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Preface: Mt. Everest Mall, digital collage,
400 x 300 px, 2003
Recipient Organization: Pond
Lead Artist: Amy Balkin
Other Collaborating Artists: Kim Stringfellow,
Tim Halbur
Genre and Date Awarded: Visual Arts, June 2004
Completed: July 2005
Artists Amy Balkin, Kim
Stringfellow, Tim Halbur, the nonprofit
organization Pond, and Greenaction
for Health and Environmental Justice will create a self-guided audio tour of Interstate 5, between
San Francisco and Los Angeles, illuminating environmental impacts
on communities and land along the route.
Their piece will include a series of audio segments related to
existing or ghosted landmarks that drivers can see from the road,
or that can be viewed near an exit ramp. The vehicle for the project
will be a two-CD set of complementary North and South discs. An
annotated booklet/map of the route—mixing landmark photography,
collage, maps, and text—will accompany the CD set. The artists
plan to begin distributing the completed audio tour in August 2005.
The artists write, “Blending the stories of individuals
impacted by toxic activities, with archival sound, recorded music,
and field sound, we will explore the battles being fought along
this road.” Tour sites under consideration include the Hunters
Point Shipyard and power plant locations, Lawrence Livermore Labs,
the Altamont Pass wind farm, the Tracy Biomass Plant, the Coalinga
Feed Lot, the Covanta garbage incinerator, the Westley Tire Fire
site, and the Kettleman Hills hazardous waste landfill. The artists
will also consider environmental issues along the route not linked
to specific sites—such as water and pesticide contamination.
Lead artist Amy Balkin’s work focuses on how humans interact
with and impact the social and material landscapes they inhabit.
Her most recent project is “This is the Public Domain,” an
effort to create a permanent international commons from 2.5 acres
of land purchased near Tehachapi, California, via legal transfer
of ownership to the global public. Other recent projects include
Public Smog, a clean-air park created via emissions trading, and “Preface,” a
series of hypothetical public architectural interventions.
Kim Stringfellow is a web artist and photographer whose work investigates
environmental and historical topics related to land use through
hybrid documentary forms incorporating a variety of media, including
photography, film/video, audio, installation, and web-based interactive
multimedia.
Tim Halbur is an audio tour specialist, sound artist, and musician.
He has been producing and writing audio tours for Antenna Audio
since 1996, making award-winning productions for museums and historic
sites.
Pond, which opened its doors in 2001, is dedicated to providing
a forum through which experimental artists may share ideas and
foster a mutually beneficial relationship with the larger community.
Its goal is to offer an accessible place for individuals and community
groups to develop and execute ideas in a non-competitive atmosphere.
Pond has curated or produced more than 20 exhibitions, three music
events, three lecture series, seven special events, two international
artists’ exchanges, and one public art project.
Greenaction for Health and Environmental Justice is a nonprofit
organization whose mission is to mobilize community power to win
victories that change government and corporate policies and practices
in order to protect health and promote environmental justice. It
has worked with diverse communities around the Western United States
to win victories, stopping pollution threats at their source. Greenaction
works or has worked closely with many of the communities that are
located along the audio tour.
Amy Balkin
Selected Exhibitions and Presentations
- Panel: “The Artist
as Stakeholder” Paris, France (2004)
- Presentation: Version>04
Chicago Cultural Center, Chicago, IL (2004)
- Presentation: Mills
College, Oakland, California (2003)
- “Our Hospitality,” Adobe
Books, San Francisco, California (2003)
- Stanford MFA Thesis
Show, Thomas Welton Stanford Gallery, Stanford
- Introductions South,
San Jose, California (2003)
- “No War,” The
Luggage Store, San Francisco, California (2002)
- Murphy/Cadogan Award
Exhibition, SFAC Gallery, San Francisco, California (2002)
- “An introductions-like
themeless show with an emphasis on drawing and maybe tech.” Quotidian,
San Francisco, California (2001)
- “la perruque,” office/gallery,
San Francisco, California (2001)
- Balkin/Meredith/LaBell,
The Lab, San Francisco, California (2000)
- “Selections from
the New Langton Gift Shop,” Musee Miniscule at New Langton
Arts, San Francisco, California (1999)
- “Dystopia,” Roebling
Hall, New York (1998)
- “NOW,” ESP,
San Francisco, California (1998)
- “The SURVEY Show,” ESP,
San Francisco, California (1998)
- “Mixing Messages,” Cooper
Hewitt Museum, New York, New York (1997)
- “Shrink,” Southern
Exposure Gallery, San Francisco, California (1997)
- “Do Not Bend,” San
Francisco State University Gallery, San Francisco, California
(1997)
Residencies and Awards
- Atlantic Center for
the Arts, Smyrna, Florida (2000)
- Civitella Ranieri, Umbria,
Italy (2000)
- Murphy/Cadogan Fellowship,
San Francisco Foundation (2002)
Curation
- “la perruque” co-presenter
at office/gallery, San Francisco, California (2001)
- “Hutchings/Benson/Garrett,” at
quotidian, San Francisco, California (2001)
Projects Online
Tim Halbur
Tim Halbur is an audio specialist and musician living in San Francisco,
California. He currently is Senior Producer for Antenna Audio,
a company that produces audio tours for museums and historic sites
worldwide. He has edited, mixed, and designed audio tours for over
150 attractions across the United States. Mr. Halbur’s audio
tour for Space Center Houston, a museum attached to the Johnson
Space Center, which he wrote as well as produced, won first place
in the National Association of Interpretation’s (NAI) 2002
competition for best audio program. The tour he produced for the
Newport Historic Society’s Marble House mansion won a Silver
MUSE award for history and culture interpretation in 2003. His
2003 production for the Metropolitan Museum’s exhibition
of photographs by Richard Avedon won a 2003 NAI award.
Halbur’s background is an unusual combination of theatre,
radio, and music. Throughout his years at San Francisco State University
as a major in Broadcasting, he experimented with audio as an element
of theatrical productions. One of the highlights of this period
was his sound design for a live theatrical adaptation of Dostoyevsky’s The
Possessed. His ‘thesis’ in radio production was
an hour-long radio drama of Alice in Wonderland, which
he adapted into an original script. After college, he continued
to collaborate with theaters and artists on plays and art installations,
including sound for Sue Galvez’s installation at the Day
of the Dead exhibition at the Mission Cultural Center, San Francisco.
Halbur turned towards public radio as a new means of expression.
After an internship with KQED-FM, Halbur freelanced many stories
to the station, particularly on the local arts scene. Interviewees
included blues musician Charles Brown, author Peter Plate, and
composer Lou Harrison. His radio reports appeared on National Public
Radio’s Weekend Edition and KQED’s The California Report.
Since 1997, Halbur has been working at Antenna Audio making audio
tours. His audio tour for the Whitney Biennial 2002 featured original
interviews with every artist in the show, each presenting their
piece in their own words. Other highlights from his audio tour
experience include Te Papa museum in New Zealand, “Van Gogh
and Gauguin,” at the Art Institute of Chicago, and Madame
Tussaud’s Wax Museum in Las Vegas.
Halbur has performed in several bands playing in a variety of
styles, including gypsy, klezmer, and bluegrass. He plays upright
bass, accordion, and keyboards.
Kim Stringfellow
Kim Stringfellow is an artist and educator residing in San Diego,
California. Her work addresses ecological, societal and historical
issues related to land use and the built environment through hybrid
documentary forms involving digital media, photography and installation.
Her projects address repercussions of human development within
the western United States and evolve out of a rigorously researched
area of interest focused on a particular subject, community or
region and discuss complex, interrelated issues of the chosen site.
Within her research, she attempts to expose human values and/or
political agendas that form our understanding of these places.Ultimately,
her projects are designed to create awareness, educate and create
a rich dialogue in relation to the subject at hand. All projects
include a web-based component [www.kimstringfellow.com], which
she considers an effective platform for public art.
Stringfellow’s work has been exhibited at SIGGRAPH, SXSW,
San Francisco Camerawork, Rachel Carson Institute at Chatham College,
Washington State University and Jose Martí National Library
in Havana, Cuba through an exhibition organized by the Puffin Foundation.
Project commissions include Salmoncity.net for the Seattle
Arts Commission and Safe As Mother’s Milk: The Hanford
Project for Cornish College of the Arts 2002 ART | ACTIVISM
Visiting Artist Series. This project will be exhibited at ISEA
2004 in Tallinn, Estonia for the Geopolitics of Media conference.
Her photographic monograph, Greetings from the Salton Sea,
will be published in March 2005 by the Center for American Places
and is partially funded by Graham Foundation. Currently, she teaches
as an assistant professor in San Diego State University's Department
of Art, Design and Art History.
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