Why Art - Breathing Room

BREATHING ROOM - Beginning on June 7th at 10 AM the public are invited to the kick off of PUBLIC ART PROJECTS - SUMMER 2025 at Birdsong Farm, in Hamden. The four month project is a collaboration with Institute for Cultural Activism International (I.C.A.I. or The Institute) and Birdsong Farm. 

Regional & International Artists For Public Art and Conversations

The project is not as much about showing art as it is about using art, interactive installations and other aesthetic devices to promote conversations about our current social and environmental, regional and global situations.

In BREATHING ROOM visitors enter the Birdsong Farm Gallery where a 24 foot long sealed glass enclosure houses hundreds of green, oxygen producing plants. Long bright blue breathing tubes and comfort-fit surgical sanitary masks attached to the glass enclosure, enable participants to exchange breaths with the oxygen generating plants. Their exhaled CO2 feeds the plants which in-turn transform the CO2 into O2, overnight. On the gallery walls, projected slow motion films of people breathing from mobile FRESH AIR units in America, Switzerland, Germany and France, in the 1990’s, appear. Visitors can also watch televised news reports on monitors inside the glass sculpture.

Through this immersive experience visitors may become mindful of their interdependency with plants and each other. The FRESH AIR Sculpture and BREATHING ROOM will continue until early July.

Don’t we all need a little Breathing Room these days?

PUBLIC ART PROJECTS - SUMMER 2025 Program

The four month project includes exhibitions, artists talks, events, poetry film screenings, yoga & meditation.

“The Institute” 

is a non-profit art project utilizing socially engaged art and cultural practices in the service of creative and social evolution (cultural activism). To activate regional and international conversations among a diverse cross section of society “Institute” leverages the following cultural communication models: 

A bi-weekly, WIOX Radio Show: TUNING FORK FM  Regional & online (40 shows since 2023)

Weekly articles for Mountain Eagle Newspaper: the ICAI column WHY ART? (45+ articles since 2023)

Monthly TUNING FORK LIVE Zoom broadcasts with artists – bringing regional artists and audiences in dialogue with international artists (50 episodes since 2020)

Catskill Film Series: Film screenings & special cross-silo conversations with people from different walks of life, not limited to conventional art/culture & spirituality communities; 

Public Participatory Art Events: regionally & internationally;

In-Person & Online Meditation Classes and Retreats, bringing contemplative cultural communities together regionally, & internationally;

Artist-led Workshops & Residencies: by regional & international artists.

Institute Backstory

ICAI’s collaborative work began in 2018 with a series of public art interactions related to works of both founder/creator, artist/filmmaker John Halpern from 1977-2015 and the sculptor Emily Marie Harris - collaborator and ICAI founder. Triggered by the necessity for community engagement during the Covid Pandemic Lockdown. In 2022, “Institute” was legally established as a 501 (C) 3.  

Institute in Delhi

Harris and Halpern first held meditation retreats at William Duke’s Streamside Yoga, in Andes, before the pandemic. Their last retreat at Streamside ended three days before the pandemic broke out. They thenfound a 5 acre property with beautiful barns and stable built by locals Betsy and Brian Clark  for their material art and ICAI events and moved in in 2022. They are SUNY Delhi advisory board members to the Liberal Arts Department, they collaborate with regional organizations and venues like Bushel, Delhi, Good Taste Epicurean, Franklin, Delhi Community Church, Osmos Station, Stamford, Walton’s Ogden and Franklin Free Public libraries, AMR Open Studios - and maintain ongoing work and exchange with organizations like: Culture Declares Emergency, Great Britain; Free International University, Europe; Art for Impact Program, Amsterdam, Holland, International Buddhist Film Festival & Archive, US; Emily Harvey Foundation, NYC; Upstate Art Weekend; John Halpern is a recipient for a $3000 grant from the Roxbury Arts Group for: WE DO SURFING THE APOCALYPSE KARAOKE - an event at Birdsong for Upstate Art Weekend, July 18th. 

For more information about ICAI’s PUBLIC ART SUMMER ARTS PROJECTS - WWW.STUDIOICAI.ORG