Wild New Territories
An art project by Ron den Daas & Kathy Kenny

Link to the WNT transmedia website, by Bo Myers, Ron Den Daas & Dana Claxton

DOWNLOAD the WNT PDF

LINK TO INFO about JAMIE'S WORK WITH DIEGO SAMPER for WNT


image by Gordon Cheung,  stock listings, ink, acrylic, and spay paint on canvas

 

Introduction
This project showcases new visual art, media and performance works that explore the interplay between the urban and the wild. Noting that species are disappearing at an unprecedented rate, it celebrates the highly complex interconnectedness of everything. In particular, it explores the vital, often intangible links between cultural and natural ecologies. This project challenges some of the widespread assumptions that depict the wilderness as, somehow, disconnected from the cultivated, and 'humanity' as disconnected from 'nature’. These exhibitions, discussions and performances will be held in gallery spaces and in renewed spaces of wilderness in London, Berlin, Vancouver and, perhaps, beyond.

LONDON
The London exhibition will run from September to October, 2012 at Camley Street Natural Park under the auspices of London Wildlife Trust. This is located in the heart of the burgeoning Kings Cross, Euro tunnel development (webcam link). The opening night is on 18th of September 2012, at Canada House in Trafalgar Square. The evening will include a screening of video art, a live performance event, and a panel discussion. The public can experience the outdoor installations at Camley St Natural Park during regular daytime opening hours, with additional video projections visible to passersby during the dusk hours.

VANCOUVER
The exhibition will then move to the Teck Gallery, Simon Fraser University downtown campus, in the heart of Vancouver, where it will run from January to April, 2013. with sites planned in nearby Stanley Park, considered one of the worlds great urban parks encompassing 1,000 acres of protected land next to Vancouver’s downtown core.

BERLIN
In Autumn 2013, the exhibition is expected to move to the 126 acre historical Botanischer Garten und Botanisches Museum Berlin-Dahlem in Berlin, one of the world´s largest botanical gardens, founded in the 17th century.


ARTISTS

 

TRANSMEDIA
The transmedia component consists of a web based project by Canadian media artist Bo Myers. Conceived at the intersection of experimental film, documentary video and digital, nonlinear and mobile technologies, this work will ‘capture’, or better, express the initiative online, worldwide. Simultaneously, it will provide a portal for direct public participation. Specifically, the public is invited to generate images, sounds and texts for inclusion into the piece both in situ during the exhibitions and upon reflection, as the work evolves across all three cities and sites.

Transmedia Website: http://wildnewterritories.wordpress.com/

 

PANELS AND FORUMS
There will be forums in Vancouver and Berlin and a symposium at Canada House in conjunction with the Museum of Natural History, London in October 2012.

Speakers
Dusty Gedge  Small Green Roofs
Dr. Viginia Nimarkoh  Edge of a Dream
Dr. Alan Rayner  NatureScope
Prof. Kate Soper What is Nature?
Prof. John Wood  Wild New Paradigms

Wild New Paradigms
A talk by John Wood for Wild New Territories

ABSTRACT
Is our global economy built upon the global ecosystem, or is it the other way around? If the politicians and bankers are correct, it would seem that we can only have a healthy environment when market forces are in good working order. This highlights the stark separation between the way economists, and ecologists, see the world. This is bizarre, especially as 'economy' and 'ecology' derive from the same (Greek) word. When did our culture become so dangerously disconnected from the cultures of other living creatures? More to the point, how can we put Nature and Nurture back together again? We need a massive behavioural change, but our habits are driven by beliefs. Our beliefs, in turn, are manacled to the languages we use. One reason why the 2010 UN conference on biodiversity failed to achieve its own targets is because science's job is to map out truths (e.g. to make taxonomies of species), rather than imagine new ways of living and being. Similarly, although they may realise that we need a radical paradigm change, politicians always choose economic, fiscal, bureaucratic measures that are too abstract and detached to work. Artists have a crucially important role to play in addressing these issues. Where dictionary definitions and scientific laws tend to explicate knowledge, ossify meanings and fix relationships, artists work with intangibles, ineffables and unknowns. In theory, artists therefore have the potential to bring us slightly nearer to Nature. By creating wild new aesthetic domains, artists awaken those parts of us that were fashioned by, and within Nature, during our evolutionary development. By creating new terms of reference for these newly awakened senses and experiences we can all begin to rethink the purpose of our existence and to work out better ways of supporting the proliferation of other species.
 

Further reading

  • Bateson, G. (1979), 'Mind and Nature a Necessary Unity', London, Wildwood House
  • Bateson, G., (1973), “Steps to an Ecology of Mind”, Paladin Books
  • Gill, S., Jandrell, M., Spero, D., Halliday, P., Nimarkoh, V., Wood, J., Iles, A., Soper, K., (2010), “Edge of a Dream: Utopia, Landscape & Contemporary Photography” Paperback: 120 pages, Affram Books (October 2010), ISBN-10: 0956645003, ISBN-13: 978-0956645005
  • Gross, M., & Williams, N., (2010), Missed targets, Current Biology, Volume 20, Issue 12, 22 June (2010)
  • Harrop, S., (2011), Living In Harmony With Nature? Outcomes of the 2010 Nagoya Conference of the Convention on Biological Diversity, Journal of Environmental Law, Volume23, Issue1, (2011) pp.117-128
  • J.J. von Uexküll, in Ingold, T., (2011), Being Alive; essays on movement and description, Routledge ISBN: 978-0-415-57684-0 (2011)
  • Jones, J.C., (1991), Designing Designing, London: Architecture Design and Technology Press
  • Koestler, A., (1964), “The Act of Creation”, London: Hutchinson Margulis, 1967
  • Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M., (1980), Metaphors We Live By, Chicago: University of Chicago (1980)
  • Lovelock, James (2006). The Revenge of Gaia: Why the Earth Is Fighting Back - and How We Can Still Save Humanity. Santa Barbara (California): Allen Lane. ISBN 0-7139-9914-4.
  • Margulis, L (1998) “The Symbiotic Planet: a New look at Evolution”, Science Masters, New York
  • Maturana, H., & Varela, F., (1992), The Tree of Knowledge; biological roots of understanding, Shambhala
  • Meadows, D., (1999), Leverage Points; places to intervene in a system, The Sustainability Institute, http://www.sustainer.org/pubs/Leverage_Points.pdf (downloaded - 14th August, 2009) (1999)
  • Nieuwenhuijze, O. & Wood, J. (2006), Synergy and Sympoiesis in the Writing of Joint Papers; anticipation with/in imagination, International Journal of Computing Anticipatory Systems, edited by Daniel M. Dubois, published by the Centre for Hyperincursive Anticipation in Ordered Systems, Liège, Belgium, Volume 10, pp. 87-102, ISSN: 1373-541 (2006)
  • Ponting, C., (1991), "A Green History of the World", Penguin
  • Rayner, A. (2012), NaturesScope?, O Books ISBN-13: 1846949807 (2012)
  • Sheldrake, R., (1981), A New Science of Life; The hypothesis of morphic resonance, Park Street Press, Vermont, USA
  • Soper, K., "What is Nature? Culture, Politics and the Non-Human", Routledge, 1995
  • Tarnas, R. (1991), The Passion of the Western Mind, Pimlico (1991)
  • Vernadsky, V., (1998) The Biosphere, tr. David B. Langmuir, New York, Copernicus, ISBN 0-387-98268-X, (1926)
  • Whorf, B.L., (1956), Language, Thought and Reality: Selected Writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf. Cambridge, MA., MIT Press, (1956)
  • Wood, J., (2009), Auspicious Reasoning; can metadesign become a mode of governance? Journal of Postcolonial Studies, Volume 12, Issue 3 September (2009) 315 – 327
  • Wood, J., Metadesign, (2007), Designing for Micro-utopias; thinking beyond the possible, Gower, UK, ISBN 0-7546-4608-4 (2007)
  • Wood, J., (2011), ‘Languaging Change from Within; can we metadesign biodiversity?’ Journal of Science and Innovation, ISSN 2078-5453, Volume 1, Number 3, October 2011, pp. 27-32

 

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