritage are at stake. With over 120 institutions participating this is truly a global action -  from museums , galleries, universities and libraries throughout Europe, Asia, Australia and the United States.  

   

  For more a list of participating museums and information about how to participate: http://www.cultureshutdown.net/public-call-day-of-museum-solidarity

   

  Image: Sydney Museum of Contemporary Art, Australia

  
  

• BHUTAN SET TO BECOME FIRST WHOLLY ORGANIC COUNTRY

  
  

  March 2, 2013 - From The Guardian (UK) POVERTY MATTERS BLOG

   

  Bhutan plans to become the first country in the world to turn its agriculture completely organic, banning the sales of pesticides and herbicides and relying on its own animals and farm waste for fertilizers. But rather than accept that this will mean farmers of the small Himalayan kingdom of around 1.2m people (according to Pema Gyamtsho, Bhutan's minister of agriculture and forests; the World Bank estimates it at around 740,000) will be able to grow less food, the government expects them to be able to grow more – and to export increasing amounts of high quality niche foods to neighboring India, China and other countries.

   

  The decision to go organic was both practical and philosophical, said Gyamtsho, in Delhi for the annual sustainable development conference last week. "Ours is a mountainous terrain. When we use chemicals they don't stay where we use them, they impact the water and plants. We say that we need to consider all the environment. Most of our farm practices are traditional farming, so we are largely organic anyway.

   

  "But we are Buddhists, too, and we believe in living in harmony with nature. Animals have the right to live, we like to see plants happy and insects happy," he said.

   

  To read more of this article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/poverty-matters/2013/feb/11/bhutan-first-wholly-organic-country

   

  Photograph: Alamy, courtesy The Guardian Poverty Matters Blog

   

   

  
  

• E-V-E-R-Y-O-N-E

  
  

  February 26, 2013 - E-V-E-R-Y-O-N-E

  Presented by Prosodic Body & The Commons Choir

  February 28 - March 2, 2013 at New York Live Arts

   

  E-V-E-R-Y-O-N-E is an operatic, town hall epic that proposes, with Thomas Paine and Martin Luther King, money as public property. Created by choreographer Daria Faïn and poet Robert Kocik (whose project, The Prosodic Body is a part of MAP), in collaboration with composer Katherine Young, vocalist Samita Sinha and the Commons Choir, E-V-E-R-Y-O-N-E was developed by researching the sonic and connotative power of language (especially phonemes, the smallest sound units of language) and suggesting the ways in which these sounds could heal our current economic and ecological crises. Drawing on phenomena as diverse as the choral ode, algorithmic procedure, dead languages, the endocrine system, triple bottom line accounting, innate awareness and the town hall meeting, 27 dancers, singers and actors carry out a cosmogenetic redo as they treat our current inequity crisis with reparative tones and intentions with the body as horn of plenty.

   

  The performers of E-V-E-R-Y-O-N-E oscillate between solo performance and choral responses either choreographed in formal geometry or in compelling and high-energy group movements. At other moments, simple standing postures of the performers allow the audience to be absorbed in the harmony of the singing.

   

  For tickets and more information: http://www.commonschoir.org

  https://tickets.newyorklivearts.org/public/show_events_list.asp?shcode=782

   

  Image: Prosodic Body/The Commons Choir by Iki Nakagawa

  
  

• OPEN CALL

  
  

  February 25, 2013 - 

  Offsite Insights Environmental/EcoArt Exhibit 

  Eckerd College, Sarasota Campus

  8031 Cooper Creek Blvd. Ste 106, University Parkway, Fl 34201

  Event Dates: 04/12/2013 – 05/10/2013

  Entry Deadline: 03/22/2013

  Notification of participation: 3/29/13

   

  Entries for this show will represent all environmental art genres, particularly work brought “offsite” into the gallery as well as two- and three-dimensional work designed to be presented in a traditional gallery setting. All work should give some “insight” into the relevance of Environmental Art and thought-provoking sustainability issues.

   

  Please submit all requirements for consideration to pamelacallender@yahoo.com. 

  Requirements: 3 jpg format photos of your work, Artist Bio, website, and contact information

  Image: Offsite / Pamela Callender

  
  

• IMPACT!

  
  

  February 21, 2013 - Impact! Design for Social Change the School of Visual Arts and Design Ignites Change present a series of free 30-minute webinars that will explore how design-driven ideas for social good are launched. Each session is hosted by Mark Randall, chair of Impact! Design for Social Change and principal of Worldstudio, in conversation with business leaders, creative professionals and influencers working in the area of social change. There will be a 15-minute introduction of the topic and a 15-minute question and answer period. You only need to sign up once and you will be sent a link the day before each session. If you miss a session it will be archived on the Impact! Design for Social Change Web site.

   

  MARCH SESSIONS

  ———————————————————————

  Friday, March 1, 2013

  12:30pm GMT-0500 – Eastern Standard Time

  THE POWER OF PARTNERSHIPS

  Michael Blakeney

  Good Profit

  Cultivating and maintaining a wide range of relationships is critical to the success of any social venture. In many cases individuals are not even aware of the powerful connections they already have which can help them turn their project, program or business into a success.

  ———————————————————————

  Friday, March 15, 2013

  12:30pm GMT-0500 – Eastern Standard Time

  FUNDING SOCIAL CHANGE

  Andréa Pellegrino

  Pellegrino Collaborative

  For many creative professionals, the thought of having to figure out the funding of a social change project is daunting and prevents great ideas from getting off the ground. This session will introduce various funding models to help de-mystify the process.

  ———————————————————————

  Friday, March 29, 2013

  12:30pm GMT-0500 – Eastern Standard Time

  THINKING LIKE A SOCIAL ENTREPRENEUR

  Shana Dressler

  Social Innovators Collective

  The creative professions have traditionally been a service industry where a client drives the inception and development of a project. What about self-driven, non-client based projects? This session will introduce you to the concept of the social entrepreneur and what to consider to successfully launch your own ideas.

  ———————————————————————

  This series is in partnership with Design Ignites Change a collaboration between Adobe Foundation and MAP partner Worldstudio.

   

  For more information and to sign up: http://impact.sva.edu/uncategorized/free-impact-sessions-webinar-series/

  
  

• THE HUMAN LIBRARY

  
  

  February 18, 2013 -The Human Library will be at University of North Texas Libraries, Feb 18 and 19. Students, faculty and community members are invited to take out a Human Book, when the doors open to the very first official Human Library event at the North Texas University Library. The two day event is organized in a partnership between the University Libraries and the University of North Texas Multicultural Center.

   

  The Human Library is an innovative method designed to promote dialogue, reduce prejudices and encourage understanding. In its initial form the Human Library is a mobile library set up as a space for dialogue and interaction. Visitors to a Human Library are given the opportunity to speak informally with “people on loan”; this latter group being extremely varied in age, sex and cultural background. The initial list of titles of "books" at the University of North texas Library includes the African American; a Latino,a GLBT; a homeless person; an unauthorized immigrant; an animal rights activist; a vegan; the feminist; a formerly incarcerated person; a football jock; and more. 

   

  For more information: http://www.unt.edu

  For more information about The Human Library project: http://humanlibrary.org
  
  

• DEPARTMENT OF PEACE

  
  

  February 17, 2013 - Legislation calling for the establishment of a cabinet-level U.S. Department of Peacebuilding was introduced today in the U.S. House of Representatives by Rep. Barbara Lee (CA-13). This historic measure will provide practical, nonviolent solutions to the problems of domestic and international conflict.

  A Department of Peace will work to:

   

  - Provide assistance to city, county, and state governments in coordinating existing peace programs                                    

  - Develop new programs based on best practices nationally

  - Teach violence prevention and mediation to America's school children

  - Effectively treat and dismantle gang psychology

  - Rehabilitate the prison population

  - Build peace-making efforts among conflicting cultures both here and abroad

  - Create and administer a U.S. Peace Academy, acting as a sister organization to the U.S. Military Academy.

  - And more…

   

  For more information: http://www.thepeacealliance.org/issues-advocacy/department-of-peace/index.html

   

  Image: "What is Your Vision of Peace?" billboard, Chicago, 2004, Janeil Engelstad and Rumiel Rothschild. Photo: Janeil Engelstad

  
  

• THINK BEYOND PLASTIC COMPETITION

  
  

  February 14, 2014 - Plastic Pollution Coalition’s annual innovation contest for products or solutions that will measurably reduce plastic pollution is underway. The contest is dedicated to fostering a spirit of entrepreneurship and innovation in addressing the plastic pollution crisis. Eligible contestants will compete for a first prize investment of $50,000 for an existing business, and $10,000 investment for the most innovative business idea. The contest will be juried by leaders in industry and science including Eben Bayer (Ecovative), Mike Biddle (MBA Polymers), Julie Corbett (Ecologic), Adam Lowry (Method), Dr. Ramani Narayan, Mike Velings (A-Spark Good Ventures) and Adam Werbach (Yerdle). The presentation of awards and the final public event will take place at the Think Beyond Plastic annual conference on June 13-14, 2013 in Berkeley, CA, in front of an audience of entrepreneurs, investors, journalists and thought leaders.

   

  For more information: http://plasticpollutioncoalition.org

   

  
  

• THE SUN MAGAZINE IS HIRING

  
  

  February 13, 2013 - The Sun, one of the leading magazines devoted to writing, photography, poetry and art is looking for a full-time managing editor. The Sun is a nonprofit, ad-free magazine in its thirty-ninth year of publication. This position is in their editorial office in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. The job requires "impeccable editorial skills, proven management ability, and a meticulous and exacting eye for detail". The Sun offer competitive compensation, excellent benefits, and an appealing work environment.

   

  For more information: http://thesunmagazine.org/about/announcements/2012/49

  
  

• MIGRATING ARCHIVES AT GLBT HISTORY MUSEUM, SAN FRANCISCO

  
  

  February 11, 2013 - Conceived by E. G. Crichton, artist-in-residence at the GLBT Historical Society and a MAP participant, “Migrating Archives” includes poignant and evocative archival material from collections in Australia, Belgium, England, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, the Philippines, Scotland, South Africa and the United States.Each participating organization provided photographs of artifacts that portray the experiences of one or two LGBT individuals from the past.

   

  “My idea is to put materials that are precious to each collection into motion as they become guests and hosts, sometimes crossing national borders more easily than individuals can,” notes Crichton. “For people whose traces are so often erased even by our biological families, omitted from official histories, or just lost, archives are a way of creating our own lineage. ‘Migrating Archives’ is designed to both demonstrate and inspire this vital process of historical self-creation.”

   

  For more information and to read an interview with E.G. Crichton: http://www.glbthistory.org/museum/

   

  Image: “Migrating Archives” features archives from nine countries, including Belgium (left), South Africa (upper right) and Italy (lower right). Click on photo to view full image.

  
  

• FIRST INTERDISCIPLINARY ECO ART TEXTBOOK

  
  

  February 10, 2013 - "Eco Art in Pursuit of a Sustainable Planet," by curator and writer Linda Weintraub documents the eco art movement from A to Z, presenting a panorama of artistic responses to environmental concerns, from Ant Farm’s anti-consumer antics in the 1970s to Marina Zurkow’s 2007 animation that anticipates the havoc wreaked upon the planet by global warming. 

  
  This text is the first international survey of twentieth and twenty-first-century artists who are transforming the global challenges facing humanity and the Earth’s diverse living systems. Their pioneering explorations are situated at today’s cultural, scientific, economic, spiritual, and ethical frontiers. The text guides students of art, design, environmental studies, and interdisciplinary studies to integrate environmental awareness, responsibility, and activism into their professional and personal lives.
  
  For more information: http://lindaweintraub.com

  
  

• NEW ZEALAND GRANTS WHANGANU RIVER THE RIGHTS OF PERSONHOOD

  
  

   

  February 7, 2013 -  If Corporations are People Why Can't Rivers Be?

   

  
The Whanganui, New Zealand's third-longest river has been granted legal personhood by the government of New Zealand. The Whanganu will now have rights “in the same way a company is, which will give it rights and interests”. The agreement is the result of over 100 years of adovacy by the Whanganui River iwi, an indigenous Māori community with strong cultural and commercial ties to the waterway. 

Under the settlement, the river is regarded as a protected entity, through an arrangement in which representatives from both the iwi and the national government will serve as legal custodians towards the Whanganui’s best interests. 

  
  

• THE HARRISONS - ON MIXING, MAPPING AND TERRITORY

  
  

   

  February 4, 2013 - Work by Helen and Newton Harrison is being exhibited at the Sesnon Art Gallery, located in Porter College at UC Santa Cruz. Their visionary projects have focused on watershed restoration, urban renewal, agriculture and forestry issues among others. Results included changes in governmental, environmental policy and have expanded the conversation around previously unexplored issues leading to practical implementations throughout the United States and Europe.

   

  The exhibition opens on February 6, wit ha reception from 6 to 7:30 p.m. Prior to the reception, they will present a lecture from 4:30 to 6 p.m. at the Digital Arts Research Center (Room 108). The exhibition runs through March 15. Admission to all events is free and open to the public. 

   

  To read an article about The Harrisons visit the USSC news link: http://art.ucsc.edu/galleries/sesnon/current

   

  The Harrisons will be participating in MAP 2013 and their large -scale project, "The Force Majeure Works" is featured on MAP's projects link

   

  Image: Helen and Newton Harrison, Future Garden Part 1: The Endangered Meadows of Europe, 1996-1998, Kunst-und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Bonn, Germany

   

  
  

• SCANZ 2013

  
  

  February 1, 2013 - SCANZ 2013 3rd nature wānanga-symposium: DEVELOPING THE CULTURE TO CREATE A SUSTAINABLE CIVILIZATION, FEB 1 - 3, 2013, NEW ZEALAND  
At the symposium's foundation is the integration of indigenous knowledge, creative practices and Western science. This integration is a feature of recent Intercreate.org projects, the organization that is the producer of the wānanga-symposium. The symposium will provide a wide range of solutions to environmental issues of working across cultures and disciplines, from several countries. 

For more information:http://www.intercreate.org/2012/10/scanz-2013-hui-symposium-selected-abstracts/

  
  

• THE ART OF SEEKING SAHRAWI INDEPENDENCE

  
  

  January 31, 2013 -  Robin Kahn interviewed in The Huffington Post

   

  
Through "The Art of Sahrawi Cooking," which is featured in MAP's Projects link, Robin Kahn lived with Sahrawi families in the Tindouf Refugee Camps located within the “Liberated Territory” of Western Sahara - the last remaining colony in Africa. Working with the Sahrawi women she created a cookbook that explores the Sahrawis’ connection to food as a way of tracing their identity. By combining the sparse materials available locally, she collaged photos, histories and drawings into a 50 page recipe book that examines the art of Sahrawi food production : how kitchens are improvised, food is procured and prepared, and traditional dishes are innovated from humanitarian aid. 

Kahn reflects on various aspects of the project and its presentation in dOCUMENTA 13 in a conversation with the writer and cultural critic G. Roger Denson in a recent issue of the Huffington Post.

   

  To read the article:http://www.huffingtonpost.com/g-roger-denson/from-dining-in-refugee-ca_b_2520573.html



  Image: Tfarra, Najat, and Mouna dancing at dOCUMENTA 13, 2013. Photo by Kirby Gookin

  
  

• MAKING CHANGE IN THE LARGEST SLUM IN ASIA

  
  

   

  January 28, 2013 - The project "Dharavi Diary" started with a short documentary film that followed the lives of the people living and working in one of the world's recycling capitals, Dharavi slum in Mumbai, India. Since the completion of the film, "Dharavi Diary" has grown into a slum innovation project fusing entrepreneurship, storytelling, design, creative and strategic thinking and creative technologies to harness the opportunities and skills of the project's collaborators in the slum. The purpose is to help the community to rise out of poverty and innovate global sustainability. 

   

  The project is not only training people to make products, but has also helped the pickers who sort through the trash earn more money, which allows them to keep their children in school. The recycling process has been owned and operated by business people who live outside of the slum, paying pickers a small fee to sort through the trash for specific materials. Now the people who sort through the trash have the opportunity to sell their materials for a higher price directly to "Dharavi Diary." 

For more information and a clip of the film visit the "Dharavi Diary" website:
http://www.dharavidiary.com

  
  

• 1700 SEEDS

  
  

   

  January 26, 2013 - Cynthia Mulcahy and Robert Hamilton's "1700 Seeds"  is part of the exhibition "FOOD" at the Eastfield College galleries in Mesquite, Texas

   

  In 2012 Mulcahy and Hamilton planted 1700 Sunflowers in a large, empty lot in Dallas, Texas. Produced in a Hispanic neighborhood that is gentrifying, the project was a place where different people from different communities came together to talk, share food and, among the field of 1700 giant sunflowers, find common ground. After the harvest of the seeds, Mulcahy and Hamilton have been giving away seed packets to people around the world, further spreading the good will that was established in Dallas.

   

  The exhibition, "FOOD" brings together seven artists whose work constructs meaning in the physical and psychological space between art and food.

"1700 Seeds" will be featured on the Project of MAP's website in the upcoming weeks.



   

  For more information about the exhibition:http://www.artandseek.org/event.php?id=43722

Image: Cynthia Mulcahy and Robert Hamilton, "1700 Seeds," installation at Eastfield College Main Gallery, mixed- media, 2013. Photo by C Mulcahy

  
  

• PROJECT IN BRAZIL RE-USES PLASTIC BOTTLES FOR SURFBOARDS

  
  

  January 24, 2013 - Through their project, “Eco-Surfboard,”Jairo Lumertz and Carolina Scorsin are creating surfboards made out of plastic bottles. Traveling to beaches throughout Brazil the couple are helping children take up surfing and reducing waste at the same time. 

   

  
Lumertz’s eco surfboards, which he first developed in 2007, consist of approximately 40 bottles (paddleboards consist of up to 75 bottles), treated with dry ice to make them stronger and more floatable, supported by PVC tubes and glue. “A common surfboard in the store costs at least $2,000, but can reach $5,000. A board with plastic bottles is only $100,” explains Scorsin in an interview in the Epoch Times. Lumertz and Scorsin visit schools in Brazil and talk to students about surfing, protecting the environment, and their distinctive surfboards. Their aim is for children to take up surfing and for more people to become conscious of the environment, reusing and repurposing waste in new products and design.


   

  For more information:http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/world/on-mission-to-help-the-environment-with-surfing-323293.html



   

  Image: Jairo Lumertz and Carolina Scorsin, founders of the Eco Surfboard project with their eco surfboard, Rio de Janeiro (Eco Surfboard/Facebook)

  
  

• FDA MOVES CLOSER TO APPROVING GE SALMON

  
  

  January 23, 2013 - On December 21st, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) released an Environmental Assessment (EA) with a “Finding of No Significant Impact” on the controversial AquaBounty AquaAdvantage transgenic salmon. The FDA action is widely viewed as confirmation that the Obama Administration is prepared to approve shortly the first genetically engineered (GE) animal intended for human consumption in the face of widespread opposition. 

  
  The GE Atlantic salmon being considered was developed by AquaBounty Technologies, and genetically engineered to produce growth hormones year-round, creating a fish the company claims grows at twice the normal rate. This could allow factory fish farms to crowd the salmon into pens and still get high production rates.
  
  Each year millions of farmed salmon escape, outcompeting wild populations for resources and straining ecosystems. Any approval of GE salmon would represent a serious threat to the survival of native salmon populations, many of which have already suffered severe declines related to salmon farms and other man-made impacts. Research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences notes that a release of just sixty GE salmon into a wild population of 60,000 could lead to the extinction of the wild population in less than 40 fish generations. Wild salmon populations are already on the Endangered Species List; approving these GE salmon could be the final blow to these wild stocks.
  
  The human health impacts of eating GE fish, which would be the first-ever GE food animal, are entirely unknown, but some scientific research raises cause for alarm: for example, some scientists have asserted that foreign growth hormones in transgenic fish may increase production of other compounds such as insulin in the fish. Additionally, FDA has recognized that a transgene cannot be “turned off” once it is inserted in the organism, and will therefore have effects that are uncontrollable. 
  
  Please take action today! The public has until February 25th to comment on this misguided and dangerous action. 
  
  Go to:http://salsa3.salsalabs.com/o/1881/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=9138

  
  

• SUSTAINABLE TECHNOLOGIES AND TRANSDISCIPLINARY FUTURES

  
  

  January 22, 2013 - SUSTAINABLE TECHNOLOGIES AND TRANSDISCIPLINARY FUTURES: FROM COLLABORATIVE DESIGN TO DIGITAL FABRICATION, LISBON, PORTUGAL, SUMMER 2013
  
  SUSTAINABLE TECHNOLOGIES AND TRANSDISCIPLINARY FUTURES is producing a one week intensive program of social and technical methods, in a transdisciplinary environment that will engage participants in both conceptual and practical activities with all four pillars of sustainability as background. The intensive is intended for Master and PhD students, researchers, and professionals from STS, Product and Service Design, Social Sciences and Humanities, Architecture and Engineering, Communication and Media, Environmental Studies, Economics and Management, Computer Sciences, and others.
  
  Everyone will have the opportunity to work in sociotechnical processes of design, construction and discussion of concrete objects, through Introductory Sessions, Masterclasses and Hands On Workshops.
  
  For more information and application:http://sttf2013.iscte-iul.pt/

  
  

• ART FOR CHANGE IN CHINA

  
  

  January 20, 2012 - NEW BOOK BY ARTIST LILY YEH OUTLINES HER WORK IN TRANSFORMING A SCHOOL FOR MIGRANT WORKERS IN CHINA

   

  "AWAKENING CREATIVITY - Dandelion School Blossoms"

   

  From the newvillagePRESS website:

   

  " In Awakening Creativity, Yeh facilitates the art-making process for students of The Dandelion School, the only nonprofit organization in Beijing that serves the children of poor migrant workers coming from 24 provinces. Yeh worked with hundreds of students, teachers, volunteers and workers to transform the school's main campus with mural painting, mosaics, and environmental sculpture. Students were involved in every aspect of the art-making, which has become central to the school's curriculum and well-being. 

   

  For more information: http://www.newvillagepress.net/book/?GCOI=97660100626950

   

  To view images and read an article by Lily Yeh., published in YES! Magazine, about the project: http://www.yesmagazine.org/happiness/photo-essay-awakening-creativity

   

  "When I see brokenness, poverty, and crime in inner cities, 

  I also see the enormous potential and readiness for 

  transformation and rebirth. We are creating an art form that 

  comes from the heart and reflects the pain and sorrow of people's lives. 

  It also expresses joy, beauty, and love." 

  — Lily Yeh

   
  
  

• PROJECT DOCUMENTS LIVES OF MIGRANT WORKERS IN SINGAPORE

  
  

  January 17, 2013 - "Beyond the Border, Behind the Men" aims to increase knowledge and expand thinking about Bangladeshi migrants working in Singapore. A project produced by three young Singaporeans and their migrant worker friends culminated in a short-film and photo essay, which expands the narrative beyond the one-dimensional stereotypes such as the construction or shipyard worker, the gardner or the cleaner, or the Bangla.

  
  Bernice Wong, in an interview with OneBetterWorld said, "we felt it was timely and necessary to expand the narrative” beyond “the deeply-entrenched image of them as low cost economic digits or cogs in our industrial machine”.
  
  “We went to unearth what is it that they are working so hard for? Why do they put up with the precarious realities of being a migrant worker here? What are they fighting for?”
  
  From the "Beyond the Border, Behind the Men" website:
  
  This project pays tribute to these “builders” of our country and those they leave behind. We wish to celebrate their resilience, spread stories of cheer and inspiration, and pay tribute to the human spirit. Like us, they are fathers, sons, husbands, story-tellers and dreamers too. And on a more fundamental and human level, we are all equals.
  
  For more information visit the "Beyond the Border, Behind the Men" website : www.btbbtm.com
  
  Image: Photograph of Rasel, a Bangladeshi working in Singapore, from his childhood days (pictured here with his older sister). By Bernice Wong from "Beyond the Border, Behind the Men."

  
  

• ROMA GYPSIES PARTICIPATE IN A TOMáš RAFA PROJECT

  
  

  January 15, 2013 - Working with artists and volunteers, Tomáš Rafa's Sports Wall project, produced in Sečovce, Slovakia, changed the look and feel of a concrete wall that was built to separate the Roma Gypsies from the rest of the population living in the town. A short video of the project documents the creation of the mural and offers poetic glimpses into the daily lives and music of the Roma. 

  
  Tomáš Rafa's piece "New Nationalism," which addresses the rise of nationalism and separatism in Central and Eastern Europe can be found in MAP's project link. To view the "Wall of Sports" video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=5AKmFxXd_A0

  
  Image: Video still from "Wall of Sports" by Tomáš Rafa

  
  

• TRADITIONAL, SUSTAINABLE ARCHITECTURE IN HAWAI

  
  

  January 11, 2013 - People throughout the Hawai'in Islands are building homes and other buildings, such as community centers, using materials and techniques practiced for over 2,000 years throughout the Pacific Islands.

   

  Unlike Western buildings, traditional Hawai'in structures are sustainable, built from abundant, local plant materials and withstand intense sun and tropical storms. Following is an excerpt from an illuminating conversation between Catharine Lo, from the Honolulu Weekly, and Sate Senator J. Kalani English about the benefits of traditional architecture in Hawai'i. Sen. English was instrumental in passing a bill that allowed the return of native architecture on the island of Maui. The law set a statewide standard that has since been adapted by the islands of Kaua'i, Hawai'i and O'ahu.

   

  Catherine Lo: How would you describe traditional Hawaiian architecture?

   

  Sen English: Traditional architecture uses indigenous materials–stone, wood, various types of thatching such as ti leaf, hala or various grasses like pili. The architectural style is uniquely Polynesian in that it’s usually built on a paepae or a platform, sometimes enclosed, sometimes not. What we have to understand, though, is these were the types of structures that supported our people in Hawai’i for as long as people have been here. And in the last century it became illegal to use these as building materials.

   

  For safety reasons?

   

  I’m not sure. It could be vestiges of colonialism, right? The idea was to end everything Hawaiian and make us something else. The reality is if you were to put a Western style wood-frame home next to a traditional Hawaiian building and a hurricane were to hit, most likely the Western structure would be demolished and the grass house would be left standing. And here’s why: The way that the Western homes are built is like an airplane wing–when the strong winds come, it creates suction. That’s why when you see videos of hurricanes, roofs get lifted right off the house. What happens with traditional structures is that the wind passes through them. People think the Western structures are stronger, when in fact the traditional structures were constructed specifically to withstand these types of conditions.

   

  What about thatch and fires?

   

  I worked very closely with the fire department in Maui County when I was on the [Maui County] council and creating this concept, and they went from being the strongest opponents to some of the strongest advocates. After two years of looking at different flame retardants, they said, hey, this works. Their inspectors are trained to know what to look for–certain types of retardants will be used on the leaves and the thatching. Certain structures will require a sprinkler system inside.

   

  How do you apply traditional elements in today’s buildings? It’s hard to imagine modern steel-and-glass structures with thatch.

   

  First, I had to change a whole mindset. Previously people called these grass shacks–that’s the image they would get. They would think of a structure that was below Western standards. So by coining a new term–indigenous architecture–it put it in the context of architecture. Now it’s on equal footing with Western architecture and other great civilizations’ architecture. From there I could have a debate on how to set up the codes and the permitting system to make it work.

   

  The second thing was to get buy-ins from all the players–the BIA [Building Industry Association], the Association of Architects, for example–that this is a legitimate form of architecture. I wanted to make clear to them that I’m not looking at strictly following a traditional model. I’m not saying you only can build traditional structures. I’m looking for how you can take these concepts innovatively and use them in a modern context.

   

  I’ll give you a good example in Tahiti. There’s a number of government buildings that are traditional structures–thatching on the outside–but you go inside, it’s fully air-conditioned, they have computers and everything is just like a regular office inside.

   

  What are the benefits of bringing back traditional hale?

   

  I think it helps people to feel a greater sense of place. In my hometown in Hana, people feel very comfortable meeting under them and using them as their workspace and their living area, because their grandparents remember them, right? It’s still within living memory.

   

  It’s also economical to build–that’s the other thing. For those guys out there, all the materials are gatherable. Part of what I contemplated and I hope is coming into being is creating some secondary markets. What would have been considered rubbish plants before–they use inkberry, for example, as one of the building materials.

   

  Does adopting these methods support a more sustainable Hawai’i?

   

  I think it could. This is really a way of simplifying. We have this idea of what our inner spaces should be–what constitutes inside and outside. To do the transition from hermetically sealed interiors to something more interactive with the elements is a big step for a lot of people. But if we move toward this, I know families that have family lands who have come to me and said we want to build some traditional style structures so our family can live on this land. This allows them to do that. So in a way, it might help address homelessness and reach some of the poorest people in the population.

   

  Image:contemporary home designed and built with traditional Hawai'in design principles and materials on the island of Maui. Ike Kligerman Barkley Architects.
  
  

• OPPORTUNITY

  
  

  January 9, 2013 - OPPORTUNITY for Artists, Scientists, Conservationists and Cultural Planners in Hawaii

  
  The Volcano Arts Center on the big island of Hawai'i hosts exhibitions and programs that lie at the crossroads of ecology, community and art. The Center is operated under a Cooperative Agreement with the National Park Service, as an enhancement to the interpretive programs of Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park (HVNP). 
  
  For more information: http://volcanoartcenter.org/

  
  

• WELCOME THE WHALES CEREMONY

  
  

  WELCOME THE WHALES CEREMONY
  MAP in residence in Kauai'i, Hawai'i Jan 4 - 13
  
  This past weekend artists, musicians, writers, poets and community members gathered for the third annual "Welcome the Whales Ceremony at Kapa'a beach on the Hawaiian island of Kaua'i. 
  
  The ceremony marks the seasonal migration of endangered North Pacific Humpback whales, a 3,000 mile trip from Alaska to Hawai'i. The event was organized by Kohola Leo (Whale Voice) a non-profit collective of activists and artists promoting whale advocacy and dedicated to protecting the whales and their ocean world. 
  
  The ceremony was an inspiring time of wonder, mystery and celebration: as the ceremony began with drumming, song and a digeridoo performance by John Dumas a humpback whale suddenly appeared off the coast of Kapa'a Beach and as tropical rain storms persisted throughout the island, the area just above the ceremony was all blue sky. Wondrous indeed. 
  
  The Kohola Leo website has in-depth, scientific articles about Humpback whales, the ecology of oceans, and other relevant information: www.koholaleo.com
  
  Image: Humpback Whale by Chris Bangs, courtesy of Kohola Leo, www.koholaleo.com

  
  

• INDIGENOUS PERSPECTIVES IN RESTORATIVE JUSTICE

  
  

  January 5, 2013 - Beginning Sunday, January 6 and continuing on various days throughout the month, the Peace Alliance is producing a tele council that includes esteemed teachers, elders and leaders from the Maori (NZ), the Hopi (USA) and the Choctaw (USA). These teleconferences will present concepts of restorative justice that are systematic to various indigenous traditions and explore how they can be used throughout the world.

  
  For more information visit The Peace Alliance Website:
  http://dopeace.us/page/restorative-justice
  
  Image: Traditional Maori Bone Carving, New Zealand of the Koru, a symbol of peace, tranquility and spirituality

  
  

• HAPPY 2013

  
  

  NEW YEARS GREETINGS FROM ALL OF US AT MAP
  
  Thank you for your support during 2012, MAP's inaugural year of producing projects and participating in programs dedicated to positive social and environmental change around the globe. We Wish You a Creative, Peaceful and Inspiring 2013. 
  
  Announcing MAP 2013, a festival and exhibition of projects that protect the environment, promote social justice and advance human knowledge and well-being.

  
  October - November 2013, Dallas, Texas. 
  Updates about MAP 2013 will posted to our website and FB page in the upcoming months. Stay tuned!

  
  

• GREENMEME AT SAN JOSE AIRPORT

  
  

  December 30, 2012 - MAP participating artists Freya Bardell and Brian Howe of Greenmeme Studio's installation "Wired Wilderness 01" at the San Jose, California airport has been designed to raise awareness about climate change. Commissioned by the City of San Jose's Public Art Program the piece features time lapse videos of the Blue Oak Ranch Reserve, a part of the University of California Natural Reserve System (UCNRS), which is located nine miles from the airport. “We were inter­ested in look­ing at nature but also how tech­nol­ogy is being used to bet­ter under­stand nature’s mes­sages,” said Bardell in an interview on the UCNRS website . This focus led them to dig­i­tal ecol­o­gist Michael Hamil­ton of the UC Nat­ural Reserve System.

  
  Hamil­ton has helped pio­neer the devel­op­ment of wire­less envi­ron­men­tal sen­sors that are designed to oper­ate out­doors over long peri­ods of time. These small devices can pro­vide con­tin­u­ous record­ings of cli­mate, audio, and video con­di­tions from remote, wild loca­tions. They also give information related to phys­i­cal con­di­tions such as tem­per­a­ture, humid­ity, light lev­els, and soil mois­ture across an entire land­scape. The pro­gres­sion of events such as wild­flower blooms and bird nesting are part of the time lapse photography that viewers of "wired Wilderness 01" can see while waiting at the airport.

  
  For more information:http://ucop.ucnrs.org/blog/reserves/blue-oak-ranch/blue-oak-reserve-arrives-at-san-jose-airport.html

   

  Image: "Wired Wilderness 01" installation view, San Jose Airport  2012

  
  

• THE RECYCLED ORCHESTRA OF CATUERA, PARAGUAY

  
  

  December 26, 2012 - Graham Townsley’s new documentary film, “Landfill Harmonic” shows how trash and recycled materials can be transformed into beautiful sounding musical instruments that are also in and of themselves works of art. A cello made from an oilcan and pieces of wood thrown in the garbage; violins crafted from cardboard and tin, and a saxophone made of spoons and buttons. These are just some of the instruments crafted by Nicolas, a recycler with no previous experience making musical instruments, living and working in Catuera, Paraguay a town essentially built on top of a landfill. When an orchestra director, Maestro Luis Szaran and music teacher, Favio Chávez set up a music program for the children of the recyclers of Cateura, they soon had more students than instruments. That changed when they were brought instruments made out of garbage. Today, more than 30 youth make up The Recycled Orchestra.

   

  For more information: http://www.landfillharmonicmovie.com

  
  

• IMAGINE PEACE

  
  

  December 20, 2012 - CELEBRATE PEACE IN TIMES SQUARE 12-21-12

  A Yoko Ono happening, Friday, December 21st at 11:45pm everyone is invited to sing John Lennon's legendary song "IMAGINE" while Yoko Ono's film IMAGINE PEACE plays on Times Square's monumental billboards.
  To join the happening, all are invited to meet at the "Red Steps" in Duffy Square, Broadway between 46th and 47th Streets, on Friday, December 21, at 11:45 p.m. Participants-and those who cannot make it to Times Square-are encouraged to follow @TSqArts on Friday night and tweet photos, videos, and peace using the hashtag #imaginepeaceTSQ.
   

  The happening is a collaboration between Yoko Ono, Times Square Arts (the public arts program of the Times Square Alliance), Art Production Fund, and Make Music New York.

   

  Image: Yoko Ono, Imagine Peace, www.imaginepeace.com

  
  

• URBAN THINK TANK, COMMUNITY CENTER, SPACE FOR GATHERING

  
  

  December 17, 2012 - Part urban think tank, part community center and public gathering space, the BMW Guggenheim Lab is a mobile laboratory that travels to cities worldwide. Led by international, interdisciplinary teams of emerging talents in the areas of urbanism, architecture, art, design, science, technology, education, and sustainability, the Lab addresses issues of contemporary urban life through programs and public discourse. Its goal is the exploration of new ideas, experimentation, and ultimately the creation of forward-thinking visions for city life.

   

  For more information: http://www.bmwguggenheimlab.org

   

  
  

• GUN VIOLENCE IN AMERICA

  
  

  December 15, 2012 - From 1999 – 2001, in collaboration with NYC based graphic design firm World Studio, I produced a national project titled Peace Signs / Visualizing Violence. The aim of the project was to help young people, between the ages of 15 and 20, develop creative their skills and then provide them opportunities to access media where they could express their thoughts about youth gun violence. The project grew out of our frustration with mainstream media’s coverage of gun violence. While some journalists explored deeper cultural questions related to Columbine and the numerous other high school shootings of that time, rarely did they invite young people into the conversation. We wanted to know what young people thought about gun violence and how it impacted their lives.

   

  In San Francisco, Los Angeles, Washington DC, New York City and Chicago youth (from every socio-economic background) participated in non-violence and mediation workshops, studied media literacy, helped to produce peace rallies, met with their local and state government representatives and expressed their thoughts and opinions in billboards, bus shelter posters, newspaper and magazine articles, and on radio and television. In each of the cities where the project was produced, there was a wider conversation among community members about the causes and impact of gun violence. The project became part of a nation wide conversation that sometimes led to meaningful action, such as the passage of stricter gun control laws in the state of California.

   

  Most community cultural work, even in a project that is produced in cities across America (as Peace Signs was) is conducted in a microcosm. Our experience in this project however, corroborated many of the issues related to gun violence. From the project participants we learned that the glorification of violence in movies, television, and video games conveyed to them that the road to self-empowerment was often through bullying and violence. We also learned that where there were programs to help students, especially those suffering from depression, to better understand and navigate their world there was a decrease in all types of violence. Time and time again, we heard from the participants that adults did not listen to their concerns. And perhaps most distressing, we learned that most of the young people who came through our program, whether they were from an upscale neighborhood in Santa Monica, a middle-class suburb outside of Chicago, or the roughest neighborhoods in the South Bronx had access, or knew someone who had access to guns. They were not talking about guns locked up in the cabinets of relatives and friends, but guns for sale to anyone of any age and any mental disposition, who could come up with the cash.

   

  In times of mass shootings, pundits often divide the country into simple dualities where gun rights advocates are on one side of the line and people for stronger gun control are on the other. It is as if each side lives in a walled city and there is no room for meaningful action that protects the second amendment rights of law abiding gun owners, but helps to keeps guns out of the hands of the mentally ill and others who seek to do harm. No ideological platform can accomplish the shift needed to end the epidemic of gun violence in the United States. Artists, designers and other cultural producers can and should play a role in creating spaces that are less polarizing, where meaningful dialogue, constructive action and positive change can take place. Culture is a powerful and effective agent for positive social transformation, one that can be less polarizing and also create societal benefits that go far beyond the initial purpose of a project or program. The question we must all ask ourselves now, is how can I use my creative skills and knowledge to help create a more peaceful and just society? And then, we must get to work.  

   

  Janeil Engelstad

   

  Image: Taneisha Butler (age 20) + Janeil Engelstad, “Are You Listening?” bus shelter poster, Los Angeles, 48 x 69”, 2000

  
  

• OTO HUDEC: NOMADIA TRAVELING MUSEUM

  
  

  December 13, 2012 - OTO HUDEC'S NOMADIA TRAVELING MUSEUM AT GANDY GALLERY

  
  Nomadia is an imaginary country without land ownership or borders. As it extends over different nationalities, it also extends over time – the past, the present and the future are interconnected. Nomadia is a country of travelers in tents. Its history is unwritten; only floating from the mouth to the ear via storytellers.

  
  Throughout history tents have been used as shelter in different cultures. In North American indigenous people, Mongolian shepherds and Sahara tribes lived with basic necessities. To own luxurious and heavy things was not useful for people who are always ready for a journey. To live in the tent is almost to live as one with nature and therefore the people of Nomadia don´t consider Nature as property owned by man, but rather man is a part of Nature.
  
  Inspired by contemporary movements such as Occupy in the United States, Indignados in Spain, Acampamentos in Portugal, where tents and camping became a pacifist yet powerful part of protest, Hudec considers "this way of thinking and living very meaningful in today´s situation. Nomadia is a reaction to the feeling that happens sometimes in history when people of different nationalities, backgrounds and ages feel the same. As if there was an idea in the air that everyone shares. And everyone adds a little of his own. This work is my small contribution towards this undefined idea."
  
  Image: Nomadia Traveling Museum, installation view at Gandy Gallery, Bratislava, Slovak Republic.
  
  

• THE BUILDING COLLECTIVE

  
  

  December 11, 2012 - For the exhibition “Work in Progress” at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History, the building collective will transform the space of the museum by filling it with secret histories excavated from everyday spaces throughout Santa Cruz. Every other week, they will invite amateur historians, story makers, accidental geographers and other participants to the museum to create shared spatial histories by sharing stories in a shared space. These shared histories will become an over-sized concept map drawn on the walls of the museum, serving as a record of the meetings while exploring the connections between the social and material practices that continually recreate the spaces that the residents of Santa Cruz inhabit.

  Do you know a secret something about Santa Cruz? Come to the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History and share it.

  MEETING DATES and THEMES:

   

  December 14: set-up

  
December 21: Downtown


  Jan 11: Westside


  Jan 25: UC Santa Cruz and the greenbelt


  Feb 8: the mighty San Lorenzo River and its levees


  Feb 22: Midtown / Seabright / Branciforte


  Mar 8: Beach Flats / Boardwalk

   

  For more information: http://www.santacruzmah.org/2012/work-in-progress

   

  Image: Postcard, Pacific Avenue, Santa Cruz, circa 1940s

  
  

• 50 YEARS OF LOVE

  
  

  December 6, 2012 - French filmmaker Vincent Lauth’s new documentary film project, “50 Years of Love” not only provides the audience with a window into the lives of street children living in Mumbai, India but also created an opportunity for the children to express their hopes, dreams and messages through art.

   

  Beginning this past February, 125 children who were living or had lived on the streets created 15 large cubes - three dimensional canvases - where they expressed their messages to the larger community. Helping them were artists Christine Delbecq, Emmanuelle Grand and Alain Steck, members of a French artist group HYPOTHESE 222. “We wanted to push these children into a different world,” said Lauth. “The children were shy at first. But they opened up, not just to art but also to a world that lies beyond theirs and the possibilities that exist. When they were allowed to express themselves freely, they did so without any inhibitions whatsoever.”

   

  The cubes have been exhibited in several public locations throughout the city, including the main Mumbai train station, in the process inspiring a community dialogue about the many complex issues that are connected with children having to live on the street.

   

  Image: Gallery installation of cubes from “50 Years of Love”

  
  

• OCCULIBRARY

  
  

  December 3, 2012 - MAP Partner, OccuLibrary at Co – Re-Creating spaces, CentralTrak, Dallas.

   

  Co- Re-Creating spaces surveys how artists are questioning and subverting existing systems, contexts, or spaces – the law, the economy, history, the news, and language. OccuLibrary is a Mobile OccuLab where informational mashups of studio systems and their arbiters pervasively skirt the pedagogical underpinnings of the culture capitalist institutions and exist in "dark matter" autonomy and collectivity. OccuLibrary includes books and other educational material donated by Dallas community members.

   

  Curated by Carolyn Sortor (co-producer of OccuLibrary) & Michael A. Morris Co-Recreating spaces runs through January 5, 2013.

   

  Public Programs:

  Video Screenings: December 6, 7:00 PM

  Artists Talk: December 13, 7:00 PM

   

  For more information: http://occulibrary.blogspot.com and http://www.centraltrak.net/portfolios/corecreatingspaces

   

  Image: OccuLibrary designed by Cassandra Emswiler, Kristen Cochran, & Greg Metz

  
  

• DAY WITH(OUT) ART

  
  

   

  December 1, 2012 - Day With(out) Art, highlighting the proactive programming of art projects by artists living with HIV/AIDS, and art about AIDS, that is taking place around the world. MAP thanks all of the artists, including MAP artist Katt Lissard, who have used their creative energies to draw attention to, educate people about, and reduce the impact of HIV-AIDS around the globe. We also remember and honor the many artists and other people who have died of AIDS related complications.

   

  “Above all else, it is about leaving a mark that I existed: I was here. I was hungry. I was defeated. I was happy. I was sad. I was in love. I was afraid. I was hopeful. I had an idea and I had a good purpose and that's why I made works of art. ”

  ― Felix Gonzalez-Torres

   

  Image: Felix Gonzalez-Torres, “Untitled,” 1991. Installation view in Manhattan for Projects 34: Felix Gonzalez-Torres at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1992 Photo: Peter Muscato ©The Felix Gonzalez-Torres Foundation

  
  

• JANEIL ENGELSTAD - ARTISTS TALK AT RE

  
  

  November 30, 2012 - JANEIL ENGELSTAD participating in artist's talk at RE gallery + studio, December 2
  
  MAP Founding Director Janeil Engelstad will be participating in an informal artist's talk at RE gallery + studio in conjunction with the exhibition ILLUMINA

  TIONS. Engelstad will be reflecting on the work of the award winning New York based architecture firm LOT-EK and other themes related to the use of recycled and repurposed materials for lighting. Other participants include: Mary Benedicto, Marc McCollum, and Jared White
  
  RE gallery + studio
  1717 Gould Street, Dallas
  Artist's talk
  Sunday December 2, 2012
  Reception 6:00 - 7:00 PM
  Talk: 7:00 - 8:00 PM
  
  Image: Lamp from up-cycled Arm & Hammer laundry detergent bottle by LOT-EK
  
  

• CALL FOR PROPOSALS

  
  

  OPEN ENGAGEMENT, May 17 - 19, 2013 in Portland, Oregon is an international conference that sets out to explore various perspectives on art and social practice and expand the dialogue around socially engaged art making. T

  he Open Engagement conference is an initiative of Portland State University’s Art and Social Practice MFA concentration. Directed and founded by Jen Delos Reyes and planned in conjunction with Harrell Fletcher and the Art and Social Practice students, this year’s conference features keynote presenters Claire Doherty, Tom Finkelpearl, and Michael Rakowitz. The work by these artists and scholars touch on subjects including public art, politics, art in context and education.
  
  
  You are invited to contribute to OPEN ENGAGEMENT by submitting your proposals for projects, performances, tours, interventions, presentations, or panel ideas.
  
  SUBMISSIONS ARE DUE JANUARY 4, 2013.
  
  For more information: http://openengagement.info/?utm_source=Open+Engagement+2012+general&utm_campaign=68555268b6-OE+call+for+proposals+2013&utm_medium=email
  
  Image: Open Engagement 2011, photo by Jason Sturgill
  
  

• NON-PLACE / PLACE - A SONIC EXCHANGE

  
  

  November 25, 2012 - MAP partner Ear to the Earth presents Non-Place / Place a performance by Gill Arno and Daniel Neumann. Organized in space and time, field recordings are sent by multiple phonographers from many countries. A group of sound artists and musicians, performing with acoustic as well as electronic instruments, create an acoustic topology of where we are in a world of non-place spaces, of presence and solitude. The concept of non-place is based on anthropologist Marc Augé's observation that airports, railway stations, leisure parks, hotel chains, and supermarkets, for examples, are places of transience that are not significant enough to us to be considered places in our lives.

   

  Ear to the Earth 2012

  Non-Place / Place - a sonic exchange

  Monday, November 26


  Installation 2—8pm


  Concert 8pm


  Judson Church

  55 Washington Square South

  New York, NY

   

  For more information: http://www.eartotheearth.org/events/e2e12_na.html

  Image: Grand Central Terminal, New York

  
  

• NATURAL DISCOURSE

  
  

  November 21, 2012 - Natural Discourse: Artists, Architects, Scientists &

  Poets in the Garden , University of California Botanical Garden at Berkeley

   

  A collaborative project between The University of California Botanical Garden at Berkeley (UCBG) and a multi-disciplinary group of artists, writers, architects and researchers invited to spend time in UCBG’s extraordinary collection of plants, engage with the horticulturalists and develop new site specific work. One of the primary objectives of the exhibition is to raise awareness and support for the work that UCBG undertakes to research, grow and preserve plant species from around the world.

   

  Curated by Mary Anne Friel, Assistant Professor, Rhode Island School of Design, and Shirley Watts, award-winning San Francisco Bay Area Landscape Designer the exhibition runs through January 2013.

  For more information: http://botanicalgarden.berkeley.edu/whatsnew/NaturalDiscourse/index.shtml

   

  Image: Ronald Rael & Virginia San Fratello,
SOL Grotto,(detail) 2012
Plywood and glass tubes with reflective coating for solar application

  
  

• GREEN ACRES

  
  

  November 17, 2012 -  GREEN ACRES: Artists Farming Fields, Greenhouses and Abandoned Lots at Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, Ohio through January 20, 2013

   

  Curated by Sue Spaid, this exhibition addresses farming as both activism and art form. Featuring a real working farm within the gallery, a farm stand in the museum lobby, sculptures used for farming, videos and other installations, Green Acres presents farming as art through a wide variety of approaches. Another key component to the exhibition are satellite projects throughout the community. The exhibition includes MAP artists Kim Abeles and Helen and Newton Harrison.

  For more information: http://contemporaryartscenter.org/GreenAcres

  Image: Green Acres, Installation View

  
  

• L3CS IN ARTS AND CULTURE

  
  

  November 15, 2012 - Understanding the Potential of Low-Profit Limited Liability Companies (L3Cs) in Arts and Culture

  
  November 16, 2012 • 2:00pm-6:00pm Columbia University • Schermerhorn Hall

  
  INFORMATION and REGISTRATION:http://www.l3candthearts.com/
  
  This symposium offers participants the opportunity to gain an understanding of the L3C, the unique symbol of a for-profit corporation organized to achieve charitable and socially beneficial results. Featuring the country’s L3C legal experts and thought leaders from the business of arts and culture, guest speakers include:
  
  Adam Huttler Founder and Executive Director, Fractured Atlas
  
  Jayme Koszyn Principal and Founder, Koszyn & Company
  
  Marc Lane Author Social Enterprise: Empowering Mission-Driven Entrepreneurs Founder and President, The Law Offices of Marc J. Lane, P.C.
  
  Gregory Mosher Tony Award Winning Director and Producer
  Professor, Columbia University School of the Arts, Theatre
  
  Andrew Taylor Author, The Artful Manager Professor, American University's Arts Management Program
  
  Rick Zwetsch Co-Founder and Principal Partner, interSector Partners, L3C
  
  Image: Columbia University / Morningside Heights, NYC, courtesy Columbia University
  
  

• INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY AND THE FUTURE OF CULTURE

  
  

  November 13, 2012 -  ARTIST STEPHANIE SYJUCO IN DISCUSSION WITH MIKE LINKSVAYER FROM CREATIVE COMMONS: How pressing issues around intellectual property will shape how culture is accessed and produced, in the future, around the world.

   

  ZERO1 BIENNIAL

  Conversation at ZERO1 GARAGE 439 S. 1^st Street, San Jose, California

  Reception: 6:30 PM Talk: 7:00 PM

  For more information: http://www.zero1biennial.org/stephanie-syjuco

  Image: FREE TEXT: The Open Source Reading Room (2012),  Stephanie Syjuco. Installation commissioned by ZERO1 with the support of the James Irvine Foundation

  
  

• CALL FOR PROGRAM AND EXHIBITION PLANNER

  
  

  NOVEMBER 8, 2012 -  Pixelache Helsinki 2013 Festival "Facing North - Facing South."

  
  "Facing North – Facing South" is organized as a dual-city event, in Helsinki, Finland and Tallinn, Estonia from May 16 -19 2013. If every North has its South and every South has its North, this is an invitation to alternately face North and South from multiple points of views, including geo-political, cultural, economical, both on global, regional and local levels.

  
  Pixelache Helsinki 2013 is looking for organizations, groups or individuals to produce a seminar and an exhibition for "Facing North – Facing South," with the hope that the program will bring interesting insights and points of views to the question of North-South relationships. The selected organisation, group or individual will be given a production budget and a fee for the realization of the 'Facing North – Facing South' seminar and exhibition.

  
  
  Application deadline: December 5, 2012

  
  
  FOR MORE INFORMATION & APPLICATION FORM
  http://www.pixelache.ac/helsinki/festival-2013/
  
  

• URBAN PARK REFLECTS THE DIVERSE COMMUNITY IT SERVES

  
  

  November 4, 2012 - Designed by BIG architects, landscape architecture studio Topotek1, and artist collective Superflex, the mile long Superkilen park in Copenhagen contains red, green and black zones. Each zone facilities different activities and includes destinations such as an outdoor market, playgrounds, fountains, open green space and more than 100 objects from the more than 60 different cultures that live in the surrounding area.

   

  “Rather than a public outreach process towards the lowest common denominator or a politically correct post rationalization 
of preconceived ideas navigated around any potential public resistance – we proposed public participation as the driving force 
of the design leading towards the maximum freedom of expression. By transforming public procedure into proactive proposition 
we curated a park for the people by the people – peer to peer design – literally implemented.” -Bjarke Ingels, founding partner, BIG


   

  “Our mission was to find the big picture in the extreme detail of a personal memory or story, which on the surface might appear insignificant, 
but once hunted down and enlarged became super big. A glass of Palestinian soil in a living room in Nørrebro serving as a memory of a lost land, 
enlarged to a small mountain of Palestinian soil in the park. A distant Mediterranean flirt in the seventies symbolized by a great iron bull, 
hunted down and raised on a hill in the park.” – SUPERFLEX

   

  ”While the romantic gardens of the 19th century attempted to give the visitors an exotic experience of the world that was still 
big and hard to travel around – allowing people to witness a Chinese pagoda or a Greek temple – the super park in Copenhagen 
does the opposite. Rather than perpetuating a perception of Denmark as a mono-ethnic people, the super park portrays a true sample 
of the cultural diversity of contemporary Copenhagen.” -Martin-Rein Cano, topotek1

   

  More information and images of the park can be found on the Superflex website: http://superflex.net/tools/superkilen

  
  

• ILLUMINATIONS AT RE GALLERY + STUDIO

  
  

   

  NOVEMBER 2, 2012 -  ILLUMINATIONS AT RE GALLERY + STUDIO

   

  MAP partner Dallas based RE gallery + studio is having their grand opening on Friday, November 2 from 7:00 – 11:00 PM. The brainchild of architect and designer Wanda Dye, RE focuses on work that is made from recycled and repurposed materials. The inaugural exhibition, titled “ILLUMINATIONS,” features lamps designed and produced by American architects. Fabricated from variety of repurposed and recycled materials, the majority of the pieces were created especially for this exhibition. RE is one of the 15+ sites for “MAP 2013” an exhibition of social practice projects that includes symposiums, panel discussions, community workshops and other public programs spread throughout the greater Dallas- Fort Worth area in the fall of 2013.

   

  For more information about RE gallery + studio: http://regallerystudio.com

   

  Image: piece for “ILLUMINATIONS” by ANDERSON ANDERSON ARCHITECTURE, San Francisco, California ILLUMINATIONS AT RE GALLERY + STUDIO

  
  

• NATURAL DISASTER

  
  

  November 1, 2012 - “There is no such thing as natural disaster,” the landscape architect and theorist Anuradha Mathur has declared often, in the context of her work on the Mississippi River. Disasters, she implies, happen when the logic of natural systems is encroached upon by stupid urban development. Every disaster yielding human loss, socioeconomic and environmental degradation, and political strife can be traced to a specific conflict between ecologies, natural and artificial.

   

  From Beyond Shelter – Architecture and Human Dignity edited by Marie J. Aquilino

   

  Image: Anuradha Mathur + Dilip da Cunha, Photowork and Line Drawing of the Mining of Sand from the Kaveri River, India

   

  To read an interview with Mathur and da Cunha about their work visit:

  http://places.designobserver.com/feature/preparing-ground-an-interview-with-anuradha-mathur-and-dilip-da-cunha/13858/

  
  

• S.S. PALO ALTO ARTPARK

  
  

  OCTOBER 30, 2012 - Last week MAP Founding Director, Janeil Engelstad participated in a roundtable discussion that included artists, sceintists, educators and others at the University of California, Santa Cruz about the planned S.S. Palo Alto ArtPark on the Monterey Bay in Aptos, California. A project conceived by artist Barbara Bennish (the founding Director of MAP partner, ArtMill), the S.S. Palo Alto Project will focus on the sustainability of the ocean environment. Located off of Seacliff State Beach it has the potential to become a rallying symbol for the precarious future of California's State Parks, and the health of the world's oceans.

   

  As an eco-friendly attraction to Seacliff's 1.5 million annual visitors, focusing on sustaining the unique marine life of the surrounding Monterey Bay, the beloved 'Cement Ship' will continue gracefully sinking to the sea floor off the pier at Aptos, while providing an international educational and recreational platform. The Ship, which is slowly becoming a new reef, will be filled with imaginative kinetic and solar sculptures as will the 400 foot long pier leading out to the S.S. Palo Alto.  All sculptures will be safe and non-obtrusive to the delicate balance of the eco-system, made with natural biodegradable materials or otherwise non-toxic systems.

   

   

  MAP's Mobile Environmental Art Lab will be an arts and environmental hub for the project as well as a resource center for the particpants and visitors. Updates on the proejct will be posted to MAP's blog and FB page.

   

   

  Further details on ArtMill's website at: http://new.artmill.eu/ss-palo-alto-project 

  
  

• BLUE TRAIL DESIGN JAM COMPETITION

  
  

   

  October 26, 2012 - Inspired by the America’s Cup Healthy Ocean Project, Blue Trail is a “trail” of ten interactive art-design-science-tech installations that will take place along the San Francisco waterfront during the final races of the international America’s Cup sailing challenge in September 2013.

   

  Each installation will offer a unique and imaginative way to encourage those on the Embarcadero and around the world to awaken to the mystery, beauty and fragility of the world’s oceans. Through immersive, participatory and provocative experiences that can be physical, digital, theatrical or otherwise interactive, people of all ages, nationalities and backgrounds will find new ways to connect with the ocean and be inspired to support three global sustainability initiatives: Plastics - keeping plastics out of the ocean; Sustainable Seafood - promotion of sustainable seafood choices; and Marine Sanctuaries - preservation of biodiversity and extraordinary marine habitats

   

  The Blue Trail Design Jam Competition, a high energy day of art-design-science-tech collaboration to generate concepts for the Blue Trail takes place Saturday, October 27 10 AM - 5:30 PM at Adaptive path, Pier One, San Francisco

   

  Details and registration: www.bluetrail.us

  
  

• THE ARCHITECTURE OF E-V-E-R-Y-O-N-E AT NY LIVE ARTS

  
  

  October 24, 2012 -  The Architecture of E-V-E-R-Y-O-N-E, New York Live Arts Oct 31 to Nov 3 at 7:30 pm

  
  E-V-E-R-Y-O-N-E is an epic, town hall musical proposing, with Thomas Paine and Martin Luther King, money as public property. Created by choreographer Daria Faïn and poet Robert Kocik, whose project "The Prosodic Body" is a part of MAP, in collaboration with composer Katherine Young and vocalist Samita Sinha and the Commons Choir. Twenty-seven dancers, singers and actors treat our current inequity crisis with reparative tones and intentions with the body as horn of plenty.

  
  There will also be a series of ancillary talks, performances and workshops at Live Arts during the week of the show. It is Faïn and Kocik's hope that these discussions and actions will deepen the understanding of the work while simultaneously expanding the work beyond the scope of a performance.

   

   

   

  Saturday, October 27, 10am-12pm--Shared Practice workshop with Daria Fain. $15.
  
  Thursday, November 1 at 6:30pm--Come Early Conversation: BEGGING, with Sam Miller (President, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council) Laura Barnard Stelmok and Robert Kocik.
  
  Thursday, November 1 (post show) a benefit celebration for The Commons Choir in the Live Arts lobby!
  Friday, November 2 (post show) Stay Late Discussion: Practicing the Prosodic Body, with Faïn, Kocik, The Commons Choir and Carla Peterson.
  
  Saturday, November 3 at 3:00pm--Dramatic Presentation: On the Mechanization of the body and dancing towards liberation, with feminist activist Silvia Federici (author of Caliban and Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation).
  
  October 31-November 3--Ongoing and OPEN to all in the New York Live Arts lobby--LOBBYING with Robert Kocik. An installed presence in the lobby that sets up an open resource (open collaboration) for learning how to take steps to influence lawmaking, as practiced by our Poets, Performers And People Pressure Group. Self-description:
  
  "We collaboratively write and pursue the enactment of model legislation, resolutions, ordinances, bills and initiatives in favor of a more nurturing, other-oriented economy. We are a task force for providing lawmakers with model policies that distribute goods and services directly to needs, without the mediation of monetized exchanges geared toward maximized personal gain. We serve as a clearinghouse for ideas that introduce and induce an economics based on interconnectivity and plenty."

  
  
  For more information:http://www.newyorklivearts.org/event/e_v_e_r_y_o_n_e
  
  Photo: Matthew Semler

   

   

  
  

• MATEJ VAKULA"S MANUALS FOR PUBLIC SPACE

  
  

  October 16, 2012 -  MAP artist Matej Vakula's, Manuals for Public Space (MfPS) at the Cyprián Majerník's Gallery  in his exhibition, Open Sources. MfPS is a grassroots platform where people from around the world to exchange ideas about how to improve public space. Inspired by ideas that are based in “open source” sharing, the ideas and recommendations that come from this exchange are used to create printed and electronic manuals on how step by step, to recapture public space and make it more accessible and respondent to community needs. Visit Matej's project page to find out more information about and to particpate in the project.

   

  Cyprián Majerník's Gallery  

  Ventúrska 9, 2. floor., Bratislava, Slovakia

  Exhibition runs from Oct 12 - Nov 13, 2012

   

  Image: Manuals for Public Space, New York City workshop, summer 2012

  
  

• FIRST EXPOSURES AT MINT PLAZA, SAN FRANCISCO

  
  

  October 13, 2012 - First Exposures & 200 Yards Exhibition at Intersection for the Arts Kiosk At Mint Plaza, San Francisco. MAP partner First Exposures (the education program of SF Camerawork) is exhibiting images that students took of their neighborhood from a summer program produced in partnership with 200 Yards.

  Dates and times: Fridays, October 5, 12, 19 & 26 | 12-2pm
  Location: Kiosk at Mint Plaza
  Cost: FREE
  For more information:http://theintersection.org/2012/10/placeworks-5w-present-200-yards-first-exposures-exhibition
  
  Photograph by Keelan Sunglao-Valdez, age 17

   

  
  

• 1ST KAMPALA CONTEMPORARY ART FESTIVAL

  
  

  October 10, 2012 - UGANDAN ARTISTS ADRESS HIV/AIDS, ECOLOGY and THE ENVIRONMENT, HUMAN RIGHTS and MORE in 1st KAMPALA CONTEMPORARY ART FESTIVAL (KLA ART 012)

  
  
  

  The KLA ART 012 Festival aims to explore new and innovative ways of creating art and presenting outcomes to the public. Twelve artists have been invited to use twelve shipping containers, placed around the city of Kampala, as exhibition spaces. Many of these artists including Lilian Mary Nabulime and Ruganzu Bruno (founder of ECOART UGANDA) are using the festival to address social and environmental issues that impact people throughout Uganda, Africa and the world.

  
  Fro more information: http://klaart012.org/what-is-kla-art-012/
  
  

• SHARED SKIES A PUBLIC ART WORK BY KIM ABELES

  
  

  October 8, 2012 - Kim Abeles, whose project frugalworld is featured on the MAP website has created a permanent public artwork for the Anderson-Munger YMCA that is being built in Koreatown, Los Angeles, California. 

   

  Abeles writes: "Shared Skies speaks to the connections between global, local and personal. As people look toward the sky each morning, through the day or each night, the sky speaks to their personal and local concerns. In a global sense, we observe the effects of our environmental decisions and find community through a seamless sky.

   

  Shared Skies’ photographs are being collected through four situations: Abeles’ journeys and artists who participate as they travel worldwide, international friends through social media, and some purchased from photographers through stock photo sites. From the Salt Flats of Bolivia to Grand Forks in the United States, and Maasai Mara, Kenya to Pine Ridge, Oglala Sioux Tribe, our skies portray the connected parts of our place on this earth." 

   

  Image from Kim Abeles Shared Skies

   

  
  

• SPONTANEOUS INTERVENTIONS: DESIGN ACTIONS FOR THE COMMON GOOD

  
  

  October 4, 2012 - SPONTANEOUS INTERVENTIONS: DESIGN ACTIONS FOR THE COMMON GOOD at the U.S. Pavilion, 13th International Venice Architecture Biennale through November 25, 2012

  
  

  In recent years, there has been a nascent movement of designers acting on their o

  wn initiative to solve problematic urban situations, creating new opportunities and amenities for the public. Provisional, improvisational, guerrilla, unsolicited, tactical, temporary, informal, DIY, unplanned, participatory, opensource—these are just a few of the words that have been used to describe this growing body of work.
  
  Spontaneous Interventions frames an archive of compelling, actionable strategies, ranging from urban farms to guerilla bike lanes, temporary architecture to poster campaigns, urban navigation apps to crowdsourced city planning. These efforts cut across boundaries, addressing architecture, landscape, infrastructure, and the digital universe, and run the gamut from symbolic to practical, physical to virtual, whimsical to serious. But they share an optimistic willingness to venture outside conventional practice and to deploy fresh tactics to make cities more sustainable, accessible, and inclusive.
  
  For more information and to access the archive:
  http://www.spontaneousinterventions.org/
  
  Image: Intersection Repair, Portland, Oregon USA
  
  

• TAKE ACTION!

  
  

  September 30, 2012 - International initiative for public action as the National Museum of Bosnia-Herzegovina shuts down on Oct. 4, 2012

   

  While the National Museum of Bosnia-Herzegovina (B&H) closes down on 4 October 2012 just as the National Gallery of B&H clo

  sed down a year ago and five other state-level museums and libraries in Sarajevo are threatened with closure, scholars and artists are gathering around the platform Cultureshutdown.net. They are calling for the international public to join a global debate and to seek solutions in order to help the country overcome its impasse. The problem is not only financial, but also structural. Hence, a good solution can only be the product of a focused debate.

  
  
  Cultureshutdown.net calls the public to: 

  
  
  • Visit www.cultureshutdown.net and send your comments on the published texts to contact@cultureshutdown.net
  
  • Send your critical reflection, opinion, statement, suggestion of a solution, information on operation models of similar institutions in other countries to contact@cultureshutdown.net (they suggest for you to read the Summary of Institutions’ Positions, and critical reflections published on the www.cultureshutdown.net)
  
  • Send links to relevant articles, analyses and critical studies produced globally that could inspire solution of the crisis of cultural institutions in B&H
  
  • Cultureshutdown.net calls for a constructive debate that will put an end to this crisis and save the cultural and historical heritage of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
  
  Cultureshutdown.net was launched in January 2012 on the initiative of Azra Akšamija, a Sarajevo-born artist and architectural historian at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Cambridge, MA) and a MAP-Make Art with Purpose participant, and Maximilian Hartmuth, an art historian from Vienna who specializes in the Balkans. 

  
  
  Contact :
  Selma Gičević | 38762332865 | contact@cultureshutdown.net |www.facebook.com/cultureshutdown |www.cultureshutdown.net
  
  

• FILM BY JULIE TROOST SCREENING AT OUTLET DANCE FESTIVAL

  
  

  September 27, 2012 - Julie Troost's short film of the MAP project, H U G, will be screened on Sunday, October 7 at Grounds for Sculpture in Hamilton, NJ as part of the day long Outlet Dance Project. Dance films will be screened twice beginning and between the screenings live dance performances will take place in the theater as well as on the sculpture grounds. The festival is free with park admission.

  
  
  H U G 
  a short film by Julie Troost
  at the Outlet Dance Festival
  Grounds for Sculpture
  Hamilton, NJ
  11:30am-12:30pm AND 12:45pm-1:45pm, dance films in the Seward Johnson Center
  2pm-4pm Live dance performances in the theater 
  and on the grounds. 
  Free with park admission.
  http://www.groundsforsculpture.org/index.html
  
  Image: Pedro Jimenez and Laeticia Emmanuel, perform H U G
  Photograph by Amadeo Lasansky © H U G
  
  

• RUSSIAN BAND PUSSY RIOT WINS LENNON-ONO PEACE PRIZE

  
  

  September 25, 2012 - Russian feminist punk rock band PUSSY RIOT stepped onto the global stage in February of 2012 after a provocative performance at Moscow’s sacred Cathedral of Christ the Saviour church in 

  which they invoked the Virgin Mary to rid Russia of President Vladimir Putin.
  
  After a video of the performance went viral, three of the group’s members were arrested and charged with hooliganism. Their lengthy trial recently concluded with a two year jail sentence. In response numerous world activists and human rights groups who have staged protests across the globe.
  
  Yoko Ono with the backing of Amnesty International, awarded the prize to Pussy Riot in New York City on September 21, 2012.
  
  

• PLAYWRIGHT EVE ENSLER’S “1 BILLION RISING” LAUNCHES WEBSITE

  
  

   

  ONE IN THREE WOMEN ON THE PLANET WILL BE RAPED OR BEATEN IN HER LIFETIME.

  ONE BILLION WOMEN VIOLATED IS AN ATROCITY

   

  September 24, 2012 - The playwright and activist Eve Ensler is launching a global strike to end violence against women. "One Billion Rising" calls on women "and the men who love them" to join together on Feb. 14, 2013, and "dance until the violence stops." The website for the campaign goes live today. Visit the website to discover how you can participate and to learn about the important work that 1 Billion Rising is doing to raise awareness about, and to help stop, violence against women. Ensler is the award-winning playwright and creator of "The Vagina Monologues." Her latest play, "Emotional Creature," opens in New York City in November.

   

  1 Billion Rising Website: http://www.onebillionrising.org

  
  

• JANEIL ENGELSTAD AT THE READING ROOM

  
  

  September 18, 2012 - JANEIL ENGELSTAD EXHIBITING AT THE READING ROOM SEPT 22 - OCT 21, 2012

   

  For over a century The State Fair of Texas, the largest state fair in the country, has been a mainstream showcase for agriculture, crafts and livestock that is sponsored, in part, by big agri-business. During the 2012 State Fair of Texas, Janeil Engelstad is producing an exhibition at The Reading Room, which is located across the street from the fairgrounds that will be a parallel universe to the official state fair.

   

  Titled,  Y’UTOPIAS: An Almanac (of sorts) of Sustainable and Off-the-Grid Living in Texas, the project investigates and documents sustainable and off-the-grid living, farming and ranching throughout the state. The installation includes photographs, video and text from her interviews with people who are, in many ways, contemporary Texan pioneers. Like any good state fair, Y'UTOPIAS includes demonstrations and other events. Engelstad has built a functioning worm farm that will demonstrate how worm castings can be used to make worm wine and naturally fertilize a garden.

   

  Other demonstrations include:

   

  Sunday, September 23, 3:00 PM, Raw & Vegan Chef and Cook Book Author, Haylee Otto will demonstrate how to make milk from nuts and seeds

   

  Sunday, Oct. 7, 3:00 PM Lisa Staffelbach, Chef and Owner of 24 Carrot Health, will teach fermenting. Come learn how to make sauerkraut and take your own jar home!

   

  Sunday, Oct 14, 3:00 PM Raw Food Chef Phebe Phiilips will demonstrate how to start a sprout farm and grow your vegetables indoors in your kitchen.

   

  The opening reception is Saturday, Sept 22 7-9 PM

  Shiner Bock and Wanda Dye's infamous BBQ!

   

  For more information: http://www.thereadingroom-dallas.blogspot.com

   

  Image: Alan Milking, Marfa Maid Dairy, Marfa Texas, Janeil Engelstad, 2012

  
  

• SOC(I)AL: ART + PEOPLE - LOS ANGELES

  
  

  September 16, 2012 - SOC(i)AL: Art + People is a free, public series of roundtable discussions and weekend events that explores socially engaged art in Southern California from East to West.  Join the dialogue with SoCal artists, scholars, activists, and administrators as we think about socially engaged art in relation to zoning, technology, ethics, food, ritual, performance, gentrification, museums, democracy, nature and art support structures in the here-and-now.   The series of individually produced events takes place at venues across L.A. September  - November 2012

   

  For more information: http://freewaves.org/public-art-social-practice/a-series-of-discussions-about-socially-engaged-art-in-l-a-fall-2012/#kcet.org/artbound

  
  

• 360° TOUR OF DOCUMENTA(13)

  
  

  September 14, 2012 – If you missed dOCUMENTA(13), one of the most thought provoking and interesting surveys in the past few years (in our humble opinion), you can view it now in 360°. With commentary in German and a view of every exhibition site and piece in the exhibition it is almost as good as being there.

  Be sure to check out MAP artist Robin Kahn’s installation, La Cooperativa Unidad Nacional Mujeres Saharauis (The National Union of Women from Western Sahara) in Karlsaue Park:

  http://www.hronline.de/website/specials/documenta13/index.jsp?rubrik=74368&tourid=75084&key=standard_document_45007116 

   

  Image: Inside Robin Kahn and The National Union of Women from Western Saraha's tent installation at dOCUMENTA(13)

  
  

• MAP EXHIBITING IN BOSTON

  
  

  September 12, 2012 - MAP will be exhibiting in South Boston as part of the Terrain show at Spoke Gallery / Medicine Wheel Productions, which opens on September 22 at 5:00 PM. Curated by Kathleen Bitetti, the exhibition features artists from around the globe whose work explores notions of terrain.

   

  MAP's contribution is a large oversized print of our map of the continents that is featured on our web site's and FB home pages. The new version marks with numbers and a takeoff on the dot in our logo, where each of MAP's artists are working in the world. An accompanying booklet gives details on each artist's project and includes a photo. Thus, the booklet is the key to the map.

   

  For more information: http://mwponline.org/wordpress/?page_id=682

  
  

• TRUTH IS CONCRETE

  
  

  September 8, 2012

   

  Truth is Concrete 

  Artistic Strategies in Politics and Political Strategies in Art.  Sept 21 - 28, 2012

  Graz, Austria features over 200 artists including Michal Murin and Milan Adamčiak

   

  Truth is Concrete is a 24-hour, 7-day marathon camp: for 170 hours more than 200 artists, activists and theorists lecture, perform, play, produce, discuss and collect useful strategies and tactics in art and politics. A full grant program additionally invited 100 students and young professionals from all over the world. The marathon is a platform, a toolbox as well as a performative statement.

   

  Truth is Concrete asks: 

   

  How did art and artistic strategies and tactics play a role in the uprisings and demonstrations around the world over the past year? At a time when art, theory and practice seem to be constantly lagging behind reality? When art is seen more and more as a mere leftist hobby rather than a foundation of humanity? Can art help solve problems that politics and society themselves have ignored for so long? Should art be a social or political tool, can it be useful? And why should artists know what to do when nobody else does?

   

  As a part of this Michal Murin will be presenting his project, Altruism as Arttruism. Murin launched this project in 2005 by helping Milan Adamčiak, a once highly regarded artist who had become homeless. Using the processes of unstrained, ergonomic, nonconfrontational intuitive management, amateur banking, do-it-yourself dealership, Murin organized a home and restored the position of  Adamčiak who had disappeared from public view for 20 years. The project, in part, is an active altruistic response to the absence of functional social and artistic systems since the collapse of Communism in 1989.

   

  For more information: http://truthisconcrete.org/about

   

  Image:Michal Murin and Milan Adamčiak Altruism as Arttruism, installation, exterior view with the artists, 10 x 10 Exhibition, Wroclaw, Poland 2011

   
  
  

• HALF LIFE: PATTERNS OF CHANGE AT SANTE FE ART INSTITUTE

  
  

  September 6, 2012 - HALF LIFE explores questions that underlie the basic concept of half-life: how do systems age, decline, and regenerate? How can we use the artistic and creative processes to make those actions sustainable, inclusive, and effective? Visiting artists, including Theater Without Borders, Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Ida Kleiterp, Nancy Holt, Amy Franceschini, Charles Lindsay, Steve Lambert, Monika Bravo, Andrea Bowers, Rulan Tangenn & Dancing Earth, will wrestle with complex issues such as the history of culture and society, the boundaries of cycles, how relationships with the natural environment build or destroy community, and meditations on self-identity and place.

  
  For schedule and more information:http://www.sfai.org/index2.html
  
  Image: Ida Kleiterp "Two Resevoir" from "How To Make Your Own Trail"
  
  

• JANEIL ENGELSTAD IN YOYO MAGAZINE

  
  

  September 2, 2012 - The current issue of YoYo, titled R/Evolution, features work that is inspired by revolution, evolution and more. Janeil Engelstad's contribution of interviews and images from her project, “Voices From the Center,” illuminate the 1989 revolutions in Central and Eastern Europe. The multiform project, which has been presented in various formats throughout Central Europe and the United States, stems from her conversations and interviews with people in Slovakia, Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland about their lives before and after communism. The “Voices From the Center” website is a unique, interactive piece that includes interviews, photographs, music, artwork and other material that gives the audience an in-depth experience of the many different facets of the period before and after the Cold War.

   

  YoYoMagazine publishes art, narrative, and poetry. They are unique in that their structure is inherently conversational; beginning with excerpts of a conversation amongst the editors, they then ask for contributions that extend their interpretations on the theme. They think of the first issue as the initial iteration: the Yo. The entire first issue becomes a call to all readers for responses. If readers think that their work is in conversation with their theme, send it to them. They may include it in their second iteration, which publishes selected responses to the first issue and comprises the second Yo in YoYo.

   

  YoYoMagazine: http://www.yoyomagazine.org

   

  Voices From the Center: www.voicesfromthecenter.net

  
  

• ENDS OF THE EARTH AT MOCA LOS ANGELES

  
  

  August 31, 2012 - LAST WEEKEND OF "ENDS OF THE EARTH: LAND ART to 1974" at MOCA LOS NGELSE, WHICh INCLUDES HELEN and NEWTON HARRISON"S HOG PASTURE SURVIVAL PIECE #1. 1970-71.

  
  First commissioned by the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the piece features a large patch of grassland growing in a wooden container under artificial lights. "We attempted to introduce a small hog to our pasture," the Harrisons said of the initial Boston exhibit. "The museum refused." Alas, there's no pig at MOCA either.

  
  "Hog Pasture' was the first of many grassland pieces grown by the Harrison's, work the would eventually evolve into major investigations, proposals and work in the filed that addressed the role of grasslands in the Earth's eco-system.
  
  For more information: http://moca.org/
  
  

• NEW WHALE MURAL BY OTO HUDEC

  
  

  August 26, 2010 -  MAP artist and associate director Oto Hudec recently completed a mural above a corridor in the bus station in the city of Topolcany, Slovakia. His foundation for the piece was the question, “How would you visually imagine earth as one living organism? Perhaps, as something that is both strong and fragile or something that responds and reacts to our actions? “ In response, Hudec envisioned Topolcany on top of a whale. 

  
  A small, historic town, Topolcany went through industrialization during socialism, privatization in the post-communist era, and finally, globalization. Only a few of the original factories survive. One, a wood-based heating factory, consumes a few camions of wood – a little piece of the forest -each day. The heating factory and the surrounding woods is one of the sites on the top of the whale. Others include: an old furniture factory; the historic Topvar brewery, now owned by an international corporation that brews the beer outside of Topolcany; a train station; and a historical villa that was reconstructed for a casino with underground parking. A nod to Topolcany’s illustrious past, Hudec asks the travelers who pass under the mural to consider the connectedness of local topographies, histories and ecologies as well as their own thoughts and actions, as a vital part of the overall organism, planet Earth.
  
  

• MEDITATIVE INSTALLATION FROM REPURPOSED CDS IN PARIS

  
  

   

  August 24, 2012 - French artist Elise Morin and architect Clémence Eliard, have created a meditative and luminous landscape composed of 65,000 old CDs hand-sewn together into dunes that cover 500 square meters. Titled '”Wastelandscap”' the installation is up, in the Halle d'aubervilliers' of Paris's centquatre, through September 10. The artists plan to install the piece in several locations, transforming the piece with each new incarnation, before eventually completely recycling the CDs into polycarbonate.

   

  For more in formation: http://www.104.fr/#/en

  
  

• CONVERSATIONS AROUND CLIMATE CHANGE, SUSTAINABILITY AND THE ARTS AT BALLROOM MARFA

  
  

  August 22, 2012 - The 2012 Ballroom Marfa 2012 Dialogues will take place from Saturday, September 1 – Sunday, September 3. The three-day symposium includes conversations around climate change and sustainability with artists, performers, writers, scientists and entrepreneurs — among them Michael Pollan, author of The Botany of Desire and The Omnivore’s Dilemma, and Rebecca Solnit, the distinguished critic and author of A Field Guide to Getting Lost and A Paradise Built in Hell. Other featured participants include David Buckland, Hamilton Fish, Cynthia Hopkins, Diana Liverman, John Nielsen-Gammon, Robert Potts, Tom Rand and Bonnie J. Warnock.

   

  The 2012 Marfa Dialogues kicks-off on Friday, August 31 with the opening of Carbon 13, Ballroom Marfa’s fall 2012 exhibition presenting newly commissioned works by artists that propose a creative response to climate change. Carbon 13 features eight international artists who have ventured alongside scientists to some of the world’s geographic tipping points, places profoundly stressed by our warming planet, and whose work aims to stimulate a wider engagement with the climate debate.

   

  All weekend events are free and open to the public. Seating is general admission and available on a first-come, first-served basis.

   

  For more information: http://ballroommarfa.org/archive/event/marfa-dialogues-2012/

   

  
  

• TIME FOR TEA & CONVERSATION IN BOSTON

  
  

  August 19, 2012 - Throughout the month of August, visual artist Kathleen Bitetti has been holding conversations hours at the Massachusetts State House's 4th floor Cafe and at Gallery Kayafas in South Boston.  The conversation hours are connected to her role serving on the State’s Creative Economy Council and are part of her contribution to the 2012 London Biennale. Those who attend are given a memento for taking the time for “Tea taking for business and pleasure”.

  Visit Kathleen on August 24 and 31, from 2:00 - 4:00 PM at the State House Cafe to talk to her about issues such as intellectual property rights, health care reform/access, fair trade issues particularly as they pertain to artists of all disciplines, artists’ space issues, cultural diplomacy, funding for the arts, the creative economy and more!

  Although not required, people are encouraged to contact Kathleen to schedule their visit when possible. Contact her via email: timefortea2012@gmail.com

  For more info and/or rsvp on Facebook:

  State House Teas:  http://www.facebook.com/events/415863975126545/

  
  

• PROJECT FOR PUBLIC SPACES

  
  

  August 17, 2012 - The Project for Public Spaces (PPS) has put together a virtual catalog of 600 inspiring public spaces around the world. The spaces include squares, commons, parks and other locations where the public can gather, meet, rest and play. Each location comes with details about how the public uses the space and why it works - what makes it a successful public space.

   

  The PPS website also includes information on how you can help to develop a public space in your own community. 

  For more

   information: http://pps.org/great_public_spaces 

   

   

  Image:

  Ortaköy Square, on the Bosporus, Istanbul, Turkey, with cafes, galleries and places for people to sit and play.  Photo courtesy of Planetware
  
  

• LAWN SCHOOL NYC, FREE SKOOL, SANTA CRUZ CA & MATEJ VAKULA IN BOSTON

  
  

   

  Aug 15, 2012 - Free summer schools for adults and children focused on the arts, activism, holistic living and more have been taking place from New York City to Santa Cruz, CA and places in-between.

   

  There is still time to participate! Lawn School will be back in Tompkins Square Park this week with courses that range from a Spanish Language Mixer to Strange Markings, a performance based experience. Free Skool's upcoming programs include beach yoga, hoop dancing and every Friday, through September, classes on urban agriculture.  

   

  MAP participant Matej Vakula will be offering his workshop Manuals for Public Space tonight in Boston at the Cyberarts Gallery at 7 PM. For more information: http://bostoncyberarts.org/uncategorized/boston-cyberarts-gallery

   

  For more information on Lawn School: http://lawnschool.net/lawnschool.html

   

  For more information on Free Skool: http://santacruz.freeskool.org

  
  

• WOMEN IN INDIA USE PHOTOGRAPHY AND TRADITION TO CAMPAIGN AGAINST USE OF PESTICIDES

  
  

  August 6, 2012 - Held annually at the beginning of August, the Indian festival Rakhi or Raksha Bandhan, celebrates the relationship of brother and a sister. On the auspicious day of Rakhi, sisters wake up in the morning, bathe, offer prayers to the Almighty and visit their brothers to perform the rituals of Rakhi, essentially tying of sacred, decorated, silk thread (which is called 'Rakhi' or 'Raksha Sutra') on their brothers' wrist. After the ritual of tying Rakhi is over, the brothers give their sisters a gift and promise them to help them whenever they need and to protect them throughout their lifetime.

   

  This Raksha Bandhad, woman from villages in the state of Haryana will tie sacred threads onto photographs of insects as a part of their campaign against the use of pesticides in agriculture fields. The photographs will be posted throughout the region as part of a larger educational effort to promote a balanced ecology.

   

  The woman attend classes organized by the agricultural scientist Surender Dalal, who has motivated farmers throughout the region to stop using pesticides. Over 90 farm-friendly insects have been identified through the program, which has resulted in a significant decrease in the use of pesticides and the return of insects who promote healthy crops.

   

  "Uncontrolled use of pesticides has killed numerous insects that actually help protect crops. Women have decided to take up the cause of insects and we will protect them," said Geeta Malik, a master trainer who learned about the insects that live in the fields around her village, Nidana. "These insects are like our brothers who protect our crop. In turn, we too have taken a vow to protect them by shunning pesticides, which kill the farm-friendly insects," she added.

   

  Image: Girls with rakhis, courtesy of Uddharan

   

  
  

• FIRST EXPOSURES AND 200 YARDS

  
  

  August 2, 2012 -  This summer the students of San Francisco based MAP partner First Exposures, part of SF Camerawork, collaborated with 200 Yards for a four-week workshop documenting their neighborhood. The students took photos and curated an exhibition themselves, along with some help from the 200 Yards staff and First Exposures staff and mentors. The exhibition will be on view in the SF Camerawork Project Room through August 25. The opening reception is Saturday, August 11, from 2-4 pm.

   

  First Exposures is a unique mentoring program that uses art education to develop transferable skills and foster supportive intergenerational relationships between artists and under-served Bay Area youth. Students and mentors meet weekly for a year and work toward a final project, which in the past has included exhibitions, public billboards, and the book First Exposures.

   

  200 Yards, founded by Shelly Kerry and Genevieve Brazelton, is a local photo project focusing on Bay Area neighborhoods 200 yards at a time. They pick a location, map a 200-yard radius around it, and put a call out to photographers to take photos within the circle. Photographers submit their favorite shots and Shelly and Genevieve curate an exhibition to showcase the micro-neighborhood.

   

  For more information: http://www.sfcamerawork.org/education

   

  
  

• REBECCA CARTER AT THE CENTER FOR BOOK ARTS, NYC

  
  

  July 31, 2012 – MAP participant Rebecca Carter will be giving an artist’s talk on August 8, 6:30 PM at The Center for Book Arts in New York City.

   

  The talk is in conjunction with her participation in the exhibition “Tell Me How You Really Feel: Diaristic Tendencies” that runs through September 22, 2012. Pieces from “Saudade”, Carter’s series of text based groundless thread drawings inspired by public signage, advertising, and a book of Elizabeth Bishop poems are included in the exhibition.

   

  The Center for Book and Paper Arts is located at 28 W 27^th Street, 3^rd Floor, NYC

  For more information: http://centerforbookarts.org

   

  Image: Rebecca Carter, “With You for You Always”, thread drawing, 2011

  
  

• OTO HUDEC EXHIBITING AT NASTUPISTE SLOVAKIA

  
  

   

  July 28, 2012 - Based on the idea of collective consciousness, the exhibition, Sleepers shows scenes from different places in the world, where, primarily, young people suffer from the consequences of the global market.

   

  Sleep is a form of non-violent resistance or just a response of the body to the unbearable pressures of overwork. Sleep is also associated with the sleeping mind – the blindness of populations – sometimes unconscious and sometimes a desired blindness / sleep because reality is too hard to accept. A sleeping Chinese worker after a 16 hour shift, a sleeping African clandestine on the beach of Tangier after nights of trying to cross the border between the Camions, and a sleeping occupy protester in a tent somewhere in America. These are some of the scenes portrayed on the exhibition. 

   

  Text from Hudec's artist statment

   

  Image: Oto Hudec, Sleeping Chinese, Oil on Canvas, installation view, 2012

  
  

• MATEJ VAKULA AT LAWN SCHOOL, NEW YORK CITY

  
  

  July 26, 2012 - A workshop for Matej Vakula's project, Manuals for Public Space, which is a part of MAP, will be produced at Lawn School in Tompkins Square Park, NYC on August 2 from 7 - 9 PM. 

   

  Manuals for Public Space is a grassroots platform where citizens from different countries around the world exchange ideas about and then engage to improve public space. At the Lawn School Vakula will lead workshops where the participants we create step by step manuals on how to solve specific issues in public space. After the workshop, the manual will be printed and also uploaded online as part of an ongoing open source library for users to freely use.

   

  Lawn School, a project of Megan Snowe and Rachel Steinberg, is a weekly series of free classes, lectures, discussions and workshops that occur on the lawns of public parks throughout New York City. Open to any and all to teach and attend, each session takes place on Thursday evenings July - August 2012.

   

  For more information about Manuals for Public Space: http://vakula.eu/blog/mfps/

  For more information about Lawn School: http://lawnschool.net/lawnschool.html

   

  Image; Matej Vakula, construction for Eco Think Tank, Slovakia

  
  

• REPORT FROM DOCUMENTA (13) - KASSEL, GERMANY

  
  

  July 21, 2012 -  MAP was at dOCUMENTA (13) this past week, connecting with new artists and visiting old friends. The thirteenth edition of Documenta triumphantly merges the political with the poetic. Inspiring, dynamic and visionary, Carolyn Christov-Bakargieve and team have curated an international survey that poses as many questions as answers and ultimately encourages us to think and engage.

   

  Artists working in, or touching upon, social practice were well represented from Theaster Gates restoration of a dilapidated Hugeuenot house built in 1826 to And, And, And’s community herb garden, classroom and tea hut where tea was brewed and served, free of charge, every afternoon. Tea was also served daily at The Sahrawi Tent Cooperative, a project of Robin Kahn in collaboration with La Cooperative Unidad Nacional Mujeres Saharauis (The National Union of Women from Western Sahara). The tent, one of more than 50 projects installed in small structures throughout Karlsaue Park, is a gathering place for tea, lentils, couscous and conversation. Kahn is on location at various times throughout the exhibition to talk with audience members about the Sahrawi Refugee camps and the plight of the Sahrawi people.

   

  In 2009 Kahn lived and worked in the camps. Out of this experience grew a cookbook, which is the foundation for her project at Documenta. In the introduction to the cookbook Kahn writes:

   

  “Since 1975, the population of Western Sahara or Sahrawis has been forced to live between two lands. The people who live in the area that extends to the Atlantic coast (The Occupied Territories) endure unfriendly occupation violently imposed upon them by the Moroccan government. They are forbidden the right to fish their well-stocked waters to benefit from their land’s abundance of natural resources. Those who were forced to leave their country in 1975 [when Spain left it’s Sahara colony and Morocco annexed the territory] reside within one of five refugee camps in the Algerian desert. The rest, mostly, nomadic, are scattered within the interior of the Liberated Territory of the Western Sahara which is flanked by a 2700 kilometer long wall armed by one of the world’s largest minefields.”

   

  In early July delegates, including the Minister of Culture for the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, were at the tent talking with people about their culture, traditions, and their desire to create an independent country. Kahn’s powerful project, which will soon be on MAP’s website, creatively gives voice and an international stage to the Sahrawi people through traditional food, mint tea and hospitality.  

   

  Janeil Engelstad

   

  Image: The Sahrawi Tent Cooperative, collage, Robin Kahn, 2012

   

  
  

• VIDEO FROM MAP’S EXHIBITION AT GALERIE CALIFIA

  
  

   

  July 19, 2012 -  View the video that MAP produced as a study for Oto Hudec’s project, “Instrument for Listening” at the MAP Vimeo site: https://vimeo.com/45746078

   

  Photograph: Janeil Engelstad and Oto Hudec in front of megaphone installation

  at Galerie Califia.  By Alex Katis

   

  
  

• MAP EXHIBITING AT GALERIE CALIFIA IN CZECH REPUBLIC

  
  

  July 14, 2012 – MAP will be participating in a group exhibition at GALERIE CALIFIA in the town of Horažďovice, located a few fields and a couple of villages away from ArtMill. American artist Barbara Benish founded GALERIE CALIFIA, like ArtMill. Both organizations are situated under the non-profit umbrella of Art Dialogue, whose scope includes a range of activities and campaigns to promote culture, education, and international artistic exchange including the artist’s residencies and art summer camp that MAP has been a part of over the past 10 days. To learn more about Art Dialogue activities visit www.artmill.eu

   

  All of the MAP artists will be represented at GALERIE CALIFIA as we are exhibiting a hand painted version of the Make Art with Purpose “map” made by Oto Hudec. The map includes numbered points that key to booklet with images and a short paragraph about each MAP artist’s project. In addition to displaying the map we are showing the megaphones and video from the workshop that we did with the ArtMill summer campers. The youth will be at the opening to see and talk about their work to audience members. MAP and ArtMill / GALERIE CALIFIA share the mission of breaking down barriers in the arts, whether it is between the art world and different communities, institutions, or art makers. Communicating our shared values of access, inclusion, education and sustainability through the arts has been at the core of MAP’s residency at ArtMill. MAP thanks everyone who is a part of the ArtMill team for helping us to advance our mission of positive social and environmental change throughout the world.

   

  Janeil Engelstad

   

  Image: MAP’s “map”, paint on canvas, work in progress, by Oto Hudec

  
  

• MDW ART FAIR CALL FOR PROPOSALS

  
  

  CALL FOR PROPOSALS MDW FAIR OCT 26 - 28 - CHICAGO

  
  
  JULY 12, 2012 - MDW Fair is an ongoing collaboration between MAP resource partner threewalls, Roots & Culture, Public Media Institute and document, highlighting independent art initiatives, spaces, galleries and artist groups, highlighting artist-run activities and experimental culture locally, nationally and internationally. The collaborators are working to create a convergence of grassroots and independent culture from across the world. MDW Fair is a showcase for independent art initiatives, spaces, galleries and artist groups, highlighting artist -run activities and experimental culture
  locally, nationally and internationally.

  
  
  Proposals are due August 15 and can be mailed to MDWfair@gmail.com.

  
  
  For more information visit: mdwfair.org

  
  

• MAP WORKSHOP FOR YOUTH AT ARTMILL

  
  

   

  JULY 9, 2012 - Today MAP produced a workshop based on Oto Hudec's project, "Instrument for Listening" with summer campers at ArtMill. Through this workshop, youth (ages 6 - 15) designed and built megaphones. They then conceived of a message that they communicated through the megaphones, which was documented on video that will be edited and on line soon.

   

  One of the things that I learned in the workshop is that these eleven kids (from the Czech Republic, Russia and the USA) are hearing from a variety of sources that we need to do a better job of taking care of our planet and that often the message is just too serious or negative. One of the workshop participants told me that she gets tired of hearing about the environment because the delivery is so heavy. In response to this she and the camper that she collaborated with created a message about the benefits of eating vegetarian that was light hearted and humorous. 

   

  The ArtMill summer camp is also light hearted and full of humor.  The campers have opportunities to learn about environmental issues in an inspired atmosphere that encourages each of them to discover their potential in meaningful and creative ways. Using arts based learning as a tool to expand their thinking about their relationship to ecology and the environment works and they have fun at the same time.  Helping our youth to imagine possibilities and be hopeful about their future is a key component of our efforts towards improving our communities and planet. 

   

  Janeil Engelstad

   

  photo: Nicholas trying our his megaphone

  Janeil Engelstad 

   

  
  

• UPDATE FROM ARTMILL - THOUGHTS ON WATER

  
  

  July 8, 2012 – As the well pump is temporarily broken we are without running water. This has inspired conversations about issues around water such as one in six people in the world live lack safe drinking water and water related illness are the leading cause of human death throughout the world. Water concerns have followed me from working on a farming project in Texas, where the drought conditions throughout the state are abnormally dry to extreme, to the Czech Republic.

   

  The pump in the well will be fixed and running water will return to ArtMill, but the European continent like the much of the world is facing groundwater over-exploitation due to new agricultural and socioeconomic development in regions where surface water resources are insufficient, uncertain or too costly. Over-abstraction leads to a lowering of the water table, loss of wetlands dependent on groundwater and deteriorating water quality. This is a significant problem in many European countries, in particular, along the coast where the population density and the need for water are high. Over-abstraction in these areas often leads to intrusion of saltwater into aquifers making groundwater unsuitable for consumptive uses (European Environmental Agency).

   

  Inspired by these events and concerns, along with the water crisis in developing countries, MAP will produce a forum on how artists are responding, and can respond, to issues around water as a part of our 2013 exhibition in the Dallas -Ft. Worth Metroplex (DFW). Later in the year we will be posting details on how you can join the conversation by participating on location in DFW or virtually. In the meantime, if you are interested in learning more about water issues around the world visit the United Nations website, UN Water: http://www.unwater.org

   

  Photo: The Well at ArtMill, Janeil Engelstad

  
  

• MAP IN RESIDENCE AT ARTMILL, CZECH REPUBLIC

  
  

  July 6, 2012 - Janeil Engelstad and Oto Hudec are in residence at ArtMill in Horaždovice, Czech Republic - in the lands traditionally known as Bohemia about 2.5 hours from Prague.

   

  While we are here we will be updating the MAP website with new projects and resources and developing our public programs that begin in Boston and Dallas this fall. In the meantime we are producing our first outreach program right here at ArtMill. We will  be working with young people gathered here for an art and sustainability summer camp. With the youth we will produce an adapted version of Oto's project "Instrument for Listening", which will be exhibited in Galerie Califia in Horaždovice opening on July 14. We will be posting material from the workshops and other news from the Czech Republic over the next week. Stay tuned!

   

  Photo: ArtMill through the trees and across the lake at sunset, Janeil Engelstad 

   

  
  

• THE FIRST FOOD FOREST IN THE USA

  
  

  July 3, 2012 -  "Seattle’s vision of an urban food oasis is going forward. A seven-acre plot of land in the city’s Beacon Hill neighborhood will be planted with hundreds of different kinds of edibles: walnut and chestnut trees; blueberry and raspberry bushes; fruit trees, including apples and pears; exotics like pineapple, yuzu citrus, guava, persimmons, honeyberries, and lingonberries; herbs; and more. All will be available for public plucking to anyone who wanders into the city’s first food forest."

   

  To read more of this article, which was originally published in Take Part, go to: http://www.takepart.com/article/2012/02/21/its-not-fairytale-seattle-build-nations-first-food-forest

  
  

• EXHIBITION OPPORTUNITY IN TORONTO

  
  

  JULY 1, 2012 - Ten years ago MAP partner Trans Cultural Exchange (TCE) launched one of the largest democratic, global art projects in the world, The Coaster Project, Destinaiton: The World. Through this project artists transcended geographical, political and cultural boundaries to stage 99+ exhibitions throughout the world. Afterwards, all 10,000+ art works were given away in the guise of "coasters" at bars, cafes and restaurants.

   

  TCE is marking the 10th anniversary of it's landmark Coaster Project by inviting the original project artists and newcomers to make, contribute, and take-away an artwork at Toronto's 2012  Culture Works Festival, which is part of BIG on Bloor Festival.

   

  Deadline for submisisons is July 10

  For more information visit the TCE website: 

  http://www.transculturalexchange.org/coasterproject/2012project.html

  
  

• REPORT FROM SOUTHWEST TEXAS

  
  

   

  June 29, 2012 - For the past week I have been photographing, video taping and talking with organic and sustainable farmers, holistic ranchers and folk living off the grid in the high desert of West Texas. My research is for my upcoming exhibition at The Reading Room in Dallas titled, Y'UTOPIAS: An almanac (of sorts) of sustainable and off-the-grid living in Texas (or thereabouts), which opens on September 22, 2012.

   

  From Ft. Davis to Marfa, to Alpine, to Terlingua, immigration, community and border politics, water and drought, the war on drugs, Transition living and the role of art in communities where the majority of the population has no connection to formal art practices intersected with the project themes. Hot. Dry. Open land stretches as far as the eye can see. Day after day after day, brilliant light illuminates the cornflower blue sky, softening to a golden hue that lingers long into the night. Shadows extend from 5,000 - 7,000 foot high mountains and mesas across the plains, across the adobes, and across the Rio Grande. Majestic canyons, one after another, line the river as it winds it way across a land that, in the greater truth of things, belongs to no one.  It is truly appropriate to use a word that has lost it's meaning and power in contemporary American English to describe the power and beauty of this place – it is nothing less than, “awesome”.

   

  Things I heard along the way:

   

  "I DID NOT COME OVER THE BORDER. THE BORDER CAME OVER ME."

   

  "TAKING WATER FROM THE GROUND TO FEED CATTLE IS NOT ONLY NOT SUSTAINABLE, IT IS MORALLY WRONG"

   

  "BEFORE DONALD JUDD THERE WAS NO MARFA IN MARFA. IT DIDN"T EXIST. AND DEPENDING ON WHO YOU ARE THAT IS EITHER A GOOD THING OR A BAD THING."

   

  " WE TRIED TO PROMOTE ALPINE AS THE TOWN WITH A 1,000 GARDENS. SOME PEOPLE DIDN"T WANT TO SHARE THE LOCATION OF THEIR GARDEN BECAUSE THEY WERE SCARED THAT THEY WOULD BE ROBBED IF TIMES GET TOO TOUGH"

   

  "MOVING TO OFF THE GRID POWER DOES NOT HAVE TO BE EXPENSIVE. THAT IS A MYTH PROMOTED BY BUSINESS AND CONSERVATIVE POLITICIANS. THERE ARE WAYS TO DO IT THAT DON"T COST THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS."

   

  " NO ONE IS EVER COMPLETELY SUSTAINABLE. WHEN THE FIRST FARMERS CAME HERE THEY WEREN"T SUSTAINABLE. EVERYBODY SHARED THEIR CROPS AND THEIR SKILLS. THAT IS HOW THIS COUNTRY WAS BUILT." 

   

  Janeil Engelstad

   

  Image: The Field Lab, John Well’s off the grid living and sustainable experiment in the SW Texas desert. You can read about John's experiments and experiences in his blog: http://thefieldlab.blogspot.com. Photograph by Janeil Engelstad. 

  
  

• NEW WORK BY DANIELA KRAJčOVá

  
  

  June 24, 2012 - If you should have the chance to walk through the subway corridor under the Topoľčany bus station in Slovakia, you might be surprised by the subtle paintings, drawings and colorful patterns on the wall. You will be looking at an original artwork that addresses the complicated history of this city. The artist Daniela Krajčová, (who, later this summer, will join MAP with her project “Slovak for Asylum Seekers”) has dedicated this work to the people from the Jewish neighborhood that was once located in the area of the bus station. Her project, titled “324” is a reference to the number of surnames of Holocaust victims from Topoľčany. Each victim’s name is represented by a particular visual code based on an image of the local synagogue. Using this code, Xeroxed pencil drawings (based on a scene from the 1965 Slovak movie Obchod  na  korze - The Shop on Main Street, which is about the relationship of a Jewish shop keeper and Slovak carpenter during WWII) are copied to the wall.

   

  Daniela Krajčová is one of the few Slovak artists who by active participation and investigation, are working to shape society through a more critical view of Slovakia’s complicated past and present. In addition, she also explores global themes such as immigration issues in France and the decline of the marketplace in Mexico City due to mafia gang violence. Krajčová’ś process includes the use of experimental documentary strategies, animation and drawing.

   

  Oto Hudec. Associate Director MAP

   

  Image: Daniela Krajčová, detail of installation at Topoľčany bus station, 2012

   

   

  
  

• RIO + 20 & HAPPY SUMMER FROM MAP

  
  

  JUNE 21, 2012 - In the Spirit of the Rio + 20 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, MAP remembers the speech that Canadian Severn Cullis-Suzuki gave to the U.N. assembly in Rio de Janeiro at the 1992 Earth Summit when she was just twelve years old. Popularly known as "The Girl Who Silenced the World for 5 Minutes" Severn movingly asked the U.N. assembly members to consider the the lives of their children as well as future generations in their governing activities.

   

  A decade after her poignant and moving appeal,  the challenges that humanity and our planet face have increased in urgency and complexity. Yet, we are also witnessing a shift in how people around the world are engaging, standing-up, occupying, sharing and thinking. This shift is at the core of MAP's mission. This summer and fall we will be producing our first public programs, throughout the world, and we are also developing a major 2013 exhibition in the Dallas Fort-Worth metroplex. In the meantime, we will continue to post interesting and relevant news, events and information on our blog and Facebook page. Stay tuned! We wish everyone a joyful summer and our friends in the Southern Hemisphere an inspiring winter. THE MAP TEAM. 

   

  To view Severn Cullis-Suzuki's speech at the 1992 Earth Summit: 

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eg8MsAx3TVE

   

  Photo: Janeil Engelstad, Ballona Wetlands, Play del Rey, California

  
  

• 50 + 20 AT THE RIO+20 U.N. CONFERENCE

  
  

  June 20, 2012 -

  50+20 at the Rio+20 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development

  Rio de Janeiro, Brazil June 20 - 22.

   

  50 + 20 seeks to learn of new ways and opportunities for management education to transform and reinvent itself. Asking critical questions about the state of the world, the emerging societal issues, the dominant economic logic, the purpose of business, the crucial role of leadership, and the challenges facing management education, 50 + 20's point of departure is the belief that the time is ripe for critical reflection on the role that business and management education plays in society, today and specifically tomorrow.

   

  The 50 + 20 website includes realtime updates from Rio +20 and a blog that offers reporting and reflection from the conference participants about concerns such as Changing Paradigms for Creating Sustainable and Just Cities, Water Rights and other issues impacting humanity and the planet. 

   

  To visit the 50 + 20 website go to: http://50plus20.org

   

  Photo: Rocinha Favela, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (Source: Wikipedia)

   

   

   

  
  

• RESPECT EXISTENCE OR EXPECT RESISTANCE!

  
  

  June 16, 2012 - Tomáš Rafa, whose “New Nationalism” project is on MAP’s project page is exhibiting his video work at the Slovak National Gallery in Bratislava from June 15 – July 26. The videos include his documentation of meetings and demonstrations that address sexual inequality and racial discrimination in Central Europe (including the cities of Berlin, Zurich, Warsaw, and Brno). Additional pieces are from Rafa’s work documenting protests directed at the functioning of political systems in Bratislava and Prague, which have been shaped and influenced by the financial interests of individuals. These pieces will be presented along with videos from Occupy Wall Street in New York.

   

  Tomáš Rafa integrates actual political events in Central and Eastern Europe into the global political context. His aim is to overcome the lack of interest and critical views of the majority of the population, opening a new way for active citizenship. 

  
  

• NEW PROJECT BY GREENMEME DESIGN

  
  

  June 14, 2012 - Greenmeme Design's Blue Tree project is a series of experiments and artifacts which engage the removal of a tree from the California State University San Bernardino campus. The loss of this Aleppo pine has been deemed necessary to develop a new station on the line of the more efficient sbX (Bus) Rapid Transit system. 

   

  Greenmeme Design's final artwork will integrate images of the tree into glass windshield panels within the new structure. The subject matter for the imagery is based on a series of actions and observations between Greenmeme Design's principles Freya Bardell and Brian Howe, the tree, and the students and teachers from The Department of Art.

   

  To view Greenmeme Design's water remediation project, River Liver, visit the projects page.

   

   

   

  
  

• A CONVERSATION WITH TODD LESTER, SPOKE GALLERY IN BOSTON

  
  

  June 8, 2012 - The Spoke Gallery at Medicine Wheel Productions (MWP) in Boston is hosting a conversation with Todd Lester on Wednesday, June 20 at 7:00 PM.

   

  Lester founded freeDimensional (fD) which works with residencies in over 80 countries to host culture workers in dire situations.  He serves on the boards of residencies in India, Germany, and Mexico and recently wrote desk studies for FREEMUSE/SIDA and Res Artis/Fonds BKVB on the residency sectors in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Turkey, West Africa, North Africa, Middle East, Central America and South America.  He convened a workshop for the Heinrich Boell Stiftung on conditions that place artists in danger for its February 2012 Radius of Art conference and recently assumed the role of Executive Director for Global Arts Corps, an organization that creates theatrical productions to advance the cause of reconciliation across civil, religious, and racial conflicts. 

   

  MWP’s Spoke Gallery is an innovative program that seeks to act as a hub for artists of all disciplines who want to join the conversation. Realizing that many artists lack the networks, support, tools, and/or resources to progress the dialogue forward on their own, the Spoke Gallery is a network and space dedicated to redefining the role of art in culture. 

  For more information: http://mwponline.org/wordpress/?page_id=1543

  
  

• COLLABORATIVE PRACTICE AND THE FUTURE OF MEMORY

  
  

   

  June 6, 2012 - E.G. Crichton, who project Migrating Archives will be featured on MAP later this year, will be participating in a performance discussion with Atlanta based performance collective JOHN Q  at the GLBT History Museum in San Francisco on Sunday June 10 at 6:00 PM. The performantive discussion will explore the intersection of archival research and the creative process.

   

  For more information: http://queerculturalcenter.org/NQAF/lecturepanel/collaborativepractice

  
  

• JUDITH SELBY LANG AT PALO ALTO ART CENTER

  
  

  June 4, 2012 - Judith Selby Lang, who along with her husband Richard Lang are participating in MAP, has produced a site-specific temporary piece, titled Water Lilies for the Palo Alto Art Center. Created from 1,000 recycled plastic bottles, the piece is floating in the Baylands Nature Preserve until September 1, 2012.

   

  The Langs were also recently featured on the NBC Today Show. To view the clip from their interview visit: http://vimeo.com/41906265

   

  Image: Water Lilies, Bayland Nature Preserve, Palo Alto, CA, 1000 plastic bottles, Judith Selby Lang, 2012

  
  

• AZRA AKšAMIJA DESIGNS FOR ISLAMIC CEMETERY IN AUSTRIA

  
  

  June 1, 2012 - Azra Akšamija, who is participating in MAP, has designed prayer carpets and the qibla wall curtain for the first Islamic cemetery in Vorarlberg, Austria. The overall project was designed by the Vorarlberg architect, Bernardo Bader.

   

  "The prayer carpets and the qibla wall curtain function as a bridge between different cultures, in addition to being a spiritual, decorative, and shading element," writes Akšamija.

   

  Approximately 38,000 Muslims, 10% of the total population, live in Vorarlberg. They are the second largest religious group, after Catholics. The community is comprised of Turkish immigrants, who came to Vorarlberg in the 1960s as "migrant workers”, Bosnian Muslims, who fled to Austria during the Yugoslav wars in the 1990s and immigrants from Chechnya and North Africa who came to the region in the past two decades. For the Muslim community, the cemetery signifies that Austria has become their homeland, beyond death.

   

  The cemetery is a sign of the co-existence between Austrians, who have lived in Vorarlberg for several generations, and Muslims, who have immigrated to the city over the past fifty years.  Akšamija's project for the interior of the prayer space highlights this co-existence. Her design of the qibla wall symbolically connects the different cultures in Vorarlberg though materials that represent the local building traditions and craft, as well as references to Islamic religious architecture. The design of the carpets, which are in dialogue to the qibla wall, have been woven by war victims in Bosnia.

   

  Image: Azra Akšamija, Islamic Cemetery, Vorarlberg, Austria. Photograph: Adolf Bereuter

   

   

   

   

  
  

• UPDATE FROM LESOTHO

  
  

  MAY 30, 2012 - Katt Lissard, whose project Split the Village is a part of MAP, has been  teaching theater this spring at the National University of Lesotho. At the same time she has been developing Split the Village.  

   

  She writes from the field:

   

  "I’ve become more and more interested in focusing on the pathways and footbridges – the primary connective tissues across the river; the loss of which creates the Split Village of the project’s title.  If you sit on one side of the river gorge for any period of time, you see herd boys with their cattle; women with laundry; children on their way to/from school – crisscrossing the slope on the opposite side as they head down to the water and then up, over, past you and out of sight.  Charlie (the archeologist on site) and I were talking about this and he said that one of the other intangible elements that he found fascinating was the way people (primarily women) communicate across the river gorge – call and response conversations – that are "syncopated"  based on what the callers and responders understand to be the lag-time between the sound going out and reaching the ears of the recipient on the other side.  How do you think it will effect these conversations, I wondered – filling the acoustical chasm with water?  He said he didn’t know, but it’s something he thought about a lot."

   

   

  To read more about Split the Village visit MAP's project link.

   

  Image - Gorge near Ha Makotoko site, photograph by Katt Lissard. 

   
  
  

• YOUTH & ELDERS PROJECT

  
  

  May 29, 2012 - In June of 2012 the Youth & Elders Project will set sail for one week with an intergenerational crew of 30 change makers from all walks of life, forming a microcosm of the world we inhabit. Their purpose is to explore issues of sustanability, asking questions such as how can youth be a force for positive change and how can elders distill their experience in ways that are meaningful to younger generations.  

   

  As they come back from the open sea and approach land once again, the boat will become a space in which ideas for collaboration and new ways of embodying intergenerational exchange can crystallise, inspiring the particpants to move beyond concepts and words and into action.

   

  There are still spaces available for hte journey, which sails from Greifswald, Germany to Gdansk, Poland

  June 10 - June 17, 2012.

   

  For more information: http://www.youthandelders.com

   

  
  

• WORKSHOP & PANEL DISCUSSION WITH THE HARRISONS

  
  

   

  May 26, 2012 -  Workshop, Presentation and Panel Discussion with MAP artists

  Helen Mayer Harrison and Newton Harrison.

   

  A unique opportunity to not only hear the legendary eco-artists speak,

  but to also gain insight into their methodology and creative thinking. 

   

  Friday, June 1 - 2, 2012

  Kunstraum of Leuphana University of Leuneburg, Germany

   

  For more Information and to register: 

   

  http://www.cultura21.net/activites/conferences/peninsula-europe-the-force-majeure#more-5946

   

   

     
  
  

• LEARNING FROM THE FUTURE

  
  

  May 23, 2012 - Call for papers for Nordic Summer University summer session

  July 28th - Auguest 2  Brandtbjerg Hejskole, Denmark

   

  Culture will play a decisive role in defining the way humanity approaches the meta- or mega-issue of sustainability. It is often said that we actually possess the technological knowledge to come out of the critical situation that the world is heading into.Innumerable alliances are forming that acknowledge the urgency of the problem, from all thinkable angles of societies. But there are crucial obstacles that cloud this positive picture. As Slavoj Zizek puts it, we know that the impossible has become not only possible, but real. But it seems we are not ready yet to believe it to be really happening (Zizek, 2010). Interpretations vary according to cultures, to disciplines, to ideologies, and to local realities that meet the conditions of climate change and crises very differently.

  We invite all interested in the themes (and crossing of themes) of culture, interculturality, transculturality, sustainability, climate change, civic participation, education, and philosophy, to contribute  abstracts can be proposed along the themes of

   

  1) Theoretical/epistemological/ontological investigations and reflections;

  2) Empirical studies – past and future;

  3) Methodological considerations;

  4) Discussions of issues of policy and political implications of the field.

  5) ..or whatever creative cross-fertilization you may be working with.

   

  For more information: http://www.nsuweb.net/wb/pages/information/briefly-in-english.php

   

  
  

• PROFIT + PURPOSE

  
  

  May 15, 2012 - PROFIT + PURPOSE STRUCTURING SOCIAL ENTERPRISE FOR IMPACT, a workshop by Kyle Westaway that will cover the basics on different types of structure including non-profits, B Corps, benefit corporations, flexible purpose corporations, LLCs and more. 

   

  MAP Partner Cultural Strategies Initiative is producing the event as a part of their exploration of partnerships between the arts and social enterprise.

   

  When: May 22, 2012 6:00 - 10:00 PM

  Where: Demos - 220 5th Avenue at 26th Street, 5th Floor, New York, NY

  Admission: $10.00

  For tickets: http://csi-westawayevent.eventbrite.com

   

  About Kyle Westaway:

  Kyle Westaway believes in the power of the market to create social and environmental change. Westaway is cofounder of Biographe, a sustainable fashion brand that employs and empowers survivors of the commercial sex trade in Bangkok, and Founding Partner at Westaway Law, an innovative law firm that counsels social entrepreneurs. He lectures on social entrepreneurship at Harvard and Stanford Law Schools. Kyle has written on capitalism, tech, entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurship for Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, Huffington Post, GOOD and Stanford Social Innovation Review and has been featured in the New York Times.

   

  
  

• ECO-ART AT PORI ART MUSEUM

  
  

   

  May 13, 2012 - In 2011 the Pori Art Museum in Finland produced an exhibition titled, ECO - ART, which investigated how artists are engaging with the landscape and environmental issues. Participating artists included MAP artists, Helen and Newton Harrison. In an effort to minimize the carbon footprint of the exhibition the museum avoided, when possible, the transport of artwork and produced the visual material locally. A full-color hardbound catalog is now available on the museum's web site and includes informative essays by John K. Grande and Peter Selz. Other featured artists include: Richard Misrach, Agnes Dene, Ichi Ikeda, Dennis Oppenheim and Jan-Erik Anderson.

   

  For more information: http://www.poriartmuseum.fi 

  
  

• THE TALES FROM OTHER SEAS

  
  

  May 6, 2012 - THE TALES FROM OTHER SEAS, is an exhibition of a new body of work by Slovak artist Oto Hudec, whose project "Instrument for Listening" is a part of MAP. About this new work, Hudec writes:

   

  "The painting is usually understood as an image fixed in time – as non moving, permanent reality. The paintings shown in this exhibition are – to the contrary – like a still image from the movie that aims to bring to question what happened before and what will happen after. They are parts of fictional story, almost illustrations for a book that was never written… 

   

  What is that book about? Talks about distant land, where vast natural areas were invaded with no respect by human constructions – with an attempt to build a perfect world – well functioning, pretty. Talks about certain solitude in this world and about alienation. There is a fragility of human existence in that world, because the nature – now out of balance – shows a signs of movement, that we cannot fully understand. The land is alive.

   

  Although these paintings were mostly painted or inspired by my stage in usa in 2011, their themes attempt to speak over the borders of one country– travelling – and understanding other countries, cultures – seems to me much more a way to understand ourselves, a way to see our own existence from a distance, new perspective."

   

  THE TALES FROM OTHER SEAS. May 5 - June 9, 2012

  Espaço Gesto

  Rua José Falcão, 107-111

  4050-317 Porto

  Portugal

   

  Image: Oto Hudec, The Price of Water, mixed media, 2012 

   

   

  
  

• ROOTED

  
  

  May 3, 2012 - ROOTED: food and farming initiatives as regional artworks salon at threewalls, May 8

   

  threewalls will examine ways that innovative agricultural and culinary projects assert new understandings of spaces, ideals, tools, and relationships. Food is a common language with which we can talk about topics such as sustainability, local economies, nutrition, access, with many different types of people. These creative initiatives are about the pleasures of food, understanding diverse histories of cuisine, and bringing people together around a table to discuss the issues that are important to their lives in Chicago and elsewhere.

   

  Information about threewalls publication, PHONEBOOK 3 a directory of independent art spaces, progrramming, and projects throughout the United States can be found in the MAP Resource link.

   

  for more information  on the salon including the participants please visit:

  http://three-walls.org/calendar/2012/05/rooted-food-and-farming-initiatives-as-regional-artworks.php 

   

  Image: Eric May's E-Dogz Mobile Culinary Community Center
   

  
  

• ATMOSPHERES OF PROTEST

  
  

  April 28, 2012 -  Atmospheres of Protest: Symposium on Sustainability and Contemporary Art at Central European University, Budapest, May 11, 2102.

   

  The upsurge of new popular movements from Egypt to Greece and Bucharest to New York has engendered an atmosphere of defiance and social creativity that has captured the global imagination. Beyond the ebb and
  flow of individual protest movements, this symposium asks whether global solidarity has really taken hold this time and considers the variety of ways in which contemporary art is embroiled through practices of dialogue and collaboration in the emergence of a common horizon and the imagining of a sustainable future. Providing a
  trans-disciplinary forum for discussion of the vital issues bridging the fields of art and environmental thought, the symposium sheds light on our understanding of the multifarious notion of sustainability, which appears by turns as a radical concept in global ecological thinking, can be recruited as a corporate strategy for green
  capitalism, and may act as a spur to new forms of social activism.

   

  For more information visit:  http://translocal.org/sustainability/indexsus6.html

   

  Photo: Occupy Museums banners outside of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, January 14, 2012

  
  

• OPEN ENGAGEMENT CONFERENCE 2012

  
  

  APRIL 23, 2012 - Open Engagement is a free annual conference on socially engaged art. Directed and founded by Jen Delos Reyes and planned in conjunction with the Art and Social Practice program at Portland State University (PSU) in Portland, Oregon. The 2012 conference takes place May 18 - 20 at various locations on and around the PSU campus.

  Each year the conference themes are directly related to the current research and inquiry of the students in the Art and Social Practice program at Portland State University. Students and faculty work together to select the featured presenters, who then also become faculty in the Art and Social Practice MFA program. Open Engagement fosters both local, national and international dialogue and partnerships around socially engaged art making.

   

  To register and for more information:  http://openengagement.info

   
  
  

• DISCUSSION ON INTERNATIONAL ART RESIDENCIES

  
  

  April 13, 2012 - Mary Sherman, whose organization Trans Cultural Exchange is a MAP partner, will take part in a panel discussion on International Art Residencies at Swissnex Boston on May 2, 2012 from 6:30 - 9:00 PM.

  Kiki Thompson, Co-Founder of the 3-D Verbier Sculpture Park Residency  Program, discuss the values of international residency programs in the arts. Additionally, Bostonian sculptors and Verbier Residency veterans, Donna Dodson and Andy Moerlein will speak about their experiences.  Other artists included in the Panel:    ● Mary Sherman, Director of TransCultural Exchange    ● Franklin Einspruch, painter, writer and arts critic    ● Lynne Allen, Director, School of Visual Arts at Boston University    ● Antoni Muntadas, visiting Professor of the Practice at MIT   Moderator:     ● Caitlin Strokosch, Exec. Director at Alliance of Artists Communities   Established in 2000 as the world’s first “science consulate,” swissnex Boston is the first of a global network of five knowledge outposts including San Francisco (2003) , Singapore (2004), China (2007) and India (2009). swissnex Boston along with the Office of Science and Technology of the Embassy of Switzerland in Washington D.C. and swissnex San Francisco constitute the official Swiss science network in North America.   For more information on Swissnex and the panel discussion: http://www.swissnexboston.org

   

  
  

• DAVID HERMAN JR. ARTIST'S TALK & EXHIBITION

  
  

  APRIL 7, 2012 -  David Herman Jr. will talk about his ongoing work to document the African Diaspora of the Gullah Geechee Heritage Corridor in conjunction with his exhibition ETCHED IN THE EYES, The Spirit of a People Called Gullah Geechee at Edward Crutchfield Center for Integrated Studies Gallery at Johnson C. Smith University in Charlotte, North Carolina. 

   

  A son of the Gullah Geechee people, Herman's vivid and moving images provide the audience an opportunity to gain a deeper understanding of the people and culture of the low country and sea islands off the eastern coast of North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Florida. 

   

  The exhibition runs April 5 - June 29. Artist's talk Tuesday, April 10 at 6:30 PM in the Crutchfield Gallery.

   

  For more information visit: davidherman.com or call 704-378-1178

   

   

  
  

• BETSY DAMON FEATURED ON DAILY GOOD

  
  

  April 4, 2012 - Artist Betsy Damon's Chinese Living Water Garden is the subject of a recent article on the inspirational news site, Daily Good. Stretching along the Yangtze River it is the first municipal living water garden in the world. Damon's artistic system of  natural ponds, filters and flowforms cleans water in Chengdu, the capital city of Sichuan. Damon's work will be featured on the MAP website later this month, in the meantime you can read about her work in China by visiting the Daily Good Site.

   

  http://www.dailygood.org/more.php?n=4958

  
  

• REBECCA CARTER VIDEO INCLUDED THE MOBILE ARCHIVE

  
  

  March 30, 2012 -  REBECCA CARTER VIDEO COLLABORATION WITH ANDREA GOLDMAN, LIEDER OF THE PACT INCLUDED THE MOBILE ARCHIVE

   

  The Mobile Archive, initiated in 2007, is a sister project of the video archive at the Israeli Center for Digital Art in Holon, Israel. The archive is presented as a video library in a gallery space with viewing stations, at which visitors can watch chosen selections. Video screenings curated from the collection will engage both university students and the general public. At the end of the exhibition, the VAC will add twenty-five works to the archive. So far, the archive has traveled to Hamburg, Sao Paulo, Basel, Zagreb, Milan, and many other international locations.

   

   

  The Mobile Archive primarily consists of videos by Israeli artists such as Yael Bartana, Gilad Ratman, and Keren Cytter, but also includes political video works by the non-governmental organization B'Tselem and activist scholars and journalists like Ariella Azoulay, Miki Kraftsman, and Avi Mugrabi. In addition, the international institutions that have hosted the archive have contributed works, including those by Artur Zmijewski (Poland), Adrian Paci (Albania), Yoshua Okon (Mexico), Christian Jankowski (Germany), Shilpa Gupta (India), and Daniel Bozhkov (Bulgaria), which have been contributed by the international institutions that hosted the archive.

   

  Rebecca Carter, whose "Sinage Workst" is a part of MAP writes: “Lieder of the Pact” includes appropriated YouTube footage of the 1960s girl band, The Shangri-Las, performing for television.  With homophonous English sub-titles we reconstruct their “Leader of the Pack” as our “Lieder of the Pact.”   Where the original song connects romance and rebellion within a constrained matrix of gender and social relations, we re-imagine it to reveal love transformed into desire for knowledge, a fight against nihilism, and the possibility of new ways of reading old things that hide in plain sight in the original.  Originally this video was part of an exhibition, FeedbackFeedbackLoopLoop, with twelve collaborative call and response drawing triptychs – our response to reading Alain Badiou’s The Theory of the Subject, together.

   

   

   

  
  

• UPCOMING LECTURES BY THE HARRISONS

  
  

  March 22, 2012 - MAP participants Helen and Newton Harrison will be speaking at 4th State of Water Symposium at UCLA. Produced in conjunction with the 4th State of Water: From Macro to Micro exhibition at CoCA Torun the symposium takes place on March 22 (World Water Day) and March 23, 2012 at the California NanoSystems Institute. The opening keynotes will be given by renowned science writer Dr. Philip Ball, author of “Why Water is Weird” and Gerald Pollack from the Department of Bioengineering at the University of Washington, speaking on the “Fourth Phase of Water”.  

   

  For more information including a complete schedule visit: http://artscicenter.com/waterbodies-ex

   

  As a part of the University of Arizona School of Art Visiting Artists and Scholars Lecture Series, The Harrisons will give a talk titled "The Force Majeure - The Peninsula of Europe, The Tibetan Plateau and Sierra Nevada." The Force Majeure is featured in Projects link. 

  Tuesday, March 27, 5:30 PM

  Center of Creative Photography

  University of Arizona, Tucson

  520-621-7968

  http://www.uanews.org/node/45300

  Image: Peninsula Europe: The Force Majeure, 2008

  
  

• OTO HUDCEC EXHIBITING IN MARTIN, SLOVAK REPUBLIC

  
  

   

  March 17, 2012 - Oto Hudec is part of a group exhibition at Turčianska gallery in Martin, Slovak Republic

   

  Titled "Maľ'ba dovnútra / Painting inside" the exhibition features young Slovak painters, all graduates of The Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava, who share common artistic approaches to their work. Curator Lucia Miklošková writes, "Alienation, loneliness, the spirit of the place, man´s relationship to the environment, these are the themes that connect these authors."

   

  In addition to painting in a classical tradition, Hudec (who is a part of MAP's creative team) often works in Social Practice. Details about his project, "Instrument for Listening" which will be produced in the Amazon can be found in the Projects link.

   

  For more information about the exhibition:http://malbadovnutra.blogspot.com

   

  Image: Oto Hudec, Black Skier, 25 x 35 cm, oil and acrylic on canvas, 2008
  
  

• THE 20TH ANNUAL ENVIRONMENTAL FILM FESTIVAL IN WASHINGTON DC

  
  

  March 14, 2012 - The Environmental Film Festival in The Nation's Capital, from March 13 - 25, 2012  is dedicated to advancing environmental understanding through the power of film. It is the United State’s largest showcase of environmental film, attracting an audience of over 30,000. Beyond Washington, DC, the Festival has launched a movement, serving as a model for environmental film festivals across the country and around the world.

   

  This year's festival includes a screening of Beyond Pollution on March 16 at 12:00 noon, a penetrating expose on the worst manmade environmental disaster in America's history: The BP oil spill. Traveling thousands of miles across the most severely impacted areas of the Gulf; the Beyond Pollution team interviewed key experts, BP contractors, government officials, and others who were directly affected. This powerful film unveils what really happened, why, and who benefited. 

   

  For information about the film festival: http://www.dcenvironmentalfilmfest.org

   

  For more information about Beyond Pollution: http://www.beyondpollutionthefilm.com

   

   

  
  

• 2012 UNITED NATIONS INTERNATIONAL YEAR OF COOPERATIVES

  
  

  March 12, 2012 - The International Year of Co-operatives (IYC) celebrates business that is focused on human need where the members who own and govern the business collectively enjoy the benefits with the purpose of profit going to all stakeholders

   

  The United Nations has dedicated a website and is producing several events and activities around the world that investigate, promote and strengthen cooperatives.

   

  "The International Year of Cooperatives is intended to raise public awareness of the invaluable contributions of cooperative enterprises to poverty reduction, employment generation and social integration. The Year will also highlight the strengths of the cooperative business model as an alternative means of doing business and furthering socioeconomic development." From the UN's IYC website. 

   

   

  For more information visit: http://social.un.org/coopsyear
  
  

• THOUGHTS INSPIRED BY THE IRANIAN FILM "A SEPARATION"

  
  

   

  March 4, 2012 - This past weekend I went to see Asghar Farhadi’s A Separation, which recently won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. What struck me about the picture, besides the fact that it is a masterpiece of filmmaking raising many philosophical and moral questions, was how much it speaks to our common humanity. Tightly woven, emotionally powerful scenes such as an adult son breaking down in tears as he bathes his elderly father who suffers from dementia and one of two children, from families in conflict, joyfully playing together reflects a shared inner humanity that is deeper than ethnic, religious or political boundaries. The role of art as an instigator of this awareness is nothing new, but at a time of heightened international tension over Iran’s nuclear program and debates over the effectiveness of diplomacy versus military strikes, it seems to me that it is as important as ever for us to consciously think in terms of one humanity and recognize that each of us is part of a greater whole.

   

  Energy follows thought and the power of our thinking to envision a world into being where unity, harmony, cooperation, sharing and understanding are the norm should not be underestimated or scorned. The purpose of this thinking is not only for our own, individual benefit, but also for the benefit of humanity as a whole. Each of us has the power to be a mental agent of change. As John Perkins writes in his book, The World As You Dream It:

   

  ‘To create a new world we must first create a new dream’

   

  Providing a platform and support for new dreams and ideas is an essential part of MAP’s mission. Over the upcoming weeks we will be adding several new projects and expanding the resources link on the MAP website. Check in when you can to see how creative dreamers in the arts are manifesting their visions for positive change on our planet.

   

  With Warm Greetings and Much Thanks for your continued interest and support,

   

  Janeil Engelstad

   

   

  
  

• ANDES SPROUTS RESIDENCY

  
  

  March 1, 2012  -  The Andes Sprouts residency program invites artists, inventors and farmers  from around the world to participate creatively within the Catskill, New York region’s working landscape.  ASsociety residency program supports the inception, creation and presentation of original art projects encompassing new media and bio-art.  The ASS residency facilitates this cross disciplinary collaboration with a mobile residency program that travels to host farms in the Catskills. Built on a trailer frame, the residency cabin periodically will be moved to different host farms allowing the residents to create projects that interact with different forms of agriculture (for example, produce, livestock, agroforestry) in different years and seasons.

   

  Applications for the summer 2012 residency are due March 6

   

  For more information: http://andessproutsresidency.wordpress.com/residency-call-out-summer-2011

  
  

• PROVISIONS LIBRARY RESEARCH RESIDENCIES

  
  

  February 27, 2012 - Provisions Library, a non-profit instigator of arts and social change in Washington DC, is launching research residencies that investigate futures for creative civil society. The program will bring together four residents (artists, scholars, activists, and practitioners) for research-based projects that explore and extend social change themes. Participants will gain exposure to policies, practices, and politics while exploring transformative social imaginations and strategies. The rapidly changing urban and institutional landscape of Washington DC will serve as a platform, model, and resource to propose and prepare social futures. A letter of interest is due on March 1.

   

  For more information: http://provisionslibrary.com/?page_id=14925

  
  

• VOICES FROM THE CENTER / CZECH SLOVAK EDITION OF FLASH ART

  
  

  Feb 25, 2012 - The Spring 2012 Czech Slovak edition of Flash Art magazine has reviewed Voices From the Center a project and exhibition produced by MAP Founding Director, Janeil Engelstad. The exhibition, which was at threewalls in Chicago, was based on Engelstad's oral history project of the same name and included the work of artists from Central Europe. Oto Hudec and Matej Vakula, who have projects featured on the MAP web site and are also a part of MAP's organizational team, each created new work for the exhibition. For more information: http://three-walls.org/programs/threewallsx/voices-from-the-center.php

   

  Image: Installation shot of Janeil Engelstad's piece for Voices From the Center at threewalls, Chicago, 2011 

  
  

• SURVIVAL OF THE BEAUTIFUL

  
  

   

  February 21, 2012 - If you are anywhere near New York City this weekend get yourself to the Cantor Film Center at NYU for this wonderful program. Check out the web site, link below, to learn about the speciific events - JE

   

  SURVIVAL OF THE BEAUTIFUL

   

  Artists and Scientists Ponder the Aesthetics of Evolution

  AN ALL-DAY WONDERCABINET

  Guest Curated by David Rothenberg

  Saturday February 25, 2012

   

  Why did the peacock’s tail so trouble Charles Darwin?  Natural selection could not explain it, so he had to contrive a whole new theory of sexual selection, which posited that certain astonishingly beautiful traits became preferred even when not exactly useful, simply because they appealed to the opposite sex, and specifically so in each case.  And yet the parallels in what gets preferred at different levels of life suggest that nature may in fact favor certain kinds of patterns over others.  Visually, the symmetrical; colorwise, the contrasting and gaudy; displaywise, the gallant and extreme.  Soundwise, the strong contrast between low note and high, between fast rhythm and the long clear tone. For that matter, plenty of beauty in nature would seem to arise for reasons other than mere sexual selection: for example, the mysterious inscriptions on the backs of seashells, or the compounding geometric symmetries of microscopic diatoms, or the live patterns pulsating across the bodies of octopus and squid.

  
  

  Humans see such things and find them astonishingly beautiful: are we wrong to experience Nature in such terms?  Far greater than our grandest edifices and epic tales, Nature itself nevertheless seems entirely without purposeful self-consciousness or self-awareness.  Meanwhile, though we ourselves are as nothing compared to it, we still seem possessed of a parallel need to create.  So: can we in fact create our way into better understanding of the role of beauty in the vast natural world?  David Rothenberg recently published a book on these themes, Survival of the Beautiful (Bloomsbury, 2011), and many of the protagonists he encountered on his quest will join him on stage at the Cantor Film Center to debate the question of whether nature’s beauty is actual, imaginary, useful, excessive, or perhaps even entirely beside the point. 

   

  Cantor Film Center, 36 E. 8th Street, NYC
  Free & Open to the Public (first-come, first-in)

   

  for more information: http://nyihumanities.org/event/survival-of-the-beautiful

  
  

• GREENMEME DESIGN

  
  

  February 17, 2012 - Greenmeme Design, whose River Liver water remediation project (pictured) will be posted to the MAP website soon will be presenting their proof on concept for the San Jose Climate Clock Initiative to the public at Montalvo Arts Center in Saratoga, CA on Wednesday, Feb 22, 6:00 - 9:00 PM.

   

  One of three finalist teams from around the world, Greenmeme's Freya Bardell and Brian Howe have been working together with Brent Bucknum on the proposal for nearly two years. The Climate Clock will be a work of art that incorporates Silicon Valleys measurement, data management, and communications technologies to help people understand climate change, while encouraging them to continue reducing their carbon footprint on planet Earth.

   

  All three finalist teams will present their proof on concepts at Montalvo.

   

  For more information:  http://climateclock.wordpress.com

  
  

• REBECCA CARTER AT DALLAS MUSEUM OF ART

  
  

  Feb 13, 2012 - Rebecca Carter whose Sinage Works is a part of MAP has an installation at the Dallas Museum of Art. About the installation she writes:

   

  "A multitude of blue cloud-like, cat-like thready eyeballs gaze down from underneath the stairwell at passersby. The work addresses the human need to see and be seen that relates to the spectacle of fashion. The need to be seen is not only the need to be seen as object, but to be held in a loving gaze by another. The Eyeballs from Outer Space gaze continuously, neither blinking nor turning away. The arrangement of the Eyeballs in broken blue lines relates formally to the blue sailor stripes to which Gaultier returns over and over to re-invent: multiple horizons, sky-like and ocean-like.

   

  The work is made out of thread through a process of machine stitching onto a dissolvable matrix. The dissolvable matrix holds the stitches in place until enough linking occurs for the drawing to cohere. The matrix dissolves in water leaving only a network of threads. In the fashion industry this process is called “free lace.”

   

  The Eyeballs From Outerspace where originally conceived as a part of the installation, The Supposed Object.

   

  Link to Eyeballs From Outerspace on Rebecca Carter's website.

  http://www.rebeccacarter.org/archives/3536

   

   

  
  

• YOUTH RISING FOR PEACE SUMMITT

  
  

  Feb 9, 2012 - The Youth Rising for Peace Summitt is the first ever 24-hour global telesummit, Feb 11 - 12, 2012,  featuring young adult voices for peace from almost every time zone. Presented by the Shift Network and other global partners, the telesummit will introduce a full spectrum of peacebuilding activities - from inner peace to international peace. The event is about the participants who will gather virtually to hear and interact with dozens of peace builders - from New Zealand, Japan, Israel/Palestine, Costa Rica and every place in-between - all talking about the ideas, programs and projects that inspire them.  

   

  For more information and to register: http://youthrisingforpeace.com/feature/The-Peace-Alliance

   

  Participation is free

   

  
  

• HELEN AND NEWTON HARRISON

  
  

  February 4, 2012 - Helen and Newton Harrison, among the leading pioneers of the eco-art movement and a part of MAP will be participating in a panel discussion at the Athenaeum in La Jolla, California on Thursday, Feb 9 at 7:30 PM. Titled, "Art and the Crossover Phenomena" the panel also includes artist and writer Suzanne Lacy and Victoria Vesna, Media artist, author, Director of UCLA Arts/Sci Center. Look for The Harrison's work to be posted to the MAP website soon. For more information on the panel discussion visit: http://www.ljathenaeum.org/lectures.html

  Photo: Helen and Newton Harrison, Installation Shot, Ronald Feldman Fine Arts 2009

   
  
  

• EARTH FORUM BERLIN

  
  

  January 27, 2012 - Earth Forum is a stimulating and productive way of working in small groups to explore how we live together on this planet. But it's not just another talk shop! Earth Forum is a process of creative imagining and exchange that enables us to go beyond swapping opinions, arguments and debates. Earth Forum's unique process enhances two important capacities: the capacity to imagine and to actively listen.

   

  Earth Forum is a process in which everyone can contribute and participate. We invite you to donate a few hours of your time to this social sculpture process that opens up a space for working creatively with conflicting agendas, emphasizes the connections between inner and outer work (work within yourself) and highlights our capacities as agents of change to shape a humane and ecologically just future.

   

  Earth Forum Berlin – One forum lasts 2 to 3 hours and involves 8-12 participants, there are two forums a day: Monday – Friday, 20th – 24th of February, 11am – 2pm and 3pm – 6pm

  Earth Forum Berlin has been developed by University of the Trees-DE and with Citizens Art—Berlin 2012.

  Citizen Art Days is a 10 day festival including workshops, lectures, discussions and city excursions with and from artists who are interested in sustainability, economy and living together in the public space of Berlin.

   

  For more information:

  www.citizenartdays.de / earthforum@citizenartdays.de

  
  

• DAWN WELESKI EXHIBITION AT STANFORD

  
  

  January 20, 2112 - Dawn Weleski, whose project Conflict Kitchen (a collaboration with Jon Rubin) will soon be featured on MAP's website is part of an exhibition opening on January 20 at Stanford in Palo Alto, CA. In addition to work created for gallery exhibition Ms. Weleski has created a sound piece.  The Hoover Institution for War, Revolution, and Peace on campus will play anthems from the recent revolutions in the Middle East, curated by citizens from each country and transposed by a UC Santa Cruz and Israeli composer for the carillon in the tower of the Hoover.  The songs will be played over the next year during the first anniversary of each revolution, beginning in February.

   

  http://art.stanford.edu/news-events/events-calendar/view/1516/?date=2012-01-17

   

   

  
  

  Image: Hoover Tower, Stanford University campus

   

  
  

• NEW YEAR'S GREETINGS FROM MAP

  
  

  Each New Year contains within its time-span unforeseen social and political events, personal joys and challenges, and change. While we cannot know all that will happen to us in 2012, we can set intentions and goals that are supported by our spirit, will, energy and work. At MAP, in 2012, we intend to produce web content and programs that contributes to the well being of humanity and the planet. Our vision for the year is one of inclusion, hope, and positive change. We do not know how big or small the changes from our efforts will be, but we do know that with your support and by working together we can have a positive impact that ripples outward beyond our individual lives. Thank you for visiting the Make Art with Purpose website. The MAP team wishes you a creative and joyful 2012.

  
  

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