Martin Clark Bridge, a regular participant in the MSoE as an environmental artist, did us a huge courtesy this last summer by allowing us to reproduce his painting Permaculture – Principle 1 for the 2016 MSoE t-shirt. This is part of his series on permaculture, with each painting representing one of permaculture’s twelve design principles. Principle I — Observe and Interact — perfectly captures one of the implicit goals of the Middlebury School of the Environment, so it was a perfect choice for our 2016 t-shirt. What makes this particularly noteworthy, though, is Martin’s generosity in sharing the painting with us simply because (in his words) “I believe in what you are doing.”
And by that, he means that he believes in all of the students, those of you who have made a commitment to becoming agents of positive change in the world, who observe what needs to be done, and interact with the world to make it a better place.
So we say, “thank you, Martin.” Check us out saying it, each in our own way from the summit of Snake Mountain.
Today’s post comes from Joan Grossman, filmmaker and producer, who most of you know as one of the key faculty members of the Middlebury School of the Environment:
As a documentary filmmaker, traveling for work is often the most authentic way to experience a place, if not the most pleasurable. Sometimes, as filmmakers we may be seeking beauty, but often we’re looking for something else that expresses the strange, unexpected struggles that underly our survival on this planet. This last year I traveled across the continent, from New York to Alaska, on a series of trips, as the American producer on an Austrian film about a Russian woman in New York, trying to walk home, heading for the Bering Strait.* The film is an unusual hybrid of unscripted fiction and documentary, and was inspired by a true story from the 1920s. Our version is contemporary and takes much poetic license. Along with being a story about a lone woman on an epic, existential journey, it is also a story that slices through North America at this particular juncture in time. We were not making an “environmental” film per se, but we were working in some extraordinary places that also happen to be environmental flashpoints.
A facility owned by Syncrude Canada north of Fort MacMurray, Alberta, where tar sands – also known as oil sands – are refined into synthetic crude oil. The emissions are so severe they can create localized weather systems. Photo: Joan Grossman
One of the most striking places we filmed at was the encampment at the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota, where Native Americans and their allies are resisting the Dakota Access Pipeline, slated to carry oil across the Missouri River just north of the reservation.The river is the main source of drinking water for the reservation and millions more downstream. It had been deemed too risky for the pipeline to cross the river at the state capital, Bismarck, 40 miles north, where the population is largely white.
The encampment had established a site where ceremony, music and organizing were taking place all day and into the night, along with an ad hoc infrastructure to care for and feed hundreds – soon to be thousands – of people every day. We were at Standing Rock in August, just as it was becoming a big international story. Among other things, we filmed statements by tribal leaders as they arrived in a steady stream of support, bringing together the largest number of tribes ever. For Native American cultures, respect for the natural environment is a guiding principle, and that was a powerful message to hear over and over again. I became acutely aware of how Standing Rock was tying together the crucial issues of our times – racial injustice, climate change, and the influence of corporate interests on our politics and economy.
Native American reservations are some of the poorest communities in the United States. Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, which encompasses parts of the Badlands, where we also filmed, has a per capita income under $4,000 per year, and 60 percent of the people do not have electricity and running water. Life expectancy is the second lowest in the Western hemisphere, after Haiti. While these statistics are bleak, the gathering at Standing Rock has energized an indigenous environmental justice movement that is gaining global support, although they clearly have a big hurdle ahead with the Trump administration determined to go forward with the pipeline.
Later, in Canada, we went to Fort MacMurray in Northern Alberta, to film at the tar sands, or oil sands, as they are referred to locally. Last year, Fort MacMurray was engulfed in a devastating wildfire that was fueled by a hotter, drier climate. The fires spread dangerously close to the oil sands operations and shut everything down. As we approached Fort MacMurray we drove through miles of burnt trees that stretched as far as the eye could see. The oil sands region in Alberta has one of the largest oil deposits in the world. It is also one of the dirtiest energy sites anywhere. The extraction of oil from the thick mixture of bitumen-covered sand requires enormous inputs of natural gas and chemicals. The controversial Keystone XL Pipeline was built to carry the synthetic crude that is produced in the oil sands, and while the pipeline was halted by an opposition movement, it is now also getting revived under the Trump administration. The area is one of the most dystopian places I have ever seen. Driving north of Fort MacMurray toward the mining operations, we were hit by a pungent, acrid smell among massive installations that produce a level of emissions so high they can create their own weather system. We experienced a strange artificial snowfall there.
We ended the production in Anchorage, Alaska, where we intended to film wintery scenes. It was November, when snow and ice can be expected. But snowfall has diminished considerably in recent years. With climate change, Alaska and the Arctic are warming at a faster rate than other parts of the world. The first few days we were there it was warm and sunny. The sunshine turned to drenching rains, and we filmed our character walking through heavy, foggy rainfall, which could have been almost anywhere.
This last year was an interesting time to be crossing the country, particularly as the only American among a European film crew, partly seeing it through their eyes. The election was on everyone’s mind and we had many conversations with people along the way, whose politics we disagreed with, but with whom I sometimes found a surprising amount of common ground. Chances are I wouldn’t have had these kinds of encounters if I the work hadn’t taken me to places I might otherwise never had visited – such as former coal towns in Pennsylvania, or the prairies of rural Nebraska. In any case, I was reminded of how big the country is, and how little we talk to each other outside of our like-minded bubbles.
The project still has a long editing process ahead with almost 200 hours of material. It’s an enigmatic story; no one knows for sure if the original character made it back to Russia in the 1920s. In the film, too, there are more questions than answers. Stay tuned.
* The film, Lillian, is directed by Andreas Horvath, and will be completed sometime in 2018.
This summer, the Middlebury School of the Environment will welcome director Noah Hutton for a public showing of his 2015 film, Deep Time.”
The themes exposed in this acclaimed documentary perfectly blend with those of the MSoE: “Ancient oceans teeming with life, Norwegian settlers, Native Americans and multinational oil corporations find intimacy in deep time. Following up his 2009 feature Crude Independence (SXSW), Deep Time is director Noah Hutton’s ethereal portrait of the landowners, state officials, and oil workers at the center of the most prolific oil boom on the planet for the past six years. With a new focus on the relationship of the indigenous peoples of North Dakota to their surging fossil wealth, Deep Time casts the ongoing boom in the context of paleo-cycles, climate change, and the dark ecology of the future” (adapted from the film’s web site).
Deep Time has been well received by critics and audiences alike. It won the Special Jury Award at the 2015 Environmental Film Festival at Yale, as well as the Jury Award for Documentary Features at the 2016 Wild and Scenic Film Festival.
We’re excited to have Noah Hutton join us for the screening, which will be followed by an open Q&A with the audience to explore both the subject of the film and the craft of film production.
The screening will be held on July 19th, 7:30 pm in Dana Auditorium on the Middlebury College campus. The film is free and open to the public, and we hope you will be able to join us.
Today’s blog post comes from alumna Hannah Root (MSoE ’15), who reports on her recent experience of presenting the results of her work this past summer in Joan Grossman’s elective on Environmental Video Production.
“In November I had the enormous honor to attend the Lake Champlain International Film Festival in Plattsburgh, NY to see my final video project from the Middlebury School of the Environment presented on the big screen. This project was part of Joan Grossman’s Environmental Video Production elective, and I was able to collaborate with two classmates (Ben Harris, Middlebury ’15 and Alice, Harvard ’15) to produce a 5-minute video. Our topic started as a portrait of the new pop-up park in Middlebury, a temporary play structure designed and built by UVM students, and it evolved into a conversation about community spaces and their standards. This was my first experience with film production and it was so rewarding to work collaboratively with a group to create an end product that we were all proud to share.
“Our film was shown in the agriculture block alongside three other films, including “Small Farm Rising” by Ben Stechschulte. All of the films in this block shared different visions for improving our local communities, be it through growing good food or creating play spaces for children. Afterwards, I was able to speak on a panel alongside the producers and some of the farmers in the films to delve into some of the common themes and the process of making our films. The whole afternoon was an amazing experience for me as a first-time filmmaker. I am so thankful to Joan Grossman for helping my group produce a film that I am proud to share, and Curt Gervich for connecting us with the organizers of the film festival!”
Congratulations, Hannah, Ben, and Alice, on having your film included in an international film festival!
I am very pleased to announce that Dr. Joan Grossman will join us this coming summer as an Assistant Professor of Environmental Art.
Joan is a media artist and filmmaker based in Brooklyn, New York, with projects that span documentary film, video installation, video projection design for live performance (including collaborating on the recent Salt Marsh Suite about a distressed wetland in North Carolina), and productions for non-profit organizations such as the World Resources Institute. Her work has won numerous awards and has been screened in more than 20 countries with projects in China, Russia, Africa, and throughout Europe. She has been a visiting artist and professor of film and media arts at universities across the country, and has worked as a producer for European feature films shooting in the US. Her recent documentary, Drop City, is currently screening internationally, and is distributed by 7th Art Releasing in Los Angeles. Joan has a PhD in Media and Philosophy from the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland. Her book, BLACKOUT: On Memory and Catastrophe, was published by Atropos Press.
At the Middlebury School of the Environment, Joan will co-teach the Introduction to Environmental Analysis (with Steve Trombulak) and an elective course on Environmental Video Production.
I am excited about her elective in video production. In this course, students will gain hands-on experience in video production and create short video works that draw on other aspects of the environmental studies curriculum. Video can be a powerful tool for research and creative expression, and has the potential to deeply enhance how we perceive and understand the environment. The course will explore aesthetic and philosophical approaches to video production, and creative techniques for communicating information and producing artistic works. The aim of this course is to develop skills and perspectives that demonstrate how video can provoke profound discourses on issues and ideas.
Last summer, Martin Clark Bridge joined us as the School of the Environment’s first artist-in-residence. Not only did he create “Vanishing Nautilus,” the acrylic on wood painting to inaugurate the School, but he delivered a riveting lecture called “Environmental Art: Exploration and Collaboration.” In this lecture he reviewed his own path to becoming one of the most promising young artists at the vanguard of the field’s modern movement, but he situates that narrative within the broader history of the field’s evolution over time.
But you don’t have to settle for my description of his presentation. You can view it here in it’s entirety. So please join me in welcoming Mr. Martin Clark Bridge, who is speaking to us about Environmental Art: Exploration and Collaboration.
One of the goals of the School of the Environment is to offer as comprehensive and integrative of a curriculum as possible. It is therefore with great pleasure that I introduce the School’s Artist-in-Residence for 2014, Mr. Martin Clark Bridge.
From his website … “Martin is proudly carrying his family tradition forth as he lives, creates and teaches in the hills of Western Massachusetts. His work spans a wide range of media from Drawing, Painting, Sculpture, Theater Design and Site Specific Installations to Performance. His Spiritual Path as an Animist first and foremost influences his art. His work celebrates the sacredness inherent in nature, the consciousness in all things and power of place and seeks to challenge the cultural paradigms that dictate the way we relate to both the natural world and our brother and sisters. He strives to create work that improves his own awareness of how he relates to the natural world and invites viewers to contemplate how to live in better balance with the world around us. Through his work he hopes to inspire and cultivate a greater sense of mystery and possibility in our experience of the world.”
As a Fellow with the School of the Environment, Martin Bridge has accepted a commission to paint an original piece to commemorate the inaugural session of the School. This image will be used on the School’s t-shirt (a tradition that I hope will continue with future artists-in-residence in the coming years), and the original will be placed on display at Middlebury College. Martin will also present an installation lecture, during which he will talk not only about the commissioned piece itself but about how it contributes to his larger exploration of arts and the environment.
Martin Bridge brings to this subject a diverse set of skills and world views that transcends traditional approaches to studies of art and the environment. He is a painter, sculptor, musician, architect, landscape designer, and mycologist … all of which both inform his practices and come together to create a more integrative reflection of the arts than any one practice alone could do. More than anyone else working in this area today, Martin Bridge lives his art, and his art comes alive (often literally) through him.
We are very pleased that he will be joining us during the second week of the summer session, and look forward not only to his presentation but to his deeper engagement with the students.
In the meantime, be sure to visit his website and its associated gallery. I am sure you will agree with me that his work dramatically throws open the door to explorations of arts and the environment.
Martin Clark Bridge, a regular participant in the MSoE as an environmental artist, did us a huge courtesy this last summer by allowing us to reproduce his painting Permaculture – Principle 1 for the 2016 MSoE t-shirt. This is part of his series on permaculture, with each painting representing one of permaculture’s twelve design principles. Principle I — Observe and Interact — perfectly captures one of the implicit goals of the Middlebury School of the Environment, so it was a perfect choice for our 2016 t-shirt. What makes this particularly noteworthy, though, is Martin’s generosity in sharing the painting with us simply because (in his words) “I believe in what you are doing.”
