ArtCraftTech 2010 Bios
Babette Audant is a Lecturer in the Department of Tourism and Hospitality, and is Assistant Development Coordinator of the Center for Economic and Workforce Development at Kingsborough Community College, City University of New York. CEWD’s focus is on strengthening local entrepreneurship, particularly as it relates to urban food systems and tourism, with an emphasis on green practices and sustainable development. Babette Audant has a master's degree in public administration, and is a doctoral candidate in Geography at the CUNY Graduate Center. Her research focuses on public markets and food policy in New York City. In addition to teaching at Kingsborough, she serves as Secretary of the Association for the Study of Food and Society (ASFS) and is a research fellow with the Public Space Research Group.
Websites:
What Tracing Trash is to Babette:
"Food cycles through the city. On its path to consumption, food collects waste (wrapping, packaging), and becomes waste (peelings, leftovers, table scraps, wishful thoughts). While most thinking about food celebrates, maps, and otherwise records its passage from farm to table, we've interrupted the passage from farm (or factory) to landfill, reminding ourselves that trash is (re-)produced and these processes too need examination. To start, trash is multi-faceted, multi-colored, never pre-determined, and not natural."
Sara Eichner is a painter whose work is derived from her interest in urban space. She has lived in Brooklyn for 12 years and exhibits her work regularly in New York. She is a past NYFA artist grant recipient and recently completed a year long residency at the Lower East Side Printshop. On the side she is studying horticulture and amateur urban agriculture. Her next solo exhibition will open April 14th, 2011 at Sears Peyton Gallery in Chelsea.
What Tracing Trash is to Sara:
"The trash collection aspect of Tracing Trash looks for patterns of day to day life revealed in stratified layers of garbage collected over time. Sorting and formalizing collected garbage in clear vitrines takes sorting our trash to a level beyond the rituals of separating plastic from glass from compost, and reconsiders the results of daily consumption."
Clarinda Mac Low works in performance and creates participatory events of all types. Her solo performance work and collaborative group extravaganzas have appeared at P.S. 122, St. Mark’s Church, Movement Research at the Judson Church, the Kitchen, and many other places and spaces around New York City (including a century-old ferryboat and the Queens Botanical Garden) and elsewhere in the world, including a park in Siberia. Mac Low’s most recent collaborations include TRYST (with Alejandra Martorell and Paul Benney), a sly series of performance interventions into everyday life, most recently as part of an iLAB Residency exploring the ecological life of North Brooklyn; Cyborg Nation, public conversation on the technological body and the nature of intimacy; and Salvage/Salvation, an ongoing collaborative installation and performance project that explores the philosophical, emotional and material implications of re-use, discard, decay and abundance. Her work has been supported by the Greenwall Foundation, through commissioning funds from the Joyce Metz-Gilmore Foundation and NYSCA and through several grants from and through the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. She has participated in many different residencies, including as a MacDowell Fellow (2000), a DTW ARM Fellow (2004-2005) and through the Society for Cultural Exchange in Pittsburgh. She received a BAXTEN Award in 2004, and is a grant recipient from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, 2007 and the recipient of a 2010 Franklin Furnace Fund for Performance Art grant. Mac Low is co-Director of Culture Push, a cross-disciplinary organization encouraging hands-on participation and strong hybrid ideas, in partnership with Aki Sasamoto and Arturo Vidich.
What Tracing Trash is to Clarinda:
"Space is taken up by the left over as well as the new. We're planning vertical farms, sky-high hydroponics, and rooftop gardens. Where will all the trash go? What do we throw out and why? What else could we do with it? Let's take a look at what we've got and where it goes, and dream about what could be different and how."
Elliott Maltby loves cities and their rich public spaces; she is interested in how art and design can contribute to the success of the urban experiment. She teaches urban design at Pratt Institute: the graduate architecture thesis studio and a seminar exploring the spatio-temporal aspects of public space. For 5 years she worked with Mary Miss, one of the most influential artists working in the public realm, as a project manager and landscape architect. She was a collaborator with the Lower Waters team, one of eight finalists in the World Trade Center Memorial competition. Elliott received a masters of landscape architecture from UC Berkeley, and has worked for and with architects, artists, and landscape architects over the years. Her work has been published in Landforum, Architectural Record, and Art in America.
What Tracing Trash is to Elliot:
"Through a series of linked public events and conversations, we are exploring, exposing and art-iculating the hidden lines of the food systems, the decaying, the disposable, and the derivative among others..." The n-dtgc: "How can the re-design of the familiar to go container challenge our reliance on and acceptance of the disposable?"
Deena Patel is a Systems manager and physicist.
What Tracing Trash is to Deena:
"Trash is an intimate part of our lives; most of us would rather keep hidden. Tracing it back to how it came into our lives (as food, packaging, stuff...) and tracing it forward to where it goes (compost, landfill, ocean, space...) ACT 10 Highlights some of these routes and raises possibilities for US urban communities to reduce trash output, such as exploring the example of Mumbai’s tiffin."
Neha Sabnis. As a student and a practitioner in the field of architecture and urbanism, I have always been interested in the way cities reshape themselves and the intimate relationship shared by the built environment with its surrounding cultural and economic environment. My awareness and personal stances towards architecture are greatly influenced by my graduate studies at Pratt Institute and undergraduate schooling at KRVIA, Mumbai. Through the various studios at Pratt and KRVIA, I focused on developing innovative architectural and programmatic systems to address issues pertaining to mass housing, regeneration of underused industrial lands; public space; and environmental sustainability through collective recycling of resources. After my undergraduate studies, I got the opportunity to work with a diverse range of architectural and urban design practices for over two years.
What Tracing Trash is to Neha:
"Total number of food containers in a given system stay constant, they can only be transferred from one user to another." - Tracing Trash’s Law of Conservation of Food Containers
This hypothesis is supported by the joint effort of N-DTGC1 Design and n-dtgc DN2, as a part of generating a DCW3 Free Society.
- N-DTGC: Non-Disposable To Go Containers
- n-dtgc DN: Non-Disposable To Go Container’s Distribution Network
- DCW: Disposable Container Waste
Jill Slater is an Urban planner and writer.
What Tracing Trash is to Jill:
"Awareness is the first step. Rather than waste waste, we contemplate it, we watch it, we capture it, we expose it. Through art, design, and other innovative acts, we engage others and through dialogue, encourage others to do the same."
Kathy Westwater creates art that exists in the human body. Her experimental, collaboratively based work has been seen in many places since 1996, including Dance Theater Workshop, Brooklyn Museum, Franklin Furnace, Danspace Project, Movement Research at Judson Church, Joyce SoHo, P.S. 122, and 92nd Street Y, among others. It has received critical attention in The New York Times, The Village Voice, The Drama Review, American Theater, and Dance Magazine. Her most recent project, PARK, seen at Dance Theater Workshop and Fresh Kills, the infamous NYC landfill that is undergoing conversion into a park, explores cycles of consumption and waste and destruction and construction. Westwater maintains an investigatory studio and teaching practice that supports the development of her creative work. Currently teaching as guest faculty at Sarah Lawrence College, Westwater has also taught at Trisha Brown Studio, 92nd Street Y, Bennington College, and Movement Research. Kathy was born in Virginia and grew up in Kentucky. She received an MFA from Sarah Lawrence and a BA from William and Mary.
What Tracing Trash is to Kathy:
"'Derivatives for Dummies,' a monologue in collaboration with ACT 2010 members, explores the role of derivatives in the trajectory of trash from production to consumption, i.e. the "trashy" prequel to the trash. What you always wanted to know about derivatives, but were afraid to ask… Westwater asks for you, and attempts to answer."
Peripheral participants: Carolina Cisneros + Mateo Pinto (Architects/artists).