Initially we are thinking of a sort of documentary to start with that would highlight the community involvement – the students planning and designing the payload package. Then we would segue into a video that will take the audience on two flights, one to 96,000 feet and the other to 86,000 feet. Along the way they would have stunning views of the greater Kansas City MO and KS area and from the second flight views of the ballon flight accross the state to Illinois.

Stay tuned. I’ll post clips as we move along. Performances in May so stay tuned!

When researching people around the area who raise and care for chickens, I stumbled upon an article by Hank Will, Editor of GRIT Magazine. This article reaveled what I felt to be a shared vision.  http://www.grit.com/daily-commute/Processing-Broiler-Chickens.aspx

After some intial contacts by phone, I had the pleasure of meeting Hank in person for an interview. I have attached an audio bite to share the thoughts and stories from that meeting.

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN

LOOSED OF LIMITS AND IMAGINARY LINES.

February 2nd, 2012, 7 PM, Epperson Auditorium at the Kansas City Art Institute.

Forget about the concept of a regional aesthetic, an all-encompassing description of what artists in a particular place and time produce. Imagine instead a continuously evolving constellation of dialogues, shared interests, and overlapping approaches that, like a city’s spider web of streets and freeways, suggest endless possibilities for navigating the local scene.

Loosed of Limits and Imaginary Lines, a forum whose title is taken from the seminal Walt Whitman poem, Song of the Open Road, is the starting point for Art Practical‘s exploration into the experimental, public-oriented art practices of the Kansas City region. Four contributors from the San Francisco-based online magazine will spend three days in Kansas City in preparation for a dedicated March issue of the magazine. They invite artists, arts professionals, and art students to join them in a lively public discussion about the unique ways our community invites artists and audiences to consider public spaces as sites for individual actions, as well as where we find points of commonality with issues and practices across the country and around the world.

Art Practical is an online journal for visuals arts criticism with an international audience; it is also distinctly a product of the collaborative energy that pervades the Bay Area culture. The region is ripe in history and opportunity for socially engaged art practices and for artistic interventions into the public sphere. But what do those terms mean and how do they get enacted elsewhere? Director Patricia Maloney, Senior Editor Victoria Gannon, and feature contributors Christian L. Frock and Elyse Mallouk will describe the attributes of the Bay Area visual arts culture that encourage collaborations and mediations, how Art Practical reflects this culture, and the ways that it negotiates and transcends its geographic identity.

They will then invite the audience to introduce them to Kansas City by taking the lead in a town hall–style conversation about how we as artists and arts professionals reflect the culture we’re immersed in. How do we intervene in public space, with or without permission? Are there focal points for collaborative activities and what do they look like? What is the impact of support structures such as the Rocket Grants program? Are there regional differences in ideas around public space and what defines art? Where is the friction between expectations of regional identities and the realities? How can those frictions be productive?

This conversation will be recorded both for podcast on Art Practical’s partner site, Bad at Sports, and transcribed for a feature article in the March 1 issue, whose content will focus exclusively on Kansas City and will be produced with contributions from local writers.

The audience will also be invited to contribute Shotgun Reviews to this issue. Shotgun Reviews are an open invitation to the broader community to contribute reviews and commentary. They are short format pieces (250-400 words) that, as the name implies, offer quick and timely responses to an exhibition or event.

This forum is a collaboration between the Rocket Grants program and the Current Perspectives series at the Kansas City Art Institute.

Art Practical is an online magazine that enriches critical dialogue for the Bay Area visual arts by providing comprehensive analysis of events and exhibitions. Since its launch in October 2009, the magazine has worked with a network of partners to promote the Bay Area’s role in the international art scene, to create a historical record of contemporary artistic practices, and to foster artistic production through critical writing and public programming.

http://www.artpractical.com

By Jane Gotch and Reid Bangert

Produced and Directed by: Jane Gotch and Mark Southerland

WE!, performed March 24th-April 3rd, 2011 was a collaborative, installation dance performance staged in an abandoned downtown office space formerly occupied by AT&T. WE! took the “idea of audience” out of their seats and into the lights — stripping away the safety net of the proscenium theater and sandwiching both dancer, art, and viewer into close proximity.

The performance moved the audience, in small groups, through a multi-room visual environment created by an award-winning team of Kansas City’s leading dance, visual, lighting and sound designers on the 6th floor of Town Pavilion. Audience size was limited to 40 people per night, to create an intimate scale. The performers’ breath, sweat, body heat, direct eye contact and even touch was palpable. From breeching walls and new office trails, to tiny tableaus and remote viewings, this collaborative team reorganized the materials and inhabitants of the office space. WE! successfully disrupted and remapped the relationship between audience and performer.

Watch the film

“The Story of Chickens: A Revolution” by artist Amber Hansen will debut in March 2012 with a ceremonial ribbon cutting for a chicken coop on wheels, and the installation of 5 chickens. During the event, community members will be invited to share personal stories about their relationships with animals and to discuss the project.

The coop will be a nomadic sculpture that will relocate every 4 days. It will be created with the technical assistance of Cotter Mitchel and will be designed to be both functional and beautiful. A public message board in the form of a chalkboard will be mounted on it, to update and inform viewers about the birds and the project.

The chickens will inhabit the coop for one month. During this time many members of the community will become engaged through story telling, proximity, and caring for the birds. The project aims to create a daily interaction with animals on a communal level. Volunteers and community members alike will become guardians of the chickens and they will have the opportunity to build a relationship with the birds.

At the end of the month, the chickens will be removed from the coop and butchered in a humane way under the guidance of Hank Will. The public will be invited, and encouraged to witness this phase of the life cycle that is often hidden from our perception. Such slaughter takes place on a mass scale every day, but each generation becomes further removed from this reality.

Participants will then be invited to a potluck that will take place the next day, when the birds will be prepared for consumption by 715 restaurant head chef Michael Beard. The meal will take place at the Percolator Art Gallery, an alternative community-run space in downtown Lawrence.

By building a relationship with the birds, the project will transform the contemporary view of chickens as merely “livestock” to the beautiful and unique creatures they are, while promoting alternative and healthy processes of caring for them. It will also make visible local groups who are already making efforts to do so.

The public will be notified of the coop’s location via the Lawrence Journal World, so that they can watch its location as it moves throughout town.

Hansen: “Interacting with animals allows us a more complete understanding of humanity; it reminds us of our relationship with the natural world, and our responsibility in caring for it.”

About the Artist

 Amber Hansen is currently the Artist in Residence at The University of Kansas living in Hashinger Hall. Amber has been involved in numerous community based projects and has experience painting murals, film-making, caring for farm animals. It is from your childhood experience, being surrounded by animals, that this project was inspired.

 Cotter Mitchel: Born, last century, and raised in Lawrence, Kansas. Mitchell began his “Art Support” career in 1984 at the Spencer Museum of Art as an Exhibition Technician. Since 1989 Mitchell has managed the Common Shop for the Art & Design Departments, assisting students and faculty with all aspects of fabrication in varied mediums. Mitchell freelance works with local and international artists, and galleries including the fabrication of public sculptures, packing, shipping and display of art objects.

 Hank Will: Hank Will-Will’s career in agriculture began while working toward his Ph.D. in plant biochemistry and molecular biology from The University of Chicago. After leaving Chicago, Hank put his rural Harrisburg, South Dakota farm to work. He grew and direct marketed several thousand free-range broilers annually from that  location. His substantial laying flock supplied the Banquet and other local food charities with hundreds of dozens of donated eggs year round and he has also donated hundreds of pounds of  free-range turkey to the Banquet and Sioux Falls Food Pantry. He is currently the editor of GRIT Magazine.

It is the relationship we build with the natural world that will drive our motivations to begin caring for it. Growing and caring for our own sources of nutrients is a healthy part of our development as humans and gives us a new perspective towards our role as both caretakers and parasites to the earth. The experience is fodder for a healthy psyche and reminds us of our own birth and mortality.

The process of co-existing with the food one eats is connected to a long history, by which generations have struggled, flourished and in one way or another, survived. Reflecting on norms of the past brings me to ponder on the effects of no longer being a part of those experiences, those relationships. My reflections elicit a sense of endemic detachment that is our experience in contemporary life, a detachment that affects our ability to perceive, understand and appreciate our influences on the natural world.

The idea for “The Story of Chickens: A Revolution”, was solidified after reading a book recommended to me by my mother, Learning from Hannah: Secrets for a Life Worth Living, written by William H. Thomas, M.D. It is a beautiful story about a man who has spent his life becoming licensed to care for the elderly. Along his academic journey he has somehow forgotten how to build and maintain meaningful relationships with the people he has spent his life learning about. I highly recommend this book for all.

I have posted three quotations from the book that I am most fond of and that have inspired, “TheStory of Chickens: A Revolution”.

Learning from Hannah: Secrets for a Life Worth Living, by William H. Thomas, M. D., 1999

1. Life in a truly human community revolves around close and continuing contact with children, plants, and animals. These ancient relationships provide young and old alike with a pathway to live a life worth living.

2. Loving companionship is the antidote to loneliness. In a human community, we must provide easy access to human and animal companionship.

3. Meaning is the food and water that nourishes the human spirit. It strengthens us. The counterfeits of meaning tempt us with hollow promises. In the end, they always leave us empty and alone.

Hello again from Field Trip Publishing, makers of the very highest quality art objects in multiple since 2011.

Since you last heard from us here on the RocketBlog, we’ve been in a wild state of preparations for our 2012 lineup of collaborations. This process began a few months back with the embossing of 20 x silver foil “Special Notes of Invitation.” These were inserted into our interactive fold-and-post Hello There! mailers along with 1 x Field Trip Vinyl Sticker, 1 x Return Postage & Address Label and 1 x Field Trip mini Sticker.

The fold-and-post mailers were sealed, and the names and addresses from our list of 20 candidates for collaboration were penciled in. We hopped in the Field Trip bus, and pealed off to the post office where we kissed our fold-and-post Hello Theres! goodbye.

Upon receiving the mailer, the candidates for collaboration are asked to remove the invitation’s contents and review our proposal for collaboration. If they are interested in our services, the artist circles the appropriate box, affixes pre-addressed return labels, folds the invitation back up and drops it back in the mail! The vinyl sticker & silver ticket are theirs to keep.

Now we are awaiting the response…

If you want to be the first to catch the big news, stay tuned here: FACEBOOK   |  TWITTER

Peace on pals,
Field Trip Publishing

And always, visit us at www.fieldtrippublishing.com to see it all!