A Domestic Revolution?

I had the amazing good fortune last week to go to Amsterdam to meet an extraordinary group of artists from around the world for work.

While there, I happened across a "The Grand Domestic Revolution (User's Manual)," a project being organized by Casco, a space that explores art in the public realm. Utterly taken by how closely related the project felt to Survival Postures, I was incredibly excited to be able to attend one night of "The Kitchen," a 10 day project where Casco set up a communal kitchen open to whoever wanted to come, at W139, another art space in the city. Every night, 2 teams cooked together, and people doing interesting artistic and political work throughout the city were invited to come talk, present or play around. It was a chaotic, critical, yummy scene, and it was ripe with the kind of participation it takes to make what can be a sad domestic task (like making dinner), into a party.

I was impressed by breadth of people they'd gotten involved, and the crossing over that happened even in the one night I was there, much less the whole 10 days.

Here's a link to the radio show that was being produced from the Kitchen for Red Light radio, with a quick interview one of the organizers Binna Choi, did with me about Survival Postures. It starts around 29:30, but the whole show will give you a sense of what the Kitchen was.

http://www.redlightradio.net/shows/w139radio/kitchen139-08-december-15th

Here are links to other shows from the Kitchen series:
http://www.redlightradio.net/shows/w139radio

And pictures from the series:
http://w139.nl/en/article/20350/kitchen139/

Great news from across the ocean!

The Power of Pizza

Realized recently that I never really broadcast out the story that ran in The Plain Dealer about building the cob oven on Blaine, which is a shame, because the more we can share what an inspiring moment that was, the better.

I've never participated in anything that captured so much curiosity-- and then channeled the curiosity into people wanting to take part in what was happening. That oven was masterful at drawing people together, into conversation, into playing in the mud, into eating pizza in the company of neighbors and strangers...

Go oven! And go Blaine Avenue!

http://www.cleveland.com/taste/index.ssf/2011/08/handmade_pizza_oven_draws_fans.html

And here's more on City Rising Farm:
http://www.cityrisingfarm.com

Fort #1 Gets Built Last Week... All is Good.

Cob Oven! Wow! We Built This! It Was Fun!

This exists now on Blaine Avenue, due to the rock 'em sock 'em team of Josh Koppen and Elle Adams, assisted by a motley and eager crew of helpers. More pictures at: http://picasaweb.google.com/102761565216320118200

Full Circle Mirror Image @ SPACES July 10

Join us at SPACES for an evening that's all about the plants and the people.

Maurice Small and Johnny Coleman collaborate on 'Full Circle Mirror Image', a living tribute to the full life cycle of one tenacious urban crop-- collard greens. A mirror installation inside and outside the gallery will both cook and grow collard greens, and tell the sensory story of what good food can do to bring people together.

In that spirit, we'll share a light, locally-sourced dinner and some good company.

For the last twenty years, artist Johnny Coleman has composed spaces activated as prayers: requests for guidance, conscious statements of intent, and thanksgiving. His process spans poetry, performance, and a sculptural format that integrates the dramatic presentation of a stage set with the oral tradition of storytelling, while consciously focusing upon private spaces that sometimes exist in the absence of a performer. He has exhibited extensively throughout the U.S., and continues to collaborate with artists nationally.

Master composter, worm translator, food broker and urban advocate Maurice Small has been building urban food systems, creating soil and training youth entrepreneurs for over twenty years. As Learning Garden Director at the Cleveland Botanical Gardens and Co-founder of City Fresh (a project that built food access in Cleveland neighborhoods, while improving urban market access for rural farmers), his work has taken the region by storm. Most recently he's been organizing on food access in Youngstown, and acting as Chief Compost Officer for Spencer’s Boy at www.mauricesmall.tumblr.com.

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Full Circle Mirror Image
with Maurice Small and Johnny Coleman
Sunday, July 10, 5:00-7:30 pm
SPACES
2220 Superior Viaduct

Suggested donation $5-10 at the door. No one turned away for lack of funds. To reserve your spot and guarantee yourself a plate, please call or email SPACES: 216.621.2314 or contact@spacesgallery.org.

Soil Repair as Wishful Thought...

This week, a proposal on doing large-scale soil repair in Cleveland that I submitted with The Green Triangle was accepted by this AMAZING project from the Institute for Wishful Thinking (www.theiwt.com). They asked for proposals on what we think the government should be doing and supporting-- and are working to promote those who responded as Artists in Residence with the US Government. It's an exciting vision for bringing people-based design work into public policy.

All the proposals they received are online, so check it out!

Animal Alphabet Shout

This book of collages I made for my incredibly charming nephew Noah this Christmas may get printed for wider consumption this summer. Keep your eyes out. But for the moment, here's a photo I just came across again of all the pieces laid out...

Here's What Happened at Survival Postures

A website documenting the Survival Postures project and exhibition (which happened at SPACES on March 20) is up and running! Check it out at: www.survivalpostures.weebly.com.

Standing Tall

Responses on Survival Postures have been incredible! Around twenty folks from Cleveland and beyond jumped head first into this social experiment, and have taken on some amazing projects.

Cleveland puppeteer Diana Sette worked with a master weaver to learn how to process and spin wool, and built a large-scale “human loom” made out of people. Emelio DiSabato and Joel Solow chipped away at snow on the Abbey Bridge in Tremont, attempting to clear a path on one of the two walkways into their neighborhood that becomes unpassable to pedestrians and cyclists after snow, often for days on end. Simon and Giulia, members of a new farm collective in New York state, began the process of brewing a cup tea from scratch and spent the month learning how you decide what trees in a healthy woodland can be harvested for firewood and how to use a chainsaw. Maria Miranda, of Cleveland’s Whisper to a Scream, translated the assignment into what it takes to survive within culture as it currently stands. She spent the month being “beauty-compliant,” wearing makeup and fashionable clothes, processing her hair, and consuming the media and products marketed to her to craft a “successful look”. Several people learned how to sew for the first time, Carmen Tracey making homemade menstrual pads after researching the toxicity of feminine hygiene products.

These folks and many more will show their stuff at the Survival Postures community dinner and exhibit held at SPACES on Sunday, March 20 at 5:30 pm. Come be a part of it!

Time to Work on that Survival Posture...

Coming up this winter at SPACES gallery in Cleveland: a group social experiment. Wanna join in? Read on for more details.

There’s been a lot of conversation lately among people I know who are social experimenters about the profound disconnection of the work many of us do to raise income from the work that actually supports our survival and the well-being of our communities.

Many of us are seeking to do work that directly provides for our community’s basic needs (growing our own food is just one example). This is a tremendously powerful thing to seek.

Yet, I think it’s important to realize that as a culture, we are very much in infancy when it comes to being actors in our own survival. Many skills basic to our survival are things we do not know how to do anymore. Beyond that, we have not often flexed the muscles that make us providers rather than consumers. A whole new set of cultural practices need to be created that support the strength of these muscles.

In the interest of building these muscles, I’d like to take a cue from feminist performance artist Mierle Laderman Ukeles, who, since the late 1960’s has used her art to make visible a hidden, stigmatized world of maintenance work that shores up our whole society. She has said that her work is a conscious attempt to re-link cultural practice with how we practice our own survival, saying that, “Art begins at the same level as basic survival systems.”

The point of the Survival Postures project is to re-link culture and survival deep within our own bodies.

Here’s the assignment: Choose a task that’s essential to your survival or well-being, or the well-being of your community, that you don’t know how to do. Then, sometime this February, learn how to do it.

You’ll document your learning (in photos, on film, in writing or in an audio interview). These will be exhibited at a dinner held at SPACES art gallery in Cleveland on Sunday, March 20 at 5:30. Participating artists are invited to be there to talk about your experience with people who show up.

The task you choose is up to you. It may not be an obvious thing or one that’s even physical. The important thing is that it’s something you feel is central to your well-being that you don’t know how to do for yourself. Choose something doable, and something you’re really motivated to learn.

How you go about learning it is also up to you. You can do it collaboratively, by yourself, consult a teacher or books, take a class… You can take the entire month of February or 2 hours to get it done. Whatever it takes. The point is to learn the task on a deep bodily level, to get to the point where you understand and adopt the posture of that task as survival posture, not a consumer posture.

If you’re interested in taking part, get a hold of me at stewardsoflostlands@gmail.com, and let me know what you might like to work on!