Steep Trail Conference - Collaboration : Improving the Model

12 June 2013
9.30-4.00
Brunton Theatre, Ladywell Way, Musselburgh, EH21 6AA

The event is free but places must be booked. To book your place email admin@edinburghsculpture.org or call Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop on 0131 551 4490.

The nature of collaboration, particularly cross-disciplinary, is examined with a view to asking how current models of collaboration function, and ways in which they could be improved.

This day-long conference is being organised as part of Steep Trail, an international project set up by Polarcap, Fife Contemporary Art & Craft and Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop, to explore the legacy of John Muir and his continuing relevance to current environmental and cultural debate in the 21st century with a keynote speech by Dr Iain Biggs of the University of the West of England and chaired by Ben Twist of Creative Carbon Scotland.

The project has developed through several strands, art/eco labs were established along the East coast of Scotland which brought together artists, scientists and environmental activists to follow John Muir’s example of physical and intellectual exploration through walking and talking. Participants met over two days to discuss their work within the contexts of climate change, public dissemination and social impact. Talks about the project have allowed other organisations within and outside of Scotland to use this model, and artist exchanges and exhibitions set up between China and Scotland in 2012 have widened the context of the discussion.

Using themes identified from these activities, the conference seeks to bring together strands of shared concerns between artists, scientists and writers including conservation, sustainability, climate change and the role of contemporary art in helping to foster effective dialogues.

Ben Twist (Chair): Carbon and Arts Management Consultant, Creative Carbon Scotland

Dr Iain Biggs: Director PLaCE, University of the West of England

Prof David Munro: Historical geographer, author of ‘Scotland: An Encyclopedia of Places and Landscape’

Mary Modeen, artist and Senior Lecturer in Fine art and Art and Philosophy at the University of Dundee. Convener PLaCE, Scotland

Claudia Zeiske, Director Deveron Arts,

Rania Ho, artist in Beijing, Co-founder of Arrow Factory, Partner at Kupa Studios, Steep Trail exchange artist to Scotland

Graeme Todd, artist, co-founder of Polarcap and Steep Trail exchange artist to China

Dr Alexandra Wortley, Royal Botanic Gardens and Hamer Dodds, artist, cross disciplinary practitioners

Chris Fremantle, producer, researcher, writer cultural historian,

Supported by Steep Trail Project, University of Edinburgh: Knowledge Exchange, East Lothian Arts Services: ELC and Creative Scotland

How to get there:

Location

Transport options:

Train,

Lothian Buses (26, 44) 30-40 mins from outside Waverley Station Edinburgh.

“Ireland’s public forests are at a point where, non clearfell, continuous cover forest systems need to be introduced and supported to fully realise the full long term economic, environmental and amenity values of Ireland’s forests.”

Helen Mayer Harrison and Newton Harrison would, we are sure, endorse this – it’s the sort of Policy that they were proposing in amongst other works, the Serpentine Lattice.

Matthew Flintham coined the phrase “Military Pastoral Complex” for Gair Dunlop’s work.

Gair’s new book is photographs and a few texts from a long-term photography and video project documenting the slow closure of RAF Coltishall. Cold War and Battle of Britain mythologies combine. The roots of the Military Pastoral Complex are evident.

Get the book here.

Gair’s website: www.atomtown.org.uk

Reblogged from seeing & tending the forest: toward deep sustainability:

Join the Masters students of Art, Space, and Nature (ECA) for a private viewing of our exciting final show. WHYLD is an exhibition of works that manifest our various interpretations of the concept of wilderness. The show opens 23rd of May from 5pm to 8pm at Patriot Hall Gallery. Speak with the artists and enjoy food and refreshments.

Eden3, Collins & Goto, 2006 ongoing

ecoartscotland is pleased to partner with Creative Carbon Scotland and Edinburgh College of Art to present Collins & Goto’s Spirit in the Air at the Edinburgh Art Festival 2013.

Collins & Goto, the eminent US ecological artists now based in Scotland, will present new work, using the Tent Gallery as a base of operations and performance to explore the actual rate and flow of CO2 in the environment in Edinburgh.  This project asks the question If humans produce gas in cities and there are no trees around to breathe it, does anyone care?

Ecoartscotland is pleased to include this collection as part of the ecoartscotland occasional papers.  There are hi res and lo res version available for download here: Su_Grierson_Corresponding_from_Fukushima_Province_Japan_hi_res Su_Grierson_Corresponding_from_Fukushima_Province_Japan_lo_res

Alternatively should we analyse what services we provide to ecosystems?  This question was raised by Shai Zakai recently during a discussion about ecosystem services.  It seems to focus precisely the problem with the ecosystems services approach, which is that it leaves us as the beneficiary of the services, limiting our responsibility to those we can comprehend.

For some useful background on this subject see the Arts and Environment network at CIWEM resource on Natural Capital, and in particular their introductory document From Microbes to Mountains.

The review addresses the approaches of the three photographers and comments on their aesthetic and art historical context.  There is a larger piece of work which would encompass, for instance, the also important books by James Marriott/PLATFORM including Next Gulf: London, Washington and the Oil Conflict in Nigeria and The Oil Road: Journeys from the Caspian Sea to the City of London.

These books provide a counterpoint because rather than focusing on the visual in the context of the industrial, they narrate the relationship between the impact on the lives of people living with the oil industry and our lives in London, or Scotland, or wherever and how we are complicit through financial investments, whether that’s JP Morgan Chase or Royal Bank of Scotland.