Idea #13: Name or Rename 7,000 Geographic Features

Idea #13:

Name or Rename 7,000 Geographic Features

Description: Name or rename landforms, using a variety of themes or strategies; some or all of the places may be portrayed in various media

Objectives:

* explore our great love for giving names to all sorts of things, and the fact that very few people ever get the privilege of naming geographic features.

* explore society’s tendency to rename things or places differently, according to expediency, political correctness, or incumbent rulers    

Project Timing: Conception: 2009 –

Artists: Tatiana Iliina (visual artist), Offroad Artist (conceptual artist)

Art Project #11: School’s Out Forever

Art Project #11: School’s Out Forever – A Community Cries

Description: Chronicle, document and record the final months of an elementary school’s existence

Objectives:

* to capture the essence of the school in the community context

* attempt to see if it will be possible to get some closure

* explore the nature of the value of the school to a community in a concrete way

* explore the benefits of a community school beyond the traditionally accepted roles

* attempt to influence a reversal of the decision to close the school

Artists: Tatiana Iliina (visual artist); Offroad Artist (conceptual artist)

Art Project #3: Offer a Course in Speech Therapy

Art Project #3: Offer a Course in Speech Therapy

Description: Creation of an amateur “speech therapy course”

Objective: to draw attention to the need for speech therapy services for children with with special needs and the shortage of speech therapists

Artists: Tatiana Iliina (visual artist) Offroad Artist (conceptual artist)

Idea #3: Create 7,000 Art Projects

Idea #3: Create 7,000 Art Projects

Objective: To incite an exploration of art as an economic and world-changing force

Project Timing: Conception and publication: Jan, 2008 – ongoing

Artists: Tatiana Iliina (visual artist), Offroad Artist (conceptual artist)

Whoa! Let me get this straight. You are suggesting a project of conceiving 7,000 ideas, each with 7,000 units, essentially as an art project…

And then, one of these 7,000 ideas is an idea to create 7,000 art projects?

You got it!

The whole thing sounds a little far-fetched, no?

Even listing one new art project every day would take almost 20 years! Never mind completing the art projects (especially if any of them are as ambitious as this).

And that doesn’t even begin to address the other 6,999 project ideas, which are also art projects in some sense of the term. The catch being that each of these ideas needs to include 7,000 units of some sort.

Yes, the whole thing is ambitious. It is meant to be.

Of course, leveraging the internet, quantities of 7,000 of anything are rendered not quite as daunting as they would have been years ago. When videos on Youtube routinely attract millions of viewers, we can see that the possibilities of thousands of anything are quite real. Still, we will have to see how this project evolves. Obviously it will not be possible for the project’s founders to complete the whole thing independently. Many parts of this project will be opened to all the artists in the world – and much of it will be wide open to anyone in the world to participate.

As soon as opportunities to participate are available, guidelines will be published.

That all said, we are going to get this going with projects of our own design.

New Art Project #2 The Underwater Gallery

Art Project #2: Create an underwater gallery

Objective: to draw attention to the problem of global warming and rising water levels.

Project Timing: June, 2009 – in progress (first stage of project complete)

Artists: Tatiana Iliina, Offroad Artist, participants

7,000 World-Changing Ideas

Time to get this bird in the sky.

This goes back to a couple of earlier posts I made on this and other blogs.

In short, it boils down to coming up with 7,000 ideas, each with 7,000 units, just like Joseph Beuys’ seminal 7,000 Oaks project.

Now that almost two years have gone by since I originally hit on this concept, I’m beginning to understand that it will be difficult to elaborate it much more than I originally did – without actually starting it.  Probably the best course is to just put one concept out there every day.

For now, I may even be flexible with the 7,000 aspect ~ leaving it open to add as we go along.

So, here it is – Idea No. 1:

1. Help build membership of 7,000 people in a non-profit organization for special needs

The organization: “RAPID” (Resources for the Anglophone Population with Intellectual Difficulties), located on the south shore of the Montreal area in Quebec, Canada.

Objective: to help build this into a sustainable, viable organization with a membership of 7,000 people

Artists: Tatiana Iliina (visual artist), Offroad Artist (conceptual artist)

The Artist: An individual who is actively seeking solutions to improve our world

The following is a quote from an interview conducted in Montreal with Alan Sonfist, by John Grande, which appeared in the RSA Arts & Ecology online magazine.

JG:

So you would recommend as a strategy for young land and earth artists involved in the public sphere, to try venues outside the art world, natural history museums, botanical gardens and so on and so forth?

AS:

All my art involves a clear understanding of environmental issues and their unique relationship with the local community. Within the 21st century we have to redefine the role of the artist as an individual who is actively seeking solutions to improve our world.

SOOO SWEET, SOOO SOCIAL!

Yeah, social is soooo sweet!

It all started with “social studies”. Grade 4 – 4th grade. We found out it was a new way of saying ‘history’ and/or ‘geography’ without using those exact words.

After that, “Socialism”. (not as bad as communism but still really really bad and only benefits weaklings and lazy cheaters)

Hot on the tail of that: “Socialist”. (A “socialist” OMG – isn’t that George W. Bush, according to recent  frantic Republican noises…)

Next up to bat came “Sociology”. (the science of studying anything that’s not science)

Somewhere in there, we got People magazine and Entertainment Tonight. (evidence that mundane stuff was actually important!)

Now, now, don’t get anti-social… This is gettin’ good.

Next, leapfrog to “Interactive”. This is like Nirvana. Sort of connects the ’80s to the Millenniumssssss…

Which brings us to…

The gif… the flashing gif…

and then…

* * *  Social Networking  * * *

* * *  Social Entrepreneurship  * * *

* * *  Social Capital  * * *

What is all this social stuff anyway?

“Art Movements Come and Go” -A.Y. Jackson, Aug., 1958

“It is hard now to believe that years ago we who were members of it were regarded as radicals.” – So said A.Y. Jackson 50 years ago in the introduction to his autobiography. As we make our own cross-Canada conceptual and artistic pilgrimage, both in our 50th years, we (Tatiana Iliina and myself, offroad artist) look to Jackson and the Group of Seven for a certain spiritual connection, if nothing else.  Indeed, as we seek out and explore new means of representation, previous generations of innovators and art explorers stand for something even more inspiring than may have been the case before.)  

“Art movements come and go. When one group becomes stabilized it is by passed by younger and more vigorous groups. In some cases new movements work a revolution in art, as did the French Impressionists and Post-Impressionists.Others are important only to the countries that gave them birth. Members of the Hudson River and the Glasgow schools of painting, among many others, have been an influence in their time and place.

The Group of Seven ranks with such local movements. It is hard now to believe that years ago we who were members of it were regarded as radicals. We were revolutionaries only in that we expected an art movement to develop in our country at a time when most Canadians were completely indifferent to any form of art, and because we attempted to paint objectively the kind of country that comprises most of Canada. The majority of Canadians, at the time, were shocked by our efforts, yet we did create something in the field of painting that was distinctly our own. Lately, it has become the fashion to disparage our achievements as a mere symptom of nationalism in a backward country.

Most of the exhibitions that are now sent abroad show next to nothing to depict the country of their origin. Today it is considered a virtue to have ideas and ideals that do not concern themselves with race or geography. Perhaps in these days of frenzied nationalism it is well to have art denatured and denationalized. But who will support art that knows no country? It seems obvious enough that the general public will continue to prefer pictures of places and objects with which they are familiar, even though the paintinng is of a type that is considered by the higher critics to be obsolete.

Perhaps in the future we shall have divergent groups: the advanced artists who talk of spatial relationships, tensions, densities, tangible volumes and so on, and who will probably spend most of their time in New York or Paris; and the painters who look to nature and are content to draw their inspiration from a land of vast spaces and infinite variety of which we are only beginning to be aware.

Conditions are more favourable for the artist in Canada today than they were when I began painting. People are better informed than they were and more tolerant of ideas. The artist is not now regarded with suspicion. He can speak for himself; in fact, he has become so respectable that artists are now in demand as speakers at service clubs and educational centres. Intelligent critics endeavour to interpret for the public the intentions of painters that are quite incomprehensible to the layman. Things were different forty years ago; Then a little group of embattled artists found itself in opposition to nearly everybody in the country. Through their efforts the restraining hand of convention was loosened and new life was breathed into the arts in Canada. Today the artist has few hindrances and much support in any effort he makes to win prestige in the wider field of international art.”

A.Y. Jackson,
Manotick, August, 1958

(from the introduction to A Painter’s Country, his autobiography)

Art Freedom Ocean to Ocean Tour reaches the Pacific

Ideas A.F.O.O.T., the Art Freedom Ocean to Ocean Tour – reached the Pacific Ocean at Long Beach, south of Tofino, British Columbia yesterday, August 15, 2008.

The tour continues with a return eastward leg beginning tomorrow.