“If You’d Like to….” at Great Sand Dunes National Park

Claire and Anna were honored to have their piece, “If You’d Like To…..Great Sand Dunes” installed at the visitors center at the Great Sand Dunes National Park in the San Luis Valley of Southern Colorado.

Patrick Myers, Sand Dunes Park Ranger had this to say about the piece:

Claire Long Cote and Anna Keleher collaborated to create one of their “If
You’d Like to…” audio installations for Great Sand Dunes National Park in
2010.  Thousands of visitors during the busy season listened quizically and
pushed pretend buttons as they heard elk bugling, Medano Creek flowing, and
other evocative sound bytes.  This installation is a creative reminder of
how automated our culture has become, and how that spills over even into
our national parks.  In our increasingly urbanized and consumer-driven
world, many of us have become used to pushing buttons to immediately get
what we want.  Experiences of nature in the park become almost like items
in a vending machine,a satellite channel list, or in this case, options on
a prerecorded phone menu.  Fortunately, these wooden buttons don’t really
take the visitor to the experience they want, leading to frustration…and
hopefully a new insight into the disconnect between the consumer’s
automated world and the wild, unpredictable natural world.

Projects return to Dartmoor for Exhibition

“If you’d like to….Dartmoor” and “Approaching an Exchange: Dartmoor”

Presented as part of “Art, Ecology and the Economy”
23rd January – March 28th, 2010

Centre for Contemporary Art and the Natural World, Exeter, Devon UK  and

Duchy Square Centre for Creativity, Dartmoor, Devon, UK

Admission Free – Open Tuesday –  Sunday 10 am – 4pm

Anna Keleher and Claire Long are showing a number of collaborative photographic, sculptural and audio outcomes and are represented at both venues. They are also presenting a live event/walk which will be led by Anna and Mark Keleher.

Participate in The Exchange – 28^th March , 11 am – 4 pm – Walk leaves from Duchy Square

Artists Anna Keleher and Claire Long invite you to add your voice to the growing community of Exchange participants.  “ If you could share an element of your life or culture with the original inhabitants of a Bronze Age dwelling what would you choose?” Journey with Anna and Mark Keleher by hire van and on foot to a nearby Bronze Age roundhouse dwelling on Dartmoor. Drink tea, eat cake and share elements of your lives and cultures with the Original Inhabitants.

Free event includes walk, tea and Exchange. Booking essential. Please call Duchy Square on 01822  890822

“Art, Ecology and the Economy” – Full Exhibition details

Art, Ecology and the Economy’ is a developmental collaboration between two leading organisations involved in the creative arts, operating on either side of Dartmoor. It is initiated by the Centre for Contemporary Art and the Natural World in Haldon Forest, near Exeter, working in collaboration with the Duchy Square Centre for Creativity in the centre of Princetown.

The project takes the form of an exhibition in two parts, displayed simultaneously and four forums. Its aim is to demonstrate how environmentally friendly approaches to manufacture and collaboration can help make the creative industries more profitable. In turn, they will show how profitable creative industries impact on other important regional industries, particularly tourism, by providing products and services that enhance local distinctiveness. Examples of work and case studies focus on the Greater Dartmoor area, but also on other predominantly rural areas in the UK and abroad (incl. Europe and Africa).Some artists (this includes designers and makers of all kinds) were invited to exhibit and others were chosen from an ‘open submission’. We have sought to include work which addresses ecological concerns and which has the potential to be developed into viable and successful ‘green’ businesses.”

Forum : Wood Culture (CCANW) Thursday 28 January

Forum : Wool Culture (Duchy Square) Thursday 11 February

Forum : Water Culture (CCANW) Thursday 25 February

Forum : Establishing Cultures ( Duchy Square) Thursday 18 March

Each forum lasts from 10am – 4pm.

See the CCANW website www.ccanw.co.uk for list of speakers.  Admission £10 (£8 conc). Booking essential, phone 01392 382277 or email info@ccanw.co.uk

Exchange featured in Web Exhibition

Approaching an Exchange: Albuquerque is featured in the recently launched Web Exhibition for the LAND/ART New  Mexico project. This online exhibition presents aspects of the many and very divers exhibitions, range of works and publications associated with this unique and somewhat colossal project. Visit LAND/ART: A WEB EXHIBITION here.

Approaching an Exchange: Albuquerque

Site Visits and Exchange Journeys

People, place and things come together in unique configurations to inform and enrich our lives and cultures. Between Sept 25th and Oct 3rd 2009 collaborative artists Claire Long and Anna Keleher hosted five experimental live research events at Tijeras Pueblo Archaeological Site in the Sandia Ranger District in Cibola National Forest, east of Albuquerque. Their film, “Approaching an Exchange: Dartmoor” played out in the University of New Mexico Art Museum linking this site-based project to its roots in England. The footage gathered at Tijeras Pueblo is part of a growing archive of Exchange, which will contribute to future Exchange exhibitions and events.

“Approaching an Exchange: Dartmoor” installed at UNM Art Museum*

Five small groups of curious participants accompanied Claire Long and Anna Keleher on successive visits to the Tijeras Pueblo Archaeological Site to engage in a novel interchange with the people who lived at the site 700 years ago. Red earth slopes of piñon and juniper witnessed the Exchange journeys while ants carried off crumbs into their homes.

Participants were requested to bring something from their lives and cultures to share with the prehistoric people of Tijeras Pueblo. From barbed wire to a Santa Fe fiesta, contributions were excitingly varied. The artists’ guests spoke with respect and intelligence and there was a palpable sense of time dissolving, connection and possibility.

Objects and ideas brought to Tijeras Pueblo by Exchange participants

Each guest was also asked to consider a gift that they would like to receive from the ancient people of Tijeras. Again the requests were varied, from sharing gossip to asking for knowledge of their navigational systems.

Together the groups shared moments of sadness, regret, humor and pride. Something seemed to happen on site at the Exchange both on Dartmoor and at Tijeras, which remains difficult to grasp and harder still to explain and can only be fully experienced by the growing community of participants in the Exchange.

Approaching an Exchange came into being in a Bronze Age Roundhouse on the windy slopes of Dartmoor National Park before making its way to Tijeras Pueblo in New Mexico. The Exchange is keen to Inhabit other sites, homes, cultures and times where it will continue to encourage diverse peoples to come together to talk.

Left image – Exchange site in Dartmoor National Park (photo by Chris Cote); right Image – Exchange site at Tijeras Pueblo

Visit live project links below to discover more about The Exchange.

What would you choose to share with the ancient inhabitants of a prehistoric settlement near you?

http://creativetorbay.com/directory/?disc=34&view=list&p=217

http://web.me.com/a.keleher/Site/Talking_with_things_home.html

*Photos are by Claire Long or Anna Keleher unless otherwise credited

Approaching an Exchange: Albuquerque

Potentizing elements of our lives, cultures and times

A collaborative project by Anna Keleher and Claire Long

An inter-temporal “Exchange” initiated in Dartmoor National Park, England now comes to New Mexico! Through the idea of exchange, the participatory project presses against boundaries of time and preconceptions of past and present peoples and cultures.

Film short – in the University of New Mexico Art Museum
Visitors to Dispersal/Return at the UNM Art Museum are invited to experience “Approaching an Exchange: Dartmoor”, a short collage of sound and image collected from visitors to a Bronze Age roundhouse on wild and windy Dartmoor during the project’s UK pilot phase.

Live events – at a nearby prehistoric site, September 29th and October 3rd, 10 am – 2 pm
Artists Claire Long and Anna Keleher invite you to add your voice to the growing community of Exchange participants, journeying with them to a nearby prehistoric, archaeological site to share elements of your lives and cultures with the original inhabitants. Light lunch will be provided. Reservations required; early booking recommended; places limited.

For reservations or more information visit the museum, call 505-277-2868 or email clairabell22@hotmail.com.

Presented as part of Dispersal/Return: Land Arts of the American West 2000 – 2006
August 28 – December 20, 2009 – Reception Friday, September 25, 5-7pm
University of New Mexico Art Museum, Popejoy Hall, Albuquerque
and Land Arts New Mexico www.landartnm.org and www.smudgestudio.com

Listen to a Radio Devon BBC interview about Approaching and Exchange: Dartmoor – COMING SOON!

Approaching an Exchange is a site-based, participatory project embodying an intercultural, inter-temporal “exchange” with the original inhabitants of prehistoric archeological sites. We invite small groups of people to these sites to participate. In preparation we ask them to bring an object or idea that reflects them personally, culturally or professionally to share with the original inhabitants and to identify a gift to offer and a gift to receive in exchange with those people.

We can only interpret the past through our present experience and by the same token, perhaps we can learn about the present by reaching for perceptions of the past. The breadth of the project expands as the community of exchange participants grows. We hope you will join us!