European Beach Grass Eradication, Humboldt Bay, CA

Diagram of an aerobic trickling filter at a wastewater treatment plant

Diagram of an anaerobic digester at a wastewater treatment plant

“I am suggesting that, for too many individuals in modern society, there is a feeling of being dominated, and that feelings of powerlessness are almost inescapable. I am also suggesting that such feelings can to a large degree be overcome through conscious endeavor on the part of individuals to keep themselves awake, to think about their condition in the world, to inquire into the forces that appear to dominate them, to interpret the experiences they are having day by day. Only as they learn to make sense of what is happening, can they feel themselves to be autonomous. Only then can they develop the sense of agency required for living a moral life.”

--Maxine Greene

Action without a name, a who attached to it, is meaningless.
 
--Hannah Arendt

Imitate, make it geometrical, intensify: That is not a bad three-part formula for the driving pulse of the arts as a whole.

--E.O. Wilson

Thus the project of imparting visibility to the very classes and peoples, the very spaces and sites, where history has remained nameless and without image and for whom cultural representation would in fact lead to an initiating constitution of historical identity could be one of the remaining functions of radical cultural practices, rather than an affirmation of past values and privileges now resurrected to reassert the vanishing basis of cultural legitimation defining Western societies. 

--Benjamin Buchloh

One of my favorite things about art/artists in the world today is that beyond any kind of label of "activist", a wide range of image makers and cultural producers are stepping up as artistic public intellectuals and taking a very active role in public discourse about complex themes that cannot be resolved by straight forward politics, science, social science or journalism. They are eschewing the marginality where most artists seem willing to wallow.

 

--Daniel Tucker

The McDaniel Slough Restoration Project, Humboldt Bay, CA

Breaching a 100-year old dike on Humboldt Bay to restore a long-lost wetland (September 26, 2013)

Experimenting with your own life is the most fundamental medium we have.

--Natalie Jeremijenko

The only way in which we can bring our creative resources fully into play is by misjudging the nature of the task, by presenting it to ourselves as more routine, simple, undemanding of genuine creativity than it will turn out to be.

--Malcolm Gladwell