FB divestiture and migration to Fish Story

March 11 update: as it turned out, I decided it wasn't worth it. But this was what I was thinking that day:

I have decided to divest my almost 1000 photos in almost 80 albums gong back to 2009, from FB because of their privacy policy. Over the next days, I will take screen shots, label and add more screen shots of each album, load them here and comment on how the ideas in each album relate to Fish Story. Cumulatively, they represent a mini-memoir of the years of writing my dissertation on "Trigger Point Theory as Aesthetic Activism," and the foundation of the thinking that culminate in Fish Story for Memphis, TN. Below, is a preview of the contents:

New York City has been where I engage in dynamic conversations with colleagues and consider challenging questions about any art practice.

Fish Story began in Vinalhaven, Maine, as I struggled to restore the town dump there to flourishing wetlands for Ghost Nets (1990-2000).  The work of restoration helped me conceive of  theoretical approach to environmental restoration, "Trigger Point Theory," which led in turn to "Gulf to Gulf," a mini-think tank with a core of scientists to consider what to do about global warming. Fish Story, at the invitation of Tom McGlynn, began looking at Memphis, TN with the  "Gulf to Gulf," team, at the center of North American ecosystem dynamics.

At every stage, art work was created to explore relevant ideas from biogeography to species diversity.

In Memphis, studying the city' s relationship to itself and the river, I continued to think and write in my dissertation about how complex agents interact in predictive modeling systems.

My time in Vinalhaven allowed me to quietly contemplate difficult possibilities.

Contrasts between city and country reflect different aspects of environmental problems.

Personalities and personal routines transcend ecosystems.

The task is always the same, connect the small dots, for example of ecotones and edges to the large dots of bioregions and global dynamics mediated by astrophysical processes as the planet warms.

Geographic Informations Systems science (GISc) is one of the most powerful tools ever discovered to see layers between bioregional and demographic layers of information, by matching up statistics and geography.

What keeps me going is my passion love for the beauty of the natural world.

Fish are the key to the health of water systems everywhere in the world.

Framing the frame, considering fish

There has been an on-going conversation on Martha Rosler & Nato Thompson's FB pages, partly in response to Mira Schor's blog about the Creative Time Summit, which I refer to here as CT.  I linked to Mira's blog on CT in my last post here. On Martha's page the discourse has been about value. On Nato's, it has been about framing. But I think they are the same question about where, as artists, we direct the gaze and what means we use to get there. My take away is that we still aren't thinking clearly about our relationships to the world we live in, which is why I'm looking at fish in Memphis for "Fish Story." I've added some clarification in parens.

Large-mouthed bass have been over-fished in the Mississippi and have to
be artificially stocked to satisfy sports fishermen. The fish are also affected by
contaminants, which are under study: http://toxics.usgs.gov/pubs/
wri99-4018/Volume2/sectionD/2507_Schmitt/pdf/2507_Schmitt.pdf

What I wrote on Nato's page, who invited critique, was as follows:

I think the key issue is framing (which I partially addressed in a previous blog here as the horizontal conference), which is initially set by the organizers and focus (confronting inequity as the stated CT conference topic). There were many wonderful aspects to the "Summit," which I thoroughly enjoyed but some were not as well-thought out as they might have been, for example, what I commented on in my own blog over the BDS protests and how Mosireen co-opted some of the frame. Also what came up in Mira's blog and on Martha's FB page last night about audience interaction.

Conferences have become a far more vital venue for artists than most galleries and therefore the framing/ curatorial issues become more complex than TED. Altho I respect CT's decision, as Anne (Pasternak) described it to me of letting the artists speak for themselves, I think the frame evolved from Friday to Sunday and perhaps, is still evolving here. What still seemed most problematic to me at CT was the (absence of a) group platform to discuss the question of how we determine, who determines inequity. For example, as an ecological artist & environmental activist, I think it's an outdated red herring to discuss capitalism as the overall critique of power, dominance and inequity, when from my point of view, the problem is our anthropocentric presumptions. I would have liked to have seen a more assertive engagement between the organizers, the artists and the wider audience to address those perceptual gaps.

And, may I add here, about why people fish for the vanishing large-mouthed bass, according to the University of Iowa, is how much "fun" it is to see them fight for their survival.

http://www.iowadnr.gov/fish/iafish/lmb-fish.html