iLAND

Interdisciplinary Laboratory for Art Nature and Dance

ArtsPool Member

Clarinda Mac Low

Clarinda Mac Low is an interdisciplinary artist and organizer working in many mediums, including collaboration on projects like this ILAND work. As part of her practice, she runs Culture Push, an arts organization dedicated to cross-sector exchange and nurturing good ideas.

Urban Backstage

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Urban Backstage explored spaces in the city that, through accident, intention, design, loss, and/or neglect, allow urban residents to remove their masks, to make mistakes, to hide and/or expose thoughts and actions that may not be allowed elsewhere. The collaborators investigated this backstage quality in the waterfront and urban infrastructure of the Lower East Side, where the mechanics of the city are
generally hidden. In the same way that the distinction between back and front stage is often blurred or eliminated in contemporary performance, this residency generated movement toward making visible these supporting services of the city.

River to Creek

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River To Creek was a participatory research project and art action that drew attention to the geographic and ecological connections across the industrial landscape of North Brooklyn, from the wild empty lots at the end of Newtown Creek in Bushwick to the East River at the edge of Greenpoint. The collaborators applied their practices in dance, marine and restoration ecology and visual and installation art to the exploration of natural and human-made elements of the site. Public events included walks, bike rides, plant and bird identification, chemical testing of water, talks on the history of development and pollution, and participatory art and dance experiences along the shores of the East River and Newtown Creek.

Fluid Histories, Neighborhood Practices

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Panelists included musician and executive director of Music of China, Susan Cheng; professor and writer, William Kornblum; conservation biologist, Eric Sanderson; teacher and performer, Lu Yu; media artist Clarinda Mac Low and sculptor, Kathy Creutzberg. Workshops were lead by iLAB residents from The Urban Backstage, Embodied Mapping and Water + Im/migration.

Symposium Overview

What:  Fluid Histories, Neighborhood Practices: Rehearsing a Changing Waterfront is a two-day event in the Lower East Side brings together contemporary choreographers, Chinese Opera artists, designers, visual and theater artists, architects, ecologists, advocates and scientists for a panel and discussion on Friday evening and a series of workshops on Saturday afternoon. The workshops are led by the 2014/15 iLAB residencies: The Urban Backstage, Embodied Mapping and Water + Im/migration. These three residency teams are currently engaging in collaborative processes and creative methodologies to explore cultural and ecological activity around the East River waterfront.

Why:   Fluid Histories, Neighborhood Practices – Rehearsing a Changing Waterfront is an open forum for exploring new methods of understanding art and science through innovative collaborations between practitioners of seemingly disparate disciplines. The iLAND Symposium is a multi-faceted platform where artists and scientists can examine best practices for interdisciplinary projects, and make these available to a broader community by facilitating dialogue about contemporary issues and themes. These conversations also create a more direct bridge to the scientific community. Throughout the Symposium, participants engage in the process of searching for shared language and collaborative processes that cut across the arts and sciences, focusing on dance and the body as primary mediators of experience and imagination. This year’s residencies were developed in as part of iLAB East River, a partnership between iLAND and Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, with the aim of engaging local artists to participate and to explore existing and potential perceptions and uses of the changing LES waterfront through their different disciplinary perspectives.

Who:    iLAND – interdisciplinary Laboratory for Art Nature and Dance – founded by Jennifer Monson in 2004, investigates the power of dance, in collaboration with other fields, to illuminate our kinetic understanding of the world. It is a dance research organization with a fundamental commitment to environmental sustainability as it relates to art and the urban context. Our goal is to cultivate cross-disciplinary research among artists, environmentalists, scientists, urban designers, and other fields. For more information, please visit ilandart.org or email info@ilandart.org.

In 2014, iLAND’s Jennifer Monson began to work closely with Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (LMCC) to help inform the organization’s work along the East River’s waterfront. In 2013, LMCC launched the Arts East River Waterfront initiative to bring artists, designers and local cultural organizations into collaboration with community partners to activate Piers 42 and 35 on the Lower East River Waterfront with arts, culture and educational projects and public programming. The nearby Pier 35 is currently under construction as a new Eco-Pier, scheduled for completion in 2017. Building upon years of community advocacy and interest in the development of these new waterfront sites as an amenity for local residents, LMCC seeks to model arts and cultural activities that respond to the unique features of these sites, and reflect the needs, interests and history of the neighborhood –taking into account community priorities for the waterfront that range from leisure uses to resiliency planning in the wake of Super Storm Sandy. Through the partnership project Paths to Pier 42, LMCC and its partners are currently activating Pier 42 with arts, culture, design and educational projects and programming while the Pier awaits permanent redevelopment by the NYC Department of Parks and Recreation. With the iLAB East River project, iLAND and LMCC are providing development residencies and community engagement opportunities to three artist-lead groups working in the Lower East Side and Chinatown, envisioning projects for the East River Waterfront.

 The 2015 iLAND Symposium is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.

Moving into the Out There

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Presenters and participants included New School professors Ivan Raykoff, Philip Silva, Danielle Goldman, Neil Greenberg, Victoria Marshall, and Robert Sember; PARK collaborators Kathy Westwater,  Seung Jae Lee and Jennifer Scappetonne; iLAND board members Elliott Maltby, Kate Cahill, Carolyn Hall and Julia Handschuh, Jennifer Monson; choreographer and improviser Susan Sgorbati, social scientist at the U.S. Forest Service, Erika Svendson; artist Kyle deCamp. Performance created by Athena Kokoronis. Workshops by E.J. McAdams; Liz Barry, Jessica Einhorn and Lailye Weidman of Higher E.D.; and Clarinda Mac Low of River to Creek.

Overview

Moving Into the Out There is iLAND’s fourth annual symposium on dance, movement, and the environment. The two-day event in the heart of New York City brings together dancers, choreographers, designers, ecologists, advocates, and scientists for interactive panel discussions, field workshops, and networking opportunities. This year’s symposium features an in-depth review of PARK, an environmental performance project at Fresh Kills Landfill supported by the 2011 iLAB Residency. Moving Into the Out There will also highlight iLAND’s recent efforts to synthesize insights and discoveries from the past seven years of iLAB collaborative residencies. Detailed event descriptions are attached.

Moving Into the Out There is an open forum for exploring new methods of understanding urban ecosystems through innovative collaborations between practitioners of movement, dance, science, and environmental management. iLAND cultivates a deeper engagement with urban environmental issues through its cross-disciplinary approach, and the annual symposium invites the general public to experience and explore recent works emerging from the iLAND community. Moving Into the Out There features the work of iLAND’s 2011 iLAB Residency, opening up the results of that collaborative experience to a wider audience for discussion.

Throughout the Symposium, participants share in the process of searching for shared language and collaborative processes that cut across the arts and sciences, focusing on dance and the body as primary mediators of experience, imagination, and knowing. Through Moving Into the Out There iLAND aims to generate conversation about collaborative practice throughout communities of art and science, instigating new ways of understanding and intervening in contemporary environmental problems – particularly those related to over-development and climate change.