Public Art in the Sustainable City, ISEA 2011

Robert Ferry, Glen Lowry, Elizabeth Monian, Patricia Watts, Nacho Zamora

What brought me to Istanbul was an invitation to participate on a panel at ISEA called Public Art in the Sustainable City. Here I am with my panel mates above, after our 9am panel on September 20th. It was a nice turn out for day 7 of a jammed pack schedule of speakers and especially the first panel of the day (it was in fact the first one that I made it to). Elizabeth and Robert presented information on their upcoming Land Art Generator Initiative design competition for 2012 at a site within Freshkills Park (the former Fresh Kills landfill) in Staten Island. Glen Lowry presented a project he is working on with a large team of architects and artists linking Dubai and Vancouver called The Maraya Project (the website is not current - soon). Both cities have "false creeks" and have tall buildings on waterways. The two cities will be connected through digital technologies as public art. Nacho Zamora from Spain gave a talk about Solar Art. He is a public art researcher and doctoral candidate and shares his research online through his Solar Art Projects website. My talk consisted of sharing examples of sustainable public art projects in North America including references for developing public art master plans that focus on ecological systems (more info HERE).

Following we had my birthday lunch together with a couple of our panel guests. Then it was a visit to Galata Tower and a trip to the Asian side for dinner + CAKE.