"Flexibility is our greatest strength"

-Gerard Minakawa

As Bamboo is flexible so must we be as a culture. We must prepare to bend in the breeze in order to make beautiful music together. We must embrace the opportunity to grow our communities in the directions we choose, propogating our messages, facilitating our dreams, so that together our futures shine with possibilty.

We choose to continue a legacy of Bamboo which initiated, for us, in Palm Desert , March 2008. The shelters are a simple emulation of work done at the Coachella Festival with an incredible artist and his crew. Gerard Minakawa, founder of Bamboo DNA (www.bambooDNA.com) was commissioned to do a piece entitled ”Bamboo Wave” and at the base his crew created organic structures out of left over supplies. It was a simple and enlightening process with each structure taking approximately 8 hours for a team of three. We participated in building a few and then watched during the event as families, couples, individuals, event coordinators, band members, and just about everyone passing by enjoyed the work. Folks climbed, bounced, rested, talked, met at, took photos of, inspected and were simply delighted to share these shelters with us and each other. We want to bring that energy to Auditorium Shores and share the great lessons of Bamboo with Austin Culture!

At Coachella, we worked very closely with a diverse group of people to create "Bamboo Wave". There was a concentrated effort to embody the flexibilty of the materials in our efforts to realize Gerard's vision. We hope to grace this New Year's site with an installation that can respond to the place and time. We intend to work with a group of people that can respond to each other and represent their communities. We will learn things together that facilitate individual creativity as well as community projects. We are planting a seed!