(Jules Rochielle curates the Social Practices Art Network newsfeed, and shares works and artist opportunities with Groundswell.)
Invisible-5 (2006) investigates the stories of people and communities fighting for environmental justice along the I-5 corridor, in California’s San Fernando Valley, through oral histories, field recordings, found sound, recorded music, and archival audio documents. The project also traces natural, social, and economic histories along the route.
LANDSAT Image of the San Fernando Valley, facing north towards Pacoima, showing the perimeter of the North Hollywood (Area 1) groundwater contamination Superfund zone. North Hollywood is one of four areas of groundwater contamination within the San Fernando Valley Basin, and consists of two parts, the North Hollywood Operable Unit (OU) and the Burbank OU.
I-5 is an important pathway for residents, migrants, shippers, and more, as well as the nonhuman life that copes with its impact. The high speed artery connects Los Angeles with San Francisco, and is an Intermodal Corridor of Economic Significance, to use the state’s term, codified under California law as a vital resource for national and international trade. Given the high traffic along the route, and the industries that call it home, the lenght of I-5 is highly contaminated with pollutants.
Often, there is little to see, smell, or taste of the mostly invisible pollutants: benzene and perchlorate in the water, dioxin and PM2.5 in the air. For residents along the I-5 corridor, often these manifest as just a hazy sky, a faint odor, or the sense that something tastes different about the water. . . And the movement of traffic along the I-5 itself creates a river of moving air, where sprayed pesticides mix with diesel emissions, creating a moving stream dense with small particulate matter.
The work takes the form of four CDs, downloadable as MP3s, to guide the listener along the highway landscape as though they were on a museum audio tour. Mixing elements of critical tourism, sonic experiment, audio documentary, and investigative journalism, Invisible-5 is a collaboration between three artists and two organizations. The collaborators on Invisible-5 are artists Amy Balkin and Kim Stringfellow, audio lead Tim Halbur, and organizations Greenaction for Health and Environmental Justice, and Pond: Art, activism, and ideas.
Invisible-5 was included in the exhibition JUST SPACE(S) at LACE, Los Angeles in fall 2007, organized by Ava Bromberg and Nicholas Brown, and in Citizen Artists Making Emphatic Arguments at Casa de Tunel, Tijuana, in 2008.
A new radio documentary on radical marching bands is available from the National Radio Project’s Making Contact.
You’ll hear from members of Infernal Noise Brigade about the efficacy of this kind of protest (and why they decided to disband), from Brass Liberation Orchestra players about their Left-unity mission, their Bad Hotel intervention, and more.
The documentary is a great expository and thinks through some of the sticky issues that have been raised in numerous HONK! Festival workshops, like militancy, cultural appropriation, and the role of public joy in protest. New listeners and longtime participants alike should take a listen.
Via: Mail. Thanks, Dashal!
Disclosure: I help(ed) to organize HONK! Festival mentioned above and in the piece, along with Groundswell guest blogger Susie Husted.
Joe Bigley is touring Afghanistan, creating what may be the largest ever social sculpture. This Afghanistan is not the territory that comes to mind, that geopolitical entity bordering China, Pakistan, Iran, and the others, but only its outline, traced within the United States, with a 3,435.5 mile bicycle ride beginning and ending at Ground Zero.
Bigley’s undertaking, Travsersing a Foreign Border Domestically, began on May 12, 2011, and this date is significant for a number of reasons. Joseph Beuys was born on that day 90 years prior, Operation Enduring Freedom (America’s post-9/11 war on Afghanistan) will turn 10 soon after the project is completed, and ten days prior to its commencement, Osama bin Laden was assassinated in Pakistan. As he describes:
The timing of this project is crucial to its impact and execution. . . July, 2011 is the proposed time for the scale down to the troop surge that was announced in November 2009. The complexity and emotional resonance that this conflict has established in the world psyche and the anticipated media focus on the scale down can very well assist in a public willingness to share ideas regarding this topic.
Bigley hand built his bike trailer out of bamboo, steel and sheet aluminum
Similar to Jeremy Deller’s It Is What It Is: Conversations About Iraq (2009), T.F.B.D. makes no pretense to offer a solution to the conflict, preferring instead to make the focus public engagement, to have a conversation with participants along the way about the war and its effects. The artist claims a neutral stance, no doubt hoping not to skew the temperament of those who would engage with the project, but within this weighty context, and with the assistance of geographers, curators, and others, Bigley will engage in what he considers to be an act of solidarity, of temporary displacement and physical exertion that he admits is a voluntary, but nonetheless an empathetic gesture.
Via Jules Rochielle
(Susie Husted is a Boston-based social justice activist. Her relationship with the Foundry dates back to 2005 when the Foundry invited her and other Boston Social Forum organizers to speak at a social forum teach-in for NYC artists.)
New York City’s Foundry Theatre sets a rigorous standard for artist and activist collaboration. In 2010, they re-imagined their city through a intense series of public forums exploring topics from the policing of sex and gender to isolation and injustice in the workplace, and produced five new theatrical works this spring for their NYC…Just Like I Pictured It festival including an adaptation of the 1937 labor musical Pins & Needles in collaboration with FUREE, Families United for Racial and Economic Equality, running at Brooklyn’s Irondale Center through July 9.
Boston will have a chance to experience the Foundry’s unique theatrical vision this summer and fall with the production How Much is Enough: Our Values in Question, exploring the fundamental concepts of value in our communities. Partially inspired by reading Marx’s Capital, playwright Kirk Lynn, and Foundry artistic director, Melanie Joseph, have developed a production requiring an interactive audience for each rehearsal – giving the Boston public a unique opportunity to help create and shape the play before it officially hits the stage. Check the ArtsEmerson website for August rehearsal and September show dates. (For NYC folks, email the Foundry for July rehearsals in Manhattan.)
How Much is Enough is the Foundry’s third collaboration with Austin-based Kirk Lynn after 2006’s Major Bang, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Dirty Bomb, and 2001’s Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the 20th Century, an adaptation of Marcus Griel’s cult classic of the same name.
Founded by Melanie Joseph in 1994, the Foundry’s productions have been critically recognized and honored with eight Obie Awards and three Drama Desk nominations for “Unique Theatrical Experience.” In 2000, The Foundry received the Ross Wetzsteon Obie Award for its “overall contribution to the Off and Off-Off Broadway community” as a theater that both “fosters new envelope-pushing work and that engages artists in the thorniest issues of the world we inhabit” and most recently received the 2011 national Peter Zeisler Award in recognition of “innovative practice and dedication to freedom of expression.”
Kirk Lynn is a playwright-in-residence at the University of Texas at Austin, and co-founder and Co-Producing Artistic Director of the Austin theater collective Rude Mechanicals. Kirk’s original scripts include Pale Idiots, Cherrywood, Requiem for Tesla, and El Paraiso: An Humiliation of Pleasures.
(Susie Husted is social justice activist inspired by projects exploring art and activism in the Boston area including those of the LPC and Rough Mountain Studios.)
Longtime Boston radical bookstore, Lucy Parsons Center, has purchased its own storefront after more than forty years of operation. They are moving on up to 358A Centre Street this summer.
Before this move, LPC had been at the same home for more than a dozen years. 549 Columbus Ave has seen hundreds of local, national and international radicals gather for organizing meetings, potlucks, book talks and much more over the years – and thanks to the building owner, the tradition will not stop once LPC moves to its new home in Jamaica Plain next month.
The building owner at 549 Columbus Ave has turned down offers from major chain stores, deciding instead to rent to Justin Francese and Danielle Connor from Rough Mountain Studios. The two collaborators are turning the site in a social justice and mission-drive artists collective. Planned as combined work, inspiration, collaboration and gallery space, 549 Columbus Ave has not seen the last of the radicals yet!
Joining Rough Mountain Studios at Columbus Ave are Quilted (Ben Mauer, web development), Golden Arrows (Nerissa Cooney & Alex Hage, graphic design) and Kelly Creedon (documentary photography & multimedia production), but space is still available for other interested artists!
An Open House for friends and potential collaborators will be Monday, July 11th, 6-9:00pm.
Contact Justin and Danielle at CreativeCoopSpace@gmail.com for more information!
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