361°

Arts and ecology

Power lines in the desert near Dubai,
taken by Mariana Canepa Luna during a recent visit to Sharjah, UAE

RSA Arts & Ecology supports the work of the arts in examining and addressing social and environmental concerns in an interdisciplinary and international arena. The entire programme is informed by the notion of ecology as the study of relationships between an individual and their cultural, social, political, economic and natural environments, and by the belief that the arts can play a central role in providing creative insights into the challenges facing contemporary society.  

Initiated in April 2005, the programme has since consisted of a series of initiatives including conferences, ongoing discourse, international research trips, education pilots, artists’ projects and commissions, and a publication. The RSA is creating a growing network of groups and individuals concerned with the issues - alongside and working with other organisations who have similar concerns. These include Tipping Point, Cape Farewell and Arts Catalyst. More information about these projects can be found throughout this website. 

Over the next three years, the ambition of the RSA Arts & Ecology programme is to become an international hub and a portal to increase the level of information and exchange. The project will act as a catalyst in seeking to involve a far greater number of artists, while simultaneously supporting, profiling and helping develop the visibility of artists' work, sharing the outcomes and experience with others.

More +++

Valéry Grancher

Valéry Grancher, “The Shiwiars Project” author won the artistic project call organized by Art aux Poles and IPEV (the french polar institute Paul Emile Victor). It was announced over Internet and on the palais de tokyo website: This french international Art Center brought together the people herafter to constitute a jury: Caroline Bourgeois (Le plateau), Marc Sanchez (Palais de tokyo), Françsoise Vincent and Elohim Feria (Art aux Poles), Alain Lesquer (French Polar Institute Paul Emile Victor).
This year, during the summer in the fourth polar year context Valery Grancher will stay at the german french scientist base called Cordel. This French man is one of the first to carry out an artistic project to Ny Alesund in Svalbard! 125 years after the first international polar Year and 50 years after the international geophysical Year, international scientific community organizes the fourth international polar Year of March 2007 at Mars 2008. There is no doubt that this year will focus good number of media fires on the scientific, climatic, strategic, energy, policies related to these territories and why not artistic? Thus its project will name “Ny Alesund Pôle 0”!
You will be able to follow the advance of this project on his new blog, there

The Center for Land Use Interpretation (CLUI)

Dedicated to the increase and diffusion of information about how the nation's lands are apportioned, utilized, and perceived.

The Center for Land Use Interpretation is a research organization interested in understanding the nature and extent of human interaction with the earth's surface. The Center embraces a multidisciplinary approach to fulfilling the stated mission, employing conventional research and information processing methodology as well as nontraditional interpretive tools.

The organization was founded in 1994, and since that time it has produced over 30 exhibits on land use themes and regions, for public institutions all over the United States, as well as overseas. Public tours have been conducted in several states, and over ten books have been published by the CLUI. CLUI Archive photographs illustrate journals, popular magazines, and books by other publishers, and have been used in non-CLUI exhibitions, and acquired by art collectors.

The CLUI exists to stimulate discussion, thought, and general interest in the contemporary landscape. Neither an environmental group nor an industry affiliated organization, the work of the Center integrates the many approaches to land use - the many perspectives of the landscape - into a single vision that illustrates the common ground in "land use" debates. At the very least, the Center attempts to emphasize the multiplicity of points of view regarding the utilization of terrestrial and geographic resources.

More +++

Tribute to Theodore Monod

À 360 Productions organize a tribute to Theodore Monod, the renowned French naturalist, geographer and explorer, at the Cité des Sciences, on the 4 of november 2006. Films, debates and lectures about this fantastic man.

Théodore André Monod (Rouen, April 9, 1902 - Versailles, November 22, 2000) was a French naturalist, explorer, and humanist scholar. In the course of his career, Monod was made director of the Institut d'Afrique noire, professor at the Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle, member of the Académie des sciences d'outre-mer in 1949, member of the Académie de la Marine in 1957, and member of the Académie des Sciences in 1963.

He began his career with the study of monk seals on Mauritania's Cap Blanc peninsula. However, he soon turned his attention to the Sahara desert, which he would survey for more than sixty years in search of meteorites. Though he failed to find the meteorite he sought, he discovered numerous plant species as well as several important Neolithic sites. Perhaps his most important find was the Asselar man, a 6,000-year-old skeleton of the Adrar des Ifoghas that many scholars believe to be the first remains of a distinctly black individual.

Monod was also a political activist also took part in pacifist and antinuclear protests, and wrote several articles that adumbrated the emerging environmentalist movement.

More +++