DREAMING PLACE: Marble Arch Caves Geopark

Join us for 40 days and 40 nights of “action research” and experiment above and below ground at the Marble Arch Caves Global Geopark, Eire/Northern Ireland. We will be meeting the people, places and things of the Geopark between June 3rd and July 12th. During the residency we will devise a special tool-kit of adventurous processes, novel techniques and gentle site-specific interactions, as well as ways for locals and visitors to participate in our residency and its artistic outcomes. Supported by Marble Arch Caves Geopark and funded by Arts Council England, the project asks the question, “Does the land dream through us?”

Anna Keleher and I met at Dartington College of Art in 2007 during our studies on the M.A. Arts and Ecology course, at which time we began our collaborative practice. When we finished our studies we vowed we would meet up again in Ireland one day to continue our collaboration and further research prehistoric ecologies. We plan to “make good” on our promise to each other in the next 40-days at the geopark in Northern Ireland and in the process enrich relationships with the natural, social and cultural ecologies of the geopark. To locate the geopark on google maps click here.

To learn more about the project or to participate, visit the DREAMING PLACE project blog, where we will post upates, invitations and outcomes.

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Sounds Surround – A Sound Journeys Workshop

Saturday, April 2, 10 am – 12 noon
Harwood Art Center, 1114 7^th St. NW, Albuquerque, NM
Workshop Facilitator – Claire Coté

Workshop is $15 – Pre-registration Requested
Morning tea and scones provided

The sounds surrounding us are an often neglected, but very important part of our perceptual experience of places and the world in general. This workshop provides guidance on deepening our listening in each unique place and how to bring soundscape awareness and sound journeys into our work. The workshop will include brief introductions to sound, listening and sound art as well as providing participants with experience-based listening exercises in and out of doors, to open our ears and minds to the sounds surrounding us.

“Sounds Surround” is open to all, but is especially geared towards artists, teachers, park rangers and interpretation specialists.

This workshop is presented in connection with “How Far From Home Are We?” a multi-sensory installation in the main gallery of the Harwood Center for the Arts. More information on the project is online at: howfarfromhomearewe.com

To register for the workshop please contact Claire Coté at 5785-586-2362 or by email at clairabell22@hotmail.com. (Registration will be capped at 20 people.)

How Far From Home Are We? – opening reception

An illustrated Radio Journey
by Claire Coté, Anna Keleher and Rebecca Beinart

Harwood Art Center, Main Gallery
1114 7^th St. NW, Albuquerque, NM
Opening Reception April 1, 6 – 8pm
Exhibition April 1 – 29, 2011
Gallery Hours: Mon – Fri, 10 AM to 4 PM, and Fri Apr. 15^th 6-8 PM

Making its debut in the United States, this exhibition is the international collaborative outcome of a voyage in a small van from Totnes England to Helsinki Finland via the Baltic States and back through Scandinavia, across 16 borders, over 5,700 kilometers and all in seventeen days. On-site recordings and creative reflection are woven together to provide audible hints of a journey by land and sea. Collaborative pen and ink drawings created over bumpy roads and by the light of headlamps offer illustrated glimpses. Whittled tally-sticks provide a sculptural “account” of the expedition. Come and experience this intimate multi-sensory journey and join the collaboration by listening, smelling and drawing!

More information about the project and the related workshop at: howfarfromhomearewe.com

“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