S.O.S. Mobile Classroom



 

#sosMobileClassroom This multi usage cargo bicycle will be a mobile classroom when park at street or doing a workshop in a school or community event. It will surely be a catalyst for an interesting green conversation and spreading the message. This mobile classroom will engage visitor by doing workshop and providing a real to life scale model of what a mobile garden and a compost bin would be by hauling all the necessary equipment along.

I have been paying attention to bicycle around me when I’m walking about in New York. Last year I saw a bike repair vendor in Bronx near East Tremont Avenue and today I saw another one on Houston Street and 2nd Avenue. Bike culture is growing, can these small industry grow? Seem like the mobile repair shop is to serve those that are at the poverty line. This idea peek my interest to investigate further into cargo capability of a bicycle and how they might help in find one’s lively hood. In India there are vendor that used a bicycle to make a different in their life. Velocommerce is all about the mobility of property, and it challenges notions of ownership and private capital. It is special because it exists at the intersection of entrepreneurship, mobility, sustainability, grassroots innovation, cultures, local economies and decentralized. How I can adapt this concept in my art practice? How about becoming a GREENwala? i.e. a green person(vendor/monger).

 

"When you learn, teach, when you get, give."

- Maya Angelou

 

Internet resources:

To know more about cargo bike: Cargo Bike Wikipedia
To be inspired by pedal commerce: Velowala-Documentary on Indian Bike Commerce
To be inspired by Columbian style cargo bike: Columbian Cargo Bike
Choose your best cargo bike that fit your needs: Cargo Bike Directory
My bicycle is made by: Bullitt
To advocate for better bicycling condition: Peopleforbikes.org
To learn to ride safely on the street of New York: Bike New York



Sponsors:

                            

 

S.O.S. Mobile Classroom at Farm City Fair, Brooklyn, New York

Cargo bicycle: L 93" x W 20" x H 40"

 

Farm City Fair
Sunday, September 12, 2010, 11am - 5pm
The Invisible Dog Gallery

51 Bergen Street, Brooklyn, NY 11201

 

Free and open to the public

 

The fair is a wild new take on the traditional County Fair.
Join us for a day-long celebration of art and food grown in Brooklyn!

Festivities engage all the senses: hear live music performed by local marching band, Asphalt Orchestra; taste food prepared
by local chefs; view specially commissioned work by local artists; get a feel for materials needed to produce your own food in workshops; browse a marketplace with some of Brooklyn's small-batch artisanal food purveyors; and cap it off with a Brooklyn Food Experiments cook-off competition.

 

www.crossingtheline.org

 

 

French Institute Alliance Françai: Crossing the Line

The French Institute Alliance Française (FIAF), New York's premiere French cultural center, announced today the program for the fourth annual edition of its acclaimed fall festival Crossing the Line, September 10–27, 2010, offering the city a unique and wide-ranging festival full of new ideas and fresh perspectives. Produced in partnership with leading New York cultural institutions, Crossing the Line is a platform for artists from both sides of the Atlantic whose powerful contemporary practices and ideas offer us critical reflections on the world we all inhabit.

In 2010, Crossing the Line will continue to deliver the highest caliber of original work with a specific focus on the artist’s role as a critically important thinker and catalyst for social change. Crossing the Line co-curators Lili Chopra, Artistic Director at FIAF and Simon Dove, Director, Herberger Institute School of Dance at Arizona State University, have focused on key artists whose work is driven by social concerns and an engagement with the policies and practices that affect our lives. The festival will continue to engage with audiences directly through a number of innovative events in public spaces, and the presentation of world-class performances.

“This fourth edition of Crossing the Line will increase and deepen relationships with a range of co-presenting partners, including cultural, academic, and non-governmental organizations and agencies, to stimulate the debate and broaden the discussion of the artists’ ideas and work,” says co-curator Lili Chopra. “Farm City, an evocative journey through the sights, sounds, tastes, and ideas of the Urban Agriculture movement rapidly evolving in Brooklyn will further the impact of the festival by connecting artists’

Farm City: Where Are You Growing? (2010), a festival of Urban Agriculture, located throughout sites in Brooklyn, co-curated with Derek Denckla. This project is conceived to introduce the public to the principles, practices, and surprising revelations of rooftop farms, urban homesteading, city beekeeping, and parking lot agriculture, to name a few. Punctuated by artists, farmers, urban planners, citizens, and delicious food, this project illuminates the compelling alternative routes to a sustainable future for urban food. Over three weekends, Farm City will explore the possibilities of our new agrarian future, while examining our current urban reality, through a Farm City Fair, films, a Farm City Tour, and a Farm City Forum to continue the dialogue.

The Farm City Fair features a number of performance events and commissions focused on the senses, including:

Asphalt Orchestra, Brooklyn-based 12-piece next-generation avant-garde marching band, will perform live throughout the day.

Andrew Casner, compost painter, demonstrates his work–the community process of developing a viable compost with an etched canvas created as a by-product.

Wylie Dufresne
, renowned chef of wd-50, creates a new downloadable recipe based on re-imagining local ingredients, to be sampled at the Fair.

Mathilde Roussel-Giraudy
,
a Brooklyn based artist, will present Ca pousse ! (It’s growing!), human form sculptures that change as they grow.

Miwa Koizumi
, Brooklyn-based ice cream maker of “NY Flavors,” will create a geographically inspired new ice cream flavor based on Bergen Street and the festival.

Tattfoo Tan
, urban farming visionary artist, launches his new bike-based S.O.S Mobile Classroom, dubbed S.O.S–Sustainable Organic Stewardship.

 

Farm City is co-curated with Derek Denckla, editor of thegreenest.net and founder of FarmCity.US.





 

S.O.S. Mobile Classroom with MLAB - Mobile Literacy Arts Bus



 

S.O.S. Mobile Classroom at The Stone House


 

 

S.O.S. Mobile Classroom at Momenta Art, Brooklyn, New York

Mobility
September 9 through October 17, 2011

Momenta Art, 56 Bogart Street, Brooklyn, NY 11237

Opening Reception: Friday, September 9th from 6 to 9 pm
Interactive Performance Dates: Sunday, September 18th and 24th from 3-6pm


 
Vending carts can be seen both as platforms for personal expression and alternatives to mass consumerism. Like the art viewing experience, they encourage a more personal transactional space. The artists in Mobility claim public space to create intimate experiences. The works will be taken out into the community surrounding the gallery and manned by the artists during scheduled performance times and will be on display at Momenta while not in action. As Momenta’s first exhibition at our new space in Bushwick, this show will also indirectly address the influx of new populations in this transitioning neighborhood through work that integrates social practice with aesthetics.

Consume Love is an anti-consumerism project by Atom Cianfarani in which she ”re-gifts” food scavenged from dumpsters. Her food cart operates as a venue in which visitors can engage in alternate forms of consumption, providing homemade food re-directed from the waste-stream by way of “freeganism”.

Máximo González’s Changarrito vending stand is based on nomadic, ambulant markets in Mexico City. Small works by a large selection of artists are donated and sold through the cart, all for under $20. Changarrito made its debut in Madrid during ARCO’05, where González presented it as an alternative to the official gallery selection presented by the Mexican cultural authorities. Initially spurned by fair authorities, it is now embraced by art fairs internationally.

Pimp My Piragua is a mobile public art project by Miguel Luciano that commemorates the innovations of Latino street vendors by transforming a traditional pushcart for selling shaved ice (Piraguas) into a hyper-modified and technologically advanced pushcart-tricycle with a high powered sound and video system. Piragua carts were among the first start-up businesses for Latino immigrants in New York.

Blender is an ongoing project by Hidemi Takagi that investigates the diverse immigrant cultures in New York City. The project includes an installation comprised of photos of the packaging of food products from various immigrant neighborhoods accompanied by descriptive texts, a cart with an interactive performance, and a website.

SOS Mobile Classroom by Tattfoo Tan merges a cargo bicycle with a mobile classroom to encourage conversation regarding green and sustainable practices by presenting composting and mobile gardening workshops. SOS Mobile Classroom presents an intersection of art with entrepreneurship, mobility, sustainability, grassroots innovation, and the recognition of local economies.

Ricardo Miranda Zuñiga’s The Undocumented Drones employs found objects and debris with embedded electronics, each focused on performing a single task. Worker drones and rogue drones are unified by their aesthetics but each have their own unique characteristics and role. Representing a near slave class of undocumented workers within the US, the drones do not have a voice or any other means of expression and exist merely to wander the gallery and provide cheap labor.



Momenta's programming is supported in part by NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the Harriet Ames Charitable Trust, The Greenwall Foundation, The Greenwich Foundation, The Jerome Foundation, The Lily Auchincloss Foundation, The New York Community Trust, The New York State Council on the Arts, and individual contributors.

Shaman staff or stick. An artist is the shaman of our time, and our vision reflects the future and our arts heal the society. We have the power. Let's pick up our shaman staff and do our magic.

 

 

S.O.S. Mobile Classroom at The Children's Storefront

The Excellent Explorers, 3rd Grade students had so many question regarding composting and they wrote them down to ask me.





 

 

 

S.O.S. Mobile Classroom making an appearance at
Art Basel Miami Beach


Dec 1, 2010, 11am at Lincoln Theatre (Pennsylvania Avenue & Lincoln Road Mall)
Dec 1, 2010, 12 pm at Miami Community Church (Drexel Avenue & Lincoln Road Mall)
Dec 1, 2010, 3pm at Bass Museum of Art at Collins Park (Collins Avenue & 22nd Street)
Dec 1, 2010, 4pm at Convention Center ( Convention Center Drive)
Dec 2, 2010, 11am at Villa Versace (Ocean Drive & 11th Street)
Dec 2, 2010, 3pm at Convention Center ( Convention Center Drive)

Project was sponsored by Atelier 4, Moving Art Forward.