City as Living Laboratory
Mary Miss has reshaped the boundaries between sculpture, architecture, landscape design, and installation art by articulating a vision of the public sphere where it is possible for an artist to address the issues of our time. She has developed the “City as Living Lab”, a framework for making issues of sustainability tangible through collaboration and the arts. Mary Miss has collaborated closely with architects, planners, engineers, ecologists, and public administrators on projects as diverse as creating a temporary memorial around the perimeter of Ground Zero, marking the predicted flood level of Boulder, Colorado, revealing the history of the Union Square Subway station in New York City or turning a sewage treatment plant into a public space. Recent projects include an installation focused on water resources in China for the Olympic Park in Beijing and a temporary installation at a seventeenth-century park in Delhi, India as part of the exhibition 49°: Public Art and Ecology.
In September of 2003 in Ljubljana, Slovenia, English-speaking U.S. artists Deidre Hoguet and Peter Walsh created a series of street actions that focused on the relationship between languages and power. The project featured 13 separate performances, with each artist interacting directly with hundreds of people, a gallery exhibition at P74, artist lectures and two public discussions (one at the 16 Beaver Group in Manhattan and a second in Ljubljana). The English word “tongue” and the Slovenian word “jezik” can both – with slightly different connotations – mean either language or the actual tongue in your mouth.
With the collective help of the citizens of Ljubljana, Peter Walsh attempted the impossible: learning to speak and write Slovene in just three weeks (photo gallery).
PieLab, an initiative of Project M, is focused on community development and engagement in Hale County, AL.
PieLab is a welcoming community space on Greensboro’s Main Street that provides delicious pie and coffee, as well as retail and hospitality job training for local youth through the YouthBuild Program. More than simply a pie shop, PieLab operates as a community design center focusing on community development projects and small business incubation in Greensboro and the surrounding five counties.
muf art projects critically intersect at the point between desire and experience, object and idea, how we live and who we are. In each situation the creative process is the mechanism to involve and inspire the potential viewer as participant or co-author of the work.
Projects include temporary and permanent interventions in a range of media; video projections, lighting projects, interventions, bespoke street furniture and signage in urban and rural locations. muf have worked with formal and informal groups that include pensioners, refugees, youth groups and young children.
fixcity.org is about taking small steps to fix your city. Our first endeavor, FixCity:Bike Racks, is a social mapping application designed to “crowdsource” community and government collaboration in the gathering, planning, and implementing new bike racks.
This application encourages residents and community organizations to suggest new bike racks, verify suggested locations, gather statements of support from the broader community, and finally submit a “shovel-ready” bulk order to the Department of Transportation. This application is designed to use the best of today’s web technology to enable smart ways to meaningfully and efficiently match residents’ wants with city services.
A Revolving Storefront in Brooklyn, NYC
303GRAND is the newest and most unique retail rental space in Brooklyn, New York. Located in the hip and trendy neighborhood of Williamsburg, 303GRAND provides brands, artists, and organizations an opportunity to create an experiential pop-up store or retail experience with minimal time or budget commitment.
The Facts
Location: 303 Grand St., Brooklyn, New York 11211
Rental Timeframe: 1 day – 3 months*
Space: Up to 800 square feet of prime retail real estate
Nancy Klem’s Spontaneous Vegetation project is amazing…. Here is one of the projects initiated by the endeavor: Neighborhood Orchard started when Trevino, who lives three houses down from me, refused to take money for jerry rigging my ancient furnace. Instead he asked me, in exchange for the work he completed, to plant him an apple tree. “Yes! Yes! Yes!” I replied immediately understanding the complexity and depth of what he revealed in terms of a different way of working one that was more linking and pervasive than the cash economy. As a result of similar exchanges, four years later, Neighborhood Orchard is a loosely organized, scattered 3/4 acres of Little Village yards and one satellite site. Some yards are more intensely planted. Others are less so, a most backyards are multifunctional, used for both recreation and numerous informal economy activities — car repair, food preparation, scrap storage, etc. Medicinal and culinary herbs, vegetables and fruit are exchanged between the participants. Tools and skills are readily shared when called upon.
Dutch Artistic Research Event: DARE # 4, September 4 – September 13.
In recent years the term spatial practice has been established as a term to describe new forms of interdisciplinary (research) practices that are responding to the rapid transformations of the contemporary city and the politics of territorial relations. This symposium both describes the critical analysis of spatial relations, and various forms of interventionist strategies that are being devised by architects, artists, designers, urbanists and curators. During 2006 MaHKU (The Utrecht Graduate School of Visual Art and Design/Professorship Artistic Research) initiated a series of research activities resulting in an annual manifestation named Dutch Artistic Research Event (DARE). The fourth edition of this event will take place from September 4 – September 13. Five locations in the city of Utrecht – Academiegalerie, Aorta, Centraal Museum, Dutch Design Center, Studio Hoograven – will not only be platforms for graduate presentations, but will also offer room for research-screenings and parallel panel discussions.
A colony of geodesic domed tents for temporary colonization, squatting, taking over, and making yourself at home / X INITIATIVE / the former Dia building / 548 West 22nd Street, New York, NY / July 9 – October 24, 2009.
Dome Colony X in the San Gabriels welcomes people to spend time in a mountain colony of intimate dome spaces focused on a central round platform stage. The walls are painted with a continuous silhouette of Los Angeles’ San Gabriel Mountains, which is echoed in the form of the continuous perimeter seating system. A space devoted to film screenings is provided for the EAI Cinema, and a neighboring bookstore for DAP Artbooks. The main space is a shifting encampment or colony of domes serving as gathering and meeting spaces starting with four geodesic dome tents, including one for EAI film club meetings, another for book-related events organized by DAP Artbooks, and the others open for use as clubhouse, for regular meetings, and general encampment and occupation for intimate organized activities. Each dome will have it’s own schedule of events on display, and when not programmed are available for lounging, reading and gathering. Check back for regular updates on the dome colony activities and occupants.
I am now in Chicago at Residency via InCUBATE Chicago – The Institute for Community Understanding between Art and the Everyday! I wanted to start off with a blog post about Mess Hall started by Temporary Services and many other artists. If you find yourself in Chicago – stop by InCUBATE and find me! So many art spaces, gardens and more to explore!
Mess Hall is an experimental cultural center. It is a place where visual art, radical politics, creative urban planning, applied ecological design and other things intersect and inform each other. We host exhibitions, discussions, film screenings, brunchlucks (brunch + potluck), workshops, concerts, campaigns, meetings (both closed and open) and more.
In September of 2003 in Ljubljana, Slovenia, English-speaking U.S. artists Deidre Hoguet and Peter Walsh created a series of street actions that focused on the relationship between languages and power. The project featured 13 separate performances, with each artist interacting directly with hundreds of people, a gallery exhibition at P74, artist lectures and two public discussions (one at the 16 Beaver Group in Manhattan and a second in Ljubljana). The English word “tongue” and the Slovenian word “jezik” can both – with slightly different connotations – mean either language or the actual tongue in your mouth.
