2008 Grant Recipients

Artica is an outdoor multi-media art festival, parade and workshops series developed to provide the people of the St. Louis metropolitan area with the opportunity to come together as a community through creative self-expression. This annual event takes place in the early fall along the Mississippi riverfront as part of an effort to revitalize an area that has been polluted, neglected and abandoned for far too long.

Although the audience is primarily the citizens of the St. Louis metropolitan area, the whole world is invited to attend and participate as creators during the festival. Artica’s development is as fluid as the river it celebrates, and its scope will depend greatly upon the emotional involvement of the community.

The festival grounds are filled with site-specific installation art created by professional artists from the St. Louis metropolitan area. The emphasis is on interactive participatory art that takes its inspiration from the river, its surrounding environment or its history. An overlapping schedule of events including music, dance theater, poetry, video, film and performance art encourages the audience to move around and experience Artica from different perspectives. The interactive nature of the event will encourage the audience to create their own art and become performers themselves.

EMERGENCE was a thematic, curated exhibition, created by over 30 emerging and professional artists and arts collectives. Presented on Governors Island, New York, under the theme of “Creative Pioneers in Uncharted Territory,” exhibitors at EMERGENCE used the context, history, and recent steps towards revitalization, or “emergence,” of Governors Island as the source of inspiration and departure for the creation of participatory art.

This transitory show morphed the abandoned military outpost of the Commanders House into an inclusive, interactive, 3-dimensional, living exhibit that shifted and evolved as a result of audience participation and interaction. This show focused on works that were created collaboratively, that grew and evolved over the summer, and that engaged participants in a creative dialogue with the art. Emergence was open to the public on Saturdays and Sundays 11 am to 6 pm throughout July of 2008. Admission and ferry transportation to the island is free.

The artists and art collectives of Emergence included: Anne Arden McDonald, artcodex, Asha Ganpat, Avant Car Guard (South Africa), Chris Jordan, Casper Electronics, Christian Nerf - Barend de Wet & Douglas Gimberg (South Africa), Damon Hamm, Erik Fabian, Eugenia Yu, Friendly Falcons & Their Friend the Snake,  G-77, Jason Van Anden & Nat Hawks, John Krill, John Walter,  Michael Alan, Monica Müller, Peripheral Media Projects, Pornj Diamond Cell, Sarah Phillips, Saviour Scraps, Tara Parsons, Tim & Martin Dockery, Triangle Project (Denmark, Istanbul), and Urban Homesteading Project.

Emergence was a project of FIGMENT 2008. FIGMENT is a project of Action Arts League, and is produced by a coalition of volunteers in partnership with The Pure Project.

The Giving Tree is an interactive, part wind-powered, part human-powered sculpture of a 30-foot tree. It is designed to generate it's own power by harnessing the movement of tree branches and leaves in the wind, a currently untapped source of mechanical wind energy. Participants generate energy in this interactive playground, by swinging on swings attached to the tree. As power is generated twofold, The Giving Tree comes alive with lights, pumping water and sound, and shows the circulatory system of the tree's xylem and phloem system within.

Globally the aim of this project is to promote the prevention of de-forestation in places where illegal lumbering is a way of survival by teaching that trees can be a valuable asset of wind energy to us if just left standing, powering rural farms and villages off the grid.    

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