A.S.T.

Alliance of the Southern Triangle (A.S.T.) is an initiative exploring how artistic and cultural possibilities can be reimagined in the context of climate change. It began as a research project in 2015 focusing on the idea of the global city, using Miami and South Florida as its case study. The project is committed to the idea that urban developmental trajectories can be altered through the adaptation of the networks that shape it. Paired with creative rethinking of what a city can be. A.S.T. uses the expansive space of the contemporary art field to function as a platform upon which to conceive of latent futures that are both reactive and propositional with regard to the shifting set of legal, economic, cultural and environmental forces that confront us. Its members (Diann Bauer, Felice Grodin, Patricia Margarita Hernandez, Elite Kedan), are a group of artists, architects and curators working together to urgently speculate viable human futures within the anthropocene..

The ‘speculative imaginary’ is both a term and strategy at the core of how A.S.T.’s work is framed. Imagining the future of a coastal city is a starting point, yet pivots to various positions (from the future, from the atmosphere, from other species) during the course of a project. In a recent work, they posit their position from an evolved conception of a nation-state such that allegiances are redefined by specifics of climate risk, rather than traditional state boundaries. Thus linking South Florida more to Lagos than Los Angeles, for example.

The work they produce includes video installations at the Sharjah Biennial 13, UAE; Art Centre South Florida, Miami; IMT Gallery, London; HistoryMiami Museum; The Schmidt Center Gallery, FAU; Multimedia Cultural Centre, Split; on line as part of San Fransisco MOMA’s platform Openspace and drawing and design work for Art Papers and The Miami Rail.

protocols for the phase transition

As new urgencies surface and new territories are defined, new alliances must be built. Inspired by the typology of starling murmuration, A.S.T. proposes a set of protocols for the construction of twenty-first century alliances that traverse borders, nation states, and species. This was originally published by Strelka Magazine along with a series of video to correspond to each of the protocols. It can be seen in full here.

The protocols were also shown as part of Incident Report in Hudson NY. It is an LED screen in a storefront space of The Flow Chart Foundation showing a project called “Reports,” which features a publication series displaying poetry, notation, transcription, weather reports, manifestos, public address, inventories, event scores, recipes, news, elegies, missives, codes, prayers, instructions, lyrics and more. More details can be found here.

The protocols also featured as part of an installation at Focal Point Gallery in Southend, UK as part of the exhibition To Dream Effectively.

Images below.

Intertidal

A collaborative four channel video installation by A.S.T. at Art Centre South Florida, curated by Natalia Zuluaga in January of 2018. All photo documentation by Zach Balber including this 3D walk through of the space.

Above is the central video contains adapted and edited texts from Kim Stanley Robinson, Benjamin Bratton, Claude Shannon via Charles and Ray Eams and A.S.T. Images from Google Earth, A Memory of a Broken Dimension (Ezra Hanson-White), Joseph Albers, Unknown Fields, Apple amongst others. Sound taken in part from Iannis Xenakis, Persepolis.

A.S.T. digital/promotional images

FUTURE CITIES: MIAMI

A.S.T. (Alliance of the Southern Triangle) in partnership with BFI (Bas Fisher Invitational)

Bruce Mowry (City Engineer, Miami Beach)
Jayantha Obeyskera (Chief Climate Modeler, SFWMD)
Kim Stanley Robinson (Writer, via skype)
Philip Stoddard (Mayor, South Miami)
Natalia Zuluaga (Curator, Writer)

RESEARCH INTENSIVE

This Research Intensive gathered artists, writers, scientists, and experts in the fields of infrastructure, climate modeling, speculative fiction, policy making, and cultural agency in order to imagine the future of the region and coastal cities beyond mere adaptation.

AST makes a call for an interdisciplinary rethinking of city structures amidst the face of globalized hyper-economy impacted by climate change. How can a repurposing of current state-infrastructures such as zoning, speculative real estate, and water management be used to project into the future in order to create an alternative vision of our present. The primary focus of this event is to use the purported freedom of art to generate a platform in which thinking can be turned towards a systemic reorganization/orientation of coastal cities generally, and Miami, in particular.

Space for FUTURE CITIES: MIAMI | RESEARCH INTENSIVE is generously donated by FIU College of Communication, Architecture +The Arts; FIU Miami Beach Urban Studios.

NOISE

(BACK BROADCAST THROUGH THE PERSISTENT ILLUSION)

Left is the three main screens for a 7 channel video installation done with A.S.T. (Diann Bauer, Felice Grodin, Patricia M. Hernandez and Elite Kedan) Texts written by Diann Bauer (central screen) and Keller Easterling (side screens). Sound by musician Jake Meginsky.

With-in the installation there are 4 additional screens with animations by artist Keith Tilford, planetary scientist Dr. Pasquale Tricarico, and engineer Andrew Wong. Also included is the website astronaut.io also designed by Wong with James Thompson. Editing work was done by Levin Haegele and translation work was done in part by Amani Althuwaini. Production assistance was provided by Ayman Zedani.The project was produced with the support of Christine Tohme and the Sharjah Art Foundation. 2017.

The projections, for the purpose of clarity,  are designated ML(left), MC(centre) and MR(right), the three main projections, and the monitors are A,B,C and D.

The central triptych videos begin with a three minuet demonstration of Claude Shannon’s diagram explaining the operation of communication and noise. The remainder takes text from architect Keller Easterling. It addresses infrastructure and power, broadly describes the conditions in which we are swimming and suggests possibilities for political agency within those conditions. MR and ML mirror one another, ML in English and MR in Arabic. The text for MC, the central screen, written by Bauer, with bits taken from Orwell,  broadly expresses the vertigo induced by the conditions described in the side panels.

The additional video monitors described below:

VIDEO A uses a website called astronaut.io as its base. We added the graphics and text. The videos in the central oval come from YouTube are algorithmically chosen.The footage of the earth is taken from the ISS.

VIDEO B takes text from Easterling with graphics and visual glitches, at times random, at times completing the triangle painted on the wall itself.

VIDEO C is a gif designed by artist Keith Tilford, an infinite flow of servers.

VIDEO D used text from promotional videos for financial services and text written by Diann Bauer. The image is an animation by planetary scientist Pasquale Tricarico.

Miami Rail

four page feature

Memory Lab

History Miami Museum