Swamps and the New Imagination

Swamps and the New Imagination PDF Author: Nomeda Urbonas
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 3956794842
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Contributors consider the vital urgency of human cohabitation with other forms of life, beginning a dialogue with possible futures. It is not easy to define a swamp, even in biology. The term is frequently used to characterize marshes, bogs, mires, wetlands, meadows, and other grey zones between land and water. In that sense, “swamp” is a metonym for a variety of transitional ecosystems and functions. This book invokes that concept as a tool to address the vital urgency of human cohabitation with other forms of life, placing the swamp at the crossroad of disciplines and practices. It is more than a biological ecosystem; it is a milieu of manifold sympoietic relationships, a locus of imagination, fostering the dialogue for possible futures. It is also a very particular modality—“an interface of Gaia”—offering a “face,” a certain physiognomy to faceless networks of relations, inviting us to engage in regimes of entanglement. The contributors to this volume expand on swampy notions, probing global and speculative art and architecture, intercalating philosophy and queer theory, and filtering these notions through the lens of posthumanist ecology, informed by the histories and theories of cybernetics, sociology, and the commons. Contributors Lorena Bello and Brent D. Ryan, Nikola Bojić, Chiara Bottici, Jonathan Jae-an Crisman and Newton Harrison, Glorianna Davenport and Gershon Dublon, T.J. Demos, Vittoria Di Palma, Jennifer Gabrys, Tinna Grétarsdóttir and Sigurjón Baldur Hafsteinsson, Stefan Helmreich, Stefanie Hessler, Yuk Hui, Giedrė Jankevičiūtė, Caroline A. Jones, Lars Bang Larsen, Bruno Latour, Gintautas Mažeikis, Astrida Neimanis, Kate Orff and Mariel Villeré, Andrew Pickering, Kristina Lee Podesva, Elizabeth A. Povinelli, María Puig de la Bellacasa and Dimitris Papadopoulos, Cristina Ricupero, Eglė Rindzevičiūtė, Kristupas Sabolius, Saskia Sassen, Caterina Scaramelli, Marco Scotini, Pelin Tan, Nomeda & Gediminas Urbonas, Angela Vettese

Swamps and the New Imagination

Swamps and the New Imagination PDF Author: Nomeda Urbonas
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 3956794842
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
Contributors consider the vital urgency of human cohabitation with other forms of life, beginning a dialogue with possible futures. It is not easy to define a swamp, even in biology. The term is frequently used to characterize marshes, bogs, mires, wetlands, meadows, and other grey zones between land and water. In that sense, “swamp” is a metonym for a variety of transitional ecosystems and functions. This book invokes that concept as a tool to address the vital urgency of human cohabitation with other forms of life, placing the swamp at the crossroad of disciplines and practices. It is more than a biological ecosystem; it is a milieu of manifold sympoietic relationships, a locus of imagination, fostering the dialogue for possible futures. It is also a very particular modality—“an interface of Gaia”—offering a “face,” a certain physiognomy to faceless networks of relations, inviting us to engage in regimes of entanglement. The contributors to this volume expand on swampy notions, probing global and speculative art and architecture, intercalating philosophy and queer theory, and filtering these notions through the lens of posthumanist ecology, informed by the histories and theories of cybernetics, sociology, and the commons. Contributors Lorena Bello and Brent D. Ryan, Nikola Bojić, Chiara Bottici, Jonathan Jae-an Crisman and Newton Harrison, Glorianna Davenport and Gershon Dublon, T.J. Demos, Vittoria Di Palma, Jennifer Gabrys, Tinna Grétarsdóttir and Sigurjón Baldur Hafsteinsson, Stefan Helmreich, Stefanie Hessler, Yuk Hui, Giedrė Jankevičiūtė, Caroline A. Jones, Lars Bang Larsen, Bruno Latour, Gintautas Mažeikis, Astrida Neimanis, Kate Orff and Mariel Villeré, Andrew Pickering, Kristina Lee Podesva, Elizabeth A. Povinelli, María Puig de la Bellacasa and Dimitris Papadopoulos, Cristina Ricupero, Eglė Rindzevičiūtė, Kristupas Sabolius, Saskia Sassen, Caterina Scaramelli, Marco Scotini, Pelin Tan, Nomeda & Gediminas Urbonas, Angela Vettese

Stirring the Mud

Stirring the Mud PDF Author: Barbara Hurd
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 9780618215126
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 164

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Book Description
In these nine evocative essays, Barbara Hurd explores the seductive allure of bogs, swamps, and wetlands. Hurd's forays into the land of carnivorous plants, swamp gas, and bog men provide fertile ground for rich thoughts about mythology, literature, Eastern spirituality, and human longing. In her observations of these muddy environments, she finds ample metaphor for human creativity, 9imagination, and fear.

Uki and the Swamp Spirit

Uki and the Swamp Spirit PDF Author: Kieran Larwood
Publisher: Faber & Faber
ISBN: 0571342841
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 227

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Book Description
From bestselling author and winner of the Blue Peter Best Story Book Award, Uki and the Swamp Spirit is the fifth title set in the world of Podkin One-Ear. Uki had the sensation of a sickly green light, spreading out through the networks of water. Of tendrils connecting all the creatures of the marsh in a web . . . Linking itself so it could poison it all and destroy it. Uki and his friends have two more spirits to find and capture. After defeating Valkus, they make for Clarice, who is spreading disease through the swamps. Can Uki and his friends outwit him - all whilst they themselves are being chased by the Endwatch and Jori's clan of assassins? 'Storytelling perfection.' Sophie Anderson 'One of my sons very favourite authors.' Romesh Ranganathan 'Superb.' Max Porter 'It's jolly good fun ... expect sequels to breed like... well, rabbits.' SFX on The Legend of Podkin One-Ear

How to Make a Wetland

How to Make a Wetland PDF Author: Caterina Scaramelli
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 1503615413
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 295

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Book Description
How to Make A Wetland tells the story of two Turkish coastal areas, both shaped by ecological change and political uncertainty. On the Black Sea coast and the shores of the Aegean, farmers, scientists, fishermen, and families grapple with livelihoods in transition, as their environment is bound up in national and international conservation projects. Bridges and drainage canals, apartment buildings and highways—as well as the birds, water buffalo, and various animals of the regions—all inform a moral ecology in the making. Drawing on six years of fieldwork in wetlands and deltas, Caterina Scaramelli offers an anthropological understanding of sweeping environmental and infrastructural change, and the moral claims made on livability and materiality in Turkey, and beyond. Beginning from a moral ecological position, she takes into account the notion that politics is not simply projected onto animals, plants, soil, water, sediments, rocks, and other non-human beings and materials. Rather, people make politics through them. With this book, she highlights the aspirations, moral relations, and care practices in constant play in contestations and alliances over environmental change.

Nomeda and Gediminas Urbonas

Nomeda and Gediminas Urbonas PDF Author: Nomeda Urbonas
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 132

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Book Description
The artists Nomeda & Gediminas Urbonas are representing Lithuania at the 52nd International Art Exhibition La Biennale di Venezia. This book documents the artistic process of the Villa Lituania project, from its inception in 2006 through to the realization of the first performance event and pavilion exhibition in June 2007. It collects the archival material associated with the challenge of building a pigeon loft in Rome, and a visual and textual artists' diary. Nomeda & Gediminas Urbonas have established an international reputation for their socially inter-active and inter-disciplinary practice that engages with the fabric of everyday life, public social space, and even political space, focusing on issues relevant to Lithuania. Generally, their practice is comprised of collective activities - workshops, lectures, debates, television programs, Internet chat-rooms, and public protest actions - that form around a specific social space and a topical issue. The art outcome is often the documentary recording, in a range of media, of the activity: or the collective production of an art work. They also collaborate with experts in different fields of cultural production such as architecture, design, and fashion to produce objects or products that cross disciplinary boundaries. Urbonas's work has evolved hand-in-hand with new media as they experiment with forms of 'access' that impacts upon public/audience reception of exhibition practices. Villa Lituania in Rome is a building associated with the Lithuanian nation: it was the Embassy of the first independent Republic of Lithuania (1918-1940) to Italy. The Embassy operated in the Villa from 1933-1940 but became a possession of the USSR after the Soviet occupation of Lithuania. The keys to the property, which had been in safe keeping, were handed by Italian authorities to Soviet officials in step with the alliance of powers signaled by the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact (1939). Since the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1990-91 and the formation of the Republic of Lithuania the Villa has remained the property of Russia; operating as the Russian Consulate in Rome. It is considered the last occupied territory of Lithuania, and successive Lithuanian governments have lobbied internationally for its restitution. Now two of the Lithuania's leading artists are taking up its cause. Their approach - qua the anarchitects Acconci, Matta-Clark, and Smithson - belongs to the symbolical field and will unfold in Venice, Vilnius, and Rome in the coming months. More than a catalogue, the publication contains specially commissioned essays by four leading international writers, and a curatorial essay by the project commissioner. David Carrier writes a brief history of avian symbolism in art, Boris Kagarlitsky traces the collapse of the USSR and its impact on contemporary life in Russia, Viktor Misiano delivers a personal view of historical ties between the Italian Communist Party and its Soviet counterpart, and Julian Stallabrass deconstructs the deployment of Marxist critique within the field of contemporary art. Villa Lituania is a truly cross-disciplinary reader; of Nomeda & Gediminas Urbonas' project; and the post-soviet condition from a contemporary Lithuanian perspective. Recent international projects by Nomeda & Gediminas Urbonas include: the Pro-test Lab Archive currently on show in "Monuments of our Discontent" a special-project for the Second Moscow Biennale; the archive was first displayed in "Fever Variations" at the Gwangju Biennale 2006. The archive developed from the Pro-test Lab project commissioned for the multi-venue touring exhibition Populism, 2005. Their Ruta Remake project (2003-05) evolved in exhibitions staged in Stuttgart, Oslo, Vienna, Berlin, and Vilnius. And Urbonas's multi-platform work Transaction was exhibited in Documenta XI and Manifesta 4 in 2002. The project Villa Lituania, principally funded by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Lithuania, is being organized by the Contemporary Art Centre and lead by CAC curator Simon Rees Contributors David Carrier, Boris Kagarlitsky, Viktor Misiano, Julian Stallabrass

Swamplandia!

Swamplandia! PDF Author: Karen Russell
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307595447
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 417

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Book Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST • The bravely imagined, wildly acclaimed debut novel from the author of Vampires in the Lemon Grove—about a thirteen year old girl who sets out on a mission through magical swamps to save her family. "Ms. Russell is one in a million.... A suspensfuly, deeply haunted book." —The New York Times Thirteen-year-old Ava Bigtree has lived her entire life at Swamplandia!, her family’s island home and gator-wrestling theme park in the Florida Everglades. But when illness fells Ava’s mother, the park’s indomitable headliner, the family is plunged into chaos; her father withdraws, her sister falls in love with a spooky character known as the Dredgeman, and her brilliant big brother, Kiwi, defects to a rival park called The World of Darkness. As Ava embarks on her mission to save them all, we are drawn into a lush debut that takes us to the shimmering edge of reality.

Atchafalaya Houseboat

Atchafalaya Houseboat PDF Author: Gwen Roland
Publisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 0807161748
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 156

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Book Description
In the early 1970s, two idealistic young people—Gwen Carpenter Roland and Calvin Voisin—decided to leave civilization and re-create the vanished simple life of their great-grandparents in the heart of Louisiana's million-acre Atchafalaya River Basin Swamp. Armed with a box of crayons and a book called How to Build Your Home in the Woods, they drew up plans to recycle a slave-built structure into a houseboat. Without power tools or building experience they constructed a floating dwelling complete with a brick fireplace. Towed deep into the sleepy waters of Bloody Bayou, it was their home for eight years. This is the tale of the not-so-simple life they made together—days spent fishing, trading, making wine, growing food, and growing up—told by Gwen with grace, economy, and eloquence. Not long after they took up swamp living, Gwen and Calvin met a young photographer named C. C. Lockwood, who shared their "back to the earth" values. His photographs of the couple going about their daily routine were published in National Geographic magazine, bringing them unexpected fame. More than a quarter of a century later, after Gwen and Calvin had long since parted, one of Lockwood's photos of them appeared in a National Geographic collector's edition entitled 100 Best Pictures Unpublished—and kindled the interest of a new generation. With quiet wisdom, Gwen recounts her eight-year voyage of discovery—about swamp life, wildlife, and herself. A keen observer of both the natural world and the ways of human beings, she transports readers to an unfamiliar and exotic place.

The Swamp

The Swamp PDF Author: Yoshiharu Tsuge
Publisher: Drawn & Quarterly
ISBN: 1770467661
Category : Comics & Graphic Novels
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
Yoshiharu Tsuge is one of the most influential and acclaimed practitioners of literary comics in Japan. The Swamp collects work from his early years, showing a major talent coming into his own. Bucking the tradition of mystery and adventure stories, Tsuge’s fiction focused on the lives of the citizens of Japan. These mesmerizing comics, like those of his contemporary Yoshihiro Tatsumi, reveal a gritty, at times desperate postwar Japan, while displaying Tsuge’s unique sense of humor and point of view. “Chirpy” is a simple domestic drama about expectations, fidelity, and escape. A couple purchase a beautiful white bird with a red beak. It is said that the bird will grow attached to its owners and never fly away. While the girlfriend is working as a hostess, flirting with men for money, the boyfriend decides to draw a portrait of the new family member, and disaster strikes. In “The Swamp,” a simple rural encounter is charged with sexual tension that is alluring but also fraught with danger. When a young woman happens upon a wing-shot goose, she tries to calm it then suddenly snaps its neck. Later, she befriends a young hunter and offers him shelter, but her motivations remain unclear, especially when the hunter notices a snake in the room where they’ll both be sleeping. The Swamp is a landmark in English manga-publishing history and the first in a series of Tsuge books Drawn & Quarterly will be publishing.

The Fabric of Space

The Fabric of Space PDF Author: Matthew Gandy
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262028255
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 363

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Book Description
A study of water at the intersection of landscape and infrastructure in Paris, Berlin, Lagos, Mumbai, Los Angeles, and London. Water lies at the intersection of landscape and infrastructure, crossing between visible and invisible domains of urban space, in the tanks and buckets of the global South and the vast subterranean technological networks of the global North. In this book, Matthew Gandy considers the cultural and material significance of water through the experiences of six cities: Paris, Berlin, Lagos, Mumbai, Los Angeles, and London. Tracing the evolving relationships among modernity, nature, and the urban imagination, from different vantage points and through different periods, Gandy uses water as a lens through which to observe both the ambiguities and the limits of nature as conventionally understood. Gandy begins with the Parisian sewers of the nineteenth century, captured in the photographs of Nadar, and the reconstruction of subterranean Paris. He moves on to Weimar-era Berlin and its protection of public access to lakes for swimming, the culmination of efforts to reconnect the city with nature. He considers the threat of malaria in Lagos, where changing geopolitical circumstances led to large-scale swamp drainage in the 1940s. He shows how the dysfunctional water infrastructure of Mumbai offers a vivid expression of persistent social inequality in a postcolonial city. He explores the incongruous concrete landscapes of the Los Angeles River. Finally, Gandy uses the fictional scenario of a partially submerged London as the starting point for an investigation of the actual hydrological threats facing that city.

Swamp Monster

Swamp Monster PDF Author: James Preller
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 1250040973
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 97

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Book Description
Twins Lance and Chance LaRue are seeking a pet in the swamp near their Texas shack when they happen upon an egg and bring it home to hatch, but the creature's mother finds them, determined to rescue her little one.