Created during post-pandemic lockdown that called for constant hand-washing and limited human-to-human contact, “A Virtual Lotioning Session” (Video, 3min 13sec, 2020) is about noticing and attending to one’s own body-to-body. Through an intimate yet public presentation of applying lotion to one’s own hand(s), the video performance positions self-care as a doubling act, one that is for others as much as it is for oneself. With a humorous spin on a daily ritual that is simultaneously mundane and absurdly sensual, an emollient-for-skin morphs into oil paint and a hand transforms into a “sensorial canvas,” waiting to be touched by all felt-experiences. As noted in the video, “Time to give your hand(s) some loving that only hugs your hand and no other human’s.”
Despite the perceptibility of the effects they impart on their hosts, the most incredible capacity of viruses is in their invisibility. Invisibility is the most frightening side of the current pandemic, and invisible is also the work of the scientists striving to find a solution. This proposal presents a data visualization that aims to give visibility to those scientists working on COVID-19. Their scientific publications have been computationally analyzed and transformed into a relational structure based on lexical similarity. The result is a network of scientists whose proximity is given by their closeness in writing. An innovative visual method that hybridizes network visualizations and word clouds presents the scientists in deep space, explorable through keywords. In such a space, individuals are situated according to their lexical similarity, and keywords are used to clarify their proximity. By zooming, the visualization reveals more information about scientists and their clusters. While a lot of visualizations during the pandemic focused on showing the spread of infection, causing anxiety among the readers, this visualization reveals the efforts of science in eradicating the virus. Making visible the enormous number of scientists working on COVID-19 research will contribute to coping more positively with the pandemic.
Virus Dice is an artistic and scientific visualization project. It features videos and an interactive installation. The project informs about the infection pathway and how medications work. The project makes the delicate, extremely vulnerable state of human health visible in a metaphorical way.
Our multimodal and multilingual collective diary of imagination, “Imaginarios de cuarentena,” has become a place for us to share our feelings and desires, with ourselves and with others. The diary has since developed into a larger project called “Errant Imaginaries: Possible Utopias,” which unites the diary with an inquiry into existing inspiring models and practices of change.
As artists, activists, grassroots organisers, mothers, scholars, educators, and citizens, we are all working for a better world in many different ways. For almost three years, the network Mujeres Errantes has been a space where we have supported each other in this mission. Via our collective diary, we are able to focus on the dreams that fuel our desire for change.
As part of the “Errant Imaginaries: Possible Utopias” project, we are contacting other collectives that inspire us and that work on some of the desires and challenges that the collective diary expresses. Through an online encounter that we will record on video, we will create an occasion for sharing their experiences and dialogue through art. In the summer, we will hold in-person and hybrid arts residencies, drawing on a shared methodology and in collaboration with other women’s groups.
Pandemic Papers is an experimental archive logging my feelings within the context of news headlines, painted on the Sunday editions of my local paper, The San Francisco Chronicle. The project consists of over 44 paintings ranging in size from 10 x 12 inches to 1 x 1 inch, created from November 2019, when COVID-19 first appeared in Wuhan, China, to July 2021, when San Francisco finally (hopefully?) retired its emergency order. Pandemic Papers gave me a way to store and recall my own personal experience of the pandemic despite my long term memory loss due to my brain injury.
March 2021
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About M Eifler
I am an artist with a pile of intersectional identities including being disabled, neurodivergent, non-binary, queer, and Jewish. I make archives, prosthetics, and simulations. My projects usually start in the waste streams of capitalism, sifting thru junk mail and newsprint, mining exhaust data and free apps, and sorting old clothes and hand-me-down yarn. From these sources I experiment with ways to understand myself and the world around me including:
Paintings, books, and sculptures made from reclaimed paper and plastic
Computational Interactives, wearables, performance, and AR/VR
Digital collage, including AI, GIF, Drawing, Photography, and Video
Handmade textiles, including garments, blankets, pillows, and sculptures
My themes: waste proliferation, speculative archives, computational prosthetics and others, stem from my brain injury which lead not only to my long term physical disability but also my severe memory loss.
I’ve exhibited work or performed at DHMD Museum, BOZAR, Ars Electronica, SomArts, TED, the Exploratorium, SFMoMA, the YBCA, and the Wattis Institute in San Francisco, XOXO, Wiensowski & Harbord in Berlin, Laurie M. Tisch Gallery and Armory Show in New York, Seattle International Film Festival, the Smithsonian Institution and Kennedy Center.
The Rose River Memorial is a grassroots community art movement that honors and grieves the many lives lost during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. We aspire to create a felt rose as a symbol of grief for every life lost. This has been a time in which so many have been devastated by the loss of a close relative, compounded by the inability to say final goodbyes and to freely grieve for loved ones. Rose River Memorial helps with the grieving process by encouraging these families to create roses for their loved ones, while at the same time inspiring the rest of the community to show their support by also contributing with hand-crafted roses. Why the Rose? We chose the rose as a symbol of mourning as it is used in the context of funerals throughout the US, The red rose symbolizes courage and valor and is the national flower of the US. The roses are hand-crafted by the community out of red eco-felt and mounted on recycled fishing nets, including some that have been extracted from marine preserves. We are partnering with Building Bridges, Marked by Covid, and Let’s Reimagine, and believe in inclusivity in all our collaborations by working with communities and age groups of all backgrounds. The project has been supported officially endorsed by mayors, lawmakers, and spiritual leaders from around the country. The Rose River Memorial has been exhibited in many places including Los Angeles, Orange County,. St. Louis, Topeka, Maui, Ojai, Rio Grande Valley, and many upcoming venues. We aim to create a national-scale memorial that will be exhibited in Washington DC. How can I get involved? Schools, churches, museums, art centers, universities, senior citizen centers, and groups including the Kiwanis and Girl Scouts of America have generously contributed thousands of roses and yet we have many more to make. If you are interested please check on the Making Roses tab or contact us to get involved, We are seeking partners to bring this project to full fruition, either by making roses or helping to host a memorial in your hometown.
The project was initiated in August 2020 with Dr. Tilly Hinton
And includes the collaboration of many key contributors and supporters including:
Marisa Caichiolo, Petra Eiko, Mary ‘Happy’ Price, Kristin Urquiza, Cynthia Campoy Brophy, Yi-Ping Hou, Robin Hanna, Tracy Hull, Angela Kender, Anna Newcome, Jennifer and Bettina Gonzales, Stuart Perkins, Jill Bernshouse, Edith Romero, Julia Johnston, Yuval Ron, Tim Garcia, Keri Meyer, Claudia Huiza, Endy Trece, Cassandra Coblenz, Mary Anne Kessler, Marvella Muro, Jasper Lutyens, Tina Calderon, Michelene Cherie, Brad Wolfe, Kuna Gordean Bailey, Carolyn Freyer-Jones, and many, many more!
As well as friends at the Orange County Museum of Art, Building Bridges Art Exchange, Ojai Retreat, Hui No’eau, Christ Cathedral, Self Help Graphics, City of Santa Monica, Heartfelt Foundation, The Friday Minute, LACDA, Create Protest, The Awesome Foundation, Burbank Tournament of Roses, Ep[iscopal School of Los Angeles, Ocean Charter School, Kiwanis, Girl Scouts of America, Elysian Valley Arts Collective, LA Breakfast Club, Orange County Autism.
PRIYA — India’s first female superhero, embarks on a mission to stop the spread of Covid-19 in the comic book “Priya’s Mask.” She befriends a little girl named Meena to show her the sacrifices made by frontline healthcare workers and instill the power of courage and compassion during this difficult time. Along with her tiger Sahas, Priya explains the importance of wearing a mask and working together to help end the pandemic around the world. She teams up with Pakistan’s female superhero, Burka Avenger, to foil her arch enemy from infecting her city with the potent virus. Released as an online comic book, the edition reached millions of people in India and the worldwide.
The short animated film, “Priya’s Mask” is an important testament to the courage of women healthcare workers and will help educate people about the virus. An international array of actors and leaders lend their voices to this important film including Vidya Balan, Mrunal Thakur, Sairah Kabir and Rosanna Arquette.
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This first story was specifically constructed to address the problem of blaming victims of sexual violence and provided a character, Priya, who could inspire change throughout communities by appealing to audiences — especially youth — with an empathetic narrative. Priya’s story became a powerful voice a in the global movement for women’s rights and a symbol of solidarity against gender-based violence and continuing with the #MeToo movement. The creators of the comic book were honored by UN Women as “gender equality champions.”
The Guggenheim is Proving That Museums Aren’t Just to Be Seen
New York Times
The famed Guggenheim institution and other museums are reaching out to audiences who cannot connect to art in typical ways.
Although many major art institutions have programs for people with disabilities, the pandemic has forced museums to recreate them in a digital space. In-person tours incorporating verbal descriptions for visitors with low vision, or American Sign Language interpretation for the hearing-impaired, have often transformed into Zoom sessions about specific artworks.
This article is part of a special report on museums, which focuses on reopening, reinvention, and resilience.
Taxonomy of Breathing is a project that investigates our current societal moment through the lens of breath—its vulnerability, its oppression, and its power of transformation. The fragility of the body—and breath as its sine qua non—is a manifestation of our environment, our historical moment, and our political and social context. It is at once foundational and aspirational, embodied and symbolic.
This current moment—a watershed that without a doubt will serve to mark the passage of eras—can in many ways be crystallized, condensed, illuminated, through the lens of the breath. The breath—our respiratory system—is the primary target of this virus that has swept and is still reshaping the world. It is the site of the transgression, the violence, the oppression that catalyzed a racial justice uprising that has not been seen in a generation: ‘I CAN’T BREATHE.’ Wildfires choking the West. Blue skies in Beijing and Delhi. Must we choose between livelihoods and the black lung? Pandemic, racial injustice, environmental cataclysm—the breath connects them. Last but not least, however, the breath as site, as promise of transformation. In the midst of the despair, the desperation, the dissolution, and depression that pervades this slow-moving unraveling of life as we knew it, there is an expanding of movements towards mindfulness and meditation, anchored by and centered around a simple observation of the act of breathing. Grounding us, slowing us, silencing us, giving us space to expand, offering us distance and perspective on what we can and cannot control. In some ways, it seems that perhaps the breath is all we control…except when we can’t. Back to pandemic, police brutality, and environmental catastrophe.
There is an expression used in some Spanish-speaking countries concerning memory and conflict: “respirar por las heridas,” which translates to “breathe through wounds.” In this moment, it can also help us locate breath as both the site of the wounds and the redemptive possibility inherent in them—the promise of healing, faith in the regenerative power of life, our ability to survive. This project explores the “act of breathing” as an archive of fleeting moments. A road trip across the USA to capture the breathing moments of people with a specialized microphone, presented as a sound archive; videos documenting conversations with writers and poets about what it means today, in the current context, to “breathe through wounds.”
The project generates ten Respiratory Portraits, grounded conceptually within the scientific, the biological: the act of breathing, particularly the respiratory rate, as one of the four main vital signs. Respiratory rate is the number of breaths a living being takes in one minute, and the standard respiration rate for an adult at rest is 12 to 20 breaths per minute. The Respiratory Portraits capture the respiratory rate of people who have endured the effects of systemic racism, who have recovered (or are still suffering after-effects) from COVID-19, who have lived through the wildfires of the west, and who are engaged in the act of meditation. Recordings are made through the measurement with a stethoscope, information is transferred through programming to 100 artificial respirators—wall-mounted artifacts in the museum. The aesthetic and sensory impact of the project is based on the assembly of these mechanical elements of the sound that is generated in the compression of the air, which creates the sensation of listening to someone’s breath and the physical effect of the air that moves in the room. It aims to generate in the viewer, the listener, the breather, an embodied effect that redirects awareness to the centrality of this simple, most foundational vital act and expands to the political, social, environmental, and, yes, intellectual and spiritual, ripples that expand from it and touch the entire world.
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IceBox Collective – a community of creative alchemists dedicated to creating platforms for conscious conversations, sacred space for creative exchange, inspiration for civic engagement, and healing connections.
Covid Artifacts was an attempt to document the objects, people, and events that suddenly became infused with cultural relevance due to the pandemic. Each day I followed the news and searched the internet, discovering unexpected new artifacts—each artifact illustrating a new page in the global pandemic narrative. As the pandemic progressed, layers of social dysfunction were exposed; I tried to capture those moments in the archive of the times that Covid Artifacts became.
The project became a way to cope. Focusing on painting kept me from spinning out in the face of an uncertain future, and, by posting an image a day on my social media it allowed me to stay connected to friends, fellow artists, and eventually strangers. After a full year I stopped the manic daily painting as I had to return to my job in a fulltime capacity. I still paint an occasional artifact as we wait for the world to right itself.
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COVID Artifacts Chronicles Our Shared Crisis at SFMOMA
Artist James Gouldthorpe paints a record of the pandemic.
It would be difficult to select one artwork to represent the last year’s heartbreaking and sometimes absurd tragedies, but those of us at SFMOMA needn’t look far to find a worthy installation of them.
Conservation technician James Gouldthorpe, a museum employee of 25 years, is the prolific artist behind COVID Artifacts, an ongoing project that distills our time’s calamities and controversies into postcard-sized paintings. Taken together, his profound vignettes depict the real-life heroes and villains, political upheavals, hospital scenes, and newly charged objects — from toilet paper to Goya beans — that became headline staples in a year of mostly bad news.
Gouldthorpe makes each COVID Artifact in his Richmond studio using a mixture of watercolor, gouache, and ink, sharing the finished pieces on Instagram in cadence with the furious news cycle that inspires them. An installation comprising more than 80 Artifacts is now on view in the exhibition Close to Home: Creativity in Crisis on Floor 3. He says it’s a surreal experience to have his artwork shown in the same galleries he has long prepared for others.
A short film documenting an attempt to cope with the uncertainty of the COVID-19 pandemic and the isolation by walking, which became a transformative meditation on life by mapping of the inner life to the outer landscape. The material was recorded on iPhone SE between March 2020 and March 2021, and an early cut was screened at the Hampshire College’s Time & Narrative Learning Collaborative Spring Forum, on April 5, 2021.
Sedalia writes, “We learn more about ourselves during times of conflict. These works express this time in history. A time that will be rewritten in history forever.”
The convergence of a worldwide pandemic, the cacophony of responses to the unrelenting murders of Black people, the call to heal the planet, the anniversary of the women’s suffrage movement, occurring simultaneously while the world looks on in astonishment as the corrupt United States government removes its mask of civility, have coalesced to create one of the most challenging years in US history.
Nine mature Black women artists gathered to share our individual observations, responses, and insights to this moment through our art practice, personal experiences, and research; our project demonstrates that Black women artists are not monolithic in our thinking or expressions. We understand that the narratives of white people may take precedence in the gestation of traumatic events taking place. However, we reject the attempts of white neutrality to define our realities. In transforming our trauma, we created visual narratives to document our images, our words, and our assessments of this era; a transgressive act.
As seasoned Womanist artists we have acquired skills over decades sharpened by profound life experiences. Our decision was to each create a unique artist’s book with space for the other eight artists to express their views. Once a month over a period of nine months we contribute to an artist’s book, handing them off to the next artist in our circle every 30 days. We began our mother books in September 2020, and the gestation period ends nine months later, in May 2021. At the end of the nine months, the books will return to their original creator filled with images, text, and objects that reveal insights into the year 2020–2021 from the hands and minds of nine mature blackwomenartists. During the ninth month each artist finalizes their book. Additionally, each month we hold fellowship meetings, both in person and virtually, to swap books, critique our process, and document the experience in a group blog. Each of us has also committed to creating at least two works of art tied to our individual studio practice and/or inspired by our fellowship in dialogue with artists’ books.
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The proposed Nine Artists/Nine Months/Nine Perspectives: Birth of 2020 Visions exhibition will provide blackwomenartists whose intersectional identities (Black, women, mature) rarely provide them with group or solo exhibitions showcasing their work. The proposed exhibition will provide a much-deserved opportunity for mature blackwomenartists to share their inner visions. The exhibition comprises nine completed artists’ books and a minimum of two additional works each, created by our blackwomenartists sistahood.
In exhibiting our impressions of this tumultuous moment, we also propose an interactive component in which gallery visitors can contribute their experiences, images, words, actions, and responses to events that shaped 2020–2021 in a collaborative artists’ book in the gallery and/or a digital media narrative they can access from home.
Viruses are invisibly small and some, including SARS-CoV-2, can be dangerous to us. The role of viruses as an ‘invisible enemy’ can make it hard to form a clear mental image of them, or to understand how they behave as part of our natural environment. This papercraft exercise adapts traditional paper snowflake designs to introduce the natural world at the scale of a virus. It explores the often beautiful symmetries of a wide variety of virus structures, and explains how understanding virus structures has guided the design of the vaccines that are now being used to control SARS-CoV-2.
Working on the Formations Series During the Pandemic
rosalie Lang
In the time of the pandemic: My painting life has been strongly influenced by the power of rock formations-their lace-like patterning, their incredible toughness, and their weathered beauty. These icons of our vast geological history still evoke within me a sense of wonder each time I look at them. Visiting places filled with rock formations imparts a deep feeling of “safe being” quietly promising to be there in times of risk or danger. Their enduring qualities both aesthetic and functional move me beyond the ever-present peril and uncertainty of this pandemic, once again underscoring the intrinsic role of rock materials in the evolution of our earth’s structure. Such longevity, such remarkable fortitude quietly conveys to me a positive message of security and safety. That deep-rooted concern for rock formations plays a key role in the subjects I choose for my oil paintings. Consistent with that interest, my current painting series entitled Formations offers a magnified view of intricate patterning etched in California coastal rock specimens. I closely examine the various kinds of interlaced details of each rock’s markings in photographs that I have taken and evaluate their feasibility for subject matter in upcoming paintings. What is the meaning of my work? In each painting I offer the viewer a gateway to enter a private, complex world of patterning and forms that would ordinarily remain unseen. This deep involvement with studying and painting rock formations shelters me from real-life dangers and strengthens my perseverance to stay safe and secure in an unpredictable time of grim realities.
On his Instagram account @bren_bash, artist Brendan McCann writes, “It’s the First Monday in May [2021], traditionally the date of the annual Met Gala. Last year in quarantine, I made a dress with materials around my apartment inspired by the cancelled ‘About Time’ Gala. With the gala postponed again, I decided to do it again. The theme: SCIENCE. Serving you COVID vaccination couture. My ‘FAUCI’ clutch is filled with free @krispykreme donuts I got with my vaccination card. This dress is dedicated to the scientists and healthcare workers that have worked tirelessly for the last year to stop the spread & develop a vaccine. I hope I made you proud, Ms. Wintour (I’m unemployed, by the way.)”
Artist and designer Brendan McCann in his science-inspired dress for this year’s postponed Met Gala. (photo by Josh Levinson / @JKLPhoto, courtesy of Brendan McCann)
I am scared of breathing. This year, I became fearful of inhaling, and guilty when exhaling. My new work explores how we can easily visualize and map our breathing, and learn to play with our own breath and the breath of another person.
Titled Geometry of Breath, this is my exploration of how to breath freely again. I investigate how the symmetry and proportions that Vitruvius applied to architecture, and that da Vinci considered with the exterior human body, also apply to our breath – as well as our consciousness. My geometric models are based on the geometry of a unit circle, polar curves and the roulettes of epicycloids. This work is on paper, acrylic on canvas, NFTs, and bronze. In addition, I invite everyone – especially artists – to share new ways to breathe freely again.
Artists Mami Kato, Trish DeMasi and Reynold Rodriguez, already known for producing labor-intensive, handmade artwork, were able to harness the moment to carefully refine their work or to experiment with techniques that were formerly beyond the constraints of their normal circumstances. Trish DeMasi has been able to defy previous confines of scale and space to create her largest functional ceramic works yet. Mami Kato took advantage of the many hours of solitude to create her precise and intricate sculptures. Reynold Rodriguez was able to reshape and rework his first publicly debuted series of playful and functional collectible design. A burden to some, a source of anxiety for many, the fluctuation and fluidity of time over the past eight months has been an opportunity for these three artists. They have cultivated their latest creative achievements, now exhibited together -“over time.
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Over Time NOVEMBER 16, 2020 THROUGH JANUARY 24, 2021 Mami Kato / Trish DeMasi / Reynold Rodriguez on view by appointment November 16, 2020 – January 24, 2021 Wexler Gallery at The New York Design Center, 200 Lexington Ave #413, New York, NY 10016 This exhibition examines how three artists- Mami Kato, Trish DeMasi and Reynold Rodriguez – made use of the time granted them by the unexpected changes brought by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Live video tours of the Garden during lockdown when public were not permitted on grounds, and other entities of the Garden created video and other online material to share via social media feeds
‘Passeggiata’: A Paradigm for the Times in Which We Now Live
terry trickett
We are now caught up in a complex metabolic whirlpool where systems of free-living equilibrium have collapsed to a radically disordered state. Viruses like COVID-19 are not free-living entities; they are parasites which invade and inflict harm on life as we know it. Cosmologists believe that such chaotic states are an inevitable consequence of life on earth where, at intervals, we must suffer the consequences of parasitic disorder. Such thoughts were not in the back of my mind when, last year, I created ‘Passeggiata’, which is based on Luciano Berio’s Sequenza IXa for solo clarinet, but on reflection and although there is no comparison in terms of scale or impact, the piece does appear to represent a composer striving to present music as a continual compromise between order and chaos. When you think of it, all music is concerned with selecting, molding and refining notes and phrases that enables complexity to seemingly spontaneously generate order and beauty. Berio, as one of the last century’s most experimental composers, gives some insight into how this magic is achieved. My own contribution, in producing a visual interpretation of Sequenza IXa is to hold up a mirror to a piece which, retrospectively, appears to provide a paradigm for the times in which we now live. Berio wrote Sequenza IXa In 1980, midway through his life-long exploration into the idiomatic potential of instrumental sound. It makes extreme technical demands on the performer and, at the same time, invents a musical language that gives the clarinet a completely new mode of expression. In the piece, Berio explores, at length, one specific harmonic field but avoids repetition by springing constant surprises in terms of speed, pitch and rhythmic variety. It slips easily between moments of orderly quiet and bursts of hectic notation when virtuosity becomes an essential element of the Sequenza’s theatricality. All in all, it’s an exercise in musical discovery that has required me to dig deep in finding visual imagery that seeks to enter the mind’s eye of the composer. My approach has been to place some reliance on the use of Deep Dream artificial intelligence, inspired by neural networks in the brain and nervous system, to produce pictoralist imagery that, at least to my mind, reflects Berio’s journey of musical discovery. The resulting images, slightly out of focus and dream-like, provide moments of equilibrium and calm in an other-worldly ‘passeggiata’ in and around a mountain village in Liguria -“ the province in Italy where Berio was born and lived. By contrast, the visual patterns that I’ve used to ‘train’ my dream-like images are given free rein in providing a visual interpretation of Berio’s moments of surprise when he weaves fast and furious note patterns which collapse the piece, at intervals, into a radically disordered state. Of course, I can never know whether or not my images convey an accurate impression of the visual mental imagery that Berio experienced in his mind’s eye when composing Sequenza IXa; it’s only in my imagination that I’m putting myself into the mind of the composer. Often the creation of Visual Music demands taking such creative leaps into the unknown where, as in Passeggiata, I’ve tried to produce intimations of a natural world familiar to the composer. If, in the process, I’ve succeeded in adding to the emotional impact of the piece and aided an audience’s understanding of a formidable work, so much the better. For me, in the light of today’s parasitic invasion, a visual interpretation of Passeggiata reveals not only a work of art but, also, life itself poised precariously on the edge of chaos. When life becomes unbalanced, as now, we search for ways to restore it to a natural state somewhere nearer the order we remember although, inevitably, still finely balanced on the edge like Berio’s Sequenza IXa. Terry Trickett, May 2020.
The Coronavirus Anagramme Stories, Five Imaginary Coronavirus Artworks
Brian Reffin smith
Over a period of five days, I wrote five short stories with a constraint: the title of each must be an anagramme of the word ‘Coronavirus’.
Over the following five days, I described, as if an art critic, five imaginary artworks by five imaginary artists (each of whose names is an anagramme of my own) in five imaginary shows in five imaginary galleries, ranging from multi-media to interactive installations, with the virus at their centre. Images of or coming from the work were also constructed.
An event exploring questions that have arisen during the co-created ASU Humanities Lab “ArtScience: COVID Responsen (link is external)” and over the past year in considering and experimenting with how to respond to COVID. Selecting from questions posed to or by students during the Lab, as well as those that remain unanswered –or perhaps unasked– we will discuss the challenges of how we determine truth and trust; how we identify or anticipate implications for policy, education, and creative collaboration; in what ways art and science address what is known and unknown. How does COVID require taking creative leaps in science and art, how can we “toggle between rigor and wonder”, and where can we find hope and healing pathways while responding to a health crisis we are still experiencing. Dr. Hartwell, Nobel Prize Winner, Center Director and Professor of the Biodesign Pathfinder Center Website: https://biodesign.asu.edu/leland-hartwell Dr. Hartwell led a research team at the Department of Genetics, University of Washington using cell biology and genetics to investigate how yeast cells divide from 1968 to 1997. They discovered two cellular pathways that are integrated by an overall control point regulating cell division and a signaling pathway that arrests cell division in response to DNA damage. Dr. Hartwell is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and he received the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Other honors include the Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award, the Gairdner Foundation International Award, the Alfred P. Sloan Award in cancer research, and the Genetics Society Medal of Honor. Diana Ayton-Shenker, CEO of Leonardo/ISAST (International Society of Arts, Science, Technology) Website: https://leonardo.asu.edu/content/diana-ayton-shenker Diana Ayton-Shenker, is an award-winning social entrepreneur who connects and convenes key partnerships, resources and capital for positive global impact. She serves as the Executive Director of Leonardo’s partnership with ASU, where she is Professor of Practice jointly appointed with the School for the Future of Innovation in Society (SFIS), and the Herberger Institute of Design & Arts’ School for Arts, Media, & Engineering. Diana is also founding CEO of Global Momenta(link is external), philanthropic strategy and social innovation firm, and the Global Catalyst Senior Fellow at The New School, where she recently collaborated with XReality Center and her partner-husband, artist William T. Ayton, to produced New Babel(link is external), the largest A.R. (Augmented Reality) public art installation of its kind (Union Square, NYC).
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Held on 23rd March 2021 at 15:30pm Arizona Time / MST.
RESPIRATION:RESTORATION is a project that began by recognizing that if the problems of police violence, pandemics, and the climate crisis are connected, then the solutions must be connected as well. Creating more green spaces with plant life leads to cleaner air. Connecting to local food source-”including our own backyards or community gardens-”reorients us towards reciprocity with non-human relatives. Defunding militarized racist police means refunding investments into Indigenous land sovereignty and stewardship, public parks, gardens, libraries, and services for the people. These solutions begin to transform an extractive and exploitative economy into a sustainable and regenerative culture. RESPIRATION:RESTORATION is an ongoing invitation to breathe together. The opening performance of music for mutual flourishing began on Saturday, September 26, 2020, when music collective Spooky Action Labs created music featuring PlantWave—a technology that converts the electromagnetic waves of plant life into musical sounds. The act of listening to plants as creative musicians encourages a radical shift in consciousness: the realization that these beings who provide us with oxygen have their own messages to share. This initial performance launched a multimedia webpage at www.makaracenterarts.org, creating a source of art and educational resources related to these intertwined themes. An ongoing call for submissions by nonprofit organization Makara Center for the Arts is now exchanging free plants for art works, creative responses and/or educational resources from members of local communities, prompted by the following question: What does it feel like to breathe in a world without police violence, pandemics, and climate disasters?
Mobile Projection Unit presents new, experimental, site specific outdoor projected video works throughout Portland by use of a mobile studio. This studio provides a cohort of new media artists tools, software, mentorship, and access to outdoor spaces in order to create and present these works to a public audience. The cohort pairs moving image artists with video mapping programmers to collaborate on works that use the city scape as its canvas. Fernanda D’Agostino and Sarah Turner are the co-founders of the Mobile Projection Unit (MPU). We began the project as a way to bridge the digital divide and to provide BIPOC artists with the means to exhibit their work at a monumental scale and to reclaim cityscapes impacted by gentrification. Both of us are artists and also occasionally present our own work through the MPU platform. Creative coding using Isadora allows us to create works that incorporate viewers presence into the work. Digital mapping using Mad Mapper allows us to occupy city spaces in ways that complicate the narratives habitually attached to them. Since the limitations that have been placed on everyone by Covid our practice has shifted to include support of the BLM movement and other social justice initiatives both through curated programs and by volunteering our gear and technical expertise to other initiatives. As quarantine loomed we geared up by buying an FM transmitter which allows us to host both drive in and walk up screenings. Our most recent drive in screening was guest curated by Ariella Tai a black media artist and film scholar. One way we’ve responded to our societal crisis has been providing a platform that allows people to gather safely outdoors in public for a shared experience. The other has been amplifying the voices and visions of historically marginalized communities. Some of the technology that makes this possible is cutting edge, some of it is turning to old school analog technologies uniquely suited to this time. Nimbleness characterizes our approach to both technology and our curatorial vision.
Brandon Ballengée / University of Houston’s Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts
In his newsletter of April 2021, Brandon Ballengée wrote:
Since last fall, I have been an Artists-in-Residence at University of Houston’s Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts. Here I have been working on a new series entitled VII.
VII explores Houston’s urban species through the lens of VII deadly vices (unsustainable practices) and VII cardinal virtues (sustainable actions) in relation to the COVID-19 epidemic (a zoonotic disease thought to be brought on by environmental degradation).
Kindness, 2020-2021, unique Giclée print, 44 X 33.5 in.
In total 14 species are depicted, each telling the story of ecosystem functionality through their population health and numbers, or lack thereof. For example, some species represent degradation and loss such as the Atlantic horseshoe crab, a species vital to modern medicine because of its use in antibody testing, but which has been missing from Texas waters since the 1990’s. Others offer a message of hope because they have rebounded such as Big Brown bats, one of several bat species found in Houston with stable populations.
Humility, 2020-2-21, unique Giclée print, 44 X 33.5 in.
Some species reflect adaptation to environmental challenges such as the hybridization of Gulf and Atlantic killifish populations in the Houston Ship Channel that have become resistant to pollutants, or the Moon jellyfish “infesting” Galveston bay as they can thrive in low-oxygen waters and are tolerant to petrochemicals.
Sloth, 2020-2-21, unique Giclée print, 44 X 33.5 in
Symbolically, each of these species has a story to tell about environmental virtue or vice and such stories are increasingly relevant as they relate to the current COVID 19 pandemic and overall human health. COVID-19 is a zoonotic disease, one which has passed from non-human animals to humans to create the largest global pandemic in modern history. Although diseases are natural, the transmission of Coronavirus from animal to human due to wildlife trade as well as its rapid global spread can be considered preternatural. Moreover, COVID-19 as well as 60% of emerging infectious diseases have recently been described as symptomatic of environmental degradation.
Following this logic, our treatment of ecosystems may be seen in terms of good (virtues moving towards sustainability) or evil (vices, selfish acts of consumption moving us closer to environmental collapse). Furthermore, actions of environmental virtue decrease our risk of zoonotic disease, while behaviors of environmental vice increase our risk.
For VII, I individually photographed natural history specimens to create portraits and used photoshop to juxtapose these depictions onto high-resolution scans of PPE masks worn during my time in Houston. They were then printed at a scale to recall human children, a size that is familiar and not threatening, to draw us towards instead of away from the image, so that we may further think about how we approach ecosystems and other species, systems that are important to our survival yet to some are not considered, while being cherished by others.”
Brandon Ballengée (American, born 1974) is a visual artist, biologist and environmental educator based in Louisiana.
Ballengée creates transdisciplinary artworks inspired from his ecological field and laboratory research. Since 1996, a central investigation focus has been the occurrence of developmental deformities and population declines among amphibians. In 2001, he was nominated for membership into Sigma XI, the Scientific Research Society. In 2009, Ballengée and SK Sessions published “Explanation for Missing Limbs in Deformed Amphibians” in the Journal of Experimental Zoology and received international media attention from the BBC and others. This scientific study was the inspiration for the book Malamp: The Occurrence of Deformities in Amphibians (published by Arts Catalyst & Yorkshire Sculpture Park, UK) and a solo exhibition at the Royal Institution of Great Britain (London, England: 2010). From 2009 through 2015 he continued his amphibian research as a Visiting Scientist at McGill University (Montréal, Canada) and, in 2011, he was awarded a conservation leadership fellowship from the National Audubon Society’s TogetherGreen Program (USA). In 2014 he received his Ph.D. in Transdisciplinary Art and Biology from Plymouth University (UK) in association with Zürich University of the Arts and Applied Sciences (Switzerland). In 2015, he was the recipient of a fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA).
Burko writes, “working on multiple projects, with various combinations of materials, using images from past and present – reflecting my personal struggle as I vacillate from a sense of morass/anxiety to a struggle to hold onto hope for a more positive future – sharing such with fellow creatives for mutual support.”
Diane Burko, July 2020, Mixed Media on Canvas, 60″X60″, 2020
All the pieces here were made between March and July 2020, so they were all shaped by the extraordinary events of the past few months. The beginning of 2020 was marked by a growing anxiety about the pandemic which was taking shape in Asia and Europe. Life went on somewhat normally here in DC, except for the swelling sense that the pandemic would soon arrive here and that we were not prepared. All I could think about was coronavirus, so that’s what I painted dozens of ink paintings of the pathogen that was suddenly the focus of the whole world’s attention. When lockdown was imposed in mid-March, normal life came to an abrupt halt. All my art exhibitions, science meetings and trips were canceled. I stayed home as instructed, only going out for long daily walks around my neighborhood. I’ve lived in DC for more than 20 years, and this was the first year I was unable to see the cherry blossoms at the Tidal Basin. Fortunately, there are some cherry trees in Rose Park, near my home. And by visiting those trees daily, instead of seeing a dramatic, once-a-year show, I witnessed the gradual transformation of the trees, from bare branches to buds to blossoms to fruit – tiny, inedible cherries, but fruit nonetheless! The tree paintings reflect this loss and gain: the trees under strain, but standing, flowering, producing; the roots digging deep and seeking nourishment and connection. The Mandala, Vessel, and Connectome paintings explore similar themes enclosure, isolation and connection expressed as neurons, blood vessels, roots and branches, and the patterns of contact-tracing diagrams. And then, into this time of anxiety and isolation but also of quiet contemplation, came the murder of George Floyd, unleashing a torrent of rage and grief across the country and through my city. The Trauma Brain paintings are a piece of my response to the other epidemic we confronted this year – police brutality. Finally, as the epidemic worsened in the US, I painted “Covid Lungs,” which is a sad, simple reflection on illness and death.
Michele Banks, Indigo Coronavirus, Ink on Yupo, Spring 2020, Collection of the National Academy of Sciences
Eras are divisions in the geographic time scale. I declare a new era, a post-Coronavirus paradigm, the Blue Era. We have entered it in isolation together, social distancing and with muffled voices behind face masks, with a chance for a reboot: life 2.0 I envisioned that humanity was going over a blue line, a blue linear portal set against clean, sunny blue skies. Stepping into an idyllic post coronavirus landscape, joyfully, children holding their parents hands, skipped over the blue line, en mass. Humanity was moving in unison towards a healthy new coexistence with each other and the planet. In less than six months at a global scale, and right at four months at a national scale, a pandemic has shifted our footing, and the Blue Line has formed, in the form of a portal. We have stepped through that portal to find our freedom of choice intact. The choice should be clear: recommit to caring about people, public health, education, clean waterways and oceans, animals and nature; towards a unified human race and a needed respect for the planet. To question, imagine, invent, reinvent, the world on the other side of my blue line is up to each one of us. It’s a rebooted landscape, where we can look at coexisting and connecting, with each other and with the planet. Our freedom of choice and collective power goes well beyond politics, or presidents. We are nimble, inventive, indefatigable, curious, creative, hardworking. We are survivors. My project, The Blue Line, is an artistic wormhole. The Merriam-Webster definition of the Eistein-Rosen wormhole is “a hypothetical structure of space-time envisioned as a tunnel connecting points that are separated in space and time.” The Blue Line is a giant portal of public art in every park, urban plaza, community. It marks the new awakening of the world. For me it’s a printmaking project on paper; its an installation of public art that will begin with a blue line in my neighborhood, with an explanation of the concept, for pedestrians to engage with and cross. It’s an installation that is reproduced in other’s front yards, to build consciousness about the opportunity that we are waking up to. It’s an installation inside or outside of white cubes for art, it’s a giant portal for public art in every park, urban plaza, and community. This is my moment as an artist, a woman, a human. I’ve crossed the line and am not looking back.
“They bring sunshine to our daily lives” – Justin Trudeau on artists during COVID-19 Sunshine Bringer is an ongoing exploration of being with and without during COVID-19 by Nicole Clouston and Quintin Teszeri.
