Fish Story update

I've been adding images of my visual progress towards the two events below, on FB each day for the past couple weeks. The FB screen shot above is from an album posted yesterday, of what I saw on Beale St, at A.L. Green's service and at Graceland. My impressions both seem on a continuum of what I saw on the Wolf River Saturday and in contrast to the green and subtle sounds I saw from the canoe I shared with Gene Turner, with whom I've been working since he joined me Friday. Tomorrow, before the participatory mapping @ Crosstown Arts, we will start installing at the Memphis College of Art.

Tuesday: 6:PM CT May 7, 2013 @ Crosstown Arts, Memphis, I will speak for a few min of intro, then give out instructions for an interactive, role-playing "Anthropocene Game" about environmental dynamics that affect fish habitat (and human survival). After the game, people will be asked to find a place to sit down, close their eyes and consider what might have been learned from the exercize, as I sing to them. Then we will start to map the insights & experiences people can share about fish & fish habitat, on a large piece of butcher paper, with markers, while discussing relationships between these local problems. Finally, there will be refreshments.

Saturday: 2:PM CT May 7, 2013 @ Memphis College of Art (MCA), Memphis, there will an unknown audience number viewing a webcast projection in a room with an installation @ MCA (detail images or earlier on this page) and interacting with about 7 people internationally, discussing how issues local to Memphis about fish habitat relate to other issues both nationally & internationally that are serious ecological problems:

The location is 477 South Main, The Hyde Gallery at the Nesin Graduate School Memphis College of Art (Downtown campus). I will host an open, public webcast comparing global bioregional habitat concerns. Webcast participants will include ecological art practitioners: curators Yvonne Senouf and Corinne Weber of M.E.L.D. of shows on global warming and endangered river systems; Amy Lipton, ecological art co-curator with Tricia Watts for ecoartspace; artist Eve Andree Laramee who works on radioactivity; artist Ruth Hardinger whose work focuses on fracking; artist Lenore Malin who experienced Sandy in NYC; Fish Story team members Dr. Eugene Turner, wetlands ecological biologist, restorationist and dead zone expert; Dr. James White, paleoecologist and Director of INSTAAR UCB and ecological artist Aviva Rahmani. The webcast will be recorded and made publically available after May 20, 2013.

Counting down to Fish Story

In a matter of minutes, I expect to get a video trailer from Kathleen Sweeney. It will be the heart of our Fish Story crowd funding re-launch campaign tomorrow on Rockethub. Meanwhile, I want to put in a plug for my colleagues' Yvonne Senouf & Corinne Weber's Project.Nero launch. I am hoping they may also guest appear May 11 in the webcast event that will close Fish Story, Memphis 2013. I find it immensely inspiring, exciting and hopeful that so many artists are working on river issues now because I think they may be a key to resilience in these times of climate change.

In 27 days, I will be back in Memphis, ready to begin the series of events that will comprise Fish Story. May 4, Dr. Eugene Turner and I will canoe the Wolf River to the Ghost River wetlands, headlands to the Wolf, documenting fish habitat. We will be joining a group from the Wolf River Conservancy.  

A little earlier today, I sent Emily Halpern, at Crosstown Arts Gallery, a description of what we will accomplish May 6 in the gallery, with young people. I will post that here ASAP. Stay tuned.

Tomorrow, my work will be in the AC Institute One of a Kind IV show, curated by Heide Hatry. The Oil & Water artists book I am exhibiting plays on a single image, taken in 2008, before the BP spill but after Katrina. It was the impact of thinking about and seeing New Orleans after these events, that began the journey that will take me to Memphis next month.

Page 3 of 12 pages of Oil & Water unique artists book, encaustic on digitized print on Hosho paper  in plexiglass box. Aviva Rahmani 2013