Planting for Life
CultureSurge - Artburst
Written by Anne Tschida
category305.com
http://www.category305.com/artburst/xavier-cortadas-reclaimation.php
Thursday, 09 November 2006
Xavier
Cortada's been up to some interesting social actions lately.
First off, at the Science Museum
(which sometimes falls under the arts radar, and it shouldn't), the
Cubamian with the big heart has a quirky installation commemorating, of
all things, 50 years of a U.S. presence on the South Pole. "The Markers"
is a set of 50 differently colored flags, each one relating to an
important event of every year of the last half century.
Actually, according to the artist, the flags "mark the passage of time by
exploring important events that have moved the world forward."
"Move" is the critical word here, as Cortada is going to take the markers
in January to
. the South Pole. He'll place them exactly where the Pole
stood each yearit moves 9.9 meters annually, in the same direction.
That's life on a glacier.
His flags will note things such as Sputnik's orbit of the earth (1957);
the election of the first woman to lead the world's biggest
democracy Indira Gandhi (1966); the discovery of our earliest ancestor,
Lucy (1974); the year Prozac was put on the market (1987); and the year
Spain banned all discrimination based on sexual orientation (2005).
And how can the tropical trooper afford such an icy excursion? As an award
recipient of the yes you're reading this right National Science
Foundation Antarctic Artist and Writer Program. [In conjunction with this
show, the Science Museum is showing photography from the region, including
awe-inspiring images of the otherworldly landscape and the creatures that
inhabit it penguins and U.S. scientists both.]
Back on our peninsula, Cortada is highlighting more native movement, with
his "Reclamation Project." He is "planting" mangrove shoots, in clear cups
with water, all over South Beach in a symbolic effort to
take the concrete land back to its original state. (It's his Art Basel
project.) As Cortada relates, a 1915 photograph was one inspiration,
showing as it did Miami Beach founder Carl Fisher posing with Rosie the
Elephant, clearing the "swamps" to pave the way for Lincoln Road.
Mangrove forests helped keep the sandy earth in place, as well as sustain
a healthy eco-system, and he wants his project "to remind us we must learn
to coexist with nature in our urban settings, instead of relegating it to
nature preserves."
Then he will take this show on the road. The 2,600 mangrove seedlings,
through an effort of an all-volunteer eco-army, will be shipped over to
Key Biscayne starting mid-December and really planted as part of a
reforestation plan. Behind this excursion are Citizens for a Better
Florida and DERM, among others.
Wanna do some planting? Contact
coordinator@reclamationproject.net
"The Markers" will be planted at the Miami Museum of Science and
Planetarium through Dec. 11, 3280 South Miami Ave., Miami. "The
Reclamation Project" will be planted around South Beach from mid-November
through Dec. 17.