As part of our Fish Stories Community Cookbook, Rachel Stevens and I meet some of the residents of Hamilton Madison House in the Lower East Side on April 17th. Big thanks to our gracious host and translator Philip Li. We will post some of the recipes generously contributed by these terrific women and men here: http://fishstories.nyc/
With Kat Griefen I am co-hosting a Plenary Session titled Gender Play at Rutgers University’s Extending Play Media Studies conference April 18. Our panelists are Myfanwy Ashmore, Heidi Boisvert and Gillian Smith. I like this mission of the conference: Play can be hard work and serious business. It’s time to push beyond the conceptualization of play as merely the pursuit of leisure and consider how the issues of power, affect, labor, identity, and privacy surround the idea and practice of play. The Rutgers Media Studies Conference: Extending Play aims to explore, understand, and facilitate discussion of play as a mediating practice and how play operates at the center of media.
My iLand collaborative group Embodied Mapping will be part of the iLand Symposium on April 17 + 18. Events at South Street Seaport Museum and Two Bridges Neighborhood Council. Embodied Mapping includes Kate Cahill, Meredith Ramirez Talusan, Jennifer Wen Ma, Kathy Creutzburg, Liza Zapol, Joe Goldman and me. For more info: http://www.ilandart.org/iland-symposium-2015/
Fish Stories Community Cookbook is a seafood cookbook, in progress, created by artists Meredith Drum and Rachel Stevens in collaboration with residents of the Lower East Side: neighbors, non-profit organizers, commercial business people and others. The project is supported by a grant and studio space on Wall Street from the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and will be a part of LMCC’s Paths to Pier 42 summer programming 2015. Visual information and documentation forthcoming.
Inspired by spiral bound cookbooks produced by local Grange chapters, the Provincetown Cookbook, and the Slingshot Organizer (collectively designed Anarchist calendar), Fish Stories will include not only recipes for cooking seafood solicited from residents, but also stories, historical recipes, drawings, maps and health and ecology information. The name Fish Stories is designed to encourage imaginative and playful contributions. It is also an homage to Allan Sekula, an artist and theorist whose work interrogates the the politics of labor and the flow of global capital in the maritime industry. We envision the cookbook as a catalyst for community engagement and an opportunity to capture the lives and cultures of people who live in the LES. The Fish Stories Community Cookbook seeks to tie everyday lives to the ecology of the rivers, harbor and estuaries of New York City.
I am working in collaboration with Grisha Coleman and Estrella Payton on a place-based public project supported by iLand (interdisciplinary Laboratory for Art, Nature and Dance). The project, Mar Sea Sol: a sensory mapping event, will occur on two Sundays in June, 2015, at Orchard Beach, Pelham Bay Park, The Bronx.
My Louisiana Re-storied cinematic installation was installed in a pop-up gallery in house 40 in the Al Fahidi Historic District (formerly called Bastakiya), a wind-tower district near the creek in Dubai. I really enjoyed seeing my piece in this setting. I had a lovely time in Dubai, both at ISEA events and simply wandering around this complex and surprising city.
I am excited to travel to the UAE in late October to install a new version of my interactive doc Louisiana Re-storied in a gallery space in the old part of Dubai (Al Fahidi Historical District). The occasion is ISEA2014. I will also be giving an academic paper on November 5, part of the conference section of the symposium.
Enjoyed attending an iLand Seminar this summer hosted by LMCC. I am a big fan of the founder of iLand, Jennifer Monson. I was thrilled to find this picture of me talking with her during the workshop outside in the East River Park near the East Broadway stop.
Includes a good shot of the piece. Thanks Coach.
Mitch and I are pleased to be a part of the summer residency at the Wassaic Project, June-July 2014. It is a beautiful place with great people. Very happy to be here.