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Welcome to the opening of Nonstop’s spring series Invigorating the Local: Conversations at the Intersection of Alternative Education, Open Media & Civic Participation. Tonight is the first event in the series, and we expect there to be four more speakers in coming months, whose work converges around art making, open media practice and alternative education, and who will appear at Nonstop in person or via skype.

Tonight’s guests have all worked together as part of a cultural geography group called The Compass. All are also active as artists, critics, and teachers whose individual and collaborative work over the last decade has been about invigorating public space and accessible communications networks, addressing continental and global issues, and specifically engaging small communities in the American Midwest, drawing connections between the global and the local, the political and the poetic. In his essay One World One Dream Brian Holmes suggests, following sociologist Ulrich Beck, that that “globalism is inseparable from a process of intensive individualism which is its other face, the flip side of the same basic currency.” The Compass Group has described their work as examining “our collective existence on all the relevant scales: the intimate, the local, the national, the continental, and the global.” Nonstop’s Working Members and Board welcomes them in expanding their Midwest Radical Cultural Corridor project eastward by visiting us in Yellow Springs.

Our guests are a distinguished group. I want to just sketch briefly some of the projects with which they have been involved.

Perhaps it was my contact with Brian Holmes’ work in recent years that inspired this series. He has worked as a critic and editor on very important international media cultural projects such as serving as the English editor at Documenta X in 1997 in Kassel, Germany, and is a frequent contributor to nettime, an important international listserv that emerged out of a series of critical media conferences, the Next 5 Minutes, in the Netherlands in the mid-90s that cultivated important global conversations at the cusp of digital media and the emergence of the internet. His blog Continental Drift speaks in English, Spanish and French—he is a translator as well—and his recent publications such as Escape the Overcode: Activist Art in the Control Society (2009) are collections of essays that mostly appeared first in Continental Drift. In projecting where we might think about going with Nonstop, and also thinking back upon the events of the last 3 years that are part of the fabric of Nonstop and Yellow Springs, I found the following statement about connections between the realms of the intimate and the institutional, the local and the national, in his introduction to Escape the Overcode to be particularly relevant.

In Escape the Overcode, Holmes writes in his introduction:
“And so finally we reach the scale of intimacy, of skin, of shared heartbeats and feelings, the scale that goes from families and lovers to people together on a street corner, in a sauna, a living room or a cafe. It would seem that intimacy is irretrievably weighted down in our time, burdened with data and surveillance and seduction, crushed with the determining influence of all the other scales. But intimacy is still an unpredictable force, a space of gestation and therefore a wellspring of gesture, the biological spring from which affect drinks. Only we can traverse all the scales, becoming other along the way. From the lovers’ bed to the wild embrace of the crowd to the alien touch of networks, it may be that intimacy and its artistic expressions are what will astonish the twenty-first century.”

Claire Pentecost teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where she recently served as chair of the Photography Department and the president of the local AAUP chapter. With Brian Holmes she contributes to Continental Drift blog and an ongoing seminar with the 16 Beaver Group in NYC. She hosts a blog, the Public Amateur, that seeks to broaden discussion about transgenic plants and other investigations into science and agriculture. She is a keyholder/member of Mess Hall, an interdisciplinary cultural center in Chicago. She has also worked closely with the Critical Art Ensemble, that published an important text dealing with cultural actions in electronic territory, The Electronic Disturbance (1994)

Rozalinda Borcila was educated in Cluj, Romania, has taught Sculpture and Expanded Media at University of South Florida, and most recently served as Visiting Faculty in Participatory Platforms at the University of Geneva, Switzerland. I have admired her work with BLW, an artists-activists collective in which she collaborated with Sarah Lewison, also a member of The Compass Group, and Julie Wyman. The group re-performed challenging political and cultural documents, usually speeches and interviews videotaped the early 1970s, a practice BLW describes as “re-speaking.” One of the their provocative texts that remarks on this practice was published in the Journal for Aesthetics and Protest (2007). Rozalinda is also a keyholder at Mess Hall in Chicago. Over soup earlier tonight she described her recent involvement with an inspiring alternative education project that evolved out of a neighborhood action by mothers and their children and that led to the creation of a library, that perhaps we will hear more about later.

Ryan Griffis teaches New Media at University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana. His recent projects engage issues of migration and travel and include Temporary Travel Office. His site yougenics.net in informative and has links to other recent projects such as co-curating the exhibition Agriarts (2009) at George Mason University, and editing an issue of the Journal of Aesthetics and Protest #4.

Sarah Ross teaches as the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and at an Illinois state prison. She has been involved with the Urbana Books to Prisoners project and her website insecurespaces.net features a number of projects and articles. A recent video Experiments of Struggle profiles activists in small midwestern towns.

Chicagoans on the Antioch Experience

Kelly Connolly ’03 presents video interviews about the Antioch College experience with alumni Sandy Macnab ’65, David Nekimken ’68, Jennifer Peters ’78, Mark Reynolds ’80, Nic Ruley ’02, and Robin Sheerer ’63.

Chicagoans on the Antioch Experience

Stravinsky/Vonnegut ‘Soldier’s Tale’ at Antioch College on April 23

YELLOW SPRINGS, Ohio – March 24, 2011 – The Johnstone Fund for New Music will present a concert performance of Igor Stravinsky's Soldier's Tale score and Kurt Vonnegut libretto in a contemporary music, theater, and dance presentation at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, April 23, in South Gym at Antioch College, One Morgan Place, Yellow Springs, OH 45387.

Based on a Russian folk tale, The Soldier’s Tale, also known as L'histoire du soldat, follows a deserting soldier who sells his soul to the devil in exchange for a book that predicts the future. The virtuosic score that Igor Stravinsky composed for The Soldier’s Tale in 1918 has been re-conceptualized many times. In 1993, novelist Kurt Vonnegut revamped the story to explore the life of Eddie Slovik, the only American soldier executed for desertion in World War II, and the first since the Civil War.

This performance was coordinated by nonprofit recital series Sunday at Central, features Columbus Symphony musicians, and is made possible by major funding from the Johnstone Fund for New Music. The ensemble features David Niwa, violin; Gary Wasserman, bass; Robert Jones, clarinet; Betsy Sturdevant, bassoon; Tom Battenberg, cornet; Rich Howenstein, trombone; Bill Lutz, percussion; and conductor Olev Viro. Collaborating with the musicians are area director and choreographer Rani Deighe Crowe, and Melissa Heston and their company of local dancers and actors.

Free parking is available behind the Olive Kettering Library, 260 E. South College Street.

About The Johnstone Fund for New Music
Columbus community leaders Jack and Zoe Johnstone founded the Johnstone Fund for New Music in 2008. It supports the continuing growth and vitality of new music and aims to position Central Ohio as a powerful incubator of this inventive art form. In addition to offering grants to commission the creation and performance of new works, the Fund inspires collaboration between composers and musicians. For more information, visit johnstonefund.org.

About Antioch College
A private, independent nonprofit liberal arts college in Yellow Springs, Ohio, Antioch College will offer a four-year, undergraduate residential experience to a new class of students beginning in the fall of 2011. The College curriculum puts equal emphasis on rigorous liberal arts learning, work (cooperative education), and community engagement. Students will complete individualized majors based on one of 11 concentrations, a language minor, and six full-time work experiences. The institution, originally founded in 1850, is now completely independent of Antioch University, the multi-campus system it created.

MEDIA CONTACT:
Gariot P. Louima ?
Director of Communications
Office: 937-319-6131
Mobile: 937-581-8201
glouima@antiochcollege.org

Alexandra Kelley
The Johnstone Fund for New Music
alexandra477@me.com

Miller Fellowship Grants Announced

The Yellow Springs Community Foundation (YSCF) has announced the names of ten Yellow Springs nonprofit organizations that will be recipients of grants to pay the direct labor costs of Antioch College students to work as interns under its Miller Fellowship Program during the 2011-2012 academic calendar.

The organizations are: Yellow Springs Arts Council, Yellow Springs Community Access TV, Glen Helen Ecology Institute, Home Inc., Yellow Springs Senior Citizens, Tecumseh Land Trust, Yellow Springs Tree Committee, WYSO, Yellow Springs Exempted Village School District, and YS Kids Playhouse.

Nick Boutis, Glen Helen Ecology Institute Director, said in his winning grant proposal: “In 1929, Glen Helen became part of the enlarged campus of Antioch College, and thus began an 80-plus year relationship of formalized work and academic opportunities in the Glen. … As efforts to resurrect Antioch College moved forward, Glen Helen Ecology Institute staff began to detail the co-operative work positions, course possibilities, and research opportunities that the Glen was suited to offer. “

The Miller Fellowship Program is funded by the Nolan J. and Richard D. Miller Endowment Fund, whose purpose is to support Antioch College students who engage in service for the benefit of the Yellow Springs community. The basic premise of the endowment is that it is meant to foster mutual respect between Antioch College and the Yellow Springs community.

State Sen. Widener Announces Glen Helen Specialty License Plate

COLUMBUS, Ohio – March 23, 2011 – State Senator Chris Widener (R-Springfield) and the Glen Helen Ecology Institute announced today that the state transportation budget, House Bill 114, will include a provision allowing for the creation of a Glen Helen Nature Preserve specialty license plate.

The state offers over 200 specialty license plates that include a picture designed by the organization and the name of the organization. Specialty plates are only authorized through legislation and can be bought when renewing or changing license plates. The Glen Helen plate costs $25, which includes a $15 donation to the Glen Helen Ecology Institute.

“The Glen is a special place in Greene County. People of all walks of life visit the preserve to learn about the natural history of our community, to experience the beauty of nature, or to exercise along the hiking trails,” Widener stated. “The specialty license plate will be a great promotional tool as well as provide additional donations to keep educational and conservational programs alive.”

The Glen Helen Ecology Institute initiated a license plate design contest last year. The new design, pending approval from the State Comptroller, will feature a design by the late-Ohio nature artist Charley Harper, who is well known for his wildlife artwork.

According to Executive Director Nick Boutis, “We are grateful for Senator Widener’s ongoing support of this legislation. Ohioans purchasing a Glen Helen license plate can feel good knowing that they are directly supporting our land conservation and environmental education efforts.”

Glen Helen is a 1,000-acre nature preserve of woods, waterways, prairies and fields laced with 25 miles of trails in Yellow Springs, Ohio. The grounds are open daily from dawn to dusk. The Glen Helen Ecology Institute is owned by Antioch College and exists to protect the Glen for present and future generations by engaging in land stewardship, education, community outreach and service and research.

Contact: Bradley Ingraham
Office: (614) 466-3780

MEDIA CONTACT:
Gariot P. Louima ?
Director of Communications
Office: 937-319-6131
Mobile: 937-581-8201
glouima@antiochcollege.org