International Caucus/UN Program Honor Roll
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2014 Honorees
This year we honor an activist collaboration, Louder Than Words, which focuses their work on sexual assault, domestic violence, and women's reproductive rights and water activist/artist Betsy Damon.
This year we honor an activist collaboration, Louder Than Words, which focuses their work on sexual assault, domestic violence, and women's reproductive rights and water activist/artist Betsy Damon.
LOUDER THAN WORDS
I Can We Can - collaboration with A Window Between Worlds
Actions Speak: The Tyranny of Violence video installation
These Walls Can Talk - participants placing "Don't Remain Silent" stickers over the weapons in the wallpaper design.
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I Can We Can outdoor public projection
These Walls Can Talk installation - video of famous world leaders reciting Jackson Katz’s 10 Things Men Can Do To Prevent Gender Violence. The wallpaper design incorporates a number of common objects that are frequently used to inflict injury: fists, knives, belts, guns and irons.
There is No Excuse and Never an Invitation to Rape - a collaboration with Peace Over Violence during Denim Day
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Actions Speak: The Tyranny of Violence video still
These Walls Can Talk's Jackson Katz’s 10 Things Men Can Do To Prevent Gender Violence.
There is No Excuse and Never an Invitation to Rape - Denim Day
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Louder Than Words is a cross-cultural, intergenerational collaborative that targets sexual assault, domestic violence, and women's reproductive rights by combining elements of activism with courageous art interventions. This collaboration also cultivate strategies for inspiring more men to become allies in gender violence prevention. Their artivist (activist+art) practice strives to ignite the political imagination, unravel obstacles, and unleash inventive action plans. S.A. Bachman, the Founding Director, is an advocate, educator and socially-engaged artist, founding member of the (Boston)Women's Action Coalition/WAC, co-founder (with David John Attyah) of the artist-interventionist collaborative THINK AGAIN. Neda Moridpour has facilitated workshops for survivors of Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault in Iran and Los Angeles and a recent project called “The Auntie Roach” focuses on the consequences of Iranian folk literature as it relates to violence against women in Iran.
Louder Than Words' projects have included:
I Can We Can - an outdoor public projection presented in three Los Angeles locations and in collaboration with A Window Between Worlds
Quote Unquote - a series of posters examining the current “war on women"
There Is No Excuse and Never an Invitation to Rape - a collaboration with Peace Over Violence which runs Denim Day, triggered by a ruling by the Italian Supreme Court where a rape conviction was overturned because the justices felt that since the victim was wearing tight jeans she must have helped her rapist remove her jeans, thereby implying consent. The following day, the women in the Italian Parliament came to work wearing jeans in solidarity with the victim.
These Walls Can Talk presented at our Half the Sky: Intersections in Social Practice Art exhibition and cultural exchange at LuXun Academy of Fine Arts in Shenyang, China. This installation addressed domestic abuse and alluded to domestic space by the juxtaposition of wallpaper, information on gender violence, a video, and “don’t remain silent” stickers.
Actions Speak: The Tyranny of Violence, in collaboration with Think Again, presented a video projection at Half the Sky: Intersections In Social Practice Art that asked viewers to reconsider the ways silence amidst a discourse of brutality (whether state-‐ sanctioned, media-‐driven, or personally inflicted) disconnects us from the individuals (living halfway around the world or in our own neighborhoods) whose bodies and lives are affected.
Links to Press:
I CAN WE CAN Socially Engaged Art Project
http://icanwecan.awbw.org/
I CAN WE CAN Exhibit at Gallery Neuartig
https://awbw.org/awbw/news_detail.php?id=91
Muftah Magazine, "Activism Meets Art at [P]Art Collective, April 8, 2013
http://muftah.org/activism-meets-art-at-part-collective/#.VAtUiEu3JIc
A Brief History of Outrage by THINK AGAIN, 2003
http://www.artbook.com/0974303097.html
Social Text: #80 Technoscience
"Activist Technologies: THINK AGAIN"
by Amy Villarejo
| activist_technologies.pdf |
Worcester Art Museum
Actions Speak
Exhibition Brochure
Actions Speak
Exhibition Brochure
| thinkagain_brochure_stoops_web.pdf |
BETSY DAMON
The Living Water Garden, aerial view, Chengdu, Sichuan, China, 1998. The Living Water Garden is a 5.9-acre public park on the Fu and Nan rivers, designed as a 7-stage natural water cleaning system, complete with wetlands, settling ponds, and flow forms. The park includes an environmental education center, natural areas, and a stone amphitheater.
reSources: Saving Living Systems
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The Living Water Garden, Chengdu, Sichuan China,1998. View of wetlands that compose the natural water cleaning system.
Living Waters of Larimer, (2012 - ongoing) is a community action project in Pittsburgh PA, that couples economic development with a community-owned rainwater-harvesting infrastructure. Betsy Damon works with community leaders, and organizes and leads workshops.
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reSources: Saving Living Systems ( 2007 - ongoing) is an in-depth study of the Tibetan water culture and a record of its rapid changes in the face of development.
Living Waters of Larimer (2012 - ongoing). The project is lead by a team of artists, community leaders, architects and engineers. We are using Landbased Systems’
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In the 1980s, Betsy Damon learned about the degraded state of our water resources in the US. From that point forward, she devoted her life to water. In Chengdu China, Damon created the Living Water Garden, the first water-themed park of its kind. This 6- acre park demonstrates a seven-stage natural water-cleaning system, and became an icon of urban water-stewardship. With reSources: Saving Living Systems in the Eastern Himalayas, Damon has worked to document the living Tibetan water culture. Here, communities revere their water sources as sacred, and have a profound understanding how the quality of water directly impacts their health. Culture and community are the key to remediating our living systems. Damon has worked with communities throughout the US. Currently, the project Living Waters of Larimer in Pittsburgh, PA activates an underserved community, and couples economic development with community ownership of sustainable water infrastructures. Damon works to bring people together to remediate their water systems. Her organization Keepers of the Waters serves as a tool to do this.
Links to Videos:
Proteus Gowanus Water Rules Life
Water Rules
Links to Press:
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette "Walkabout: Untapped potential of Larimer's water is now on display"
http://www.post-gazette.com/news/portfolio/2012/11/13/Walkabout-Untapped-potential-of-Larimer-s-water-is-now-on-display/stories/201211130209
Yes! Magazine "China's Living Water Garden"
http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/changing-the-climate/chinas-living-water-garden
Whole Earth Catalog "The Living Water Garden"
http://www.wholeearth.com/issue/2100/article/151/the.living.water.garden