Fish Story launching on Rockethub

I have made the decision to set aside work on my dissertation so I can focus entirely on producing Fish Story for May. I'm diving in with both feet and beginning my launch with Rockethub to start raising some serious financial support. This is the project description that will go on line in 24 hours:

Fish Story is a May 2013 participatory public art project about water and habitat for Memphis, TN. 

  Fish Story is about how the lives of fish in the Mississippi River reflect global environmental challenges. It is planned by artist Aviva Rahmani for May 2013, Memphis, TN, as part of the city-wide Memphis Social, apexart franchise exhibition curated and organized by Beautiful Fields. Fish Story is based on four years of art/ science research with Gulf to Gulf, a series of webcasts about global warming. The project is designed as a model for artists, scientists, conservationists and activists to work together on ecosystem problems. Fish Story will unfold in 4 stages: 1. Traversing river tributaries, 2. Mapping knowledge at Crosstown Arts, Memphis, TN., 3. Interpretive installation at Memphis College of Art, 4. Webcast public discussion about implications of what was learned and national options: May 11, 2011. 

First advance press for Fish Story

http://juicyheads.com/

I'm pleased to provide this link to the first media press for Fish Story. The visual is on the site of JUICYHEADS and in earlier posts here. The text is as follows:

Fish Story: Memphis is the center of the world. 

I'm interested in redefining public art as personal accountability to bioregions and environmental justice. That work includes creating strategies that catalyze overlapping constituencies to effect ecosystem resilience in the anthropocene.
Fish Story was created for Memphis Social, at the invitation of Tom McGlynn cofounder of "Beautiful Fields," (awarded the domestic 2013 franchise support grant from apexart). It is conceived as public art that straddles science, performance art and environmental restoration work to engage people in the conservation and restoration of waterways.
Memphis is the center of the world symbolically and continentally. It is significantly located along the Mississippi River, in the third largest watershed in the world, heavily polluted by factory farming upstream, which contributes to dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico down stream. The city has been characterized as a racially divided, economically depressed community in which large numbers of young people have little access to opportunity or quality education. Memphis also has a rich history of activist volunteerism. These characteristics make it a good paradigm for the kinds of global circumstances and local engagement that determines water quality.