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Enacting Awareness: Water, Waste, and Public Space

Fri, May 29, 2015, 1:00 am to Sat, May 30, 2015, 3:59 am

Enacting Awareness: Water, Waste, and Public Space

May 28th, 7pm (6pm reception), Digital Arts Research Center, room 108

presentations & panel discussion moderated by Andrea Steves (co-founder, FICTILIS) featuring a dynamic mix of artists, activists, researchers, & educators

 

Heidi Quante has devoted 17 years to designing and running a wide array of environmental projects and has worked on all aspects of environmental projects from community trainings on storytelling to coordinating multi-stakeholder coalitions. For the last 10 years, Heidi has designed and managed creative communication projects for a wide array of organizations including The Story of Stuff Project, Free Range Studios, Breast Cancer Action and the global climate change organization 350.org. For the last 3 years she has Co-Coordinated the innovative HighWaterLine project with the artist Eve Mosher. She is Director of Creative Catalysts, a non-profit that brings together experts from diverse disciplines: art, science, experiential learning, community organizing and multi-media to design innovative ways to raise awareness, inspire dialogue and spark action on pressing social and environmental issues.

 

Shawn Shafner is a Brooklyn-based artist, educator and activist. Founder of The People’s Own Organic Power Project, he’s been inspiring critical conversations about sustainable sanitation since 2010. Works include Flush: The Documentary with Karina Mangu-Ward, installations with Chashama and Judson Church, performances at 59E59, The Culture Project and The Jamjar in Dubai. The 2012 musical Eat $h*t: How Our Waste Can Save the World was performed internationally and heard on the floor of the UN for World Toilet Day 2013. His one-man show An Inconvenient Poop premieres this August at the NY International Fringe Festival. Shawn’s community-based art practice includes work with The World Policy Institute, Fourth Arts Block, Elastic City, and Cooper Union. He is a 2014-15 LABA Fellow, and an 2015 iLAB resident in collaboration with the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council.

 

Abigail Brown is committed to sanitation equity and sustainability as a longtime volunteer for Public Hygiene Lets Us Stay Human (PHLUSH). Her research situates contemporary water and sanitation exclusion within a political economic context with attention to inter-sectional concerns (gender, race, class, etc.), cultural nuances, and urban sociology. PHLUSH collaborates with groups working for clean safe public restrooms, including for those living outside, and with local governments in the Pacific Northwest adopting dry toilets for emergency use. PHLUSH maintains a US-based focus while partnering with the World Toilet Organization and Sustainable Sanitation Alliance. The group has presented at four World Toilet Summits. She ran the popular WaterForTheAges blog and currently tweets at @waterfortheages.

 

 

Carol Steinfeld is a researcher, writer, and market transformer who promotes resource-recycling and green building solutions. She co-wrote, with David Del Porto, Reusing the Resource: Adventures in Ecological Wastewater Recycling and The Composting Toilet System Book, and authored Liquid Gold: The Lore & Logic of Using Urine to Grow Plants. Profits from the books fund Ecowaters Projects, which presents workshops and eco-wastewater system tours worldwide. In 2000, she founded Ecovita to create markets for solutions new to North America, such as urine-diverting toilets. With Ecological Engineering Group, she helped change laws and regulations to make ecological wastewater solutions easier to permit, and she piloted non-proprietary green-roof substrates, using reclaimed materials. Her articles have been published by Natural Home, Environmental Building News, and other newspapers.