2020 Year End Appeal
We are woven into the fabric of the natural world.
Our relationship with nature is deeply inspiring and intricately interdependent.
It’s also critically out of balance.
CALL is working to help communities collaborate on creative paths forward; we know that by working together, anything is possible.
City as Living Laboratory recognizes the power of art to draw connections between the immediate experiences of individuals and the larger picture of the climate crisis in visceral and tangible ways, inspired by powerful cross-pollination of ideas and approaches from many disciplines.
Artist-led collaboration is the force for change needed to re-envision our communities for the climate crisis, and to make them more just and sustainable on every level in the process. It’s been hard work, but we’re seeing ambitious ideas we’ve invested in flourish, like our project WaterMarks in Milwaukee. This initiative to build city-wide engagement with water issues actively invites the community to become a part of green infrastructure on both an intimate and city a scale; we’re developing new green technology, facilitating projects by talented local artists, capturing imaginations, and building a constellation of diverse, committed local leaders to steer the ship.
During the pandemic, the relationship-building we prioritize enabled us to move collaborations online and keep projects on track. Our ability to meet this moment would have been impossible without the creativity of our team, the resilience of communities, and the generosity of amazing people. We’re so grateful, but our monumental task can’t rely on a handful of donors; to move forward we need everyone.
Can you make a contribution today? It doesn’t take much to make a big difference; if every reader of our newsletter contributed $25 a month, we would raise half our current operating budget over the course of a year. Whether you prefer to make monthly donation or a one time gift, no matter the size, we can promise you that every penny will be put hard to work!
What does this collaboration actually look like?
CALL’s work brings together a diversity of voices to call for change and reimagine our futures. We know collaboration creates strength, but it also presents many challenges that need to be contemplated and addressed.
We’ve asked many of the artists and scientists we work with to tell us what collaboration means to them; you can read some of their answers below and across our social media in the coming months. You can also join us for our next CALL/Conversation on this topic, on December 2nd with Marlon Blackwell, Dr. Marty Matlock, and Mary Miss. Any donor who contributes $250 or more to our year-end appeal will receive a ticket.
Hear From Artists We Work With….
Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful Espejo
Nicolás has been working with CALL on a series of projects that focus on nurturing an intimate relationship with other beings in the natural ecosystem we are a part of. In both public walks, and self-guided meditations, Nicolas has helped us to understand the interconnectedness of all beings. We’re excited about his proposal for (insert title), a outdoor curriculum that invests in educators and resources them to facilitate meaningful engagements with plants, animals, and other beings for others.
We asked Nicolás what it means to him to be a part of nature:
I am not part of nature. I am nature. This is something I learned from Anna Halprin. All separation from nature is mythological, a construct. We as “humans” can pretend, and delude ourselves that we are other than nature, but nature will always teach us otherwise. This separation paradigm is what has gotten us where we are now, not a pretty landscape. My personal understanding of all of this is as being ONE with nature. How do I this? I am still working on it. When we consciously start to incarnate that ONENESS, I think, we would be at a better place, and we would not need to talk about ecology or the environment, we would be it.
Maya Ciarrocchi
Maya joined our team of artists working on public projects for Rescuing Tibbetts Brook this year. Her work with CALL expands on beautiful cyanotype maps of Tibbetts Brook and the Northwest Bronx she produced during a residency at Wave Hill last winter. While we have had to postpone the installation of this new public artwork and the accompanying performance by Francheska Alcantara to 2021 due to the pandemic, Maya and Francheska were able to produce a beautiful short film Mosholu that touches on the project themes.
We asked Maya why the work we do together matters:
I started working with City as Living Laboratory in 2020 just as the COVID lock downs began. Although the physical aspects of our project had to be postponed, CALL was able to come up with a way for us to work together during the pandemic and continue the project’s momentum. CALL’s mission of centering artist’s voices to provide solutions for environmental issues and their openness to ideas and possibilities has been rewarding to me as an artist and as a citizen. Through our work together I have been able to conceive of a public art project that I would not have been able to produce on my own. By listening and connecting to the artists and scientists who are part of CALL’s community, I am learning how to engage more fully with my neighborhood, borough and city while deepening my artistic practice.
Melanie Ariens
One of the core principles of CALL’s efforts in Milwaukee is to populate the city with a constellation of artist projects that engage the community. Melanie Arien’s work to create a series of murals with the students at Acosta Middle School near our first WaterMarker is an exemplar of this. Ariens led walks, participated in workshops, taught lessons, and co-created a mural project with the students. WaterMarks is not Arien’s first time working with water. Much of her work is informed by environmental activism, specifically focusing on the water issues that impact the great lakes region.
Tattfoo Tan
CALL’s projects in Chinatown examine issues of climate, health, and equity through the lens of food and the larger food system. Tattfoo’s project WuXing Oracle Cards highlights locally sold asian produce, and connects it to concepts of healing in traditional Chinese medicine. Over the past few months, Tattfoo has been creating beautiful watercolor oracle cards and working with TCM practitioner Donna Mah to explore the healing properties of each featured produce item. When complete, people may use the deck to explore these concepts and connect to recipes and food memories shared by community members. You can add to the project by sharing your food story.
We asked Tattfoo what collaboration means and why our work matters:
Collaboration creates the opportunity to open up other possibilities and perspectives. I love how the issue we are working on are not just conceptual but real, and how it is both public and personal, looking a the larger system of food distribution as well as how food influences our body and mind. We need to Heal the Man in order to heal the Land.