STRATUS mini ISSUE 002: LIFE IN GREEN

group show, sept 9-24 2022

Stratus Journal invited myself again to join their team in bringing their newest publication launch event to life. As the Director of Installations, our team produced the event, curated exhibitions, and even built out interactive installations of all sizes to immerse visitors in the experience of ‘Life In Green’.  

Featuring work from:
Ahraun @ahraun, Chang Liu @shampliu, Phoebe Wong @Pho.oebe, Nicole Yazon @nyazon, An Tran @annnfilmmm, Dhakshayini Boopalan @Dhakshboo, Nadia Rompas @Nadiarompas, Cedric Oeldorf @coeld_

As well as interviews with:
Raven Trust @raven_trust, Playfool @studioplayfool, London Alternative Photography Collective @londonaltphoto, Bioplastic Design @bioplastic.design Colour the Trails @colourthetrails.”

“Life in Green brings together a photo gallery, interactive installations, 3D animations, projection work, and more. These works showcase the artists’ interactions and sensorial experiences with the natural world—one restlessly full of projects—rolling meadows, rivers, bird nests, and a variety of mushrooms. Each has its own trajectory, succession, beginning, end, and cycle.

Beyond the direct and sensorial, the works celebrate and confront the systemic essence of nature—generation, maintenance, adaptation, dynamism—these slow-moving processes have changed Earth on a time scale of millions of years and are juxtaposed by the episodic and contingent changes that have disrupted nature during the Anthropocene.

A critique raised by the artists is how human and artistic practices should fit into nature, particularly by engaging with the framework of sustainability—a word sometimes used as a green cloak draped over business as usual. How can human activity promote natural flourishing when nature already flourishes on its own? The artists present unique answers with reimagined forms of human activity which nourish the entire community of natural life on Earth.”

With a global roster of photographers forming the main gallery, our next goal was to enhance this theme through multi-sensory and multi-dimensional experiences of nature.

Our physical installations ambitiously invited artist Maya Candler and design collective, Existing Condition, whose work respectively bring large-scale sculpture and sustainability into their work. For our ‘Life In Green’ installations, we curated a range of different scales and interpretations of both the literal natural space, and perhaps a more thought-provoking metaphorical futurism to how we exist alongside nature.

There were three main installation works (scroll for more imagery):

“The Meadow” by Reem Almawed, Maya Candler, and myself

“In Preparation” by Existing Condition

Projection work, “Xeric Stellata” by Lex Milo and “Untitled“ by Chang Liu

“THE MEADOW” BY MAYA CANDLER, REEM ALMAWED AND VIVIAN HAN-TAT
Come along with Hektar into The Meadows. We’ll jump out of our desks into the garden. We’ll lay on the rolling hillside with the sun on our faces and music in our headphones. We’ll follow a creek to a mushroom patch and look up at the 100 year old trees that touch the clouds. 

The Meadows, which was an installation I worked more closely on, alongside Installations co-director Reem Almawed and guest artist Maya Candler,  is inspired by adventures in nature. The Meadow is an interactive installation that includes hand-made miniature dioramas and an AR experience accessed through the @stratus Instagram Filter ‘Life In Green/The Meadow’. The Meadow is an appreciation for our natural environment, no matter how big or small.

This space also served as the backdrop to musical performances throughout the exhibition.

For details on how we built out the space and constructed installations, including The Meadow, which I worked on during construction, click here.

“IN PREPARATION” BY EXISTING CONDITION
“In Preparation” explores the year 2122, 100 years of a mounting continuance of the damaging impacts of humankind on Earth’s environments have created a very different planet. Failure to radically pivot the status quo has rendered many parts of the globe, as well as the way of life of their inhabitants, nearly unrecognizable to societies of the past.

Monumental accumulation of waste (the decomposition of which is now producing massive amounts of methane), coupled with centuries of global industrial-scale pollution has depleted the oxygen in the atmosphere. Outside of climate-controlled, artificially sustained pockets, the lack of oxygen has left vast portions of the planet uninhabitable. These vacuums of life only further encourage the unethical dumping of waste contributing to this future.

In response to this, humanity developed a revolutionary device that allows lab-grown plants to photosynthesize internally, using synthetic UV light to go through the process of creating oxygen that was lost when our environments succumbed to our abuse, in an attempt to rejuvenate our planet and sustain the remaining life.

This installation is a replica of hyper-condensed living spaces powered by this type of technology; lived in by the future we, if we fail to change.

To read more on this installation, visit @existingcondition.

“XERIS STELLATA” BY LEX MILO
In desperation to rebuild the Earth's atmosphere, humans have created the world's first environmentally-conscious lab plant species, the Xeric Stellata genus name Helianthus Integerrima.

To watch full short, click here.

UNTITLED BY CHANG LIU
“A reflection on moving to a new environment.”

To watch the full length short, click here.

BEFORE THE EXHIBITION: In the lead-up to the magazine launch, Stratus brought community together with two special events: our annual photowalk and a one-time STRATUS Life in Green Concept Cafe.

Partnering with Arc’teryx West Edmonton, Stratus hosted a scavenger hunt-style photo walk to celebrate Life in Green on July 23rd. Proceeds from event ticket sales went back to support Raven Trust, a registered charity with a mission to raise funds for Indigenous People's access to environmental justice.

The Concept Cafe features a collaborative menu made by the STRATUS team, and is our interpretation and conceptualization of this year's publication theme "Life in Green" as a dining experience.

Follow @stratusjournal on Instagram for a full recap of our events this year!

Full magazine credits and more information on how to purchase the magazine and merch on stratusjournal.com