Booklaunch at Printed Matter, NYC April 5

[cocogord]

Book Launch for Coco Gordon's
Visioning Life Systems That Create Healthy
Resources and Transform Waste:
Artists Perform From Their Permacultural Source
at Printed Matter, Inc.,
Saturday April 5th, 2003, 5 to 7 PM

Contributors:
Agnes Denes, Alison Knowles, Alisa, Angelo Ricciardi, Antonio Picardi, Anna Ganga, Art Goodtimes, Arleen Schloss, Al Papp Jr, Artur D'amaru, Avelino, Aviva Rahmani, Barbara Harmony, Bea Briggs, Betty Beaumont, Betsy Damon, Bene? Fonteles, Coco Go, Congelo, City Repair, Gail Swithenbank, Gloria Emerson, Jay Critchley, James Nicholas, Jessica Goodyear, Jimmy Tsutomu Mirikitani, John Gian, Luc Fierens, Mark Simon & Amy Scarola Bloch, Marga Raspe', Mary Jo Walters, Margo Free, Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Mike Carr, Pauline Oliveros, Peter Fend, Ray Johnson, Regina Vater, Rita Degli Esposti, Roy Staab, SuperSkyWoman, Sandra Semchuk, Thomas Berry Interactiv', Wolf Mother Kreglyn Garrett, Wendy Lu, TIKYSK __

Printed Matter is pleased to announce a book launch for a new artists' publication from Coco Gordon / Water Mark Press titled Visioning Life Systems That Create Healthy Resources and Transform Waste: Artists Perform From Their Permacultural Source. The book launch will take place on Saturday, April 5th, 2003 from 5 - 7 PM. Printed Matter, Inc. is located at 535 West 22nd St., between 10th and 11th Avenues in New York's Chelsea district.

Produced by Coco Gordon / Water Mark Press, Visioning Life Systems That Create Healthy Resources and Transform Waste: Artists Perform From Their Permacultural Source includes over forty-five contributors representing fifteen Nations and was compiled on the occasion of the Continental Bioregional Congress in Kansas in the Prairies, held during October 2002. The book presents major alternative work being done by artists / poets / bioregionalists who focus their life / work / art on _what Earth Philosopher Thomas Berry describes as, "the integrity of the earth's functioning within the genetic coding of the biosphere, the physical codings of earth process, and within the vast codings that enable the universe to continue as an emergent reality."

In a statement on the project, Coco Gordon writes, "These contributors are attentive to the integrity of the earth as it translates to all species, transforming waste and keeping the major life systems of the earth healthy and in balance. They are doing much needed visioning, mediation, re-mediation, inventing new forms with which to express their ideas and concerns. They perform from their permacultural source. Permaculture is the design and construct of all of our living systems according to the patterns of nature, cycled without waste."

Coco Gordon is a longtime book artist, performance artist, and visual / installation artist whose work deals with issues relating to bioregionalism, ecology and the environment. She founded Water Mark Press in 1978, and has produced over fifteen books under that label, as well as twenty-nine artist's books under her W Space insignia. Printed Matter has carried artists' books by Coco Gordon since the late 1980's.

Visioning Life Systems That Create Healthy Resources and Transform Waste: Artists Perform From Their Permacultural Source is signed and numbered in an edition of 104, and is priced at $75.00.

An interview with the editor and several of the contributors will be forthcoming on the greenmuseum.org site.

Visioning Life Systems, and over 15,000 other artists' publications are available from Printed Matter's website: www.printedmatter.org.

For more information, please contact Max Schumann, Manager, Printed Matter, Inc. at (212) 925-0325 or mschumann@printedmatter.org.

_ABOUT THIS COLLECTION


My call was to artists and poets doing rehabilitative, restorative, ecological earth, water, energy work; Permacultural life systems, wise resource building, sustainable places work; open space, 3-D permaculture or urban sprawl work, local habitat work, monitoring earlier projects, developing new ones, having visions for future ones. Art had become facile, quirky, more fare for brain than felt. I found here a gut bottom line of artists each manifesting in their own way their relations with the integral web of life--the micro monumental and the mega model: the bold restorative actions of Betsy Damon's fish shaped river-hugging Living Water Garden in China, Betty Beaumont?s Ocean Landmark recycled coal waste as living reef, Peter Fend's ingenious restructuring of China's River basins, Agnes Denes' fresh bursts of proliferating nourishment from her Battery Park Landfill Wheatfield Confrontation to her tree planting projects for future generations, and Gail Swithenbank's insightful sporing / entrenchment of local mosses for rooftop greening effects.

I saw Marga Raspe's work as elementally respecting her new island home's re-positioning down from the ridge line that belongs to the water-ushering trees to be placed in the keyline where the maximum sun belt naturally allows a longest growing season with no burden or spill effect on other inhabitants. I saw the reciprocal smile of bird and girl found and fixed in its fundamental symbiosis by Arleen Schloss ("A"), the parallel amplifying of species-storical story telling of Alison Knowles, the Mark Bloch family eco-art bioregional-building activity of drawing blue crabs together at the Montauk shore, City Repair's dynamically accumulating Oregon neighborhood conviviality growing around public intersection paintings, the proactive story-telling as protest and massive public engagement of Jay Critchley's Big Twig,Pig,Rig & Dig, jolted by his performing No with the Flow, and, quintessentially, Barbara Harmony's empowering her ministerial office by presiding in lush Sweet Spring, one of many springs she is effectively listening to in Eureka Springs.

I saw the questions of the inner child to know how our culture impacts with mistakenly selected energy systems as posed by Luc Fierens for the children to know, and both Anna Ganga's Earthly oven-making and Margo Free's Make earth not war, compost-continuation of the natural cycle. I saw the questions of the new Holy Grail-making of human-manufactured artifacts, habitats and environments by Artur-D'Amaru's poetic stabs and Angelo Ricciardi's repositioning of all conferences in the gardener's house. _How the wedding of medicine wheels (Alisa), (Coco Go), the redrawing of the true nature of Audubon's research (Jessica Goodyear), the banana on the fridge leaves leaving (Ray Johnson), Leaves taped not leaving (Antonio Picardi), Spud Farm patch harvest push activity (Art Goodtimes), Skyfilters instead of Skyscrapers (SuperSkyWoman) heals overt takeovers and displacements of nature's voices / powers by human centered activities. I saw the inedit eye of Al Papp Jr's grab shot catching bird feeding bird at the NYC Indian Burial Ground, and how Cherokee Wolf Mother Kreglyn Garrett obviates human centeredness by ritually dancing her hands _voice & all her relations to welcome the planting of a new Peace Pole.


Here was a sensed need for Canary to spill forth from an aurally city-charged fountain pen (Mary Jo Walters), a sensed gravity-feed merging of rock, house and mountain range (Wendy Lu), the common "a" of bread and sea (Rita Degli Esposti) which when seeded to sprout uncovered the artistry of ants. Here was a similar Unframed Intelligence discovery of the prowess of red worms to make earth from stars in a _wartime flag (Coco Go), & the fresh wash line of repousee´s reclaimed from a Lido of Venice beach (TIKYSK). Here was the self-knowledge at an early age to recognize innate cooking powers of hot springs as a fundamental reason for securing relations (Jimmy Tsutomu Mirikitani). Here, the mantra of John Gian's Canareggio in Venice, Pauline Oliveros' _micromonumental invocation for sound garbage becoming useful again and again, the macro aria insertions of waste-cycling into our maintenance natures by Mierle Laderman Ukeles.


Here was Roy Staab's gesture of inserting a memory of lost natural perfection of reeds into the turbulent cleansing force of tides, a temporary mirage for humans to rekindle. Here was the devotion to rectifying what roads kill in coastal waters in Aviva Rahmani's Ghostnets, Bene' Fonteles _iridescence of a womb-wing sea , the clarity of self-implication in human activity on habitats (Avelino), (Regina Vater). _Here revived was the Bioregional mapmaking of place by Mike Carr and Bea Briggs, a recalling of Bioregional mappers from our listserve bioreg@yahoogroups.com & the rendering for NJ-ARP's rail Rights of Way legislation. I chuckled at Gloria Emerson's welcome surprise, a favorite image from her Navajo Reservation, Goat with green toothpick.

The taproot for all this visioning on the Earthful Philosophy plane is Thomas Berry's introduction of a new Ecozoic era at its dawn as wisely expressed in his last book, The Great Work (Coco Go's selection of epigraphs, and Interactiv' Rooms for Thomas Berry), while on the All Our Relationing plane spins the nurture of paralleling our beings as watchfully practiced by Sandra Semchuk and James Nicholas (Rock Cree).

The format for Visioning Life Systems That Create Healthy Resources and Transform Waste: Artists Work From Their Permacultural Source is being revived from the 1992 Assembling, "Artists Perform From Their Ecological Source: Working to Re-Open Major Life Systems of the Planet (Water Mark Press), a work that stems from the eco ROOM, my work for MedArt International's World Congress on Arts and Medicine in 1992.

The 1992 book in black & white featured 30 artists, writers and musicians including: Pauline Oliveros, Ione, Ed Sanders, Ray Johnson, Alison Knowles, R.I.P. Hayman, Helene Aylon, _Betty Beaumont, Mollyne Karnofsky, Hera, Donna Henes, Cassandra Langer, Irene Javors, Arleen Schloss, H7L, Coco Gordon, Michele Oka Doner, Regina Vater, Peggy Lowenberg, Sandra Semchuk, Barbara Roux, Mel Chin, Karen Shaw, Alex Gray, John Halpern, Joy Ashcroft, Katie Freygang, and a poem invocation by earth Philosopher, Thomas Berry. It is sold at Printed Matter Bookstore, NYC & at The Deep Listening Catalog http://www.deeplistening.org/dlc/newframe.html ___ ___

Coco Go, Water Mark Press, March_2003