NEW PROJECT; International Virtual Event on Global Warming in an Insane World

In an effort to address global warming and political polarization, I will be organizing a virtual event for late August. It will tie together several issues at international real world sites. I am in the early stages of planning it as part of,"The Cities and Oceans of If" project, for this web site. It will culminate in a 1-2 day on site concert late August.

Participating agencies so far include, curator Anke Mellin, of Germany and the 2006 Geumgang Nature Art Biennale 2006, Gongju, South-Korea, the Khoj International Workshop in New Delhi, India and Verdearte in Pescia, Italy. These are fabulous people/venues with whom-which I had the opportunity to participate this Summer. I decided I couldn't go anywhere. Instead, I am going to do something in cyberspace. The event will be a combination of pre-scanned/recorded/loaded and real time visual and acoustic elements.

This was all thought out before North Korea sent missiles into the Indian Ocean and bombs killed commuters in Mumbai.

I will regularly write about the evolving ideas, thinking about and plans for this event on this blog. There will be a separate page on my web site for the visual elements. The acoustic element will include the found sounds of people interacting with natural resources.

For several months I have been aware that I travel too much. Too much means too much jet fuel spewed over the earth and her waters and too much physical exhaustion for me to be as effective as I'd like or to live a sane life.... all with the goal of ecological triage. That is an oxymoron. One goal cancels the other goal.

So I'm not physically going anywhere this Summer, except into town to pick up my mail and get my groceries from time to time. It is exciting and stimulating to have the chance to work in remote locations, as I have had the opportunity to do, but it is also problemmatic. Can we connect all these local sites with a broad overview? Don't we need to be midnful of the global context that makes it so difficult to do that?

Bombs, bombs, bombs everywhere creating carnage, misery and further polarization. When we are so rattled by these threats to personal survival, how to address what remains for many, the still abstract idea of global warming, even if global warming will imminently affect far more of us personally than terrorism? It is very much like being a victim of any abuse: the struggle for day to day survival, eventually makes bigger problems seem remote.

But Horse chestnuts grow in Pescia as well as New Delhi and are both impacted by and are a resource for human life. India has water issues, as does my little island. In Korea, artists have gathered from all over the world to work on environmental projects, even as North Korea launches missiles that will contribute to global warming. It is all one mosaic to decipher, one more set of tea leaves to make sense out of.

Anke Mellin writes, "Imagine- all the so called Nature Artists refuse to travel like before (plane- long journeys by car etc). Only those who are living where the exhibition takes place are participating, others are invited to make a work which is based on a dialog between those who live in the region and the artist living far away. etc. etc. "