Shark Conservation

Jessica Zychowicz

“Shark Conservation,” Jessica Zychowicz. Oil-pastel crayon and charcoal. Berlin. 2019.

There are no sharks in Berlin. There are no sharks in Poland, either, not in any of the 2,000 lakes of Masuria. You would think that they might be thrashing around somewhere in Russia’s unfathomably deep Lake Baikal, but no, they are not. Maybe it is too icy and cold for them there? What about Israel, you say? There are even two seas there, and they are warm and bright greenish and muddy---the perfect habitat for many different kinds of sharks. But there are no sharks in those places, either: not in the Red---or in the Dead!

There are no sharks at all, in fact, wherever we might expect to find them: not in my neighbors’ swimming pool (I looked there first!), or in the sink where I like to rinse my coffee cup in the morning, or in the dark spooky space under the garden hose, next to the stairs in the backyard, where the spiders live.

There are no sharks in the wide ocean where they used to be—I looked for them with my special goggles in San Juan, but found none.

There are no sharks at all anymore. I have given up.  

Or so I thought!

One day in February, on a rainy and grey Wednesday afternoon (sharks like Wednesdays!)—I found exactly what I had been searching for. I did not expect to find so many sharks smiling at me from every single corner of this magic place that I discovered! There were funny sharks and mean sharks, big sharks and small sharks, polka-dotted ones and striped-ones, and even a very colorful lady shark with glasses and a funny hairdo who sang and danced the tango and salsa! There was a poet-shark wearing a yellow plaid scarf, and a shark with a camera who could swim really fast and talk about very important things to all of the other sharks. I even met a tiger shark with a bicycle who likes to eat French fries as much as I do.

Their teeth were so terrifying, and their fins so powerful, that I almost imagined that I would never want to meet a shark again! After all, I was just as surprised as you are to find them all swimming around inside of Lindenstraße 9-14, 10969, in Berlin, of all places. I was sure that I had checked everywhere: high and low, near and far. Had they been hiding all of these sharks? Did someone put them here? Why didn’t I see them before? Why were they here, and not in the other places that I thought they would be?

But I changed my mind. It doesn’t matter why they were here or there, instead of in the deep lakes, or in the greenish muddy seas, or the wide ocean, or in the sink where I like to rinse my coffee cup, or under the garden hose next to the stairs in the backyard. I love sharks wherever they are! Maybe someday I will even visit them again and invite them to my next birthday party. I wonder if spiders like birthday cake, too?

Berlin, February 2019

in “A Curious Guide to Ecology”

by Jessica Zychowicz

“Voided Void,” Daniel Liebeskind. Shoah Memorial Space, Jewish Museum, Berlin. Photos by the Author. February 27, 2019.

Fog: New Electronic Music

by MASLO

Fog by MASLO, released 28 January 2019

This composition came together as a response to Mark Isaac’s and Gabriela Bulisova’s blog post about the Angara River, the only river flowing out of Lake Baikal. They are documenting the effects of climate change on the most ancient and deepest lake in the world. You can read about it here: atlantika-collective.com/blog/.

I spent some time looking at the images they took of the river and its endlessly mysterious, foggy landscape. In their blog post they mention the legend of Angara. The legend has a romantic twist to it. Angara, Baikal’s beautiful daughter, ran away from her father to meet a young man she was in love with. Father Baikal did not approve of this young man and wanted Angara to marry someone else. Baikal cried so much that his tears formed the lake. This is just one of many Buryat legends about Angara and Baikal. 

I reflected on the photographs, the legend, and Mark and Gabriela’s magnificent description of the river. I then tried to paint an audio image of it with my Moog model D synthesizer. The spacious, wobbly drones represent the vastness of the fog and the water. In addition, the spooky, birdlike sounds created with the Moog along with slightly unnatural sounds of water and wind give the music a quality of otherworldliness. My vocals (high and low) represent the spirits of Angara and her grieving father, Baikal floating in the fog.

 
I specifically used field recordings of water and wind that Mark and Gabriela sent me. Their samples served both as a vehicle to bring me closer to a place I have never actually visited (Siberia), and as a launching pad for this composition. When I listened to the field recordings and looked at the photographs, a certain mood, feeling, and image of the Angara came over me. I then channeled this feeling to write the music. 

credits

MASLO is a project of Maria Shesiuk

“Fog” released January 28, 2019 
Track mixed (but not yet mastered) by Nathan Moody 
Field recordings courtesy of Mark Isaac and Gabriela Bulisova 
Photo credit: Maria Shesiuk

All rights reserved

Locked Apart Permanently: Children and Incarcerated Parents

Gabriela Bulisova & Mark Isaac

Kiya, a young woman in Philadelphia, was separated from her family and thrust into the foster care system when her father was sent to prison.

As many of you know, we’ve spent years working on the crisis of mass incarceration in the United States, including a special focus on the plight of children whose parents are incarcerated. There are millions of children in the United States whose parents are in prison, and they are often the innocent victims of a criminal justice system that does not take their welfare into account when assigning lengthy sentences far away from the family home.

Now, a new study by the Marshall Project, the non-profit news platform devoted to criminal justice reform issues, finds that children are often permanently separated from their parents when they are behind bars. In fact, the study finds that parents behind bars are more likely to lose their parental rights than those who physically or sexually assault their children. The specific law that unintentionally encouraged this outcome was unfortunately supported by top Democrats. You can read this important reporting here.

The two of us have often said that the criminal justice crisis in the United States is like an onion. Every time you peel back a layer, there’s another one underneath, usually more rotten than the one before. This reporting unfortunately confirms our adage.

For a glimpse at our work on the impact of incarceration on families — and especially children — please visit some of these portfolios and short films:

• Locked Apart: The Koger-Harris Family including this short film

• Locked Apart: Dawan and Dajuan

• Locked Apart: Kiya including this short film

• Locked Apart: The Walden-Dickson Family including this short film

• Locked Apart: Saundra and Antoine

Cyberian Dispatch 4: A Glimpse of Moscow

by Gabriela Bulisova & Mark Isaac

No city can be grasped in a few days, so our quick fling with Moscow is already a haze of veiled impressions on the fly. Gabriela had been once before -- but long ago, and the city has changed dramatically in the interim. Mark never.

The outstanding Fulbright office gathered us for a check-in with other scholars and students, many scattered across this immense nation, so there is no other opportunity to connect in person. They also arranged a bonus meeting with the US Ambassador, Jon Huntsman, a former Republican governor, who spoke quite reasonably about how to bring the Russian and American people together -- and about his efforts to engage with the Orthodox Church.

Then the city unfolded as a sumptuous, impromptu walking tour. The wide avenues and their grandiose buildings, often a misleading facade for comfortable neighborhoods with pedestrian walkways and community ponds. Zaryadye Park, Moscow’s answer to the High Line, replete with undulating rooftop gardens, delicate birch groves, and an overlook perched far above the Moskva River.

Red Square, a chaos of architectural styles. The fanciful church with precious relics. The looming walls of the Kremlin. The Gucci, Louis Vuitton and Prada stores directly facing Lenin’s tomb. The mausoleum, in maroon and black, guarded by stern-faced police who enforce silence and hats off. Lenin, glowing supernaturally in the darkness, with perfect facial hair. Outside, the graves of Stalin, Brezhnev, Andropov, all bedecked with red flowers. Also John Reed, the American who witnessed the revolution.

The exquisite art, from all eras. Ancient Egyptian death mask (Fayum) portraits, spectacularly rich icon paintings from rural Russia, modern art from around the world, official and unofficial Soviet-era art, contemporary gems. A survey exhibit of contemporary photography that would have been at home in the Whitney or MoMA. A sculpture garden in Gorky Park, abutting preserved statues of Marx, Lenin, and Stalin, also in close proximity with a memorial to the victims of totalitarian regimes.

The world class veggie bistro. The restaurants that are innovating successfully, with prices to match the West. The metro, a tour de force of architecture, convenience, value and service (trains consistently arrive moments after the last one departs), sharply contrasting with our own capital city. The warm service, the embrace of America and Americans. The sense of safety, even in crowds.

Then rapidly back in the airplane for the same overnight flight that first brought us to Irkutsk. The dawn is accelerated as five time zones melt away, and the bracing Siberian air, blowing out of an endless forest, is a potent reminder that Moscow is more than 5000 kilometers away.

Where The Rivers Come Together

Zhanna Oganesyan

By Gabriela Bulisova and Mark Isaac

As part of their series titled “Race and Postcolonialism in Ukraine and North America,” the journal Krytyka, an intellectual monthly magazine focused on contemporary thought regarding Ukraine and the region, has published an article and photographs by Atlantika Collective members Gabriela Bulisova and Mark Isaac. The project, created as part of their Fulbright grant in 2017-18, focuses on the unexpected diversity in the Southern Ukrainian city of Mykolaiv.

https://krytyka.com/en/race-and-postcolonialism-ukraine-and-north-america/articles/where-rivers-come-together

Georgians in Mykolaiv: Preserving Language and Culture

By Gabriela Bulisova and Mark Isaac

During the Soviet era, the expression of ethnic identity was discouraged or even punished, so people of many backgrounds were forced to suppress any public celebration of their roots. But after Soviet rule collapsed, the public embrace of one’s origins once again became possible. That is the case in Mykolaiv, where people from more than 130 different nationalities live together peacefully. Many of them are taking strong action to preserve their language and culture.

One of the best examples is the Georgian community. When conflicts broke out in the Abkhazia region of Georgia following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, tens of thousands of ethnic Georgians were killed and as many as 250,000 were forced to flee, some to Southern Ukraine. Now they are fighting to preserve their language and culture in their new homeland.

At the Mykolaiv College of Culture and Arts, we were invited into a classroom where the Georgian language is being taught to children of different ages. This language, which is unique among world tongues and employs its own very beautiful, rounded script, is alive in Mykolaiv thanks to the ongoing efforts of teacher Valeriy Ekhvaya, a leader of the Mykolaiv Georgian community who carefully tutors students in both reading and writing.

On the day we met him, he was awarded a certificate commending him for his work cultivating ties to other local minorities by Lalita Kaimarozova, an official responsible for outreach to all the national communities in Mykolaiv. His friends Yunus Aliev and Shamil Ismailov, members of the Azerbaijani community in Mykolaiv, attended to support him and to celebrate the long-term friendship of Georgians and Azeris. Among other things, when Georgia was attacked by Russia in 2008 following conflict in the South Ossetia region, Azerbaijanis offered support to the Georgian people.

But it is not only language that Georgians seek to preserve. We were invited to move from the classroom to the dance studio, where Georgian dance was joyously and energetically performed by beaming young people. And from there, we moved to a modern Georgian restaurant, complete with painted replicas of famous Georgian paintings, where we shared unique Georgian dishes, such as a flat bread with cheese and spicy stuffed pasta pillows filled with juices that must be slurped down before they are consumed.

The evening ended with numerous toasts about the importance of friendship among different peoples, and with the ceremonial drinking of wine from handmade, horn-shaped flasks, which have a unique construction: they cannot be put down until they are empty!

New Video: Songs in the Key of Free

Previously, we've shared some still images from a project called “Songs in the Key of Free.” Now we're sharing the main product of our work -- a video that showcases the extraordinary songwriting and performing talents of incarcerated men in a maximum security prison in Pennsylvania.

The program, which is the brainchild of August Tarrier and Miles Butler, ended a period of about two decades in which music programs were unavailable at State Correctional Institute – Graterford, which is about 45 minutes northwest of Philadelphia. After repeated visits to document these exceptional individuals, many of whom are serving long sentences or even life without parole, we became very attached to their passion, their humanity, and their commitment to do everything possible to make the most of their situation. In fact, our work on Songs engendered some of the strongest emotions of any of our experiences working on incarceration issues. That’s because the many men who we met inside were so warm and giving — and so grateful for the opportunity to express themselves through music.

Fortunately, their talents were highlighted at a concert inside the prison, which is available to view on Facebook Live, and subsequently in an outside concert in Philadelphia at the Painted Bride. In the future, the men’s original songs will be available in an album. Moreover, the Songs in the Key of Free will begin serving women in a downtown Philadelphia prison in Fall 2017.

Please check out our video — as well as the still images available here — and let us know your reactions. (Please note that prison regulations in Pennsylvania forbid us from showing the faces of those who are incarcerated.) And also please consider supporting Songs in the Key of Free in their work, which relies mostly on the help of volunteers to date. There is no question that this program is embracing and preserving the humanity of those involved — something that is sorely lacking in most prison environments in the United States.

Impact of Incarceration on Families Highlighted in ZEKE Magazine

The work of Atlantika Collective members Gabriela Bulisova and Mark Isaac, focused on the impact of incarceration on families and children, was published in ZEKE Magazine. This project, titled "Locked Apart: The Koger Harris Family," is one chapter in a series of documentaries that focus on the impact of incarceration on families. More than 2.7 million children currently have a parent in prison, and children missing their parents are seven times more likely to get involved with the criminal justice system themselves. You can check out the full story here: http://www.zekemagazine.com/forum/incarceration/locked-apart-the-koger-harris-family

Welcome to Atlantika! What We're About.

So who are we? Atlantika members want to make work that’s about something, motivated by a belief in the power and value of art. We’d all worked with each other in some combination before, and when we realized we all shared a commitment to addressing social issues through work that inspires us from an aesthetic standpoint and drives our own engagement and activism, we realized there were real opportunities here. To work in a free-form environment, erasing some traditional lines between media and roles that often define our individual professional work. To work on things we care about in ways we care about exploring and promoting. To put our ideas about art and social engagement into practice, with partners equally committed to process and results in such a collaborative spirit. As our conversations emerged we kept coming back to the same question and to the same ethos: how does a collective become more than the sum of its individuals? How does the group enable the individual voice? How can combining artists, writers, and curators in the same group take all of our work in new, different directions?

Both inside of Atlantika and in our own work, everyone does a real diversity of stuff, but we’re all makers, interpreters, and presenters at heart. Atlantika is all about raising questions and making connections, and in doing that we fully embrace a collaborative attitude, including transparency. We’ll offer a more public view of our creative process than is typical, to provide some insights into the process for shepherding work from idea to completion. And we believe this offers opportunities for new ideas, dialog, and critique. In this aspect of our collective intentions, we reach beyond our group to embrace other valued creative people and include them in our circle. Nearly as important as our commitment to process is our conviction to bringing work to completion. We believe strongly that if any of us have the vision or abilities that make us capable of producing something others find interesting, that is needed now.  

That’s who we are. Our name reflects that we’re in the mid-Atlantic region and, while our interests are diverse and our focus is international in scope, we do respond to the issues and concerns we find in our region. So as creative folks invested in environmental, community-oriented projects, we naturally gravitated to thoughts about water, specifically the Chesapeake Bay and its ecosystem that encompasses the entire mid-Atlantic region. And that’s where we’ve invested our first collective energies: Watershed.

The Watershed Project explores the environmental, social, and cultural state of the Chesapeake and its surroundings, through visual art and in collaboration with the communities that live there. In the coming weeks, we'll be posting about our process as we lead up to our first exhibition. So check back in with us right here, and in October come see the show at the Boyden Art Gallery at St. Mary's College of Maryland!