Congratulations: 2014 Supported Residents

We are excited to announce the awarded residencies for next summer. The following participants will receive funding to travel to the island starting June 2014 and their work will be featured in an exhibition and publication at the DeVos Art Museum in August-September 2014. The Rabbit Island Residency program will collaborate with the selected residents over the next 9 months to help refine their proposals, plan outcomes, and prepare them for living and working on the island.

Nich Hance McElroy, Vancouver-based photographer who’s work investigates the often incompatible notions of putting down roots (history, settlement, place-making and stewardship) and making a route (migration, entrepreneurship, way-making, and roaming). Proposal excerpt: 

While Rabbit Island is a model case of responsible development, land stewardship and progressive thinking, it is also emblematic of the highly networked, globally aware and resource dependent realities of the twenty-first century. It is simultaneously a finite 91-acre island in Lake Superior and the convergence zone for countless modes of commute and communication, whether physical or digital, affective or literal.

What does a migratory population bring to a small and isolated ecosystem? How does the culture of temporary inhabitation brush against deep ecological commitments? To investigate these questions I hope to document the comings and goings of the island, in their human, material, and biotic guises.

Elvia Wilk

Elvia Wilk, Berlin-based writer who’s critical and creative writing practices converge at the intersection of art, architecture, and networked technology, exploring the relationships between physical and virtual space. Elvia plans to produce two separate text-based works, a series of poems and an investigative essay. Proposal excerpt:

[I will] focus on questions I have begun investigating thus far in my work, beginning with the politics of isolation within today’s networked society. How has my relationship and understanding of nature been affected through the evolution of the technologies I use? Where is the dividing line between the “natural” environment and the created, virtual one?

Perhaps isolation is impossible today, but how would being surrounded by water on all sides for a chunk of time alter my mentality, my constant need for back-and-forth interaction through a server? Fittingly, water serves as both content and metaphor in much of my writing. I’m interested in juxtaposing its fluidity with the dichotomous, mathematical structure of our networked existences, and the often-rigid physical architecture characteristic of urban space. Does information “flow” through these systems like water? Are concepts so liquid as they appear?

Waboozaki

Waboozaki group proposal (Dr. Dylan Miner, Dr. Julie Nagam, Dr. Nicholas Brown, and Suzanne Morrissette). A collaborative group who’s research investigates the Indigenous histories of the Great Lakes region, presents cultural remapping studies, and explores experimental – as well as experiential – geography. Proposal excerpt:

By extending the ecologically-based projects developed by [The Rabbit Island project] Waboozaki, these three Indigenous and one non-Native artists, will begin (or rather continue) thinking about the island and Lake Superior in relation to Indigenous notions of placemaking and mapping. … Collectively, the artists will explore notions of place, Indigenous history, the islands location in the US-Canada borderlands, its specific ecology and medicinal herbs, etc. While the artists will collectively address issues related to Native American mapping, they will also develop individual projects around similar themes.

Residency Application Update: We received 115 applications from 12 countries for the 2014 Rabbit Island Residency. Creative and smart proposals and were submitted in genres across the board: visual art, dance, music, writing, photography, mapping, interactive sound, poetry, landscape architecture, and many others. Each proposal has been a pleasure to review and we would like to sincerely thank everyone who applied. We are in the process of narrowing submissions to 3 funded residencies and plan to announce winners publicly on Monday, September 9th. 

We are excited to be able to offer a small group of artists the opportunity to contemplate what it means to create on a remote island in Lake Superior. Thanks again, everyone. 

Good luck to our friends at Cabin-Time at the start the of their fifth expedition, CT5: Green River. We’re looking forward to see what they’ll be working on in the dusty expanse of Desolation Canyon, Utah, especially our friends and previous Rabbit Island residents: Geoffrey Holstad, Sarah Darnell, Ryan Greaves, Mary Rolithsberger (CT3: Rabbit Island in 2012), Emily Julka (2012 and 2013), and Charlotte X.C. Sullivan (2013).

Miles Mattison, 2012 residency beta-tester arranging a collection of driftwood.

A quick reminder that the application deadline for a 2014 residency is in two days time (August 23rd, 2013). Make sure you have your applications in by midnight of that day if you would like to be considered for one of the supported residency positions next summer. Apply at: www.rabbitisland.org/art

This past Saturday ten high school students, an illustrator and a NOLS instructor returned from a week of isolation on the island–the first ever Rabbit Island School. We are excited to share the experience and ethics of Rabbit Island with the next generation of artists and conservationists. More on this to come, including art, writing and the harrowing tale of the island’s first kidney stone. Stay tuned!

We couldn’t be more excited about our collaboration with LOVELAND and WhyDontWeOwnThis.com. Imagine if Kickstarter, The Nature Conservancy, and Google Maps had a baby. We will use the graphic mapping technology that LOVELAND has developed in urban Detroit to crowdsource conservation in northern Michigan. Our beta test will evolve amidst the forested lands of the Keweenaw Peninsula, four miles west of Rabbit Island

On the island we think a lot about wilderness in the context of art, civilization and sustainability. In Detroit LOVELAND is thinking hard about how to make land-based change happen in ways never before possible. We can’t wait to see what happens.

+ essay on culture + land use: there is no antonym for subdivision

+ rabbit island + detroit installation

It’s official. Our supported residency program has now launched and we are accepting applications for summer 2014 residents. Find out all the details and make your application here.

Storms, biology, swimming, plein-air painting, sauna building and lots of documentation… Catch up with some scenes from the summer so far on our Instagram where many of this years visitors have been sharing their research and views.

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