The Sustainability Incubator is a spring 2016 interdisciplinary platform for developing and cross-pollinating innovative curriculum and art/design projects at the intersection of social justice, health, and the environment. The Incubator brings together work by faculty, staff, and students from classes, studios, and offices in a hybrid studio classroom that produces, synthesizes, performs, and activates new ways of engaging the challenges we face in our global culture today.
The Sustainability Incubator is a public laboratory of inquiry and presentation. Please drop by often to see what is going on.
“Modules” refer to events that take place during a schedule class section. All are invited to join–please arrive at the beginning of class.
All events are held in the Sustainability Incubator in the new Design Media Center (d 110) unless indicated otherwise. Most events are cosponsored with the MassArt departments and local institutions identified in parentheses.
For more info please contact Sustainability Fellows:
Jane D. Marsching jmarsching@massart.edu
Joanne Lukitsh jlukitsh@massart.edu
UPCOMING EVENTS:
CURATED CONVERSATION
Setting Up a Studio Outside Massart
with Luanne Witkowski
Tuesday 4/16, 12:30pm
Join studio manager, Luanne Witkowski, to learn how to establish your own sustainable and healthy studio. Come learn useful information about establishing and designing your own studio.
COMMUNITY SERVICE
Muddy River Cleanup
Saturday 4/30, 9:00am-12:00pm
sign up at muddrivercleanup@wheelock.edu. Volunteers will be provided with cleanup supplies, a tshirt, and lunch. Held in Conjunction with the Annual Earth Day Charles River Cleanup. Organized by the Emerald Necklace Conservance and the COF Center for Sustainability and the Environment.
EXHIBITION & PECHA KUCHA PRESENTATIONS
Incubate
Tuesday 5/3, 6:30pm
Come to the final presentation of student, faculty, and staff projects incubated at MassArt this semester. Projects from students from throughout the college will be presented in brief 4 minute presentations. An exhibition of works will be presented in the Sustainability Incubator. Curated by Abigail Neale, the Curator of the Sustainability Incubator and on view from May 3 through May 15.
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RECENT EVENTS
RECEPTION (COF Center for Sustainability and the Environment)
Sustainability Mini-Grant Awards and Student Leadership Party
Friday 1/22, 5:30-800pm
TALK (MassArt’s Bakalar & Paine Galleries)
Ellen Driscoll From Plants to Plastics: Studies in Crosspollination
Thursday 1/28, 6:30pm DMC Lecture Hall, reception to follow
This lecture will focus on recent sculptural projects that intercept materials from the waste stream, and reconfigure them temporarily in public sites. A series of recent drawings that focus on plant “volunteers” in unlikely urban settings will also be presented. Ellen Driscoll makes sculpture, drawing, and both temporary and permanent public art and has exhibitd internationally. She is Program Director of Studio Arts and Visiting Professor of Sculpture at Bard College. ellendriscoll.net
TALK/MODULE (Studio Foundation)
Gabe Blanchet Grove: The Ecosystem
Friday 1/29, 10:00am
The Grove Ecosystem may be the future of food. Grove is a startup based in Somerville. Gabe Blanchet, Co-Founder & CEO, and Liz Cormack, Experience Designer focused on their mobile app, Grove OS, will give a presentation on the Grove Ecosystem. grovelabs.io
SCREENING (SGA group Clay for Change)
Waste Land (2010) on the work of Vik Muniz
Monday 2/1, 6:30pm
Waste Land is a 2010 British-Brazilian documentary film directed by Lucy Walker. The film chronicles artist Vik Muniz, who travels to the world’s largest landfill, Jardim Gramacho outside Rio de Janeiro, to collaborate with a lively group of catadores of recyclable materials, who find a way to the most prestigious auction house in London via the surprising transformation of refuse into contemporary art. The catadores work in a co-operative founded and led by Sebastião Carlos Dos Santos, the ACAMJG, or Association of Pickers of Jardim Gramacho, who dreamed of improving life for his community. The money created by the selling of the artworks was given back to the catadores and the ACAMJG, as well as the prize money from the film awards, in order to help the catadores and their community.
TALK (Fibers)
Judith Leemann, figuring a way
Tuesday 2/2, 7:00pm DMC Lecture Hall
figuring a way
Two nodes: sustainability and craft. Let them organize a thinking space as two magnets organize a field of iron filings. Bring in all manner of material: arborist and anti-war potters, indigo farmers, anthropologists who insist that forests think, sculptors tracking the origins of their materials back into the mines, plastic rubber band looms in landfills, Kurt Vonnegut writing time backwards, a half-eaten peanut butter and jelly sandwich, the magnificent gesture of clay slip thrown against a museum wall, and the clean up of that magnificent gesture by a someone else, the fiction of away we indulge every time we toss a thing in the trash.
Play word games to open up some of the habits language has of stiffening around each of our poles, craft and sustainability. Read each of those poles through the lens of the other. What previously unseen dynamics become evident when we examine sustainability through the lens of craft – its traditions, its concerns, its practices and practitioners? Turn the tables. Look at craft practices through the frame of sustainability and its complex, urgent imperatives – what do we still allow ourselves to ignore about our ways of working, about our relations to both material and audience, about the horizons of our attention? Use all that we stir up to uncover those questions of sustainability that might need to be re-crafted, and to re-invest ourselves as makers in building our capacity to counter habit with sustained and sustaining attention.
MODULE/TALK (Architecture)
Keith Giamportone Site Planning/ Massing/ Fenestration for Sustainable Buildings
Wednesday 2/3, 3:00-6:00pm
WORKSHOP (Studio for Interrelated Media)
Jane D. Marsching Life Cycle Assessments
Thursday 2/4, 10:00-12:00am
Event is cosponsored with the Sustainability Incubator and the Studio for Interrelated Media. In this roundtable discussion we will learn about life cycle assessments. What are the stages of life of an object: its birth, growth, movement, use, and death? What toxins, energy, human labor, and ecological networks do our objects exist within? How can be think more sustainably about the materials we use and objects we make in order to leave our world more just, healthy, and green?
TALK (3D & Fashion)
Christina Miller Good Intentions
Tuesday 2/9, 7:00pm, DMC Lecture Hall
This event is cosponsored with the Sustainability Incubator, 3D & Fashion. A good intention actually made manifest marks a rare success in the design and making of objects, shelters, garments, jewelry and even systems. By examining the source of our materials, what we make with them, and how those products interact with the world, Miller explores the critical ingredients needed to truly give life to our best and boldest good intentions.
Christina Miller is Co-Founder and Director of Ethical Metalsmiths. Radical Jewelry Makeover, codirected by Susie Ganch and Christina Miller, is a project of Ethical Metalsmiths, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to educate people about irresponsible mining, to generate a market that values jewelry made with ethically sourced materials and to promote transparency in the jewelry supply chain.
MODULE/TALK (Architecture)
Keith Giamportone Sustainable Urbanism
Wednesday 2/10, 3:00-6:00pm
TALK/MODULE (Studio Foundation)
Joshua Resnikoff Cuppow: Sustainable Products
Friday 2/12 11:00am
Joshua Resnikoff, Cuppow’s co-founder and operations director, will discuss his vision for this American company. Cuppow develops everyday products to help us live a low-impact life. The company’s flagship product is the Cuppow drinking lid for canning jars, a simple adaptor that allows people to upcycle an everyday item into the only travel mug they’ll ever need. cuppow.com
FIELD TRIP (SGA group ReStore)
Save That Stuff in Charlestown, the region’s biggest restore
Friday 2/12, 1:30-5:00pm, meet outside the Incubator at 1:30pm
Save That Stuff, Inc. is a local waste and resource management company with a warehouse full of amazing objects for the taking. Students will travel by public transportation to the facility and select items they would like to use in their work. Save That Stuff, Inc will then deliver the materials to MassArt for students to pick up. This field trip will be lead by student leaders of the SGA group ReStore, email them at restore@massart.edu to sign up, space is limited. savethatstuff.com
EXHIBITION (Fashion & Art Education)
India Now: Exploring Sustainable Handcrafts Exhibition
Reception: Tuesday 2/16 6:00-8:00pm
2/15-24, Arnheim Gallery
A cross-disciplinary exhibition featuring artistic responses to a Massart Travel Course to India this January 2016, lead by Art Education Professor Lois Hetland and Fashion Professor Jennifer Varekamp.
MODULE/ STUDIO FOR INTERRELATED MEDIA CLASS
Elaine Buckholtz , Transmaterials in Light Art and Architecture
Tuesday 2/16 1:30-3:00pm
A lecture in Professor Buckholtz’s Light As a Sculptural Element class, we will include a look at new innovations in transmaterials and materials that are being developed to address sustainability concerns. She will also be showing works of art that use sustainable materials and technologies.
TALK 
(2)
Walton Ford
Wednesday 2/17, 12:00pm Kennedy 406
Internationally renowned painter Walton ord uses the meticulous, descriptive style of nineteenth century American naturalist illustrators to make paintings and prints which illuminate and critique the consequences of colonialism, industrialism, and natural science on the environment. paulkasmingallery.com/artists/walton-ford
TALK/MODULE (History of Art)
Christoph Irmscher Ecocriticism in American Art
Thursday 2/18, 4:00-6:30 Kennedy 2nd floor conference room
Christoph Irmscher is a professor of American literature at Indiana University, who studies the visual culture of the 19th century and contemporary art in the 21st He is co-editor of the anthology, A Keener Perception: Ecocritical Studies in American Art History, one of the first publications on ecocriticism in the discipline of art history. Irmscher will discuss historical and contemporary images of nature in the American environment in his presentation. http://www.indiana.edu/~engweb/faculty/profile_cIrmscher.shtml
TALK/MODULE (Photography)
Lauret Savoy, Reading/conversation on Trace: Memory, History, Race and the American Landscape
Monday, 2/22, 3:45-5:30pm Kennedy 2nd floor conference room
Lauret Savoy, a professor of environmental studies at Mt. Holyoke College, extends her scientific knowledge of the physical environment to research and reflect upon the stories we tell of the American land’s origins—and the stories we tell of ourselves in this land. She will be reading and discussing her new book, Trace: Memory, History, Race and the American Landscape (2015). https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/facultyprofiles/lauret_savoy
MODULE/ STUDIO FOR INTERRELATED MEDIA CLASS
Elaine Buckholtz, Biomimicry in Light Art and Architecture
A lecture in Professor Buckholtz’s Light As a Sculptural Element class, we will discuss artists and designers working in the field who use biomimicry as a design tool and also how biomimicry intrinsically makes a work more sustainable.
Tuesday 2/23, 1:30-3:00pm
EXHIBITION (Brant Gallery)
ReStored: Sustainable Work at MassArt, 2/24-3/16
Wednesday 2/24, 6:00-8:00pm reception in Brant Gallery
An exhibition by the ReStore and the Sustainability Initiative highlighting sustainable work made by members of the MassArt community held in the Brant Gallery in the South Building, 2nd floor. We are showing work that is made using items from the ReStore or other upcycled materials, made in a sustainable way, or is themed around sustainability or the environment.
DIALOG
Food Justice with the Food Project, Boston
Thursday 2/25, 11:00am-12:00pm
Sutton Kiplinger, Regional Director, The Food Project, Boston, will share with us her work helping run The Food projects, which strives to improve access to healthy food in the Boston communities of Dorchester, Roxbury, and Mattapan. This food justice organization works with neighborhood gardners, youth, hunger relief organizations, farmer, and more. Come join the Sustainable Projects class and Professor Jane D. Marsching for a discussion about food justice in our urban ecosystem? Who has food and who doesn’t? Is food connected to race, gender, class, and other identity systems? How can we bring the stories of food insecurity and food challenges to light through art and design? This event is part of the Black Lives Matter Teach-In being held across the MassArt campus 2/22-3/2. Mass Art’s Black Lives Matter Teach-In is a grass-roots effort to foreground the issues of racism and the Black experience within our community. In concert with efforts at our sister State colleges, events will be held during the week of February 22-26, with a public forum on March 2nd. All are invited to contribute sessions and engage with others at this critical time. Please find the Calendar of Events online here:
MODULE / WORKSHOP (Studio Foundation)
SCREENING (SGA group MassArt Action for the Planet)
Gasland (2010) documentary on fracking
Monday 2/29, 7:00-8:00pm
Gasland is a 2010 American documentary written and directed by Josh Fox. Nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary in 2011, the film focuses on communities in the United States affected by natural gas drilling and, specifically, a method of horizontal drilling into shale formations known as hydraulic fracturing. The film was a key mobilizer for the anti-fracking movement. gaslandthemovie.com/
CURATED CONVERSATIONS
Luanne Witkowski, Why Can’t I Eat in My Studio
Tuesday 3/1 12:30-1:30
A conversation with Studio Manager Luanne Witkowski about safe, healthy, and sustainable studio practices. Bring your questions.
TALK/MODULE (Liberal Arts)
Deborah Cramer The Narrow Ledge: A Tiny Bird, An Ancient Crab, and an Epic Journey
Wednesday 3/2, 11:15am-12:45pm DMC Lecture Hall
Deborah Cramer joins scientific research to poetic mediation in compelling books of nonfiction. She will discuss her new book, The Narrow Ledge: A Tiny Bird, An Ancient Crab, and an Epic Journey (2015). Cramer lives in Gloucester and is a visiting scholar at MIT. deborahcramer.com
TALK (MassArt Alumni Association)
Jonathan Friedman Freight Farms
Wednesday 3/2, 3:30pm
Massart alum Jonathan Friedman will give a talk about his company Freight Farms and their innovative food system, The LGM is a complete farm-to-table system outfitted with vertical hydroponics, LED lighting, and intuitive climate controls. freightfarms.com/
This event is cosponsored with the Sustainability Incubator and the MassArt Alumni Association.
SCREENING (Film/Video)
Rob Todd HUMAN NATURE
Wednesday 3/2, 8:00pm Film Screening Room 1
Emerson professor and acclaimed experimental filmmaker Robert Todd will present 3 films from his HUMAN NATURE series. Nature is what we make of it, right? These films poke at the Western notion that nature exists in service to humanity. Emerald Necklace positions “natural” elements as spiritual commodities. Over Water explores mastery over water through looking at scattered pieces of an archaic water-related infrastructure in the Northeast. Artificial Atmospheres, made in collaboration with Deb Todd Wheeler, looks at the membrane between us and other, the air we breathe and out, contributing to the transformation of the planet in our own small ways. roberttoddfilms.com
MODULE / WORKSHOP (Studio Foundation)In the second session, students in Jean Ormaza’s TIME: Music to Visual Art class will present their graphic score and sound piece approx. 3-5 minutes in length. Students will then give and receive feedback and present a modified performance. The public is welcome listen and observe in either session. A collaboration with Professor Nancy Aleo and MassArt grad Dror Ashuah who will facilitate the singing plants.
TEACH-IN (COF Center for Sustainability and the Environment)
Climate Change–The Food/Water/Energy Nexus
Thursday 3/3, 5:30-7:30pm, The White Hall, Mass College of Pharmacy
Michael Berger – The Science of Climate Change; Ellen Faszewski – Climate Change and Public Health; Ilyas Bhatti – Water shortages and Resilience; Hossein Noorian – The Economics of Climate Change
EXHIBITION (Illustration)
Econundrums, 2/29-3/13
Tuesday 3/1, 6:00pm reception
This event is cosponsored with the Sustainability Incubator and Illustration. Images from Polly Becker’s Editorial Illustration class based on the award winning column in Mother Jones Magazine. We will be displaying sixteen different responses to reporting on health, environment, and food and agriculture.
CURATED CONVERSATIONS
Freedom Baird, Slow Plastic
Tuesday March 15, 6:30-8:00pm
With this talk and discussion we’ll reclaim plastic as a social and cultural construct, and consider how it can be made differently, including at home in the kitchen! We’ll look at plastic’s historical reputation as a tawdry imposter. We’ll dig into the meaning of “synthetic” and consider that plastic might actually come from nature. We’ll investigate plastic’s presence in fine art as both subject and medium. And we’ll consider the sustainability tactic of venerating plastic. MassArt MFA candidate Freedom Baird will lead the discussion and show samples of her home-made Slow Plastic dinnerware. Refreshments will be provided.
http://freedombaird.com/
TALK (Fibers)
Carole Frances Lung AKA Frau Fiber
Wednesday 3/16, 6:30pm Kennedy 2nd Floor Conference Room
Carole Frances Lung is an artist, activist, and scholar living in Long Beach, CA. Through her alter ego Frau Fiber, Carole utilizes a hybrid of playful activism, cultural criticism, research and spirited crafting of one of a kind garment production performances She investigates the human cost of mass production and consumption, addressing issues of value and time through the thoroughly hand-made construction and salvaging of garments. carolefranceslung.org
WORKSHOP (Fibers)
Frau Fiber, The T-shirt is the Problem: Hacking the Garment and the Idea
Thursday 3/17 & Friday 3/18, 7:00-9:30pm
A two-part workshop with Frau Fiber. Come see how we might re-think this only seemingly uncomplicated garment, and play out new forms of production, labor, generosity, and collective re-imagination. Collect your old tshirts and bring them to the event. carolefranceslung.org
Sign up with Judith Leemann if you are a fibers major and with Jane D. Marsching (jmarsching@masart.edu) if you are not. First come first served. This is a two part workshop that takes place over two evenings.
WORKSHOP (Fibers + Lowell Center for Sustainable Production at the UMass Lowell)
Lin Mercer Make Inks/Dyes from Plants
Monday 3/21, 2:00-5:00pm Fibers Lab
Contemporary artist Lin Mercer returns to Massart again this spring to lead a hands on workshop making dyes and experimenting with inks made from plants foraged locally and found around the world. Learn about preparing the dyes, the dye process, a bit of the science and a lot of the sustainability reasons for moving to locally sourced fabrics and dyes today. Supported by Umass Lowell’s Lowell Center for Sustainable Production. Collect your onion skins and bring them with you.
Sign up with Judith Leemann if you are a fibers major and with Jane D. Marsching (jmarsching@massart.edu) if you are not. First come first served.
TALK (Photography)
Barbara Bosworth and Margot Anne Kelley The Meadow
Tuesday 3/22, 7:00pm DMC Lecture Hall
For over a decade Barbara Bosworth (Photography) and Margot Kelley (MFA ‘03) made a single meadow in Carlisle, Massachusetts the object of their artistic inquiries into place, history, and the natural environment. Their work has just been published in The Meadow, with funding awarded Bosworth by the Pollock-Krasner Foundation. Bosworth will discuss how her developing knowledge of the meadow informed the ways she photographed this place over an extended period of time. barbarabosworth.com
WORKSHOP/MODULE (Studio for Interrelated Media) RESCHEDULED TO THIS DAY
Madeline Snow Greening the Studio: What do you use and why?
Thursday 3/24, 10:30-11:30am
Visual artists and teaching institutions use hazardous materials and natural resources in the creation of art. Environmental and health issues include the use of and exposure to materials that contain known or suspected carcinogens, respiratory irritants, or hormone-disrupting chemicals. This interactive workshop will include an overview of common challenges in art studios and the opportunities to use or create safer and more sustainable practices, materials and supplies. Facilitator: Madeline Snow, Lowell Center for Sustainable Production, UMass Lowell
WORKSHOP (Massart Action for the Planet)
Resist the Pipeline Rally Art Build
Friday 3/25 6:00-9:00pm
We must stop the corporation Spectra Energy from building new fossil fuel infrastructure in Boston — for the well being of our climate and our health. Join students from Massart Action for the Planet to create art (2D and 3D) for the rally. Bring supplies (paint, markers, fabric, tape, scissors, brushes). Contact Grant Warren for more info gcwarren@massart.edu.
SCREENING (SGA group MassArt Action for the Planet)
This Changes Everything (2015) documentary based on the Naomi Klein book
Monday 3/28, 7:00pm
Event cosponsored with the Sustainability Incubator and the SGA group Massart Action for the Planet
This Changes Everything (2015) documentary based on the Naomi Klein book. 84 minutes
What if confronting the climate crisis is the best chance we’ll ever get to build a better world? Filmed over 211 shoot days in nine countries and five continents over four years, This Changes Everything is an epic attempt to re-imagine the vast challenge of climate change. The film presents seven portraits of communities on the front lines, from Montana’s Powder River Basin to the Alberta Tar Sands, from the coast of South India to Beijing and beyond. Interwoven with these stories of struggle is Naomi Klein’s narration, connecting the carbon in the air with the economic system that put it there. Throughout the film, Klein builds to her most controversial and exciting idea: that we can seize the existential crisis of climate change to transform our failed economic system into something radically better.
TALK (3D & MIT Embr Labs)
Brunella Alfinito Wearable Technology, MassArt & MIT Embr Labs
Tuesday 3/29, 7:00-8:00pm
Event cosponsored with the Sustainability Incubator, 3D Department, and MIT’s Embr Labs, Inc.
Brunella Alfinito is an Italian born citizen doing her graduate studies at Alchimia Contemporay School of Jewelry, Florence, Italy. Brunealla is presently an exchange student at MassArt and is fulfilling an internship at MIT with Embr Labs. Embr Labs is a startup founded by four MIT materials engineering students and has invented a bracelet that locally heats and cools the wrist and enables wearers to make themselves comfortable while reducing overall building energy use. Brunella will give an artist’s talk and share her experience as an intern at MIT.
EXHIBITION (Studio Foundation)
Drawings: Slippery Terrain- Spatial Tension and Shifting Environments 4/6 – 4/20
Wednesday 4/6, 1:30pm reception
Drawings are imbued with spatial energy; they investigate sustainability, personal connection to the environment and adaptation. Formal drawing tools, used to create spatial vibration and uncertainty, concomitantly represent our shifting and unpredictable landscape and climate. Drawings from Professor Edward Monovich’s spring 2016 Studio Foundation Drawing Projects class.
LIVE FEED — ONLINE CLASSROOM DISCUSSION (Fine Arts 3D/Ceramics)
Globalization and Sustainability: The Future of Ceramics
Wendy Gers (Facilitator), Josh Green (NCECA Director), Kevin Murray (Vice-President, World Crafts Council Asia Pacific Region) and Jacques Kauffmann (IAC President)
Wednesday April 6, 7:00-9:00pm
This live lecture/discussion, part of the Virtual Clay Series from the 92Y NYC, gathers a vibrant community of artists, designers and art historians from across the country to speak with you about important topics in ceramics. This particular lecture focuses on sustainable ceramics as a range of practices that build economically, environmentally and socially healthy and resilient individual and communities. The panelists will present an overview of the current and future programs of their respective organizations that support the long-term, global sustainability of ceramics. A lively debate is guaranteed! More Info Contact: Janna Longacre (jlongacre@massart.edu)
CURATED CONVERSATIONS
Freedom Baird, Human-Nature Dictionary
Thursday April 7, 6:30-8:00pm
You are invited to infiltrate the English language by creating new words and imagery to show that humans are a part of nature, not separate from it. MassArt MFA candidate Freedom Baird will introduce the open-content Human Nature Dictionary, then attendees will sit together snacking and cooking up new words and images. Feel free to invite people. No previous word-coining experience required! Art supplies will be available, and you can bring your own. Refreshments provided. http://humannaturedictionary.
FESTIVAL (COF)
COF Earth Day
WEDNESDAY RAIN DATE 4/13 11-1 Emmanual College Quad
Event cosponsored with the Sustainability Incubator and the COF Center for Sustainability and the Environment
Celebrate sustainability and enjoy the spring weather with a full calendar of Earth-friendly events! Organized by the COF Center for Sustainability and the Environment http://www.colleges-fenway.org/events/cof-earth-day/
EXHIBITION (Godine Library)
Remaking Our World: Artists Books from Studio Foundation and the Godine Library Collection 4/12-23
Tuesday 4/12, 5pm Library & Sustainability Incubator
An exhibition of artists books by internationally renowned artists, alumni, and featuring artists books created by Studio Foundation students in over 8 sections of the freshman course TIME. Cocurated with the library and Studio Foundation faculty, you can see books in the library main floor, Tower Building 12, and the Sustainability Incubator, DMC D110. The reception will be held in the Sustainability Incubator.
TALK
Edward Monovich Footprint Project: Conservation Strategies and Changing Alpine Landscapes
Wednesday 4/13, 1:45pm
A history of overhunting for trophies, meat and medicinal uses, depleted genetic diversity in Alpine Ibex populations and nearly caused their extinction. “Footprint” is and interdisciplinary art/science collaboration that investigates the saving and reintroduction of Capra ibex ibex, and far-reaching cultural implications of this process. Cutting-edge genetic data and ibex conservation strategies are rendered accessible through interactive, visual art. Edward Monovich is Boston based visual artist. Current works include interdisciplinary art/science collaborations and interactive “viewer graffiti” installations that create a platform for exchange on topical issues. edwardmonovich.com/
FIELD TRIP/MODULE (Studio for Interrelated Media)
JP Green House A Carbon Positive Experiment in Living in Jamaica Plain
Thursday 4/14, 2:30-6:30pm
Event cosponsored with the Sustainability Incubator and the Studio for Interrelated Media
Come on a service field trip to JP Green House in Jamaica Plain. Work in their garden and get this innovative urban community garden up and running for a new growing season. Learn about permaculture, passive house design, and carbon positive living. JP GREEN HOUSE was an abandoned, derelict 100-year-old house now transformed into a zero-carbon home and community garden in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts. The house features super-insulation, passive solar heat, an air-to-water heat pump, teenaged boys, and a lot of kale and raspberries. The JP Green House yard is a small urban farm experiment that provides free food for the neighborhood, family, and visitors. Lead by SIM student Stephanie Houten. http://jpgh.org/
SYMPOSIUM (COF)
Muddy River Symposium, Connecting Communities for Environmental Advocacy
Thursday 4/14 4:00-7:30pm Wheelock College
On April 17th, Wheelock College will be hosting a discussion about the Muddy River’s key environmental concerns. All are welcome! Clickhere for more details. Register athttps://cofmuddyriversymposium2014.eventbrite.com.
http://www.colleges-fenway.org/events/muddy-river-symposium-adventures-in-environmental-advocacy-and-activism/
TALK (Studio Foundation)
Amber Christoffersen/Livablestreets Alliance, Emerald Network Initiative
Friday 4/15, 11:00am
Amber Christoffersen leads the Emerald Network Initiative, a plan for 200 miles of seamless greenways in Metro Boston. These shared-use paths allow people to safely and enjoyably walk, bike, push strollers, and use wheelchairs to get to jobs, schools, parks, shopping, and transit stations. 100 miles of the network currently exist- LivableStreets is working with many individuals, organizations, municipalities and agencies to complete the remaining 100 miles. livablestreets.info/
WORKSHOP (Liberal Arts, the ART+ BIO collaborative & the 2016 Cambridge Science Festival)
Lily Bui, Mapping Climate Change through Citizen Science and Art
Tuesday 4/19, 2:00-3:00pm
Join Lily Bui, a researcher and M.S. candidate in MIT’s Comparative Media Studies Program, for a presentation and workshop on the convergence of Art, Biology, and Storytelling that examines the effects of climate change on Puerto Rico’s island ecology. The workshop will demonstrate how to use a Citizen Science multimedia app, iseechange.org, to integrate personal observations, stories, and NASA satellite data to map climate change impacts anywhere This workshop is part of the 2016 Cambridge Science Festival. www.cambridgesciencefestival.org
SCREENING (SGA group Clay for Change)
Ai Weiwei: Without Fear or Favour (2010) documentary on his politically engaged work
Wednesday 4/20, 6:30pm
Event cosponsored with the Sustainability Incubator and the SGA group Clay for Change.
Arts documentary, first broadcast before Ai Weiwei’s arrest by the Chinese authorities in April 2011, and his subsequent release after being detained for 11 weeks. Architect, photographer, curator and blogger, Ai Weiwei is China’s most famous and politically outspoken contemporary artist. Alan Yentob explores the story of Ai Weiwei’s life and art, and reveals how this most courageous and determined of artists continues to fight for artistic freedom of expression while living under the restrictive shadows of authoritarian rule.
LUNCH CONVERSATION (with BU Department of Earth and the Environment)
Nathan Phillips We are all CO2: eating our breath
Thursday 4/21,12:00pm
Join Nathan Phillips (BU Department of Earth and the Environment Ecologist) and Jane D. Marsching (Massart Sustainability Fellow) in a lunchtime conversation about a semester long experiment conducted by Phillips in the Incubator. Throughout the semester students and visitors tested the capacity of plants to uptake CO2 as an integral part of their growth by breathing CO2 into an enclosed system planted with edible greens. Eat lunch prepared from plants grown from our collective breath as we talk about green house gases, our bodies, our community, and an intimate understanding of anthropogenic climate change. Dr. Phillips was a scientist in residence at Massart in 2013 and works often in the intersection of art/science collaboration.
TALK/MODULE (History of Art) Ezra Shales IKEA’s Orientalism and Sustainability in Our Historical Context Monday 4/25, 10:00-10:45am, followed by Q&A
IKEA might exemplify Swedish Modernists and their theories of Beauty for All and Better Things for Everyday Life, but much of what they sell is not standardized, sleek, and modular: Handicraft from Indonesia and the Philippines is featured alongside the mass-production of modernist knock-offs. Is this a new model or an old one? Join Shales (History of Art) to take a peek inside the factory –industrial espionage!– courtesy of an IKEA designer.
