Joline Blais Speaks at Waterfall Arts

Joline Blais will speak on Monday April 26 at Waterfall Arts. The talk, part of the monthly series of Artist Lectures, begins at 7 pm at 256 High Street in Belfast. Blais is Associate Professor of New Media at UMaine, co-directer of Still Water, and co-founder of LongGreenHouse. .

Blais' publications and creative work explore the overlap of digital culture, indigenous culture and permaculture. This cross-cultural braid suggests tribal and networked alternatives to conventional socio-political and cultural structures, and co-creates models of deep sustainability.

Blais' 2006 book At the Edge of Art, co-written with Jon Ippolito, investigates how new strategies of empowerment--execution rather than representation, arrest rather than entertainment--work in communities of new media artists, and how these practices reshape both art and real world contexts.

LongGreenHouse (2007), for example, weaves the Wabanaki Longhouse, permaculture gardens, and networked collaboration together in a hybrid "communiversity", in partnership with UMaine, Wassookeag school, and eco-village networks in Maine. Other projects include RFC: Request for Ceremony, a call for re-investing quotidian life with ceremony; and the Cross-Cultural Partnership, a legal framework for developing trust networks with indigenous peoples.

Claudia finds a Rose with Joline Blais