The Environmental Health Clinic
http://www.environmentalhealthclinic....
The Environmental Health Clinic at NYU is a clinic and lab, modeled on other health clinics at universities. However the project approaches health from an understanding of its dependence on external local environments; rather than on the internal biology and genetic predispositions of an individual.
The clinic works like this: you make an appointment, just like you would at a traditional health clinic, to talk about your particular environmental health concerns. What differs is that you walk out with a prescription not for pharmaceuticals but for actions: local data collection and urban interventions directed at understanding and improving your environmental health; plus referrals, not to medical specialists but to specific art, design and participatory projects, local environmental organizations and local government or civil society groups: organizations that can use the data and actions prescribed as legitimate forms of participation to promote social change.
As with traditional healthcare, the responsibility ultimately is managed by you. Attending the Environmental Health Clinic - and following up - is entirely voluntary. You decide whether or not to address an issue; you formulate the concerns, ask the questions, and come to the clinic only if you are interested in addressing these concerns. You draw on the clinic’s resources and expertise to help develop a reasonable course of action, which you can follow through or not. You are the one driving, as with traditional health care where you decide whether to smoke, exercise, or fill the prescription: you bear the costs and benefits of changing environmental health.
This inversion of health as an external phenomenon is not just a thought-experiment, but a growing concern. Take Pediatricians, for example: trained to diagnose and treat bacterial and viral disease, monitor for malnutrition and administer vaccinations. Pediatricians actually spend most of their office hours treating - according to Landrigan and the National Academies report - Asthma; Developmental Delays and Disorders (including Autism Spectrum); the increased rate of childhood cancers (an alarming 400-fold increase in some rare cancers); and increasingly now, obesity. All the conditions pediatricians spend their time on are ones in which the environment is implicated, yet this is not represented in medical curricula, or at least not proportionately to the time medical professionals spend, addressing these issues professionally.
Skydive
http://theskydive.org/
Located in the Sky Bar Building at 3400 Montrose, SKYDIVE is an artist run exhibition venue unique to Houston. Its mission is to broaden the spectrum of the dialogue in Houston by bringing in artists to generate work for the 12 x 14' exhibition space, as well as in any of the satellite spaces of 3400 Montrose. The aim of SKYDIVE is to host a range of art practices that push the limits of their material forms, including non-traditional methods of sculpture, installation, video, performance, and works that engage the viewer through participation, as well as text and web-based projects.
SKYDIVE utilizes an open and collaborative model for producing its programming. A group of artists, curators, and other professionals function as Advisors to help create shows, invite artists, and collaborate in the mission and programming of the space. Participants in SKYDIVE will be invited to Houston for a sustained number of days, previous to the exhibition to make their work, interact with the Houston community and see the sites in Houston and surrounding areas.
Advisors:
Jonathan Durham
Nancy Zastudil
Kara Hearn
Dolen Smith
Margo Handwerker
Marcus Cone
Gina Sonderegger
Jonathan Leach
John Smith
Kelly Pike
Co-directors:
Ariane Roesch
Sasha Dela
WochenKlausur
http://www.wochenklausur.at/
Since 1993 and on invitation from different art institutions, the artist group WochenKlausur develops concrete proposals aimed at small, but nevertheless effective improvements to socio-political deficiencies. Proceeding even further and invariably translating these proposals into action, artistic creativity is no longer seen as a formal act but as an intervention into society.
LifeIsLiving.org
http://www.lifeisliving.org
...a national campaign that uses a new form of green spoken story telling — one that represents the diverse and changing perspectives on what it means to be environmentally just.
This campaign seeks to inspire people to take the value they see in their LIFE, and establish it powerfully as a new voice to define what it means to be logistically and psychologically included in the new, clean and green economies.
Life is worth living, and Living is Green.
Lisa D'Amour
http://www.lisadamour.com
Lisa D'Amour is a multidisciplinary performance maker who lives in Brooklyn and New Orleans. Recent projects include SWIMMING CITIES OF SWITCHBACK SEA (a performance for seven handcrafted boats designed by SWOON); FLIGHT (a collaborative multidisciplinary performance designed by sculptor Jeff Becker and produced by ArtSpot Productions in New Orleans); BIRD EYE BLUE PRINT (created with her close collaborator, Katie Pearl, for a vacant office in the World Financial Center, NYC); STANLEY (2006) (created with her brother Todd D'Amour and videographer Tara Webb at HERE Arts Center, NYC); HIDE TOWN (a play written for Infernal Bridegroom Productions, Houston supported by an NEA/TCG Playwrights' Residency) and productions of her play ANNA BELLA EEMA in Montreal (Theater L'Opsis) and San Francisco (Crowded Fire Theater). Her work has been supported by the Jerome Foundation, the McKnight Foundation, NYSCA, NEA/TCG and the Louisiana and Minnesota State Arts Boards. Lisa won a Village Voice OBIE Award along with Katie Pearl and Kathy Randels for NITA AND ZITA, produced by ArtSpot Productions. She is the 2008 recipient of the Alpert Award in the Arts in Theater. Lisa is a core member of the Playwrights' Center and a recent alum of New Dramatists. She has been a visiting guest artist at UCSB, Dartmouth College, Smith College and the Iowa Playwrights' Workshop. She was a visiting Assistant Professor of Playwriting at UT Austin in 2003, and will be a Visiting Lecturer in Playwriting at Brown University in 2008-09.
Fritz haeg
http://www.fritzhaeg.com/
Fritz Haeg works between his art, architecture and design practice Fritz Haeg Studio (though the currently preferred clients are animals), the happenings and gatherings of Sundown Salon (now Sundown Schoolhouse), the ecology initiatives of Gardenlab (including Edible Estates), and other various combinations of building, curating, dancing, designing, exhibiting, gardening, organizing, talking, teaching, and writing. His home base since 2001 is a geodesic dome in the hills of Los Angeles.
Tacking Transience
http://trackingtransience.net/
Tracking Transience is a website that Hasan Elahi created to have himself removed from the terrorist watch list by giving a constant track of where he is.He was placed on this list on june 19th 2002 after returning from overseas when he arived at the detriot airport he was detained by INS and Investigated by the FBI The website receives hits from All branches of government including the eop*Executive Office of the President* Itself not to mention numerous .mil websites The website is powerd by google and uses Google earth to Show His Position
the TEAM
http://www.theteamplays.org/
The TEAM is the Theatre of the Emerging American Moment. We are a New York City-based theatre company dedicated to dissecting and celebrating the experience of living in America today.
We devise plays by examining a wealth of material, ranging from existing texts (fiction, theory, drama, etc.) to images taken from visual art and film, and then combining that research with original writing and staging. The work combines aggressive athleticism with delicate examinations of the social and political factors shaping our world today, keeping the brain, eyes, and heart of the audience constantly stimulated.
At times a rock concert, at times a sporting event, the TEAM has been described as avant-garde meets MTV. Ours is a theatre that does not deny its youth. Our productions are relentless out of necessity, multi-tasking between hyper-intellectual commentaries and exuberant physicality; we know of no other way to behave. With sweat and humor, the TEAM's plays uphold the fragility and poeticism of the human body and spirit.
Invisible 5
http://www.invisible5.org/
nvisible-5 is a self-guided critical audio tour along Interstate 5 between San Francisco and Los Angeles. It uses the format of a museum audio tour to guide the listener along the highway landscape.
