Adaptations: Living with Change
Adaptations Residencies invited artists to examine how climate driven adaptations - large and small, historic and contemporary, cultural and scientific - are shaping our future. 2017 - 2020
New Orleans and the region are frequently invoked as one of the areas most vulnerable to the effects of environmental change. Our highly manipulated landscape can be seen as a microcosm of the global environment, manifesting both the challenges and possibilities inherent in the ways humans interact with urban and natural ecosystems. With nearly half of the world’s population living within 40 miles of a coastline with rising seas, the concerns of Southern Louisiana resonate globally. Adaptations Residencies invite artists to examine how climate driven adaptations – large and small, historic and contemporary, cultural and scientific – are shaping our future. Adaptations Residencies provide artists with time, space, scholarship and staff support to foster critical thinking and the creation of new works. The series is open to artists of all disciplines who have demonstrated an established dialogue with environmental and culturally related issues and a commitment to seeking and plumbing new depths. We ask artists to describe in detail how the region will affect their work, to propose a public component to their residency and to suggest ways in which they will engage with the local community.
Adaptations Residencies are sponsored in part thanks to generous support of the Lambent Foundation, Keller Family Foundation with support of the Bywater Institute at Tulane University. Supported by a grant from the Louisiana Division of the Arts, Office of Cultural Development, Department of Culture, Recreation and Tourism in cooperation with the Louisiana State Arts Council. This program is supported in part by a Community Arts Grant made possible by the City of New Orleans. Funding has also been provided by the National Endowment for the Arts, Art Works. Additional support provided by the Puffin Foundation.
Related News
Adaptations: Living with Change Residents
-
Aurora Levins Morales Writer and Historian, 2005 (Pre-Katrina), 2018, 2025, Puerto Rico Aurora Levins Morales is a cuir, feminist, disabled and chronically ill Boricua-Ashkenazi (Puerto Rican Jewish) poet, essayist and visual artist. She is a movement elder and sixth generation radical. The author of nine books, her writing is widely taught and… -
Jeffery Darensbourg Literary Artist, 2020, Louisiana Jeffery Darensbourg is interested in the knowledge of flora, fauna, and people his Atakapa-Ishak ancestors carried with them and wishes to connect this sort of Louisiana-specific knowledge to the knowledge urban Natives such as himself have in negotiating Indigeneity, within… -
Nick Slie Performing Artist, 2020, Louisiana While in residence, Nick embarked on “Invisible Rivers,” a series of performances and public walks that seek to re-engage citizens with the wisdom of adaptation and uncertainty inherent in the once wild paths of the Mississippi River. “Invisible Rivers” unites… -
Ash Arder Transdisciplinary Artist, 2019, Michigan Ash Arder is a transdisciplinary artist who creates idea and object-based systems for interpreting and re-imagining interspecies relations (i.e. relations between humans and plants). This highly flexible, research-based approach examines these relationships primarily through pop culture and historic lenses. Arder’s… -
Geraldine Laurendeau Multidisciplinary Artist, 2019, Canada Geraldine Laurendeau is a multidisciplinary artist from Montreal (Canada). She has a background in Fine Arts, Landscape Architecture and Environmental Studies. She’s also a trained ethnologist and collaborates with First Nations, museums and research institutions as an independent curator, designer… -
Hannah Pepper-Cunningham Performing Artist, 2019, Louisiana Hannah Pepper-Cunningham has been creating performance work in New Orleans since 2009. A member of Mondo Bizarro from 2009-2018, Hannah served as co-artistic director of training programs and collaboratively developed and performed in “Cry You One” and “The Way at Midnight.”… -
kai barrow Visual and Performing Artist, Louisiana, 2019-20 While in residence, kai barrow continued work on “A CHORUS OF OUTLAWS,” a multimedia assemblage of ‘singing’ sculptures. The work features the recorded voices, ecologies, and sounds of historic and contemporary refugees, fugitives, abolitionists, and nomads—people who demonstrate radical imagination… -
Margaret Pearce Cartographer, 2019, Maine Margaret Pearce (Citizen Band Potawatomi), continued research for “Mississippi Dialogues,” a three-year project to map public opinion about flooding into an Indigenized map of the Mississippi River. She used her residency to be in proximity to Indigenous communities of the… -
ChE and kei slaughter Performing Artists, 2019-20, Louisiana ChE and kei slaughter worked on “The People Can Fly,” a land-responsive performance ritual rooted in Queer Afro-Indigenous cultural strategies to address issues of climate gentrification, environmental racism, and land displacement for communities most impacted by climate adaptations. ChE is… -
Monique Michelle Verdin Visual Artist, 2007, 2017, 2018 and 2019, Louisiana Monique Michelle Verdin uses imagery to expose the reality of a Louisiana lost and the Louisiana left behind. More folk artist than photographer, more storyteller than visual artist, Verdin has captured, collected and exposed an intimate perspective into the survival… -
John Kleinschmidt Visual Artist, 2018, Louisiana John Kleinschmidt used drawing and installations to explore prehistoric and present-day environmental change and project what plants and animals might thrive in the distant future environment of New Orleans. John, in collaboration with evolutionary biologists, geologists, and experts in ecological… -
Tia-Simone Gardner Multidisciplinary Artist, 2018, Minnesota Tia-Simone Gardner began a new project, There’s Something in the Water, Yemaya and Oshun, amassing footage and archival research to create a seven-channel video installation that documents seven sites along the Mississippi River, chosen because of their relationship to the… -
Dasha Chapman, Jean-Sebastien Duvilaire, Ann Mazzocca & Phil Rodriguez Performing Artists, 2018, Massachusetts, Virginia and Haiti The Tè Glise Collective– comprised of Dasha Chapman, Jean-Sebastien Duvilaire, Ann Mazzocca and Phil Rodriguez– is a group of dance artists, scholar-practitioners and musicians who explore collaborative site-specific projects in relation to place-making, history, and the role of spirit in… -
Jonathan Mayers Visual and Literary Artist, 2018, Louisiana Jonathan “rat de bois farouche” Mayers is a Louisiana Creole artist and writer from Baton Rouge, LA. His paintings depict metaphorical beasts amid meticulously rendered landscapes. The mysterious creatures – somewhat wicked, somewhat charming – were born of the artist’s… -
Manon Bellet Visual and Olfactory Artist, 2018, Louisiana Manon Bellet [b. 1979] is a French artist who lives and works in New Orleans since 2016. Bellet holds a BA/MFA from the University of the Arts, ECAV Switzerland. She has been awarded, Monroe Fellowship from The New Orleans Center… -
Katie Mathews Filmmaker, 2018, Louisiana With New Orleans Video Access Center, Katie Mathews has helped produce Post Coastal, a series of short documentary films addressing coastal communities and water issues. She used her time in residence to develop programming around screenings for coastal communities grappling… -
Julia Kumari Drapkin & Lindsey Wagner New Media Artists, 2017, Louisiana and Massachusetts Julia Kumari Drapkin and Lindsey Wagner are founding members of ISeeChange, a global online platform and app where citizens can observe and discuss what they notice changing in the environment and the ways those changes impact their lives. Julia and… -
Aubrey Edwards & Gretchen Faust Visual Artists, 2017, Louisiana Aubrey Edwards and Gretchen Faust applied as a collaborative team to work on a project comprised of a short observational film exploring an array of healing practices and a contextualizing, accompanying publication featuring an ensemble of over fifty regional, female-identified…