Cease and Desist Served, First Movement Launch: Moving Forward with "Blued Trees"
October 1, 2015
FOR
IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACTS:
Blued Trees Serves
Cease-and-Desist on Fracked-Gas Corporation
As Next Phase of Eco-Art Project
Debuts Oct. 4
Algonquin receives notice to halt forest
destruction,
as Blued Trees Symphony’s First Movement is about to
launch
Blued Trees is a symphonic art installation
encompassing visual and musical art forms in concert with nature. The project
was conceived by ecological artist Aviva Rahmani to move the function of art
beyond witnessing or illustrating ecosystem devastation and into direct policy
engagement. Rahmani was invited by New York residents-cum-activists faced with
condemnation and seizure of properties and beloved places by fracked-gas
pipeline corporations.
As corporations are leveraging the legal tool of
“eminent domain,” Rahmani is contesting the justice of that leverage with the
sword of copyright law. Blued Trees
is being copyrighted by Rahmani in discrete movements, as it grows in scale.
Blued Trees consists of trees in the line of
destruction on which a blue sine wave is painted. One such tree is one note in
the symphonic score. One-third mile of these notes constitutes one full
measure.
A Cease-and-Desist Demand has been served by Blued Trees on the Algonquin Gas Transmission LLC. That corporation
seeks to condemn the private property in Peekskill in Westchester County, NY, on
which the overture for the project was installed on June 21, and copyrighted.
The overture was created on land that has been
owned by a small group of families for four generations. That property lies in
the path of the Algonquin Incremental Markets (AIM) pipeline for “natural” gas,
planned by Algonquin and its parent company, Spectra Energy Partners, to span four states: New York, Connecticut,
Rhode Island and Massachusetts. The pipeline is also slated to pass just 105 feet
from vital structures at the Indian Point nuclear facility, 30 miles from New
York City.
Additional
measures and “Greek choruses” have joined the Blued Trees orchestra from 11 other sites internationally since the
summer solstice overture launch.
On Sunday, Oct. 4, a number of simultaneous events
in the Blued Trees Symphony/Saga will
unfold:
·
Blued Trees’ First Movement will formally commence with
a full 1/3-mile measure of the score being painted and performed in the rural
Town of Augusta and Town of Kirkland, NY, threatened by the Dominion New Market
Pipeline and Niagara Expansion Project of TGP/Kinder Morgan. Additional measures are joining the orchestra from the New River Valley
of Virginia and Nassau, NY.
These
new sites will be included in the second copyright filing. Five movements in
total, over the next year, complete this symphony, with the Coda planned for
fall 2016.
The
words of Pope Francis, delivered at the United Nations General Assembly on
Sept. 25, resonate with Rahmani and other Blued
Trees participants: “Any harm done to the environment…is harm done to
humanity.”
Individuals
and groups whose properties lie in the path of fossil-fuel infrastructure are
invited to join the Blued Trees “Greek
Chorus.” Detailed instructions are at: pushingrocks.blogspot.com/2015/09/painting-full-measure-of-first-movement.html.
NOTE TO EDITORS &
PRODUCERS:
To arrange an interview with Rahmani, participating landowners, attorneys or
painters, please contact Margery Newman, MargeryNewman@aol.com, 917-608-6306.
See
map with locations and photos of Blued
Trees Symphony and Greek Chorus pieces http://www.gulftogulf.org/map/ .
View
a graphic from the Spectra Corporation’s website of Spectra AIM project path at
spectraenergy.com/Operations/New-Projects-and-Our-Process/New-Projects-in-US/Algonquin-Incremental-Market-AIM-Project/.
Blued Trees is an element of Gulf to Gulf, a fiscally sponsored NYFA
project, which has since 2010 investigated how art might impact climate change
policy, gulftogulf.org.