Archives

Crochet Coral Reef @ Museum of Arts and Design

Sep 15 Thu
10am-6pm

Exhibition Opens


Crochet Coral Reef: TOXIC SEAS
By Margaret and Christine Wertheim

and the Institute For Figuring

September 15, 2016 to January 22, 2017

This Fall and Winter the IFF’s exhibition Crochet Coral Reef: Toxic Seas, will be on show at the Museum of Arts and Design in NY. In addition to our giant Coral Forest (an assortment of large-scale yarn and plastic snaky armed sculptures), and a collection of miniature coral Pod Worlds (featuring pieces by some of our most skilled Reef contributors), the show will debut our new Toxic Reef: CO2CA CO2LA Ocean. This black and white and red and silver installation, masterminded by Christine, is composed from delicate yarns, traditional doilies, bridal adornments and video tape. Glitter and plastic medical waste littered on the sand at the feet of toxically elegant coral mounds create a red, white and blue panorama that complements the election season. In addition, the exhibition will showcase a new presentation of The Midden, four-years worth of Margaret and Christine’s domestic plastic trash.

The Museum of Arts and Design, located on Columbus Circle in Midtown Manhattan, is just around the corner from the Trump Tower. We are enthused that during the presidential election, the Crochet Coral Reef will be squaring off against the Donald: eco-fem-arts-collaborationism versus egomaniacal-climate-change-denialism. We hope you’ll be all voting.

About the Exhibition

 Crochet Coral Reef: TOXIC SEAS celebrates the tenth anniversary of the “Crochet Coral Reef” (2005–present), an ongoing project by sisters Margaret and Christine Wertheim and their Institute For Figuring. Mixing crocheted yarn with plastic trash, the work fuses mathematics, marine biology, feminist art practices, and craft to produce large-scale coralline landscapes, both beautiful and blighted. At once figurative, collaborative, worldly, and dispersed, the “Crochet Coral Reef” offers a tender response to dual calamities facing marine life: climate change and plastic trash.

With 2016 the hottest year on record, living reefs everywhere are under stress. Into these arenas of color huge areas of whiteness now intrude; bleaching events signal that corals are sick and dying. In 2005, in response to devastation of the Great Barrier Reef in their native Australia, the Wertheims began to crochet a simulation of healthy and ailing reefs. Using the algorithmic codes of crochet, the sisters produce crenellated forms that are representations of hyperbolic geometry, which is also manifest in the undulating structures of corals, kelps, and other reef organisms. The Wertheims and their collaborators, a core group of “Crochet Reefers” around the world, fabricate an ever-evolving artificial ecology.

Mixing environmental science with fantastically inflected science fiction, the Crochet Coral Reef calls us into what scholar Donna Haraway has called “a time of response-ability” and sisterhood with the sea.

Crochet Coral Reef: TOXIC SEAS, is curated for the Museum of Arts and Design by MAD Assistant Curator Samantha De Tillio.

MAD Exhibition webpage

P1210096

Core Reef Contributors included in this exhibition:
Helen Bernasconi (Australia), Orla Breslin (Ireland), Anita Bruce (United Kingdom), Gina Cacciolo (CA), Jane Canby (AZ), Chicago Satellite Reefers (IL), Tane Clark (AZ), Pate Conaway (IL), Barbara Van Elsen (NY), Dagma Frinta (NY), Mieko Fukuhara (Japan), Lucinda Ganderton (United Kingdom), Vanessa Garcia (CA), Sally Giles (IL), Kathleen Greco (PA), Beverly Griffiths (United Kingdom), Evelyn Hardin (TX), Chantal Horeau (CA), Irish Satellite Reefers (Ireland), Gunta Jekabsone (Latvia), Helle Jorgensen (Australia), Siew Chu Kerk (NY), Lynn Latta (CA), Lucia LaVilla-Havelin (TX), Nancy Lewis (VT), Irene Lundgaard (Ireland), Anna Mayer (CA), Heather McCarren (CA), Vonda N. McIntyre (WA), Sharon Menges (AZ), Anitra Menning (CA), Marianne Midelburg (Australia), Arlene Mintzer (NY), Una Morrison (Ireland), Clare O’Callaghan (CA), Sue Von Ohlsen (PA), David Orozco (CA), Rebecca Peapples (MI), Shari Porter (CA), Jill Schrier (NY), Nadia Severns (NY), Christina Simons (CA), Diana Simons (CA), Sarah Simons (CA), Pamela Stiles (NY), Ildiko Szabo (United Kingdom), Ann Wertheim (Australia), Barbara Wertheim (Australia), Elizabeth Wertheim (Australia), Katherine Wertheim (Australia), Jennifer White (AZ), Ying Wong (CA), Jemima Wyman (CA), Nancy Youhros (AZ), and Theresa Bowen (NY), Matthew Adnams (UAE), Suha Malqua (UAE). Plus traditional crafters and unknown Chinese factory workers. Also on show is the Latvian Pod by Tija Viksna and the Latvian Reef crafters.

Crochet Coral Reef: TOXIC SEAS is part of MAD Transformations, a series of six exhibitions presented this fall by the Museum of Arts and Design that address artists who have transformed and continue to transform our perceptions of traditional craft mediums.

The IFF’s work for Crochet Coral Reef: TOXIC SEAS is generously supported by a grant from the Opaline Fund of the Jewish Community Federation and Endowment Fund.

Crochet Coral Reef in e-flux

In an article in e-flux magazine Rebekah Sheldon discusses the Crochet Coral Reef project as an exemplar of the recent interest among feminist and queer studies scholars in moving away from universal theorizations towards acknowledgement of the epistemic power of the particular. Entitled “Queer Universal,” Sheldon’s piece hails the virtues of attending to such “particular forms of life” as “lightning, atoms, jellyfish … extinct aurochs, wooly coral reefs … and transgender frogs.” The IFF is delighted to be in such company. Sheldon’s article also draws on a recent essay about the Crochet Coral Reef by trans-studies theorist Jeanne Vaccaro “Feelings and Fractals: Wooly Ecologies of Transgender Matter” published in the journal GLQ: A Journal of Gay and Lesbian Studies.

Queer Universal
e-flux: Journal #75, 05/2016

About the author: Rebekah Sheldon, an assistant professor at Indiana University Bloomington, is a scholar of feminist philosophy, queer theory, the new realisms, and contemporary American literature, culture, and popular rhetoric.

 

Science Show with Robyn Williams

On the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s beloved Science Show with Robyn Williams, IFF director Margaret Wertheim speaks about corals, carbon and the cosmos. Thanks for a lovely interview with reporter Alexandra de Blas.

 

Stratford Festival – Challenges of Science

Jul 23 Sat
10:30am

Public Discussion


 

IDEAS AT STRATFORD: THE CHALLENGE OF SCIENCE

On Saturday July 23 at the celebrated Stratford Festival in Canada, IFF director Margaret Wertheim will part of a discussion on “The Challenges of Science”. The event is part of the CBC’s Ideas at Stratford series and will be broadcast on the CBC radio program Big Ideas.

About the event:
“Science has given us great gifts, but the social consequences are less clear. We live longer and better, and we know more about ourselves, our world and the cosmos – but to what end? Massey lecturer Neil Turok, Director of Perimeter Institute, discusses the future of scientific research with Mark Kingwell, philosopher and social theorist at the University of Toronto, and Margaret Wertheim, author of a series of books that consider the role of theoretical physics in the cultural landscape of modern Western society.

Event time: July 23, 10:30am-12noon
Place: Studio Theatre, Stratford, Ontario, Canada
Stratford Festival website

American Association of Physics Teachers Award

IFF Director Margaret Wertheim has been awarded the 2016 Klopsteg Memorial Lecture Award by the American Association of Physics Teachers. On July 18, 2016, Margaret will deliver her lecture at the AAPT’s annual meeting in Sacramento. This is the first time since 2006 the award has been given to a woman. Previous honorees include Harvard theoretical physicist Lisa Randal (2006), Lee Smolin (former director of the Perimeter Institute and the inventor of loop quantum gravity, an alternative to string theory) and Neil de Grasse Tyson (director of the Hayden Planetarium).

About the Klopsteg Award
Named for Paul E. Klopsteg, a former President and long-time member of AAPT, the Klopsteg Memorial Lecture Award recognizes outstanding communication of the excitement of contemporary physics to the general public.

 

American Association of Physics Teachers

Jul 18 Mon
7:30pm @ Sacramento

Public Lecture


IFF Director Margaret Wertheim has been awarded the 2016 Klopsteg Memorial Lecture Award by the American Association of Physics Teachers. On July 18, 2016, Margaret will deliver her lecture at the AAPT’s annual meeting in Sacramento. This is the first time since 2006 the award has been given to a woman. Previous honorees include Harvard theoretical physicist Lisa Randal (2006), Lee Smolin (former director of the Perimeter Institute and the inventor of loop quantum gravity, an alternative to string theory) and Neil de Grasse Tyson (director of the Hayden Planetarium).

About the Klopsteg Award
Named for Paul E. Klopsteg, a former President and long-time member of AAPT, the Klopsteg Memorial Lecture Award recognizes outstanding communication of the excitement of contemporary physics to the general public. The recipient delivers the Klopsteg Lecture at an AAPT Summer Meeting on a topic of current significance.

Description of Margaret’s talk
Of Corals and the Cosmos: A Story of Hyperbolic Space
Throughout the natural world – in corals, cactuses and lettuce leaves – we see swooping, curving and crenelated forms. All these are biological manifestations of hyperbolic geometry, an alternative to the Euclidean geometry we learn about in school. While nature has been playing with permutations of hyperbolic space for hundreds of millions of years, humans spent centuries trying to prove that such forms were impossible. The discovery of hyperbolic geometry in the nineteenth century helped to usher in a revolution in our understanding of space, for such “non-Euclidean geometry” now underlies the general theory of relativity and thus our understanding of the universe. While physicists and astronomers are still trying to discover the geometry of the cosmos, on the Great Barrier Reef the corals making hyperbolic structures are being threatened by global warming and climate change. Bridging the domains of physics, math and culture, this multifaceted lecture will discuss the story of hyperbolic space and its resonances for how we see our world.

World Ocean Day

DSCN0070

Today is World Ocean Day, and the IFF salutes marine life everywhere. This picture shows corals growing around plastic trash on a pier at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, an elegiac reminder of the stresses these wondrous organisms are facing and the need for us all to confront our run-away use of plastic. This Fall, the IFF’s Crochet Coral Reef project will be exhibited at the Museum of Arts and Design in NY, with a specially curated focus on plastic trash and coral bleaching.

 

On Being a Woman in Science

Margaret Wertheim drawing hyperbolic diagrams at the "Reefs, Rubbish and Reason" exhibition, Art Center College of Design, 2012.

IFF Director Margaret Wertheim writes: “Given the many stories that have been coming out recently about sexual harassment of young women in science, I decided to write a piece about my own experiences with this. It’s out now in AEON. This is the first time I’ve publicly discussed what caused me to leave academic science. Since then I’ve spent 35 years as a science writer, author and exhibition curator, trying to find ways to make the public representation of science more sensitive to, and appealing to women. My work with the Crochet Coral Reef project results from this impulse, as did the columns I wrote for 10 years about science and technology for Australian women’s magazines such as Vogue and Elle.”

 

MASS MoCA – Explode Every Day

May 28 Sat
5-6:30pm

Exhibition Opening


Origami Wall Friezeite specific installation, at MASS MoCA, North Adams MA, 2016.

Origami Wall Frieze, site specific installation at MASS MoCA, North Adams MA, 2016.

EXPLODE EVERY DAY: An Inquiry into the Phenomenon of Wonder 

@ MASS MoCA

Exhibition dates: May 28, 2016 – February 28, 2017

Opening May 28, 2016, MASS MoCA’s exhibition Explode Every Day: An Inquiry into the Phenomenon of Wonder includes a series of new business card origami sculptures by Margaret Wertheim and the Institute For Figuring.

These works, inspired by the pioneering techniques of Dr. Jeannine Mosely, have emerged from an open ended experimental process that takes its cues from the formalisms of mathematics and the open-ended dynamics of nature. On show is a 3-dimensional sculpture, Fractal Ruin, constructed from 8000 psychedelic business cards whose backbone architecture is derived from the structure of the Mosely Snowflake Sponge fractal; plus two 2-dimensional works, including Origami Wall Frieze (above) that uses business card origami as a new method for “drawing” on a wall. This site-specific low-relief sculpture evokes circuit board design, set theory, early video-game graphics, needlepoint, and plumbing. In addition will be a diagrammatic rendition of the interior geometry of a level two Snowflake Sponge revealing the form’s unique fractal symmetries, from which the above works have been “wildified.”

About the exhibition: Harnessing the idea of wonder as a thematic metaphor, MASS MoCA’s exhibition “Explode Every Day” features both existing and new works by twenty-three international artists, each touching on certain facets of wonder, including: the perceptual/ visionary, the technological/scientific, the philosophical/meditative, time/cosmos, and illusion/fear. 

Curator Denise Markonish remarks, “a true state of wonder agitates, mesmerizes, and is almost forcible and shocking. It is a sudden intake of breath, a gaping mouth a relinquishing understanding. As commonly used, ‘wonder’ is sometimes mistaken for curiosity, which centers on fact-finding and explanation. In “Explode Every Day,” viewers experience a purer state of wonder, a state poised between knowing and not knowing and defined by an experience of something truly new.”

“Explode Every Day”, co-organized by Markonish and Ohio-based artist Sean Foley, has a title inspired by writer Ray Bradbury’s remark: “You remain invested in your inner child by exploding every day. You don’t worry about the future, you don’t worry about the past—you just explode.”

Participating artists: Jonathan Allen, Jen Bervin, Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Véréna Paravel, Jason de Haan, Tristan Duke, Sharon Ellis, Tom Friedman, Christopher Gausby, Hope Ginsburg, Laurent Grasso, Institute For Figuring and Margaret Wertheim, Nina Katchadourian, Michael Light, Charles Lindsay, Megan and Murray McMillan, Ryan and Trevor Oakes, Demetrius Oliver, Dario Robleto, Rachel Sussman, Julianne Swartz, Chris Taylor, Fred Tomaselli.

IFF works in this exhibition have been constructed by Margaret Wertheim, Christina Simons and Jake Dotson; with design assistance from Christine Wertheim. Business card design by Cindy Kusuda.

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalog that includes essays from renowned wonder-author Lawrence Weschler, clinical psychologist Kay Redfield Jamison, art historian Barbara Maria Stafford, Jill Tarter (former director of the Center for SETI Research), and others; co-published by MASS MoCA and Prestel.

MASS MoCA
1040 MASS MoCA Way

North Adams, MA 01247

The IFF’s work for “Explode Every Day” is generously supported by grants from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and the Opaline Fund of the Jewish Community Federation and Endowment Fund.

On Being with Krista Tippett

Apr 21 Thu
7:30pm @ Wilshire Boulevard Temple

Conversation


 

Krista Tippett (c) Ann Marsden

Krista Tippett, Peabody Award winning host of the NPR series On Being, is doing an event in Los Angeles to celebrate the publication of her new book, Becoming Wise. The book features interviews with, and reflections on the lives and careers of people Tippett has interviewed over the years, including IFF director Margaret Wertheim.

Presented by Book Soup, the event takes place at the Wilshire Boulevard Temple, Thursday April 21 @ 7:30pm.

Event webpage and to book tickets:

Listen to Margaret’s On Being interview, entitled The Limits and Grandeur of Science.