St.Louis

CALL co-organized a three-part WALK for Marfa Dialogues/St. Louis (MD/STL) which started at the controversial 30-acre former public housing site, Pruitt-Igoe, demolished 40 years ago. The site has since lain fallow in a poor neighborhood of St. Louis. From Pruitt-Igoe the WALK continued down blocks with many abandoned homes, adjacent to others undergoing new housing construction, past urban farms, and ended in Grand Center - a cultural hub in St. Louis that still struggles from the consequences of de-population.

Participants included: artist Bob Hansman, poet MK Stallings, plant biologist George Yatskievych, architect Tyler Meyr, environmentalist and public policy activist Lorin Crandall, architects Axi:Ome, and plant morphologist Dan Chitwood.

Shifting Domains: Artists Respond to the Threatened Ecological Commons

Suzaan Boettger, art historian and critic, moderated this discussion between artists Mary Miss, Matthew Jensen, and scientist Patrick Kinney, along with Julie Reiss, author of From Margins to Center, The Spaces of Installation Art, on the erosion of traditional distinctions between art and utility and emerging hybrids of artistic, social, and ecological functionality. Together they reflected on how various artists’ strategies are recasting the role of the artist as an effective catalyst for social and environmental change.