Refuge in Refuse: Homesteading Art and Culture Project

Produced by artists/curators Danielle Siembieda and Robin Laser with support by SomARTS Cultural Center 2015.

For a full list of projects and participating artists please see this link more information about the project with this link.

Refuge in Refuse: Homesteading Art and Culture Project is an interactive, mobile, transmedia collection of visual and sound data reflecting the intersection of architecture, art, ecology and people homesteading on a decommissioned shoreline dump located in Albany, California. For more than two decades artists, recreationalists, and landfill residents share the Bulb exploring borders between public and private urban space. The Refuge in Refuse project project utilizes storytelling in the form of interactive on site augmented reality, sound, sculpture, video, photography, 3D imaging, urban planning, landscape architecture, and contemporary archeology mapping systems to address issues of human adaptation to social and environmental conditions in flux. We are interested in exploring the Albany Bulb Landfill from multiple disciplines and perspectives. We highlight different approaches to the same place and explore the conventions, constraints, and possibilities inherent in each discipline.

STORY SIGNS

Refuge in Refuse collaborators Robin Lasser and Danielle Siembieda partnered with an architectural surveying company, F3 & Associates, to do 3D scans of notable structures and sculptures at the Bulb before the demolition in April 2015. Siembieda and Lasser also created official looking California State Park Signs that hold stories told by former landfill residents. These signs are installed in the exhibition at SOMArts and can also be experienced as augmented reality on site at the Albany Bulb. The adoption of theses signs by gallery goers will help support local resources for the homeless. Post the SOMArts exhibition these signs were installed at the Bulb on the one-year anniversary of the resident’s eviction April 25, 2015. Residents were not allowed to enter the Bulb for one year. This intervention also marks their legal return as visitors to the Bulb.

Fly-throughs of three structures at the Albany Bulb - Mad Marc's Castle, Statue by Osha Neuman, Boxer Bob's Mansion. Structures were captured with 3D Laser scanners and rendered in 3D by F3 and Associates. Artists include Danielle Siembieda and Robin Lasser. These images also available in still form on archival print.