[Swarmies] Multispecies Salon 3: SWARM in New Orleans November 13-23!

Sat Nov 6 03:50:35 PDT 2010

Hello fellow SWARMies! We'll be at an art opening in New Orleans next week.
Stop in if you're nearby!

Here's the press release.

CONTACT: 
Dr. Eben Kirksey, 831.600.5937,  <mailto:dmanning at gc.cuny.edu>
ekirksey at gc.cuny.edu 
Myrtle Von Damitz lll, 504.908.4741, myrtlered at gmail.com

http://www.wix.com/multispecies/multispecies

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Multispecies Salon 3: SWARM

Exhibitions to Open in New Orleans November 13, 2010

Art exhibitions centered on the relationship between humans and other
creatures, The Multispecies Salon 3: Swarm, will open in the St. Claude Arts
District of New Orleans on November 13, 2010 from 6 pm to 10 pm and will run
through December 5th.   

Spawned by the annual conference of the 2010 American Anthropological
Association (AAA), this year convening in New Orleans, the Multispecies
Salon will explore relations between humans and other creatures.  Art shows
will be installed at three sites in the St. Claude district: The Ironworks,
(612 Piety St.), The Front (4100 St. Claude Ave., on November 13th only),
and Kawliga Studios (3331 St. Claude Ave.).  

Coming together in a collaborative venture from the East Coast, the West
Coast and New Orleans, six members of a curatorial swarm-Myrtle Von Damitz
III, Marnia Johnston, Amy Jenkins, Nina Nichols, Karen Kern, and Eben
Kirksey-have brought together a multitude of creative agents.  Over seventy
artists-hailing from New Orleans, the far reaches of the United States,
Europe, and Australia-will animate the shows.  A full list of these
participants-including internationally acclaimed artists like Kathy High,
Adam Zaretsky, and Cornelia Hesse-Honeger-is available online.

The swarm is a network with no center to dictate order.  Swarming is the
tactic, rather than the theme, of the Multispecies Salon.  Three
interrelated themes-orbiting around human relationships with plants,
microbes, and animals-will come together in the Multispecies Salon: "Hope in
Blasted Landscapes", "Edible Companions", and "Life in the Age of
Biotechnology."  Hope in Blasted Landscapes will showcase forms of life that
persist in post-industrial sites, in the aftermath of disaster.  Blurring
the boundaries between food and art, we will invite gallery visitors to eat
Edible Companions-critters whose bios, biographical and political lives,
might provoke a bit of indigestion.  Life in the Age of Biotechnology will
feature new organisms and machines that have been created by humans or are
dependent upon on humans for their very survival.  

An opening reception will take place at all three gallery sites on Saturday,
November 13, from 6 pm to 10 pm, in conjunction with the Prospect 1.5
biennial and the St. Claude Art Walk.  The Swarm Orbs, spherical robots that
embody the tactics of our show, will be on the move outside The Front
Gallery among goats from Pretty Doe Dairy, creatures involved in an urban
bioremediation project.  Samples from a buffet of edible insects, prepared
by Zack Lemann of the Audubon Insectarium, will also be available to
visitors. 

Multispecies Salon events will continue the following week in association
with the American Anthropological Association (AAA) conference as well as
the New Orleans Fringe Festival, both from November 17-21.  Internationally
renowned anthropologists will give lectures about human relations with other
species, free and open to the public, at Kawliga Studios (6:30-7:30 pm, on
Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, November 15-19).   

Anthropologists will become embedded art critics at the Multispecies
Salon-working alongside the curators to help stage and document the events
with a live blog.  Happenings in art worlds will accompany discussions at
the AAA conference about the emergence of a new approach to anthropology:
multispecies ethnography.  Literally ethno-graphy means "people writing" and
conventionally anthropologists have limited their research to human realms.
"Creatures previously appearing on the margins of anthropology - as part of
the landscape, as food for humans, as symbols - have been pressed into the
foreground in recent ethnographies," write Eben Kirksey and Stefan Helmreich
in the November special issue of Cultural Anthropology, the flagship journal
of the discipline.  

The Fringe Festival parade will stop for music and refreshments at the
Multispecies Salon-arriving at the Ironworks site at 2:45 pm on Saturday,
November 20.  A garden party, featuring live music by New Orleans musicians
Walt McClements and Alex McMurray follows at the Ironworks that afternoon.
The evening of Saturday, November 20 (6pm-9pm) we will present a free
concert by the J.O. Evans ensemble. Cuisine from Louisiana's
swamplands-raccoon, gator, and frog legs-will be on offer from Holly Tamale
as concessions throughout the day.

Please visit http://www.wix.com/multispecies/multispecies for a full
description and schedule of the Multispecies Salon shows and related
activities.  

Primary contact:

Dr. Eben Kirksey, 831.600.5937,  <mailto:dmanning at gc.cuny.edu>
ekirksey at gc.cuny.edu 
Myrtle Von Damitz lll, 504.908.4741, myrtlered at gmail.com

Attached pictures:
The Paranioa Bugs-a swarm of small clay figurines by Marnia Johnston, a
sculptural embodiment of biotechnology that has gone wild-will populate the
Kawliga Studios (3331 St. Claude Ave).

The Swarm Orbs-an interactive group of kinetic sculptures that cost $50,000
to build-will make their debut in New Orleans at the Front Gallery (4100 St.
Claude Ave.) on November 13th.  They will then visit the New Orleans Marriot
for the American Anthropological Association conference.

Thneeds Re-seed is a sculptural remediation by Deanna Pindell-a series of
small felted habitats, for Bryum argenteum (Silvery Bryum) moss that will be
on display at The Ironworks, (612 Piety St.).  As the "first responder" in
healing deforested areas, these art objects will help mosses establish basic
support systems for the diverse species necessary for the restoration of
devastated woodlands.  The original Thneeds were a commodity in Dr Seuss's
famous children's book, The Lorax.  

# # #

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