BROADWAY: 1000 Steps
MARFA DIALOGUES, 2013
Mary Miss/City as Living Laboratory continued its BROADWAY: 1000 Steps project with a series of walking dialogues between artists and scientists. CaLL began conducting walks along Broadway in 2012 at the invitation of the Municipal Art Society. Building on the earlier walks which spanned the 18 mile length of Manhattan’s main artery, these walks focused on short segments of the avenue beginning at Bowling Green and 23rd Street, jumping up to 168th Street and ending at 183rd Street. The artist/scientist duos discussed, between themselves and the public, possible solutions to a variety of environmental challenges along the Broadway corridor, with particular focus on surrounding neighborhoods.
The WALKS were followed by a panel discussion on Tuesday, November 19, 6PM, at the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation (RRF) Project Space (455 W. 19th Street), entitled Shifting Domains: Artists Respond to the Threatened Ecological Commons. Participating artists and scientists included art historian Julie Reiss, author of From Margins to Center, The Spaces of Installation Art. Suzaan Boettger, art historian and critic, whose longstanding research focus has been contemporary land and environmentalist art, will moderate. The panel also included Mary Miss, artist, Matthew Jensen, artist, and Patrick Kinney, Scientist and Epidemiologist. Together they reflected on the erosion of traditional distinctions between art and utility and emerging hybrids of artistic, social, and ecological functionality and how various artists’ strategies are recasting the role of the artist as an effective catalyst for social and environmental change.
The CaLL/WALKS have been made possible with support by the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation in partnership with Marfa Dialogues/NY, an examination of climate change science, environmental activism and artistic practice taking place this October and November 2013 in New York City. Marfa Dialogues/NY is a collaboration between the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, Ballroom Marfa and the Public Concern Foundation and will feature more than 20 Program Partners, including MM/CaLL ~ BROADWAY: 1000 Steps, and a spectrum of exhibitions, performance, and interdisciplinary discussions at the intersection of the arts and climate change. www.marfadialogues.org