Salina Art Center

February 11, 2012
Salina the Ocean: Receiving and Giving, A Day-Long Workshop with spurse

10:00 am-4:00 pm

We need your help! Everywhere we go, we find ingenious people who are already experimenting with new ways of relating to the environment. Instead of just talking about problems, let’s get together to generously swap ideas and collaborate towards a new future! On Saturday, February 11, beginning at 10:00 am, spurse will conduct an exciting and innovative day-long workshop wading into how water shapes and is shaped by our practices and how, by acting together, we can creatively remake the world.

Kansas sits on top of a hidden ocean of freshwater, the Ogallala Aquifer. How is our life entangled with this ocean? Water has a way of defying boundaries. How are our lives entwined with water across the globe? In this workshop, we will seek to re-imagine our watery lives, allowing for new forms of resilience and co-evolution. The poetic will be replaced by the mundane in order to ask basic questions: How much water is in one pound of steak (1,799 gallons) or in one cup of coffee (37gallons)? Where does it come from? How long will it last?

spurse, an experimental research and design collective, has gained a reputation for unique workshops that bring together multiple stakeholders to produce novel ways of looking at issues and developing unexpected approaches, methodologies, and outcomes. Over the last ten years, spurse has been working on water issues from the fate of Atlantic ecosystems and fishing communities to the problems with acid mine drainage within the communities of Northern Appalachia.