You know you are in Alaska when the only bird you see is an enormous bald eagle flying right overhead…in downtown Anchorage…and its brilliantly sunlit at 10:00pm at night~ The crew is amassing:  Kip Evans and JJ Kelly have been out shooting B-roll all day, Mark Dion is scouting for birds, Andy Hughes arrives sometime tonight en route from the UK, and I am assembling my gear for the 7am bus to Seward and then, we set sail.  The Norseman is undergoing final preparations in Resurrection Bay.  Tonight we meet…

After more than 3 years in development, the GYRE expedition will sail in June 2013!!!!  Departing from Seward, Alaska and following along remote coasts of Kodiak Island and the upper Aleutian islands, the research vessel Norseman  will travel for 10 days with a crew of artists, scientists, policy makers and crew to discover, research, and gather the vast amounts of plastic waste on these shores.  After two scouting missions in 2010 and 2011, I can report untold amounts of material from all over the world on beaches so remote humans rarely…

Longobardi named one of 4 finalists for the prestigious $50,000 Hudgens Prize! The finalists were chosen from a pool of 370 applicants by Doryun Chong, associate curator at the Museum of Modern Art in New York; Toby Kamps, chief curator of the Menil Collection in Houston; and Heather Pesanti, senior curator at AMOA/Arthouse in Austin and until recently curator at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York. The $50,000 Hudgens Prize will be awarded by the jury based on studio visits and the works exhibited in the Hudgens Prize…

Part of the project of cleaning the cave was conducting a forensic study on the totality of the materials inside. As each geographic location has its own character, each beach cleaning creates a portrait of that location, its culture, its industry, its values. The contents of the sea cave create a similar story. The following are the total tallies of each and every individual plastic object that was taken from the cave. 1310 pieces of Styrofoam (polystyrene), ball-type, white or black 320 PETE plastic beverage bottles 118 pieces of compressed…

View the film here by clicking here: Giant Sea Cave Excavation ~ Drifters Project Kefalonia The cave is enormous, an upward-sloping bowl shaped amphitheater.  Once you pass the rocky water entrance, you enter a boulder field that stretches back 150 feet or more.  The first large object you see is a completely rusted out 50 gallon drum 40 feet from the water’s edge.  But its the fringe of visible objects at the far back of the cave that are of concern, the thousands of pieces of plastic:  styrofoam blocks and balls…

We had a one day window and a single chance to make this film. All forces collided to help us. For 7 days we tried to enter the cave and only 1 time were we successful in order to strategize the entry and exit with everyone safe, the plastic removed and bags not broken to put it back in the sea. The amazing shooter Sergio Ko was in the water with us, and getting bashed by the waves not to drop or crash his expensive camera. The incredible editor Nickos…

My current expedition Drifters Project Kefalonia:  The Giant Sea Cave Excavation was inspired by a heartbreakingly poignant discovery I made last summer here in Kefalonia. In July 2011, working on my Drifters Project phase I: One World Ocean, I went to a remote beach by boat with a local fisherman.  He described this beach as having some of the most debris on the island.  It was spectacularly beautiful, but even from the crystalline water 100 yards offshore, I could see the telltale signs of plastic impact.  The amazing feature of this beach were the…

Somehow, I just had the smoothest international travel experience I have ever had, after scores and scores for the past several decades….the Greece we see on the news is not the whole story. Life is going forward, people are living, struggle is real and tensions are high (there is a neo-Nazi party that now has a seat in Parliament) but, as is usually true, individuals are hearty and full of heart, riding this transforming wave as best they can. I actually feel a similar vibe in the air here to…

Drifters Project Kefalonia 2012 will be excavating a giant sea cave to reinsert the contents into cultural space.  Analysis of the cultural archaelogy of the cave and subsequent installation will reveal a new Odyssey for the recently discovered true birthplace of Homer.