“Look around. Listen. What is nature telling us? What is the ocean saying? Seek and find the messages of the ocean through the plastic you find. On beaches. On riverbanks. On city streets, on its way to the storm sewer, to the river, to the ocean. Intervene in its journey.”
Ocean Gleaning with the Drifters Project
A workshop with artist Pam Longobardi
Tuesday, August 17th
4 pm EDT / 1pm PDT / 8pm GMT
Artist Pam Longobardi has spent the last decade and a half in a deep dive with vagrant ocean plastic. This extensive international research and art making effort called Drifters Project has led her to believe that Ocean is communicating with us through the medium of plastic as it is something we can understand if we give proper attention. Utilizing forensic aesthetics as a modality, Longobardi cleans beaches, sea caves and coastal zones of the world, seeking plastic and the messages it brings.
Join us in an online workshop with Pam Longobardi this August, aimed at decoding the messages in found plastic objects. Participants indicating interest in attending (limited space) will be given more specific instructions on how to find the objects and what to do with them, which we will examine and discuss collectively as we seek to expand our understanding of what Ocean is saying.
Individual messages will be crafted during the workshop and honed through collective intelligence. Object/message combinations may be invited for inclusion in Longobardi’s upcoming book Ocean Gleaning to be published in early 2022 by Fall Line Press, her large-scale exhibition at the Baker Museum of Art in Naples, FL January-July 2022, or both.
Pam Longobardi is Distinguished Professor of Art at Georgia State University and Artist-in-Nature for the Oceanic Society. Her artwork addresses the psychological relationship of humans to the natural world, and has been featured in National Geographic, the Venice Biennale, and dozens of exhibitions around the world. With the Drifters Project, she collects, documents, and transforms oceanic plastic into installations, public art, painting, and photography.
To participate, register HERE as “Going”. You’ll need to log into your EDC account to register, and to create an account HERE if you haven’t already. The workshop will take place on the Art & Ecology channel of our Commons (find and join it by searching on the Commons left sidebar). Please write to collective@ecodesigncollective.org with any problems.