Schedule

Members' Premiere – The Altered Landscape: Photographs of a Changing Environment

Conference guests are invited to join the Nevada Museum of Art for the Members’ Premiere of The Altered Landscape: Photographs of a Changing Environment, the backdrop exhibition to the Conference.

Hosted by NV Energy

Welcome Reception

Conference speakers, sponsors, attendees, Museum staff and Trustees are invited to this private Welcome Reception. Enjoy cocktails and refreshments, then join curators and artists who will offer informal presentations in the Museum’s galleries beginning at 8 pm. Among those present are Diana Al-Hadid, Richard Black, Pilar Cereceda, Amy Franceschini, Helen Mayer Harrison & Newton Harrison, Geoff Manaugh, Christine Mazuera-Davis, Rodrigo Pérez de Arce, and Ann M. Wolfe.

Paul D. Miller aka DJ Spooky: Ice Music

Paul D. Miller aka DJ Spooky that Subliminal Kid, has spent much of his career as a composer, multimedia artist, and writer, creating bridges between sound art and contemporary visual culture. Most recently, Paul D. Miller aka DJ Spooky has created sound samplings using live symphonic performance and electronic music to conceptually interpret the environments of the Arctic and Antarctic, human interactions with them, and environmental changes affecting these fragile places. Musicians from the Reno Philharmonic, led by Dustin Budish, perform live as Paul D. Miller aka DJ Spooky recreates sonic soundscapes of the Earth's polar regions.

Sponsored by the Stremmel Gallery

Conference Welcome

Designing for Longevity

Futurist Bruce Sterling will introduce Alexander Rose, Director of The Long Now Foundation, who will discuss the design and construction of a monument-sized, 10,000-year clock as an icon to long-term thinking. Long Now is currently constructing the first version of the clock in west Texas, and owns property adjoining Great Basin National Park in eastern Nevada where it plans to build a final public version. The Long Now Foundation was established in 1996 to creatively foster long-term thinking and responsibility in the framework of the next 10,000 years.

Altering the Landscape

An introduction to the signature photography collection of the Nevada Museum of Art, The Altered Landscape: Photographs of a Changing Environment, reveals how individuals and industries have marked, mined, toured, tested, developed, occupied, and exploited landscapes over the last fifty years.

In The Wake of Progress

In his large-scale photographs, Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky examines nature as it is transformed through industry. Recycling yards, mine tailings, quarries and refineries are all places outside the everyday experience of the average person, yet Burtynsky notes that we all partake of their industrial production on a daily basis. Burtynsky’s dramatic images are metaphors for the dilemma of modern existence, as they seek a dialogue between attraction and repulsion, seduction and fear.

Presented by the Carol Franc Buck Foundation

Break

Framing Consumption: Photographies of Sustainability

Photographers Subhankar Banerjee and Chris Jordan join Edward Burtynsky in a conversation about global consumption and sustainability. A photographer, writer, and environmental activist, Subhankar Banerjee is a leading voice on issues of arctic conservation, resource development, and climate change. Photographer Chris Jordan gains access to some of America’s largest industrial waste facilities and factories to photograph the detritus of our consumer culture at an immense scale.

Presented by the Carol Franc Buck Foundation

Lunch

Living Legend: G. Robert Deiro and Earthworks in Nevada

Once a trusted advisor to artists Michael Heizer and Walter de Maria, G. Robert Deiro helped to manage the creation of some of the largest earthworks in the American West.  As a pilot and director of aviation for Howard Hughes in Las Vegas in the late 1960s, Deiro helped Heizer and de Maria identify and secure land, engineer plans, order supplies, and establish project costs for some of their most significant undertakings. Deiro, who recently donated significant archive materials to the Center for Art + Environment, will share stories about his encounters and relationships with these iconic artists and artworks.

Bring your lunch to this program presented in the Founders' Room on the Third Floor. Space is limited and seating is available on a first come, first served basis.

Fahrenheit Rising: Adapting Ecologies in the Sierra Nevada

Scientists have recorded ongoing temperature increases in the Sierra Nevada that threaten beneficial plant species and the invasion of harmful ones. Internationally-renowned environmental artists Helen Mayer Harrison & Newton Harrison propose a series of long-term ecological responses that have the potential to mitigate the effects of global warming on the Sierra’s ecosystems.

Presented by the Wilhelm Hoppe Family Trust and the Elke Hoppe Youth
Advancement Trust

Designing the Wild and Cultivating the City

The ecological initiatives of artist, gardener and designer Fritz Haeg fuse fields of performance, architecture, and eco-activism. Currently a Rome Prize Fellow at the American Academy in Rome, Haeg presents images and thoughts on recent directions in his work.

Chinati at a Crossroads: Art and Environment in West Texas

A contemporary art museum based upon the ideas of its founder Donald Judd, The Chinati Foundation is located on 340 acres of land on the site of former Fort Russell in Marfa, Texas. Chinati preserves and presents permanent large-scale installations by Judd, John Chamberlain, Dan Flavin, Richard Long, Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen, with an emphasis on works that are inextricably linked to the surrounding landscape.  Recently appointed director of the Chinati Foundation, Thomas Kellein, formerly of the Kunsthalle Bielefeld museum in Germany, will outline his innovative plans for the future of the Foundation.

Break

Meditations on Mediation: Leo Villareal on Technologies of Perception

The most prominent light sculptor of his generation, Leo Villareal creates immersive interactive sculptures that combine strobe lights, neon, and LED bulbs activated by his own custom-made software. Villareal’s large-scale installations respond to unique architectural features of the built environment, while simultaneously activating these spaces in hypnotic and exhilarating ways.

Designing Architectures for Environmental Change

Landscape Futures curator Geoff Manaugh asserts that planetary landscapes, and our perceptions of them, can be utterly transformed by technology and design. This session, moderated by futurist Bruce Sterling, explores shifting terrains of architectural invention, where the construction of new spatial devices on a variety of scales — from the inhabitable to the portable — uncover previously inaccessible aspects of the built and natural environments. David Benjamin explores adaptive technologies and responsive architecture through open source, collaborative, hands-on research and design. London-based architect Mark Smout presents Envirographic Architecture that explores how natural landscapes can be transformed into sensitive drawing devices. Liam Young of futures think tank Tomorrows Thoughts Today discusses his series Specimens of Unnatural History, a collection of near-future taxidermy that explores the possibilities of emerging technologies in complex ecosystems.

Programming related to this presentation is supported by the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts

Composing Place: Music of Sean Shepherd

A graduate of The Juilliard School and a winner of multiple awards for his musical compositions, Sean Shepherd — 2011 Composer-in-Residence with the Reno Philharmonic — presents a new musical work written in response to the Nevada landscape. Conversation follows between Shepherd and Laura Jackson, Music Director of the Reno Philharmonic, about how Shepherd’s new composition Silvery Rills and Antonín Dvořák’s historical Symphony No. 9 refer to time and place in completely different ways.

Ecologies of Infrastructure

Art, ecology, landscaping and functional infrastructure meet in all of Patricia Johanson’s creative endeavors. Since the 1960s, her innovative and multi-dimensional design approach to infrastructure projects such as municipal flood basins, sewers, water-treatment systems, and flood control structures have resulted in landscapes that are functional, sculptural, and enjoyed by the public. From mine-scarred land to typical highway structures, Johanson creates multi-functional designs where life can flourish. She will discuss projects in Dallas; Petaluma, California; Salt Lake City; and Scranton, Pennsylvania.

Not Horsing Around: Amy Franceschini and Farming
in the Future

Amy Franceschini’s most recent project, This is Not a Trojan Horse, concerns rural regeneration in the Abruzzo region of Italy, where globalization has had a significant impact on traditional modes of farming and agriculture. Franceschini’s large-scale, mobile sculpture, designed to move throughout the Italian countryside, collects traces of rural farming practices including seeds, tools, interviews, recipes and products with an aim to enliven the imaginations of farmers and locals through discourse and artistic production. The project was commissioned by Gaetano Carboni, General Director of the Polinaria Arts Center and Organic Farm in Abruzzo.

The Center for Art + Environment awarded the first Artists | Writers | Environments grant to artist Amy Franceschini and writer Michael Taussig for this project. The grant was sponsored by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

Break

Navigating the Waters of Art and Science in Australia

This session brings together a range of creative voices working around rivers and their environments in Australia. Renowned scientist Gerald Nanson will first provide an overview of the rivers of our flattest and hottest continent. Artist Mandy Martin will discuss the Desert Channels project, which focuses on the region of southwestern-Queensland, and then is joined by curator John Carty to discuss the recent Paruku expedition in Western Australia. Architect Richard Black proposes a series of sustainable design solutions to improve the health of the Murray River system, and artist John Reid presents Fishman, a unique project that is part visual art, natural history theater, and conservation campaign in New South Wales. Dr. Steven G. Wells, President of the Desert Research Institute (DRI) will introduce the panelists.

Lunch

VENUE: A Special Announcement

Geoff Manaugh, author of BLDGBLOG and Contributing Editor of WIRED UK, and Nicola Twilley, author of the blog Edible Geography and Food Editor for the magazine GOOD, embark on a year-long project in collaboration with the Center for Art + Environment.

Visual Eclectics: Jorge Pardo’s Art(chitectures)

Recognized as a 2010 Fellow by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Jorge Pardo continually challenges the definition of traditional fine art by blurring the boundaries between design, architecture, and everyday objects. While exploring the relationship between spectatorship and participation, Pardo’s work complicates issues of virtual space and environment, the valuation of objects and artworks, and the question of where art ends and real life begins.

Critical Velocity: Bruce Sterling Speculations

Author and visionary Bruce Sterling will reflect on the issues raised at the 2011 Art + Environment^SM Conference and suggest potential directions for future dialogue.

Wrap Party

The Conference closes with a cocktail celebration hosted by the Nevada Museum of Art. The party is open to all speakers, sponsors, and attendees.