Avita Geva

Agriculturalist

Greenhouse Project
Israel - Ein Shemer / since 1980
Avital Geva
Since more than 20 years Avital Geva has concentrated on the Greenhouse Project. Geva activates dozens of young people from the Kibbutzim in the vicinity, who cooperate with the best scientists from agricultural and industrial research institutions in Israel.

In this cooperative project various organic-agricultural processes are studied: solaric methods of growing, sophisticated methods of cycling water, alternative substrata for soil and more: all these are being tried - together with advanced cybernetic technology - under the guidance of the artist.

Avital Geva, now, activates a complete organic cosmos, which unites nature and culture, and constitutes as a real proposal. The Greenhouse, as an inter-disciplinary environment, refuses all metaphoricity: This is a unit of reality. Its concern is to re-arouse thoughts on questions about the borders between art and life or art and nature. After all that has been claimed during the postmodern decade, the option of the artist as an ideologist, a human of ideas and bearer of a utopian social mission, returns.


http://www.novelsquat.com/conceptualart.html


http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1310/is_1993_Oct/ai_14591224

Practice in Context

Summary of Art Practice

In terms of the developmental stage of my independent art practice over the last year has been an exploration of social situations, politics and cultural heritage mostly resulting screenprints of puns, slogans and story telling. I want to continue looking at these themes and transforming them into more coherent and concrete project. The conclusions I have made from my developmental stage is to create my own concept nation i.e. my own world where I can explore my different and unique perspectives of current social and political scapes and the emphasis of my work has been to present them coherently to the rest of the world,

Plans for Practice in Context:

Collaberative and interactive projects are one of my main art interests, and I would like to explore these ideas in conjunction with new themes of social networking in terms of the internet and new media. Therefore I plan to create a virtual community either via a blogspot or website, which will potentially open up communication and discussion and will be play a part in my research part of the project and also be a oppurtune place to showcase my work virtually which may take the forms of films, photos, drawings as well as essays, texts and narratives. I was considering to create a daily journal which would function as a virtual sketchbook, where I can propose new ideas and projects and hopefully incite interest and interactivity within a community of artists, writers, theorists etc. The contents of this would be socio-political and cultural interests as well as observations and narratives written within a journalistic style in order for it to be widely accessible.


Contextual Research:

The body of my research and art practice has always been to explore the problems, conflicts and different perspectives that arise from living in multicultural societies or cultures that are embedded within other cultures i.e. hybrid cultures. To supplement my knowledge of this topic I will read Homi K Bhabha s The Location of Culture and other seminal cultural theorists including Jaques Derrida in terms of theories on deconstruction.

Artist/ Curatorial contextual research (incl. exhibitions) :

Peter Coffin, Grow Youre Own State, Palais de Tokyo, 2007.
The artists and curators that have incredibly relevance to my own independent art practice include Peter Coffin who curated the show Grow youre own State to exhibit the diverse and complex study of micro nations and concept nations.

Martin Bricelj, Everlandia, ICA, www.everlandia.net
The artist Martin Bricelj is a web based artist, creating interactive art pieces that can be accessed virtually via the web. The Everlandia project is virtual travel agency thus forcing the active participants to imagine and therefore create imaginary fanatasy worlds.

Emma Ruston and Derek Tyman, Flaghall, Unit 2 Gallery, 2002
The curators Rushton and Tyman, explore social, cultural situations along the lines of relational aesthetics. Working with artists like Paul Rooney and Kwong Lee.

On receiving my grotesque but equally exciting record cover for the L.P ‘Come to my surprise party’ I decided there and then that I wanted to promote this strange evidence of the 60’s and project on to it a new legacy for the 21^st century. My initial idea was to create a campaign, but for what? What better way to do this then digitize this remarkable yet disturbing piece of album art. Here are some of the themes that were made apparent during this experiment:

• Web Based Art Spaces: and the legitimacy of the Internet

• Participation by the act of Non Participation: act of non action

• Legacy and Longevity in the Digital Age

• Enabling Constraints.

Experiment: Testing Art within the perimeters of the Internet

Aim: The original aim of the project was to set up a campaign to celebrate an1960’s band of which I had never heard of, but more importantly to create a new legacy for which the album art work would be accessible to a new audience. I then decided the easier way to promote and simultaneously extend the life of the object was to digitalize it, and place it in a digital sphere. The aim of this experiment was to see how this art project would be received within a non art space.

Method: To achieve this outcome I decided to create a fake event, and advertise it on the social networking site ‘Facebook’. I created an event, and indiscriminately invited all my facebook contacts to this event, all 223 people. The event details were the virtual constraints, which needed to be as ambiguous as possible as to blur boundaries between the real and the virtual. The only legitimate fact was that I, Taneesha Ahmed, was the creator of this event. The project is a time based piece, and the duration of the piece will be 72hours approximately.

Results:

CoConclusion

1) See http://0100101110101101.org/projects.html

Taneesha, I attach pictures of a mountain and a molehill as you seem to be getting the two confused.



Emma told you on tuesday that tutors will be assigned when she's seen everyone. The structure is up to you, that's the point of being in the third year of a fine art degree. In the end you have to make the decisions yourself about where and how you start and how you proceed, just as you do with your practice. Everything is in your control, you own your work!




Simon Lewandowski

School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies

University of Leeds.






On 7 Nov 2007, at 22:52, Taneesha Ahmed wrote:



Simon, I know this isnt youre module. but im having a night mare situation- i have been finding have the lack of structure really difficult. and im getting increasingly stressed out about how to go about doing this module- not what has to be done- but the process of it all.

To be fair, i feel like i have a good understanding of the module- but its really hard to articulate what this is- without really having any foundation/ structure and to build up on this. Some of the seminars and the tutorials have been really helpful - but im still really lost. I feel like i havent got a starting point, and im trying to start too many things all at one go, without really knowing what im doing, and why im doing it. I have set myself some questions, and have some reading- but cannot seem to pull out the relevant information into writing- etc. I thought that i would be able to handle this better- but im just feel over whelmed completely by the sheer task of this. I also do not know yet who my practice in context tutor will be and I am worried about this, im not sure why, im just worried i suppose about the variable outcomes of what could or could not be achieved, and who out of all the staff will be able to help me realize the potential of what i am doing- despite the fact this is out of my control.

over and out. Taneesha. x

taneesha is den excited...

Me and alex came up with the idea over the weekend to make dens. which is what we did.

love buddha!

http://www.atlasmagazine.com/cyberbilly/logbuddha/