Press

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

 

Contact:

iLAND, Inc.

Jennifer Monson
Artistic Director
Phone: (212) 375-8283
E-mail: info@ilandart.org
Web: http://www.ilandart.org

iLAND – interdisciplinary Laboratory for Art Nature and Dance is pleased to announce the recipients of the 2009 iLAB collaborative residencies and their upcoming public engagements:

Waterways

The League of Imaginary Scientists: Artist Lucy Hg, with Composer Matt McBane, Architect Annie Kwon, Environmental Researcher David Garin, Danish Choreography Collective E.K.K.O: Karina Dichov Lund, Emma Nordanfors, and Klara Elenius

iLAB now in its fourth year, is a residency program supporting collaborations between movement based artists and scientists, environmentalists, urban designers/landscape architects, architects and others that integrate creative practice within different fields/disciplines. The goals of iLAB are 1) to invigorate and re-imagine relationships between the public and the urban environment through kinetic experience, 2) to engage artists and practitioners across the disciplines of dance, art, and the ecology of physical interrelationships such that we create and investigate innovative approaches to science, infrastructure, urbanisms, and architecture within a performative context, and 3) to support the development of process in engagement over product such that process is itself a product for artistic and public action.

iLAND is a not for profit organization conceived and formed by choreographer Jennifer Monson in 2004.  The organization’s mission is to investigate the power of dance, in collaboration with other fields, to illuminate our kinetic understanding of the world.  iLAND, a dance research organization with a fundamental commitment to environmental sustainability as it relates to art and the urban context, cultivates cross-disciplinary research among artists, environmentalists, scientists, urban designers and other fields.

iLAB 2009 is supported in part by the Brooklyn Arts Council.
FOR MORE INFORMATION contact info@ilandart.org or 212 375-8283.
_______________________________________________

Waterways is an international collaboration fusing creative methods of science, architecture, media, music and movement.  This collaborative research will culminate in public actions surrounding the theme of water.

A city’s circulatory system is both human and ecological – one enacted with water systems and cycles and plotted daily by the city’s inhabitants. While seemingly self-propelled, water does not move by itself. Guided but not directed by its source, Waterways is pushed along by the city itself. By focusing on the exchange of their practices and developing a common process, the group will develop interactive scenarios and perform site-specific water actions.

Liquid is a form – a way of staying in motion, of maintaining a state of development, of being in process – now, and later.

6 FREE PUBLIC EVENTS

Sunday, August16th, 11 AM to 7 PM
On the Waterpod in the Brooklyn Bridge Park
http://www.thewaterpod.org

Sunday, Sept. 20th, 1 to 3 PM
In the East River State Park along the East River in Brooklyn, 90 Kent Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11211
http://www.confluxfestival.org

Friday-Sunday, Sept. 25-27th, 7 to 9 PM
D.U.M.B.O. Art Under the Bridge Festival
on board the NY Harbor Experience water taxi, tours scheduled throughout the evening
http://www.dumboartscenter.org

Saturday, October 3rd, 4 – 9pm
HUMAN GLACIER in collaboration with Paul Dl Miller at 2012:  Art, The City, and the Environment, The Drop
http://imaginepeace.com/news/archives/7917

Sunday, October 4th
Actions at different locations along the Brooklyn Greenway
http://www.brooklyngreenway.org

Monday, October 5th, 6 PM
Water Potluck and Presentation of the Waterways Project
Gabriel Rivera’s facade/fasad
373 Columbia st. #1 ground floor, Brooklyn NY 10011
(together with Strataspore)

The initial phase of the research process and the first Waterways action took place aboard the Waterpod at Brooklyn Bridge Park, a floating habitat that is host to collaborations and artists. The Waterpod docks different places around the city from May through to October 2009. Additional free public actions by the Waterways collaborators will take place along the Brooklyn Greenway in September and October.

________________________________________________

Collaborator Biographies:

Waterways

The League of Imaginary Scientists is a group of artists and scientists who engineer hybrid art works in the cross-section of their worlds, in collaboration with local communities.  In pairing science and art, the League seeks to formulate new methods for data expression, embodied in playful interactions that produce physical artifacts and scientific residues.  The League’s process is interdisciplinary, drawing on collaborators ranging from natural history museum curators to genomic scientists.  Each imaginary science experiment brings together a new group of creative researchers, rallied by media artist Lucy Hg.  Lucy Hg has collaborated with Waterways collaborator E.K.K.O and with Emma Nordanfors in particular on past international projects.  The League has exhibited interactive art works globally.  A complete listing of the League’s experiments is online.  http://www.imaginaryscience.org

E.K.K.O is a choreography collective consisting of the dancers/choreographers, Emma Nordanfors, Klara Elenius and Karina Dichov Lund.  E.K.K.O works at the intersection of dance and performing arts with the directive of integrating other art forms into their practice.  E.K.K.O is a forum for testing new working methods are tested, a platform for three artists to expand their creative processes, and a place to experiment and push movement ideas in new directions.  Emma Nordanfors, Klara Elenius and Karina Dichov Lund earned their degrees from the National School for Modern Dance in Denmark in 2002.  They work professionally with dance and theatre in Denmark and abroad, both individually and collectively as E.K.K.O.  The Danish Art Council has funded the artists consistently since 2003.
http://www.ekkoproject.net

David Garin is an eco-minded scientist whose experience includes teaching chemistry at the University of Missouri, St. Louis and working on local environmental issues with the Missouri Coalition for the Environment.  As a Congressional Science Fellow, he worked in Al Gore’s office on environmental issues and co-founded the first non-partisan political action committee for scientists, engineers and educators, the National Coalition for Science and Technology.  His interest in balanced ecosystems led him to a position with the Environmental Protection Agency and chairmanship of Missouri’s Hazard Waste Management Commission.  He co-authored of the textbook, “Chemistry: Its Role in Society,” and has written more than two-dozen papers on organic chemistry, chemistry education, and science policy.

Annie Kwon holds a Bachelors of Architecture and Bachelors of Fine Arts from the Rhode Island School of Design and a Masters of Science in Advanced Architectural Design from Columbia University.  She is currently the architect for James Turrell’s studio in New York City. Her interdisciplinary work includes the scenography design for the Merce Cunningham international performance, Nearly Ninety.  She is a professor of architectural design at Pratt teaches collaboratively at Parsons School of Design and RISD.  Kwon established Serge Studio, a New York City-based progressive design firm that practices contemporary architecture, urbanism, and filmmaking.

Matt McBane is a NY-based composer who works across genres and in a variety of media.  He is the founder and director of the new music ensemble/band, Build, which Time Out New York describes as “a new quintet that straddles the increasingly permeable line between chamber music and instrumental rock.”  Music by McBane has been performed throughout America and Europe, with pieces for solo instruments, electronics, chamber groups, orchestras, film, and theater.  Recent projects include “2×4” for string octet commissioned for the California and Calder Quartets and “Granular Memory” for large ensemble conducted by Brad Lubman with members of Bang On A Can at MassMOCA. http://www.mattmcbane.com