On Defiance, Uncertainty, and Empathy

Photograph by Joe Gaffney

Shortly after my last post on this site, I began chemotherapy for breast cancer. I am now halfway through that grueling treatment protocol. Meanwhile, Blued Trees was awarded a 2016 Fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts in the category of Architecture/ Environmental Structures/ Design, and a wonderful new article was published in the Village Voice on Blued Trees, by Audrea Lim, which included this quote:

"Michael Royce, editorial director of the New York Foundation for the Arts, says there's a strong case to be made that Blued Trees"expands the boundaries of traditional sculpture installations and symphonic orchestration by allowing for a fluid interplay of music and physical experience...with the viewer as participant or observer."


The article makes clear, that in Peekskill, New York, the site of the 2015 overture launch of Blued Trees, the Spectra Corporation defied both good public policy, and legal constraints, to place their corporate profits above safety for millions of people. On the other hand, the article also made clear, that an idea cannot be killed. 

As I negotiate the private process of surviving the medical protocols for cancer treatment, in the midst of creating the Coda movement which will culminate Blued Trees on the American Election Day, November 8, 2016, I am reminded of all the ways humans must publically negotiate uncertainty in the Anthropocene era.

A central thesis in my dissertation, "Trigger Point Theory as Aesthetic Activism," circled around the implications for the second law of thermodynamics, of James Clerk Maxwell's nineteenth century idea model, Maxwell's Demon, which posited that the work of sorting information, is a form of entropy. The implications I saw for environmental triage, were that the correct information can effect surprising change, in even the most apparently hopeless situations. In an era of unprecedented uncertainty and risk, the need for clean habitat for life on earth supersedes the disruptive impacts of greed.

In the case of the Blued Trees Symphony, which evolved out of Blued Trees, the surprising information is in the resilience and power of beauty, and empathy, in the face of destruction and greed. Effecting that surprise is the task of art. It is the mission of the Blued Trees Symphony. One tree,  one note in our continental music. One person's struggle to defy despair, is all of our struggle to hold onto hope. That is how I would define empathy.

We now have the legal framework to resist the proliferation of fossil fuel infrastructure poisoning the earth, thanks to the work of the legal team of Gale Elston, and Michael Gentlesk. It will be made available to the Blued Trees painters.

New Press on "Blued Trees Symphony"

Detail of a Blued Tree before destruction by Spectra Corporation to install natural gas pipelines in Peekskill, New York Photo by Erik R. McGregor

There is some amazing new press on the Blued Trees Symphony:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/g-roger-denson/earth-day-ecoart-confront_b_9721354.html

http://wvtf.org/post/landowners-put-hope-art-project-combat-pipeline#stream/0. 

This afternoon, April 21, 2016, thanks to a generous grant from the Ethelwyn Doolittle Justice and Outreach Fund from the Community Church of New York Unitarian Universalist. we will be meeting with our lawyers to create a legal framework that would umbrella all the Blued Trees sites!

Please consider donating to this project: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/blued-trees-new-legal-initiatives#/.

Draft letter to a policymaker in New York State on the proliferation of natural gas pipelines

I have been advised that the legal process is both too expensive and takes too long for an artist to engage in to resist the proliferation of natural gas infrastructure at the expense of citizens. Some activists, such as the Montrose 9 + 2, have taken the route of risking (and being) arrested to prevail under the "necessity defense," that the necessity of opposing a disaster prevails over other considerations. Instead, I was advised to, and decided to find a policymaker who could spearhead the necessary changes. So I drafted the following letter for a policy maker in NYS:

I am writing as a citizen concerned with pubic good, and aware of your record of concern for the people of this state, with the hopes that we might meet to discuss your position on natural gas. I am a resident of NYC, and an ecological artist, with a transdisciplinary PhD in environmental sciences from the University of Plymouth, UK, and an Affiliate at the Institute for Arctic and Alpine Research (INSTAAR) at the University of Colorado at Boulder. I was approached a year ago, by activists opposing the Algonquin natural gas pipeline (AIM), now being installed in Peekskill, NY close to the Indian Point nuclear facility. Since then, I have informed myself about the risks that concerned them. In June 2015, I launched a public art project, “Blued Trees,” at the invitation of private landowners resisting eminent domain condemnation of their lands. That work has now been installed within the corridors of miles of proposed natural gas infrastructure, throughout the United States, copyrighted, and in the case of the Algonquin, a cease and desist was issued, and subsequently ignored by Spectra Corporation. The grounds of this legal-art work, are that the public good is not being served, as we face a catastrophe of climate change, alarming data on fugitive methane emissions, the probability of a fracked gas explosion close to a nuclear facility thirty miles from NYC, and impacts on watersheds and the small farming communities of upper New York State. I would be very appreciative if we might meet to discuss the data about this situation.

Thank you for you time and attention,

Dr. Aviva Rahmani 

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.

"Blued Trees" Fact Sheet

Blued Trees

Multi-Form Permanent Art Installation

Conceived Of By Ecological Artist Aviva Rahmani

Blued Trees Stands in the Path of Gas Pipeline Expansion on Private Land Seeking Copyright to Protect the Art, Hence the Land

Second Phase of Installation Slated for October 4

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world;

indeed, it is the only thing that ever has. -- Margaret Mead

FACT SHEET

Please see previous posts for more information and visuals.

A five minute film of the Blued Trees “overture” launch can be viewed at: https://vimeo.com/channels/94313

• Blued Trees is a site-specific permanent artwork installed on private land in the path of the Algonquin natural gas pipeline in New York State. The project was conceived of by ecological artist Aviva Rahmani at the invitation of New York residents-cum-activists faced with fossil fuel corporations expanding pipelines through their properties. The Algonquin pipeline, owned by the Spectra Corporation, passes within 105 ft. of the Indian Point nuclear facility, in Peekskill, 30 miles from New York City.

• The artwork consists of a number of trees, painted with a slurry of non-toxic ultramarine blue pigment and buttermilk, designed to grow moss, in the pattern of a vertical sine wave. If perceived aerially, the trees designated for painting represent “notes” in a symphonic score, and are accompanied by a “Greek Chorus” of painted trees and music at other sites.

• Spectra is now moving to condemn the land the art is on by eminent domain and begin excavation of the site in October. Rahmani has filed a federal copyright to protect this site-specific artwork and related domestic and international “Greek Chorus” sites of painted trees and music that were simultaneously initiated as part of the “Overture.”

• The Blued Trees “Overture” launched June 21, 2015, in Peekskill, NY. The property owners on whose land Blued Trees sits have received notification that their land will be condemned. The intended imminent excavation for the pipeline expansion is among many other pipeline projects that are planned and being permitted across the country.

• For the “Overture,” the bark of approximately twenty designated trees within the pipeline corridor was painted with a blue sine wave, beginning at the tree's roots, and winding up the trunk. The Blued Trees artwork is integrated with the trees and all living things on and in the soil of the site.

• To make the musical composition, each painted tree was mapped to become a “note” in the Blued Trees score. The distribution of the trees in the “Overture” corresponds to a measure of music which can be played or sung as a melody. Each measure, 1/3 mile, of the symphonic installation is simultaneously an aerial map and a musical score.

• The first movement of a larger “Symphony” is planned for October 4, 2015. On that date, at 5 sites locally and internationally, approximately 75 additional trees will be painted, the project will be performed and documented to expand the sphere of protection. When the human performers leave, the installation remains with the trees as a permanent work of art.

• The “Greek Chorus,” trees that have been painted with the blue sine wave in other locations, could be protected by copyright as part of Blued Trees, so long as they each conform to the same design concept. “Greek Chorus” sites so far have included Washington, Florida, Virginia, and Lisbon, Portugal.

• Blued Trees endeavors to prevent the destruction of the habitat and artwork embedded into the habitat, as well as the danger of a nuclear accident. The project is a bold, innovative strategy to redefine public good by protecting the integrity of art and nature. A legal basis for that protection is the Visual Artists Rights Act (VARA), which asserts the “moral rights of art” against destruction.

• The currently filed US Copyright Registration Application is for elements of the "Overture,” launched in Peekskill, New York. This application will be the heart of the first Cease and Desist Demand to be addressed to Spectra Corporation. The demand is intended to prevent an October excavation, and would include the Greek Chorus for that launch. This registration will likely be the first of two filings. A second copyright registration application filing will include additional work to be completed elsewhere October 4, 2015.

• The project is raising funds now for the legal process that could stop the proceedings before the scheduled date to break ground for the Algonquin pipeline expansion. This would begin a process of pitting copyright law against condemnation by eminent domain takings in the name of public good. If sufficient funds are raised, the legal team would address the overlap between copyright and eminent domain law. The proposed legal actions might lead to a redefinition of the public good.

• To date, new locations for the full “Symphony” have been secured in 3 states with committed artists spearheading each of the installations. Some artists who have confirmed they will be painting measures of land in the path of the expansions include: Deanna Pindell, Wash., Toshia Hance, N.Y., and Robin Boucher, Va.

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

• Mapping for all Blued Trees locations will be available at: http://www.gulftogulf.org/project_item/blued_trees/

• Instructions for painting trees are available at: http://pushingrocks.blogspot.com/2015/06/greek-chorus-for-blued-trees.html

About Aviva Rahmani

Ecological artist Aviva Rahmani’s art work has reflected environmental and social concerns throughout her career. Her projects range from complete landscape restorations to museum venues that reference painting, sound and photography. Early influences on her work include interdisciplinary classical studies, activism, city planning and the merging of science with aesthetics. Aviva Rahmani is an affiliate at the Institute for Arctic and Alpine Research (INSTAAR) at the University of Colorado at Boulder, Colorado. She is a PhD candidate at the University of Plymouth, UK, has exhibited and published internationally and has been the recipient of numerous grants. I am recommending her because she is using art to effect environmental change in innovative ways. Her most recent work, Blued Trees launched June 21, 2015. It contests the definition of eminent domain with the moral rights of art. More information is available at www.ghostnets.com.

Press Contact:

Margery Newman

MargeryNewman@aol.com, 212-475-0252