>>Waterpod: Autonomy and Ecology at Exit Art in New York January 9 - February 6, 2010
Mira Hunter will be exhibiting 4 small sculptural works and 12 photographs at Waterpod: Autonomy and Ecology, the sixth exhibition of the SEA (Social Envrionmental Aesthetics) program, and a survey of Waterpod™'s five-month voyage around the boroughs of New York. It includes videos, photographs, relics, art works, journal entries, and ephemera that tell the story of this unusual public art project.
Waterpod™ was a floating, sculptural structure designed as a futuristic habitat and an experimental platform for assessing the design and efficacy of living systems fashioned to create an autonomous, fully functional marine shelter.
A New York-based multinational team, led by founder and artistic director Mary Mattingly, drew upon the talents of artists, designers, builders, civic activists, scientists, environmentalists, and marine engineers to bring this cross-disciplinary collaboration to fruition in the waterways of New York City. During a global recession and within strict government guidelines, the Waterpod managed to achieve new ways of community outreach, resource sharing, and art creation.
To fortify against the possibility of widespread climate change, desertification, overpopulation, and rising sea levels, Waterpod™ offered a pathway to sustainable survival, mobility, and community building through a free, participatory project and event space that visited the five boroughs and Governors Island, for a voyage lasting from June to October 2009. The Waterpod’s mission has been to prepare, inform, and offer alternatives to current and future living spaces >>
>>Mira Hunter is currently in New York working/living on Waterpod™ Project.
Waterpod™ is a floating, sculptural, eco-habitat designed for the rising tides. It departed in June of 2009, from the Brooklyn Navy Yard, and is currently navigating the New York waterways docking at piers throughout the 5 boroughs. Waterpod™ demonstrates future pathways for water-based innovations. As a sustainable, navigable living space, Waterpod™ showcases the critical importance of the environment and art, serving as a model for new living, d.i.y. technologies, art, and dialogue. It illustrates positive interactions between communities: private and corporate; artistic and social; aquatic and terrestrial while exploring the cultural richness of New York's five boroughs and beyond>>
Waterpod™ is fiscally sponsored by Action Arts League, a 501 (c) 3 not-for-profit organization. Waterpod™ actively supports organizations that provide in-kind goods or services, supplying signage, acknowledgements, and other emoluments based on contribution level.
To donate to Waterpod™ Project please click the link below >> justgive.org
>>Fatih Akin and Mira: You can watch award winning director Fatih Akin's acclaimed documentary on the musical culture of Istanbul, Crossing The Bridge: The Sounds Of Istanbul, which features a very short interview with Mira Hunter. It streams from the google video website in Turkish and German with English subtitles. It is a gem of a film that follows some of Turkey's most influential musicians, hip hop artists and even street performers. Worth checking out.
>>Mira Hunter’s most recent piece Time Machine, which is the result of a collaboration with her husband Derek Hunter, features 65 disposable cameras fixed to a 360 degree rail made from reclaimed lumber, activated by electromechanical solenoids. The photographs, which feature Mira, are animated in a sequence, giving the audience the visual experience of revolving around a whirling dervish, caught in a single moment. The images, often displaying unusual exposure anomalies, were scanned and made into two films, which played simultaneously within a wooden yurt. It was installed at the SFU School for Contemporary Arts exhibition space in Vancouver, 2008. The Hunters are relocating to New York in the fall to work on the floating art exhibit, Waterpod™. They are currently working on a new companion piece to Time Machine, working title: Time Bomb. Time Bomb aims to be a novel look at reparative/restorative potential in art. Inspired by Fischli/Weiss and Mary Mattingly's future human Navigators, it will playfully document a moment when nature and the common animal will raise a molotov cocktail in the name of environmental injustice, through bullet time photography, stop motion animation, super 16 film, video and a rotating tripod machine.
