LISTEN – PROCESS – INTERVENE – KIN

Symposium in conjunction with the project, A Garden: The Birds Arrive

LISTEN – PROCESS – INTERVENE – KIN is an afternoon symposium at the Albuquerque Museum drawing together presentations, discussions, and performative works highlighting the year-long earthwork and garden project currently underway called, A Garden: The Birds Arrive. Presented by artists from Land Arts of the American West, 7th regen, and UNM Art & Ecology, this symposium will address contemporary Art & Ecology practices through examining the role of listening, creative processes, intervention as engagement, and kin-making as catalysts.

Free and open to the public

December 6, 2018
2pm – 330pm
Albuquerque Museum
Ventana Salon
Albuquerque, NM

A Garden: The Birds Arrive

A Garden: The Birds Arrive is an earthwork and experimental garden at the Albuquerque Museum located in the sculpture garden right off Mountain Rd NW. This project was conceived, designed, and created by Land Arts of the American West and 7th regen, in conjunction with SeedBroadcast's exhibition "Seed: Climate Change Resilience" coming in 2019. 

Land Arts of the American West designed concentric planting beds radiating from a central existing pine tree and seeded these with Middle Eastern and Asian heritage grains emmer, spelt, Sonoran Wheat, and Cache Valley Rye as a winter cover crop. In the summer, local indigenous amaranth will succeed the grains. As an experiment, the garden employs two varying methods for production: dryland farming waffle gardens and drip irrigation beds. It also accommodates the shadow line of the building. A light installation will cast shadows of the growing plants on the building wall at night.

The garden aims to be an area for artistic installation and future community engagement. 7th regen has created a steel portal of three half arches reminiscent of sheafs of grain and a mud stenciled phrase, "I wait for the birds to tell me when grain is ready," spoken by Tiana Baca of the Desert Oasis Teaching Garden. The name of the garden/installation - "The Birds Arrive" - was adapted from Baca's quote and the acronym TBA (to be announced). This project is about possibility, variability, and engagement.

September 1, 2018 – September 29, 2019

Albuquerque Museum
2000 Mountain Rd NW
Albuquerque, NM

Partners and collaborators for this project include:
Land Arts of the American West
Rocky Mountain Seed Alliance
Sarah Montgomery of Garden's Edge
Christine Mackey
Tiana Baca of Desert Oasis Teaching Garden
Albuquerque Museum
7th regen
Art & Ecology Area at UNM
SeedBroadcast
Sun, Wind, Rain
Soil Microbes, Seeds, and Birds

This project and the accompanying symposium are made possible through a partnership between Albuquerque Museum, SeedBroadcast, UNM Land Arts of the American West, and UNM Art & Ecology.

Listening to Neighbours

By Hamshya Rajkumar

Albuquerque

August 30, 2016

Listening to intricate water utility systems defeated me.

I wish I could be treated like a child as hand puppets would deliver complex information to me successfully. I feel overwhelmed.

However, at Mountain View community gardens I absorbed and felt every single word. There was even a moment where I felt tears forming in my eyes. I met a neighbour today. (I have taken a liking to the word ‘neighbour’.) Very rarely do I meet someone who can embrace another as a neighbour blind to race, gender or any other binary we are seemingly tied to. I was overjoyed to be in a community garden with the goal of unification who will empower any human being without any form of discrimination. We were given three rules (never forget where you came from, never forget those who made this opportunity for you, always give back to those who gave to you) which my family instilled in me. What warmed me even more is to hear the same values from another side of the world in a different cultural setting from the one I was raised in. All words were spoken with conviction and heart. I was incredibly delighted to be in a place that strive to enforce change. When I get filled with this much bliss and inspiration I generally want to hug them.

I got my hug.

I’m just so happy now.

Thank You

The Marginalized

By Kaitlin Bryson

Albuquerque - Mountain View//Los Jardines Institute

August 30, 2016

I am saddened to see such a strong example of disheartening land-use politics and the mismanagement of waste so vividly displayed in Albuquerque. Today we listened to Richard and Lauro from Los Jardines Institute tell their life stories. These two men have worked hard for many years battling the never-ending environmental racism that pollutes—and consequently diminishes the values of—their land and culture in the South Valley of Albuquerque.  Historically, these lands and people have not had a voice, or their voices weren’t valued and therefore not heard. As we toured their neighborhood of Mountain View we observed that much of the city’s toxic waste ends up in this valley and is left for the environment and people to deal with. “Dealing” with this fatal problem has left the people of the valley with an average life expectancy that is twenty-two years shorter than that of people living only twenty miles to the north. Despite the hard work of Richard and Lauro, many of the factories in the area that are still operational, and largely responsible for much of the environmental disturbances that continue to release toxins into the groundwater and atmosphere.

This experience left me thinking about the paradox of living and being in our current state of affairs… Thinking about how the factories and waste-facilities are a part of our modern lifestyle and, in essence, inextricable from the luxuries the modern form of western civilization affords. Abundance and waste; it’s all woven together. Still, I strongly hope for a way to bring these polarities into plane sight, therefore bringing waste-treatment into the dialogue and into the city, rather than continuing to push these “unsightly” aspects of society to the fringes or to the margins/marginalized.   

Environmental Justice

By Molly Zimmer
Albuquerque
August 30, 2016

We had a great discussion with Richard Moore at the Mountainview Community Garden, located adjacent to the Albuquerque Southside Wastewater Treatment Plant. Leakage and chemical runoff from industrial businesses in their area have created serious health conditions for the community over the past years. Many locations in their neighborhood are designated as superfund sites, and families have access to limited resources to improve their lives.

With such overwhelming evidence of industrial exploitation in one area for the benefit of the city of Albuquerque, it makes me question how we can change a community, and survive together? Richard gives us 3 Rules to live by in the larger conversation of Environmental Justice, and that begins with where you live.

1. Never Forget where you came from
2. Remember who made it possible for you to be here
3. Always give back to others what has been given to you

Mountain View Neighborhood

By Hollis Moore

Albuquerque

August 30, 2016

This experience itself deserves a novel instead of a short entry. Beginning from the moment we met Richard Moore and Lauro Salvo I felt like we were accepted into a very special community. We learned about the mission for Environmental Justice and how it is linked to everything. Sitting in the farm I felt at home. Inspirited to get my hands back into dirt. Maybe buy a row next summer?

We toured the Mountain View Neighborhood and saw one environmental disaster after the next. The industries have absolutely no regard or respect for the earth and even less for the people that call that land home. Chemicals, car dumps, bomb trains, dog food factories, asphalt, paint spills. Every plot was something worse and the arroyos and canals ran dry.

This seems unfair. To put the most damaging industries in the poorest, least educated neighborhoods. Absolutely an environmental genocide.

Makes we wonder what I can or need to do with this new knowledge I have. How can I exchange with this community? Maybe start by buying a row in the farm.

Aerobic Water

By Nancy Dewhurst
Albuquerque
August 29, 2015

Today we visited the Albuquerque Southside Wastewater Reclamation Plant. There are an astonishing number of processes that go into creating the clean drinking water that we take for granted (we were even told that some of these are unnecessary and just for the public’s peace of mind!).  

The whole process was too complicated and too scientific for me to recount, so instead, I will tell you a story that stayed with me.   

At one stage in the process, the water reaches a density that is less than 1 (what people are), so it is impossible to swim in (it would be like trying to swim in air). Once, a hydro engineer fell into the tank (which at this point in the process is still filled with sewage), and was only able to get out by crawling along the bottom to ladders at the edge of the tank (luckily for him, he knew exactly where they were).  

Here is a video of aerobic water: 

Making Water

By Rachel Zollinger

Albuquerque

August 30, 2016

Scott Salvas, chief engineer of surface water, Albuquerque Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority, says (in passing), “I make water.” How strange to think about, making water. As if our planet’s closed hydrologic system is something from which we can add or subtract. We followed the path of the 84 million gallons a day that pass from the river through the treatment plant, from diversion, to coagulation and flocculation, to ozonation, to carbon filtration, and out to the city. We drank from the water fountain in the lobby of the treatment plant. It tasted fresh and clear, hardly resembling the muddy, turbid river we watched a couple hours before. I suppose water can be made.