"Hello New Friends!!" by Robin Lasser

Hello new friends!

Late last night I arrived home from India where I am working with four artists from Bangalore and three artists from the Bay Area to embark on a project titled: “The Distance from Me to You.”

I am looking forward to discovering you and your work in a few weeks, as this is the first time I have attended the symposium.

I will be presenting my collaborative photographs, video, installations and public art created over the past decade.  These works explore environmental, cultural, and social issues in the context of the relationships of our bodies to the land.

I will share two projects with you now. “Dress Tents: Nomadic Wearable Architecture” in collaboration with Adrienne Pao and “Refuge in Refuse: Mandalas and Zoetropes from the Albany Landfill” in collaboration with Judith Leinen.

“The Edible Garden Dress Tent” 30 x 36 chromogenic print by Robin Lasser and Adrienne Pao, 2013

 “Ms. Russia: Camera Obscura Dress Tent” 40 x 48 chromogenic print by Robin Lasser and Adrienne Pao 2011

Dress Tents are a fusion of architecture, the body and the land played out through living sculpture, moving images and photography. The wearable architecture is installed and worn in the landscape in order to be photographed. Humor is s paramount in these photographs, which are meant to be alluring and whimsical. In other instances, the installations are per formed and displayed in a gallery or museum as interactive living sculptures. On occasion the Dress Tents are

commissioned as semi - permanent, interactive public art installations. The Dress Tent project investigates desire from a female centered perspective and uses seduction as a vehicle to explore the relationship between the body and the land.

Images from the Refuge in Refuse: 

  Mandala  “Grim Salutes the Sunrise” in collaboration with Judith Leinen, 36 x 36 

chromogenic print on aluminum by Robin Lasser and Judith Leinen, 2014 

Mandala, “Tamara Disappears Behind Mad Mark’s Castle Window”

36 x 36 chromogenic print on aluminum by Robin Lasser and Judith Leinen, 2014

The Refuge in Refuse: Homesteading Art and Culture project is an interactive, mobile, transmedia collection of visual and sound data reflecting the intersection of architecture, art, ecology and people homesteading on a decommissioned shoreline construction dump located in Albany, California.  For more than two decades artists, recreationalists, and the homeless share the bulb exploring borders between public and private urban space.  The project utilizes sound (stories), video, photography and sculpture.

The Albany Bulb is a landfill peninsula located along the east shore of the San Francisco Bay. This year the Albany City Council voted to begin transferring the land from the city of Albany over to the California State Park System. Transferring this land will also mean that over sixty people who have long been camped at the Albany Bulb, will be made, once again, homeless. This upcoming eviction will bring changing tides for a group of people, a body of water, and a spit of land.

The word mandala is Sanskrit for whole world or healing circle. The mandala is a representation of the universe and everything in it; it is the most basic form in nature. They are a meditation on and celebration of the myriad ways residents use their creativity in response to life on the brink of change. The mandalas also serve as zoetrope image portraits. Zoetrope means “wheel of life.” A Zoetrope is a device giving the illusion of motion.  When spun on a disc, powered by citizens riding a bike made from metal scraps gifted to us by campers at the Bulb, these series of still portraits in the round come alive, the animations reveal creative actions by residents who in time of crisis choose to live creatively by painting, performing, cooking, and community organizing.

-Robin Lasser  2014 Yuma Symposium Presenter