Links to published material on The Blued Trees Symphony

Blued Trees Links:

GIS Mapping: 
https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/a85bf0d635384e879499ec736bc2aa8a

Website

www.gulftogulf.org webpage with map of Blued Trees locations: http://www.gulftogulf.org/project_item/blued_trees/

Audio podcasts and links:

"Using ecological art to spark environmental conservation" interview with Kamea Chayne on the Green Dreamer podcast: https://greendreamer.com/podcast/aviva-rahmani-ecological-artist aired July 11, 2019.

The Art of Protecting Lands: Aviva Rahmani a State of the Art podcast https://art19.com/shows/state-of-the-art/episodes/41e5ab5d-611a-47f8-9238-c262581562df recorded April 8th, 2019

The Sarah West Love show, a live radio conversation recorded with Gale Elston, Robin Scully and Aviva Rahmani about expanding The Blued Trees Symphony in Virginia: https://www.facebook.com/TheWorkFM/videos/349790569212554/ April 2nd, 2019

“Artist Series: Aviva Rahmani’s work with VARA, land use and environmental law,” The Art Law podcast, interview with Steve Schindler & Katie Wilson-Milne http://artlawpodcast.com/2018/11/08/artist-series-aviva-rahmanis-work-with-vara-land-use-and-environmental-law/#more-472 November 8, 2018

“Making the trees sing: Using art to try to stop pipelines” Day 6 CBC Radio Canadian Broadcasting, http://www.cbc.ca/radio/day6/making-the-trees-sing-using-art-to-try-to-stop-pipelines-1.4634839 April 28, 2018

“Artist Blocked Pipeline with Blued Trees Symphony,” Earth911, interview by Mitch Ratcliffe https://earth911.com/podcast/podcast-may-7-2018/ May 7, 2018

“Interview with Aviva Rahmani” on the Environmental Art Podcast 

hosted by Ariel Garber: https://soundcloud.com/rielarber/aviva-rahmani-interview

May 26, 2017.

Interviews (with/without audio):

“One-on-One” in Canvas Magazine November/ December 2019 issue https://files.constantcontact.com/9f11d50b001/975c5636-d9d3-477d-a7f4-184088263fd1.pdf

“Conversations Aviva Rahmani’s “Blued Trees Symphony” A NYFA Interview https://current.nyfa.org/post/178288450088/conversations-aviva-rahmanis-blued-trees posted September 20, 2018.

Edited Interview with Mitch Ratcliffe of Earth911: https://earth911.com/inspire/artist-blocks-fracking/ May 8, 2018.

Written articles:

Matuseviciute, Rugile. “Artist Uses Art To Stop Construction Of A Gas Pipeline” https://www.demilked.com/artist-uses-art-to-stop-construction-of-a-gas-pipeline/

April 26, 2018.

Sutton, Benjamin “Testing the Legal Power of Art to Stop a Pipeline”

https://hyperallergic.com/439553/aviva-rahmani-cardozo-school-of-law-stop-a-pipeline/

April 24, 2018

Bajaj, Jaya. “Art, Copyright, and Activism: Could the Intersection of Environmental Art and Copyright Law Provide a New Avenue for Activists to Protest Various Forms of Exploitation?” Northwestern Journal of Technology and Intellectual Property

Volume 15, Issue 1, Article 3 https://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1268&context=njtip Spring 2017

Stambouli, Anissa. “Trash Talk, Eco-Activist Artwork and Sustainable Creativity” published by the online magazine, INSPADES https://astamdesigns.org/2017/07/11/trash-talk-eco-activist-artwork-and-sustainable-creativity/ December, 2016.

Rossi, Izzy. “Local Activists Use Art to Block Pipeline” Collegiate Times

online publication available at: http://www.collegiatetimes.com/news/local-activists-use-art-t.blockpipeline/article_33bfd510-ae9a-11e6-8034-1719d6c51df1.html

November 19, 2016.

Lim, Audrea. “How Land Art Lived and Died to Stop a Fracked Gas Pipeline and How It Lives Again” Village Voice available at: https://www.villagevoice.com/2016/06/29/how-land-art-lived-and-died-to-stop-a-fracked-gas-pipeline-and-how-it-lives-again/

June 27, 2016.

Averett, Nancy. “An artist uses her creativity to fight the construction of natural gas pipelines,” Earth Island Journal online publication available at: http://www.earthisland.org/journal/index.php/elist/eListRead/copyrighting_nature/ June 16, 2016 originally published here: http://www.goethe.de/ins/cz/prj/fup/en15648790.htm

Kaplan, Isaac. “This Nonprofit Is Willing to Bet That Art Can Change the World” Artsy, online publication available at: https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-nonprofit-bet-art-change May 1, 2017.

                       

Denson, Roger. “Earth Day EcoArt Confronts Deforestation, Fracking, Nuclear Hazards In Eastern US Woodlands,” Huffington Post online publication available at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/g-roger-denson/earth-day-ecoart-confront_b_9721354.html April, 21, 2016.

Williams, Wes. “Landowners Put Hope in Art Project to Combat Pipeline,” WVTF.org online     publication available at: http://wvtf.org/post/landowners-put-hope-art-project-combat-pipeline#stream/0 April, 19, 2016.

Rahmani, Aviva. “The Spirit of Change: Water, Policy and Ecological Artmaking” Center for Humans and Nature online publication available at: http://www.humansandnature.org/the-spirit-of-change 2016

Gresham. Hunter. “Art Raises Awareness about Trees in Pipeline's Path” Virginia Tech website posting, available online: https://vtnews.vt.edu/articles/2016/11/110816-dsa-bluedtrees.html November 4, 2016.

Collins, Shay. Aviva Rahmani’s Blued Trees and the Fight Against Pipelines” The Cornell Daily Sun http://cornellsun.com/2015/12/03/aviva-rahmanis-blued-trees-and-the-fight-against-pipelines/ December 3, 2015.

Rahmani, Aviva. “Blued Trees on the front lines journal excerpts” The Brooklyn Rail available at: https://brooklynrail.org/2015/11/criticspage/blued-trees-on-the-front-lines-journal-excerpts November, 5th, 2015.

“Using copyright law as an artistic strategy” by ikonotv on tumblr https://ikonotv.tumblr.com/post/130191702053/using-copyright-law-as-an-artistic-strategy  September 30, 2015.

Blue Fractivism: The New Green by Tom Shepstone (natural gas industry shill) denigrating Blued Trees project: http://naturalgasnow.org/blue-fractivism-the-new-green/  September 20, 2015.

Bogok, Gusti. Art and Activism: The Blued Trees symphonic movement to put “public” back in “public benefit” http://readersupportednews.org//index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=32089 August 28, 2015

Videos:

“Can Art Stop a Pipeline?” about the Blued Trees Project and “I Speak for the Trees, A Mock Trial”: http://www.abladeofgrass.org/fieldworks/can-art-stop-pipelinefeaturing-artist-aviva-rahmani/

“Blued Trees” https://vimeo.com/135290635  Videographer and editor Denise Petrizzo

“PIPELINE - 19 - BLUED TREES”  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkbJKUI9S_w&list=PLW8EgxbXUQCGRJkTVDiF-q6ukGNaMgcgg&index=20  Documentary by Marino Colmano.

“Blued Trees Music” First movement of a symphony for performance: https://vimeo.com/154011018

Other links:

Talking About Unspeakable Acts: Women, Art and Sexual Violence panel with Lynn Hershman Leeson, Suzanne Lacy, Nancy Princenthal (wav file recording: https://tinyurl.com/sqzjt7v

Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (LMCC): https://lmcc.net/artist/aviva-rahmani-arts-center-residency-2019/

A Blade of Grass (ABOG): http://www.abladeofgrass.org/lay-of-the-land/blade-grass-announces-2017-abog-fellows-socially-engaged-art/

Wikipedia: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviva_Rahmani

 https://d.rip/aviva

Getting up to speed with "The Blued Trees Symphony"

I haven't posted here in a long time because getting work done has taken precedence over reporting on work done. My biggest news has been the award of a fellowship with A Blade of Grass: http://www.abladeofgrass.org/fellows/aviva-rahmani/.

The easiest way to keep track of my work on a daily basis is to personally friend me on Facebook (FB). Many personal comments are mixed in there with professional announcements, and I would welcome your presence. You may also follow The Blued Trees Symphony FB page. But occasionally there's something really important that's too long for FB. This is one of those occassions: my formal comments to the Federal Regulatory Commission (FERC) in Virginia to save the Blued Trees there. I am posting it below, because I hope that it will bring attention to an entirely new way of thinking about the relationships between art, environmental science, and the legal premises that determine public policy.

For anyone who has followed my work, you may know that The Blued Trees Symphony challenges conventional ideas about copyright law, as defined by the Visual Artists Rights Act (VARA). In Virginia, where over 200 trees have been painted, environmentalists and supporters of this project have just submitted formal comments to oppose the Mountain Valley Pipeline there. There will then be a period of 45- 90 days for "injunctive relief," which means that work on that pipeline could be halted, and would save the Blued Trees in Virginia.

Please find below, the complete text of my formal letter to FERC, which was submitted yesterday.

June 21, 2017

Dear Ms. Bose,

I am writing as the lead artist and producer of The Blued Trees Symphony that is endangered by the path of Mountain Valley Pipeline in Virginia. I attach my cv and a list of venues where you can read further about this work. It has been internationally recognized, with appearances in Korea, the UK and forthcoming, in China. Additionally, I invite you to visit my websites.

In this letter, I want to try to explain the significance, meaning and value of the work I have created and plead for its protection under the 1990 Visual Artists Rights Act (VARA), a division of copyright law. This work is an installation of art that extends across large portions of the landscape of North America, in increments of 1/3 mile each.

Technically, under VARA, this work falls under the category of sculpture, as a new sub-category of copyrightable art: sonified biogeographic sculpture. That is sculpture that is integrally designed to be inseparable from the local biogeographic systems that include the trees, soil and watershed of it’s location. Broadly, this work falls under the genre of ecological art, which is deeply grounded in systems science and has become recognized as a new category of work by art historians and curators.

My PhD is in a crossover field between environmental sciences, technology and studio art. My dissertation developed a theoretical premise: that small sites can be located whose implications for large landscape sustainability and healing is crucial. That original premise is trigger point theory, and the basis for developing The Blued Trees Symphony.

Each increment of this sonified sculpture, termed a “measure,” has been created at the invitation of private landowners for corridors where natural gas pipelines would otherwise devastate habitat and the watersheds that habitat protects. It represents replacing a dysfunction, global warming producing system that threatens the planet, with a system that sustains all life on the plant. The latter system recognizes our interdependence with other species and intact biogeographies.

In each community, local individuals have gathered to paint these trees as a celebration of the natural beauty they cherish, to hear the music of the natural world and to assert their ownership of the land they love. In upper New York State, performers of this work created a manual to instruct people in the painting, to assure that the work would meet the highest aesthetic standards.

The measures follow a template of designated distributions of trees that aerially corresponds to the notes of a reiterated score. Each designated tree becomes a soloist, a tree-note in a synesthetic composition. The trees are designated in their spatial distribution with maps and ground truthing the distancing to accommodate the unique biogeographic elements of each measure. Each painted tree-note in situ is painted by an individual with the sigil of a vertical sine wave whose dimensions are determined by the width of the tree trunk, winding around the tree so that the effect corresponds to the dimensions of the soloist.

Miles of these measures have been painted nationally with an ultramarine blue non-toxic pure pigment mixed with buttermilk to grow moss on the trunks of each tree-note and then copyrighted for protection. The development of this work, as often happens with art, expresses what many believe is a critical mandate for our times: how can art convey the yearnings of communities to feel connected to place, to celebrate the elements of their surroundings, and find hope to survive the extraordinary changes we observe in the Anthropocene era, this era when humans have transformed every living system on earth?

At a time when many people feel a desperate hopelessness and helplessness in the face of indifferent, monolithic corporate power, The Blued Trees Symphony has been a beacon of inspiration and connectivity in the communities where it has been performed and produced.

¥ The Blued Trees Symphony needs to be saved from destruction.
¥ Saving The Blued Trees Symphony means saving the community's environmental rights and cultural aspirations. ¥ This art redefines human relationships to water and the trees that preserve water.
¥ Beauty and health are more important than the corporate profits of multi-national fossil fuel corporations.

I respectfully submit this information you for your consideration and thank you for your attention.

Sincerely yours,

Aviva Rahmani, PhD
Attached: artists biography and cv
List of citations for The Blued Trees Symphony

For those who want to know more about recent work, please visit:

Recent Gulf to Gulf webcasts:

"Creeping Activism" https://vimeo.com/215739440 

"From the Ground Up" https://vimeo.com/222428122

Interview with Aviva Rahmani on the Environmental Art Podcast 

hosted by Ariel Garber: https://soundcloud.com/rielarber/aviva-rahmani-interview

Raped by Monsters; Crossing a Rickety Bridge essay by Aviva Rahmani at: http://www.darkmatterwomenwitnessing.com

Cease and Desist Served, First Movement Launch: Moving Forward with "Blued Trees"

October 1, 2015

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACTS:

Margery Newman, Publicity & Communications, 212-475-0252, MargeryNewman@aol.com

Aviva Rahmani, Eco-Artist; GhostNets@ghostnets.com

Blued Trees Serves Cease-and-Desist on Fracked-Gas Corporation

As Next Phase of Eco-Art Project Debuts Oct. 4

Algonquin receives notice to halt forest destruction,

as Blued Trees Symphony’s First Movement is about to launch

Blued Trees is a symphonic art installation encompassing visual and musical art forms in concert with nature. The project was conceived by ecological artist Aviva Rahmani to move the function of art beyond witnessing or illustrating ecosystem devastation and into direct policy engagement. Rahmani was invited by New York residents-cum-activists faced with condemnation and seizure of properties and beloved places by fracked-gas pipeline corporations.

As corporations are leveraging the legal tool of “eminent domain,” Rahmani is contesting the justice of that leverage with the sword of copyright law. Blued Trees is being copyrighted by Rahmani in discrete movements, as it grows in scale.

Blued Trees consists of trees in the line of destruction on which a blue sine wave is painted. One such tree is one note in the symphonic score. One-third mile of these notes constitutes one full measure.

A Cease-and-Desist Demand has been served by Blued Trees on the Algonquin Gas Transmission LLC. That corporation seeks to condemn the private property in Peekskill in Westchester County, NY, on which the overture for the project was installed on June 21, and copyrighted.

The overture was created on land that has been owned by a small group of families for four generations. That property lies in the path of the Algonquin Incremental Markets (AIM) pipeline for “natural” gas, planned by Algonquin and its parent company, Spectra Energy Partners,  to span four states: New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Massachusetts. The pipeline is also slated to pass just 105 feet from vital structures at the Indian Point nuclear facility, 30 miles from New York City.

Additional measures and “Greek choruses” have joined the Blued Trees orchestra from 11 other sites internationally since the summer solstice overture launch.

On Sunday, Oct. 4, a number of simultaneous events in the Blued Trees Symphony/Saga will unfold:

·      Blued Trees’ First Movement will formally commence with a full 1/3-mile measure of the score being painted and performed in the rural Town of Augusta and Town of Kirkland, NY, threatened by the Dominion New Market Pipeline and Niagara Expansion Project of TGP/Kinder Morgan. Additional measures are joining the orchestra from the New River Valley of Virginia and Nassau, NY.

These new sites will be included in the second copyright filing. Five movements in total, over the next year, complete this symphony, with the Coda planned for fall 2016.

The words of Pope Francis, delivered at the United Nations General Assembly on Sept. 25, resonate with Rahmani and other Blued Trees participants: “Any harm done to the environment…is harm done to humanity.”

Individuals and groups whose properties lie in the path of fossil-fuel infrastructure are invited to join the Blued Trees “Greek Chorus.” Detailed instructions are at: pushingrocks.blogspot.com/2015/09/painting-full-measure-of-first-movement.html.

NOTE TO EDITORS & PRODUCERS: To arrange an interview with Rahmani, participating landowners, attorneys or painters, please contact Margery Newman, MargeryNewman@aol.com, 917-608-6306.

View a short video about the project at https://vimeo.com/135290635 

See map with locations and photos of Blued Trees Symphony and Greek Chorus pieces http://www.gulftogulf.org/map/ .

View a graphic from the Spectra Corporation’s website of Spectra AIM project path at spectraenergy.com/Operations/New-Projects-and-Our-Process/New-Projects-in-US/Algonquin-Incremental-Market-AIM-Project/.

Blued Trees is an element of Gulf to Gulf, a fiscally sponsored NYFA project, which has since 2010 investigated how art might impact climate change policy, gulftogulf.org.

More information about Aviva Rahmani is at ghostnets.com.