S.O.S.

Sustainable. Organics. Stewardship. is a multi facet and year long horticulture and cultivation project that includes social, cultural and artistic practices. By acknowledging the shortage of food on the global scale, we should look at how we eat, what we eat and how we can grow our own food and understand the origin of food and the labor, the politic that involved to grow these perishable items that we consume that have direct effect on our health and well-being.

S.O.S. is very much a local and grass root project and is closely link to the neighborhood of St. George, Stapleton and Clifton/Park Hill in Staten Island. Staten Island is New York’s often forgotten borough when it comes to progressive food programs aimed to cut across class and neighborhood lines. Borough representatives and residents are rarely integrated in city-wide conferences, events, and policy development. This exclusion is due in part to Staten Island’s unique geography, low overall population density, limited public transit system, and unfamiliar neighborhood characteristics. Thus programming and initiatives that might apply to other New York City neighborhoods are rarely extended to the borough.

Specifically the under-served communities of Stapleton and Park Hill, which may seem surprising in contrast to the stereotypical image of Staten Island as a homogenous, suburban borough. These neighborhoods, however, are served by only a small number of food retailers and supermarkets that are particularly difficult to access on a regular basis, which negatively influences residents’ food purchasing habits.

Citizens rely primarily on public buses with limited routes and schedules. Thirty-three percent of individuals living in zip code 10304, one of the lowest income areas in the borough, do not have a car and most shopper need to call for a cab for their grocery trips. Additionally, there is only one Greenmarket serving these neighborhoods and the entire borough of half a million people.

Staten Island has experienced the highest population growth of any borough since 2000 with a growth rate of 8.8 percent. A recent influx of Hispanic, West African, Eastern European, Caribbean and Middle Eastern immigrants to these neighborhoods has both complicated and diversified the food landscape. For instance, while ethnic food stores proliferate, access to quality and affordable produce remains a concern. Compared to the rest of the City, the borough offers less social services and outreach to recent immigrants and low income families, and a lack of youth programming and activities are consistently voiced concerns.

Health is closely linked to our diet, and with healthcare quality declining and insurance costs escalating. Chronic disease due to the subsidized production of corn and soy products has been needlessly on the rise in our children for years, and has put a strain on our medical system. The economy is linked to agri-business’ dependence on oil and pharmaceuticals for the cheap production of food-like substances: we need education regarding the real price of sustainable, healthy food. The food industries uses more fossil fuel than any other sector of the economy, between 19 and 37 percent depending on the study. Contributing to the fossil fuel costs of the food system are: gas-powered farming equipment; chemical fertilizers made from natural gas; pesticides made from petroleum; gas-powered food processing machines; oil based packaging materials; and refrigerated transportation. Our food system is at a critical point: we either reconnect to local resources, or we risk the health of ourselves, our communities, and the land. The scare of tainted food supplies, in our food production and delivery system need to be re-exam and overhaul.

We should search, relearn and revive the lost knowledge of natural apothecaries, herbalism and foraging.

Understanding the Gaia principle that we are all one organism and need each other to survive and complete the cycle of life. All the living creatures on earth, from the tiniest of the bacteria to the largest of the mammals, are contributing in maintaining an optimum environment for life. In other words, activities of life on earth are ensuring its own survival.

Based on S.O.S., I manage to create projects that is independent but all under the vision on Sustainable. Organics. Stewardship.

Perhaps most important, Conceptualists indicated that the most exciting "art" might still be buried in social energies not yet recognized as art. The process of discovering the boundaries didn't stop with Conceptualist art: These energies are still out there, waiting for artists to plug into them, potential fuel for the expension of what "art" can mean. - Lucy Lippard from the essay "Escape Attempts" in Reconsidering The Object of Art, 1995

Books:
Juicing, Fasting and Detoxing for life by Cherie Calbom
Easy Compost, The Secret to Great Soil and Spectacular Plants, Brooklyn Botanical Garden
The Vegetable Gardeners's Bible by Edward C. Smith
Worms Eat My Garbage by Mary Appelhof, Flower Press
Cradle to Cradle, Remaking the Way We Make Things, William McDonough & Michael Braungart
The Long Emergency, Surviving the end of oil, climate change, and other converfing catastrophes of the twenty-first century, James Howard Kunstler

Internet resources:
Trees NY
Just Food
Michael Pollan
WIldman Steve Brill
The New York City Compost Project

This project was made possible, in part, by a New York State Council on the Arts Original Work Grant in partnership with the Council on the Arts and Humanities for Staten Island.

The sign of times

People don't see the sign, watchin' money all the time, the environment is fragile and we been on the gradual decline. Open up your eyes, you can see things rearrangin', the world is ending' and if they says it's gonna be okay, they just pretendin'. Lord, come down and help us out. These are lyrics from will.i.am song S.O.S. which I just found is similar to my project title and topics. Truely this is the sign our our times and all artists are doing their part calling out. How about you?

The circle of life - composting

Black Gold took the concept of Piero Manzoni into the 21st century by canning worm casting instead of artist's waste. By purchasing this artwork one is confronted the dilemma of using the compost as a plant fertilizer or not using it and maintain it status as a work of art? Piero also price his work weight based on the current value of gold (around $1.12 a gram in 1960) and coincidentally, compost is called Black Gold by gardener because of its value in improving garden soil.

In a undisclose location, a secret cellar is in the process of brewing the most creative compost ever. The curing process will take a year long but the final results in pure gold. Black gold to be more precise. The special blended concoction is under the skillful hand and eyes of Master Composter Tattfoo. This limited edition 2009 vintage will be availble in early spring 2010. Reserve your bottle now.

The current value of gold is USD900 per oz. and each botlle contain 10oz of Black Gold. The price of each bottle is USD9000. Email me for a special recession price.

The rhizome - local horticulture gardens

In this project I like to shift from a concept of art based on self-expression to one based on the ethics of communicative exchange. The act of establishing exchange among gardeners, is an integral part of the artistic practice, constituting a kind of "aesthetic of listening, sharing and networking" creating a hub for urban farmers to share both their knowledge and harvest. This dialogical practice is a quotidian experience that is long-suppresed by the culture of one way communication that involved in speaking, molding and informing but have little familiarity with what it means to listen and learn. I myself falls into this category but soon realize that every story has two face and begin to acknowledge the long-suppresed role of listening as a creative practice.

By visiting and creating a dialog about gardening and sustainability is important to foster relationships and create awareness of the organic food issue. These relationship also florish into collaboration and information sharing among these eco-villagers.

Each garden is unique in its approach and method, but they all are passionate growers and generous key player in their community.

The green stewardship

I'm intrigue by the certification of knowledge and the power that was bestow by the agency that gave the certificate. Partly propeled by the thirst of knowledge and partly to sustain the endurance of going to classes and community service requirements of these courses. Lastly, to be able to flaunt my new found title on my gray coverall and wear it during events and gardening.

All four patches are available for USD250

Master Composter

The Master Composter Certificate Course aims to train an enthusiast to be a compost expert and spread the compost know-how and making a meaningful impact in the community! This train-the-trainer course is designed to promote the practice of home composting and the reduction of our city’s solid waste. This course consist of 21 hours of classroom training (including two field trips), and 30 hours of volunteer outreach service in compost education and promotion. The course is free.

Staten Island Compost Project, funded by the NYC Department of Sanitation Bureau of Waste Prevention, Reuse and Recycling, provides education and outreach for anyone interested in composting, an esssential horticultural and waste management practice that benefits our community and the environment.

I redesign the "Caduceus" symbol of divine providence and the embryo of life from a serpent to a red worm and place the icon of the earth at the background to show that composting save the earth.

Citizen pruner

With Mayor Bloomberg’s plan to plant a million trees in 10 years, many of them on streets, the need for volunteer pruners and tree care is growing. I decide to becomes a certified citizen pruner after completing a 12-hour course, taught by Trees New York, a nonprofit group, on topics like tree identification and sawing technique, treat minor injuries, mostly cracked branches, that could lead to more serious maladies. Now I can walk down a street and identify some of the tree growing there and know what is a good tree pit should be.

Trees New York’s Citizen Pruner Tree Care Course trains New Yorkers in tree care and pruning. The course consists of eight hours of classroom training and four hours of hands-on experience in the field. The comprehensive curriculum covers street tree basics, street tree identification and street tree care. The two-hour long classes meet once a week for four consecutive weeks, and for four hours of field training on a Saturday. Classes are held in the spring and fall of each year. The course fee is $100 and includes a comprehensive manual and other materials. Since the Citizen Tree Pruner Course is offered throughout the city, it attracts people from a wide variety of backgrounds and learning styles. Each class is tailored to those participating. As a result, although a standard curriculum is used, each class moves at its own pace.

Following the course, participants take a final exam that certifies them to legally work on trees owned by the City of New York. This includes street trees and most park trees, excluding parks that have their own conservancies such as Central Park and Prospect Park. Certificates are issued by Trees New York and the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation. In New York City where there is limited money for tree maintenance but significant need, this provides a tremendous benefit to our urban environment.

Mobile garden

Mobile Garden is a discarded shopping cart retro fit into a mobile edible garden that can be lock to a sign post or be parade to engage the public.

Discarded shopping cart can be found everywhere, especially in low income neighborhood and housing projects that spreads across the city. Pushed by individuals who survive through economies of recycling. These wire frame vehicles stand in for consumption in excess and as much as the objects they contain, all seem to be subject to the same fated disposability. It is a sign of homelessness, of desperate measure, urban decay and neglect.

The location where one can find this urban artifact also point out a piece of land that is unused or a corner in our urban sprawl that is out of sight. This land can be and should be better used. Why are they just there and deserted? Who owns the land? Who have the rights to use the land?

A discarded shopping cart is the sign of our times. The collapse of financial institution and big corporation. The recession is cause by our excessive and irresponsible buying habits. Foreclosure of real estate, cause the working poor to be homeless and suburbanization cause the abandonment of our inner city neighborhood.

Mobile Garden is also inspired by the ghost bike memorial that is around the city to mark the place where a bicyclist was killed. Now Mobile Garden can be a marker, a reminder to the scarce of land, it’s right and usage. May be we can start to think about how to repurpose our urban environment.

An edible garden is also a sign of our time. The lack of food in the world. The tainted food supply, cause by industrial gardening. The rise of the organic movement. The cost of producing and transporting (carbon footprint) the crops and produce, and the effect it had on the environment. The disease of over consumption and the need to purchase inferior quality product that will be thrown away is indeed need to be eradicated. The logo of big box retailer that is imprinted on this shopping cart remind us that the resources wasted on transportation from raw material to production to retail, the lot that it sit on, the parking lot that burn under the sky, the car the consumer drive there.

Mobile Garden is raising further questions rather than resolving it. This action came to generate further actions and led to an increasingly open structure, where it is important to continually invite and allow the input of others, to keep tense the core elements as a narrative of multiple voices and directions.

Sowing the seed in Bronx, New York at Bronx River Art Center

BRONX RIVER ART CENTER opens curatorial initiative DIALECTS and its inaugural exhibition, Black Gold, featuring Tattfoo Tan (Gallery 1) & Abigail DeVille (Gallery 2)—opening on Friday, July 24, 2009 from 6 - 9pm.

Bronx, NY, July 1, 2009…. The Bronx River Art Center (BRAC) is pleased to open its 2009-10 gallery season with a new curatorial initiative entitled DIALECTS. Working under the umbrella of local and international dialogue, research, and collaboration, DIALECTS presents 4 sets of side-by-side solo exhibitions, 8 exhibitions total, that pair local Bronx artists with foreign-born, NY-based artists. The exhibitions will showcase the new work created from this process and will be overseen by BRAC’s Gallery Director & Curator José Ruiz.

Bronx artists Blanka Amezkua (Mixed-media), Vidal Centeno (Sculpture & Installation), Abigail DeVille (Painting), and Ronny Quevedo (Printmaking) will pair up with artists Shelly Bahl (India/Canada), Tattfoo Tan (Malaysia), Bjargey Olafsdottir (Iceland), and Dario Solman (Croatia). In order to further the definition of the “international” and “New York” artist, while simultaneously bridging cultures and ideologies, BRAC has invited artists who hail from countries that are currently underrepresented in the global art scene as a parallel response to the Bronx’s own position within the New York art community.

Black Gold, the first exhibition in the series, extrapolates context from a term that carries diverse meanings and connotations. From glorified connections to oil drilling, to re-branded forms of jewelry, and even political forms of corruption, this ominous term allows Malaysian-born artist Tattfoo Tan and Bronx artist Abigail DeVille to bilaterally coalesce around themes of urbanity & nature, decay & environmental stewardship, and loss & congregation, to name a few. The exhibition, which features new, site-specific works in painting, sculpture, and installation, amidst subtle interventions and collaborations within each of the artists’ projects, will run from Friday, July 24 to Saturday, September 12, 2009.

In Gallery 1: Tattfoo Tan’s art practice encompasses a wide set of mediums, such as sculpture, installation, design, and public
artworks, to establish an interactive and often participatory relationship with the viewer. Influenced primarily by a need to
decipher the crux between art and life, the artist gives life to his works through a framework of collaborative events, dinners,
exchanges, and eclectic everyday rituals. The artist uses organic, living materials as transitional elements that live, grow, die, decompose, and through his interventions, are repositioned at the same hierarchical level and with the same innate complexities as the viewer. It is within this milieu of shared relational systems that Tattfoo’s work becomes conscious. In keeping with the spirit of the transitional, his works are often ephemeral and conceptual in nature. His most recent body of work, S.O.S. (Sustainable. Organics. Stewardship.) is a multifaceted, yearlong horticulture and cultivation project, in which the artist engages deeply in the social and cultural curve of “green” ethics and aesthetics. By acknowledging the shortage of food at the global scale—how we eat, what we eat and how we should offset these demands—the artist tackles the sociopolitical ramifications of the origin of food, its labor, and their direct effect on our health and well-being with humorous works and challenging interventions inside and outside of BRAC.

In Gallery 2: Abigail DeVille presents a new, site-specific installation that combines painting, drawing, and collage to create a
wild, chaotic, and seductive environment encompassing the gallery’s walls, floor, and ceiling. This large-scale work physically mixes and juxtaposes old and new paintings and sculptural elements as installation materials and objects for a topographical assemblage. A part of her ongoing series Universal Diagrams of Discourse, this work uses the pictorial format to highlight issues and concerns in contemporary history and American society. In mathematical theory, the Universe of Discourse includes all things that are under discussion at a given time. Extrapolating from this idea, DeVille manifests the complexity of “blackness” and the reality of racial prejudice and tension in America within a sociological Venn diagram: a rectangle comprised of an infinite variety of situations, narratives, and multiple points of view. The artist balances and counterweighs the overabundance of rough, toxic and inauthentic societal visions with poetic resistance and self-reflection. These excesses are illuminated with an excessive artistic process that is layered, dense, and loaded with diverse sets of response imagery and codes of influence, from African sculpture and textiles to the artist’s own personal biography. This compositional whirlwind and structured disarray outlines the confusion of the individual in American society, the decay of social structures throughout America’s cities, and glorifies the richness of popular, intellectual, and artistic culture that has been born from this maelstrom.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS:
Tattfoo Tan was born in Malaysia and currently resides in Staten Island, NY. He has exhibited extensively over the past decade at venues such as the Queens Museum of Art, Pocket Utopia, Lower East Side Tenement Museum, Jamaica Center for Arts & Learning, and Flux Factory, all in New York. Tan has participated in residencies and fellowships at the Center for Book Arts (NY) and at Aljira, a Center for Contemporary Art (NJ) as well as lectured at institutions such as the Fashion Institute of Technology (NY) and the California Institute of the Arts (CA). He has created public works in partnership with the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Fashion Center Business Improvement District, Times Square Alliance, DUMBO Improvement District, and the NYC Department of Transportation, all in New York.

Abigail DeVille was born in New York City in 1981. She received her BFA from the Fashion Institute of Technology in 2007. In 2005, she received The Frank Shapiro award, which is F.I.T.’s highest award for excellence in Fine Arts. She received a fellowship to participate in the Skowhegan Residency Program in 2007 and was a participant in the artworld’s first reality show, Artstar, which aired on Gallery HD from June 2006 – January 2009 and culminated with an exhibition at Deitch Projects (NY). Currently, DeVille is a Resident Artist and Art Instructor at the Bronx River Art Center. A longtime resident of the Bronx, Abigail DeVille will begin her graduate studies at Yale University’s prestigious Painting Program this fall.

Bronx River Art Center 1087 East Tremont Ave Bronx, NY 10460 718.589.5819 www.bronxriverart.org
The Bronx River Art Center (BRAC) is a culturally diverse, multi-arts, non-profit organization that provides a forum for community,
artists and youth to transform creativity into vision. Our Education, Exhibitions, Artist Studios, and Presenting programs cultivate
leadership in an urban environment and stewardship of our natural resource—the Bronx River.

GALLERY HOURS Monday–Friday 2pm–6pm / Saturday 12pm–5pm ADMISSION Free

These exhibitions are made possible with support from the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency. Additional support is provided by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and the Deutsche Bank Americas Foundation’s Arts & Enterprise Place-Based Revitalization Program. Tattfoo Tan’s project is made possible, in part, by a New York State Council on the Arts’ Original Work Grant in partnership with the Council on the Arts and Humanities of Staten Island.

Visitors at exhibition sign up to pledge their commitment to be a SOS steward.

Introduction to basic composting and Adopt-A-Worm campaign with the children of Parkchester After School Program, Bronx.

Sowing the seed at 14th Street, Manhattan, New York

How to make your own Mobile Garden.

1 - log on to craigslist.org and search the free items posting or dumpster dive.
2 - look out for items that can be easily roll around like office chair, luggage, stroller, skateboard etc.
3 - contact doner and pick up items.
4 - fix any broken parts and convert the item to a planter.
5 - be creative and design your mobile garden.
6 - remember to put some hole at the bottom for drainage.
7 - place edible plants into Mobile Garden.
8 - now you have a living sculpture.

Simonetta Moro, Eve Mosher and Tattfoo
Signs of Growth + Mobile Garden
interpreted by student of Eugene Lang College.

In preparation for this joint project, Eugene Lang students supervised by the artists will conduct research along a designated area of 14th street, to identify places where food could be grown. At the same time, they will design a "tag" to leave in the designated areas, and a map that will be handed out to participants in a walking tour illustrating the sites for potential food crops.

Another team of students will be given the brief to build a few mobile sculptures, consisting of a suitable mobile planter that can be moved, pushed and paraded around. It can be a baby stroller, skateboard, flatbed pickup truck, suitcase, laundry basket, file cabinet with caster, bicycle basket and more. The carts will be filled with dirt and edible plants, and paraded along 14th street on the days of the event. The carts will display the “Signs of Growth” tags, which will be left in the designated areas by the students. We envision this as a great way to start a conversation with the public, and telling them about the project and the issues we are highlighting.

Students will start building the “Mobile Garden” and display it at the campus courtyard starting in October as the project unfolds. A parade will be held October 16, 17 and 18, 2009 along 14th street and then it will be on display at the Skybridge Art & Sound Space for the duration of the month.

Growing Space Blog to share information and document the progress of the project.

The Skybridge Art & Sound Space
Between 66 W 12th and 65 W 11th Streets, 3rd Floor, New York, NY 10011

The Skybridge Art and Sound Space at Eugene Lang College is located on the third floor between the Lang and the New School building. This unsual space - a walkway with floor to ceiling windows on one side and audio/visual equipment - provides an opportunity for multi-media exhibitions and curriculum-based projects in the Arts. Students and faculty work, visiting artists’ shows and broader curatorial projects are part of our program to make the space a vibrant and exciting laboratory for visual enjoyment and critical thinking.

The Skybridge Art and Sound Space is open Monday-Friday 8am-7pm throughout the year, and on weekends by appointment. The space hosts two to three shows a semester, and a summer show. For additional information, please contact Simonetta Moro at 212-22905100x2258 or at moros@newschool.edu

Visit our blog: http://skybridgescope.blogspot.com/

Art In Odd Places presents 2009 Festival
SIGN
October 1-26, 2009 on 14th Street, NYC

A festival exploring the odd, ordinary, and ingenious in the spectacle of daily life. NEW YORK, NY (July 8, 2009) Art in Odd Places, NYC’s annual public art and performance festival, announces its 2009 season: SIGN with more than 60 artists and performers. Once again, from October 1 through 26, Art in Odd Places (AiOP) brings art into the public life of 14th Street, infusing its everyday rhythms and spaces with ideas, imagination, humor, and politics, and encouraging its residents, workers, andvisitors to experience it anew.

This year’s festival gathers under the many meanings of the word ‘SIGN’: Direction, ban, authority, solidarity, advertisement, ownership, gesture, enticement, omen, signature, and trace. “We’re excited to bring creative energy into our streets and invite artists to explore the freedoms of the public realm with their fellow New Yorkers,” say co-curators, Erin Donnelly and Radhika Subramaniam, “14th Street has the geographical breadth and metaphoric depth to make it an apt location for art that manifests the signs of our times and while also being a signpost toward future possibilities.”

About Art in Odd Places
Art in Odd Places (AiOP) aims to present art that stretches the boundaries of communication in the public realm by presenting artworks in all disciplines outside the confines of traditional public space regulations. AiOP reminds us that public spaces function as the epicenter for diverse social interactions and the unfettered exchange of ideas. AiOP is directed by artist Ed Woodham and is a project of GOH Productions. www.gohproductions.com.

Wild Foraging

Is all wild vegetation just nuisance. Did we overlook their potential? Do you recognize any of these species? How to use or consume it? Come and share your knowledge or just to get your hands dirty. Search and identify the plants and start a herbarium library.