CURRENTS New Media Fundraiser

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https://www.facebook.com/donate/966247260975272/?fundraiser_source=external_url

For my birthday, I’m asking for donations to Currents New Media. I’m a new member of their board of directors (!), and they face some unique challenges this year, since the festival will not be returning to their previous location at El Museo. The hunt for the perfect new spot (or several spots) is underway! This will probably involve hiring more staff than in previous years, as well as more complex logistics, due to covid precautions.

For those who don’t know, the Currents New Media festival has been taking place in Santa Fe for the last ten years. It is an international festival that seeks to showcase some of the best and most innovative combinations of technology and art. I joined the board because I’m basically just a huge fangirl of the festival and I wanted to be involved in some way.

Here is a little bit more about them, or you can check out the website:

https://currentsnewmedia.org/

Parallel Studios, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, has been producing, curating, and designing small- and large-scale video exhibitions in Santa Fe since 2002. In 2010, we launched CURRENTS NEW MEDIA as an annual, citywide event. The festival brings together the work of established and emerging new media artists, from New Mexico, the United States, and across the world for events showcasing interactive and non-interactive installations, multimedia performances, VR and AR environments, single channel video, animation, experimental documentary, web based/app art forms, robotics and 3D printing. Parallel Studios reaches out to local high and middle school students through its Youth Media Makers Program.

Facebook pays all the processing fees for you, so 100% of your donation will go to Parallel Studios.

Desiccation: Dormancy: Deluge

Posted on Posted in art, Gallery show, Installation Art, Maternal Mitochondria, poetry, Santa Fe, sculpture, The Poetry YardTagged , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Miriam Sagan will be opening The Poetry Yard this year, an outside space where sculpture and poetry can be fully experienced. Here is a sneak peak at the first sculpture to go up- a permanent feature of the yard. Made entirely of recycled materials, this land art project helps direct rainfall by incorporating a dry pond. The sculpture’s relationship with the land may change over time- will the wood rot when exposed to water? Or will it remain an ever present reminder of fire and drought? As our climate changes, the sculpture may reflect that change on a local level. Along with the ambiguity and anxiety of climate change, “Desiccation: Dormancy: Deluge” brings up issues of human consumption and how different organisms feed. The sculpture takes inspiration from saprophytic fungi (mushrooms that consume dead wood) and the twin processes of parasitic and symbiotic growth. The plastic and dairy industries are an ambiguous two-edged sword- using unsustainable environmental practices while at the same time greatly expanding human access to food and vital resources. So the question is: how do we achieve a balance between human needs and biological destruction?

Desiccation: Dormancy: Deluge

(A triangle) Between me / G-d / and the water

Current Shows

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I am currently in 2 shows that can be viewed online, with some other powerhouse work!

Through the Eye: Women in Photography with Womenswork.Art in Poughkeepsie, NY.

And a particularly exciting online show with Shaping the Figural Gaze.

ARTIST STATEMENT VIDEO

An online response to Bustes de Femmes –

“The Gagosian states that the selected group of “paintings, sculptures, and photographs on view demonstrate how the female figure has been reimagined and reconfigured by modern and contemporary artists of diverse backgrounds and traditions,” however, it features only 5 female-identifying artists out of 28 artists total. Of these 28 artists, a majority are white. This leads to an exhibit that not only is lacking in a diversity of backgrounds and traditions, but one that is also blatantly ignoring the conjunctions between race and gender.

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Unfortunately, the exhibit put on by the Gagosian is only too representative of past and current norms surrounding the viewpoints society platforms for creation and consumption surrounding the figural.

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We wish to counter Bustes de Femmes and the other of 1000s of exhibits like it, by presenting the works of femxle and queer identifying artists whose skill in figural portraiture demonstrates a diverse array of contemporary visions, sensitivities, and/or ideals, that usurp or unconventionally assume the traditional utilization of the male and/or dominant gazes. The goal is to address institutionalized gender roles and gendered racial stereotypes, and the subsequent sexism and racism perpetuated by them. This is in order to facilitate the interrogation and examination of the traditional motives and depictions of gender and sex, while proposing new or uncommon narratives. These ideas will be addressed from queer and femxle perspectives that are traditionally unheard from, in order to reimagine and reconstruct traditional racialized and gendered power structures upon which these institutionalized spaces were built and thrive. This is in order to combat the unequal ratio of queer and femxle art and perspectives that are being showcased within the museum and art worlds via institutions.”

Video for “What We Wrote on the Water”

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While we do encourage you to visit the installation in person, that obviously is not possible for everyone, so we are making the video available for separate viewing. Please enjoy Maternal Mitochondria’s experimental video “What We Wrote on the Water”!

The installation is available by appointment in Santa Fe, NM until February 8th 2021. E-mail msagan1035@aol.com or call 505-231-1922 to schedule a viewing.

What We Wrote on the Water

Posted on Posted in art, Events, free, Gallery show, Installation Art, Maternal Mitochondria, Santa Fe, sculpture, suminagashiTagged , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Maternal Mitochondria has a new art show up with Vital Spaces arts organization! Located in the Midtown Annex, 1600 St. Michaels Drive, and available by appointment only (in order to ensure COVID-safe practices), What We Wrote on The Water is a video installation constructed from the poetry of borders, drumming in a dream, the scarce commodity of water in the desert, and gestures in ink. The installation will be available to experience from January 9th-February 8th, and there is no fee!

In a dark enclosed womb of space, the video projects over a large vase, filled with water. It features the Japanese art of suminagashi, spoken poetry, and percussive drums. The projection overlaps the glass, creating new shadows and reflections. This is an immersive experience, playing with materials such as ink and glass, and the metaphor of water as the unconscious mind.

What We Wrote on the Water explores the dialectical flow between creator and viewer, form and meaning, being both on the surface of the water and under it. The viewer leaves refreshed, having temporarily been elsewhere.

FOR APPOINTMENTS: From January 9th-February 8th, please call Isabel at 505-231-1922 or e-mail Miriam at msagan1035@aol.com.

installation art featuring poetry, suminagashi, water, glass, and drumming.

Maternal Mitochondria is a mother-daughter creative duo collaborating in Santa Fe. Miriam Sagan is a writer and Isabel Winson-Sagan is an interdisciplinary artist. Their bilingual video installation of suminagashi and poetry, Thresh/hold, premiered in an abandoned square grain silo at Studio Kura in Itoshima, Japan in 2018. They produced a poetry and suminagashi installation in Santa Fe’s Railyard Park with more than twenty participants, aged 4 to 80. The walking path at Santa Fe Skies RV Park on Route 14 is host to their Fairy Houses installation in recycled metal, which has had numerous visitors during the pandemic. For What We Wrote on the Water, they have also collaborated with local drummer Tim Brown.