WATERWAYs 2005

For me, the seed of this project began in Miami with the "Lifeboat". Paul Middendorf, a curator from Portland OR, and I went to Miami in December during Art Basel, snuck our way into the Positions (the Basel galleries containers turned into exhibition-spaces), and used the space to build a boat. We organized artists - over 60 artists worldwide sent work to us that had to do with the environment, trade/borders, utopian concepts, and micronations.

In Miami, we met and engaged in a dialogue with many people, from beachgoers who were curious about the work, to refugees who shared stories of their personal experiences with us, as well as people attending the art fairs.

At one point we met and discussed with Renee Vara, a curator who runs varaart.com, about some of our many convening ideas. We came to learn quickly that we both felt that we wanted to do whatever we could to provide a platform for socially conscious art, that would activate communities with new ideas, take chances, be subversive, and grow as an alternative, a long-tail to the mainstream.

Renee became increasingly interested in doing something in Venice because of the current conditions there with rising tides (that are literally proof of global warming), and causing the entire city to sink. As she and I learned more about each other, we came together with the following concerns - our own government’s ignorant stance towards global warming and its ramifications, as well as many other current issues surrounding water, like privatization in less-powerful countries and pollution from industry. More to come…

"Castaways" is an overnight performance by Renée Vara that explores the social constructions of displacement as it affects societies of both humans and other species-specifically the relationship between the patterns of social constructions and species preservation.

CURATORIAL COMMITTEE: Renée N. Vara, A. Faculty, NYU & Solomon Guggenheim Museum Lecturer; Eugenia Cherkasskaya, Vara Global Fine Arts; Ethan Cohen, Ethan Cohen Fine Arts; Mary Mattingly; Karen LaGatta; Irene Nikolai, independent curator.

ARTISTS: Art Hijack, Elena Bajo, Brandon Ballengée, John Breiner, Orly Cogan, Christoph Draeger, Peter Fend, Emmanuelle Gauthier, G-77, Jason Hackenworth, Tamar Hirschl, Susanne Kriemann, Michelle Vara Livsey, Pan Xing Lei, Eva Mantell, Elahe Massumi, Mary Mattingly, Jason Middlebrook, Zhu Ming, Naoto Nakagawa, Agata Oleksiak, Rune Olsen, Libia Perez & Olafur Ami Olafsson, Jim Peters & Vicky Tomayko, Aviva Rahmani, Avelino Sala, Lisa Marie Schilling, Dana Shea, Raphaele Shirley, Jeannie Wiessglass, Wu Shan Zhuan & Inga Svala Thorsdottir.

Check out the WATERWAYs 2005 Press Release.
Want to make a monetary contribution to this project? Here is how you can turn "green" into green consciousness. You can own a unique porfolio made by exhibited artists exclusively for the support WATERWAYs.

WATERWAYs -- Art as Action
June 10th, 12AM - June 11th, 6PM
Location: St. Elena Port

Curatorial Proposal

Waterways is a collective effort, action, ecovention and exhibition created and self-produced by 5 curators and 33 international artists to be installed on a public Vaporetto. The exhibition will take place alongside the Venice Biennale, at St. Elena, for the opening weekend - June 10th and June 11th.

The Waterways project organically developed amongst a group of artists and curators, who wanted to create socially conscious art and reassert a utopian role for art as an international communicator, which could shape, inform and transform the dialogue regarding specific global issues. The genesis of the project started with Renee Vara and Mary Mattingly, as an intentional response to the present "fair factor" dominating the presentation and exhibition of art. It has since grown into an international forum of academics in the arts and sciences, curators, artists, private patrons, art institutions, interested volunteers, and the general public. They have gathered public and private resources, skills, abilities, voices and efforts to construct and create a global call for attention and international cooperation regarding the preservation of our world's natural resources. Much like Joseph Beuys 7000 Oaks, which began at Documenta II, the project attempts to begin a series of self-produced interventions, which deal with environmental issues in a nonpolitical context.

Waterways is as much about the process as it is about the exhibition. The exhibition and the installation of 33 original works of art that deal with rising tides, species preservation, global warming and air pollution, suggests that there are multiple models in the display and exhibition of art, which do and can offer alternative means to voice aesthetic responses. More important, the locus of "meaning" of such exhibitions is not just bound by the material art objects that are installed, but are situated in the process, the collection and the organization of a "community" from disparate and unaffiliated individuals and institutions, which become connected through a shared value system.

Waterways has been completely self-produced, self-funded, and self-organized. It represents a "call" to people in both the art world and other communities, of how social activism and collective efforts can create "affects", "dialogues," "activities" and "communities" which are as informative to the construction of culture as material production is in our society. Its aim is in the processes of inclusion and pluralism, rather than the current dominant functions in the art world. The organizers of Waterways make no differentiation between a social demonstration and an art intervention, as they aim to maintain a vibrant expression for public art within our society.

Renee N. Vara, Curator
141 Wooster Street - Suite 4D
New York, NY 10012
212-475-4404