Plotform
A collective: Jane D. Marsching + Andi Sutton
Plotform is a collective formed by Jane D. Marsching + Andi Sutton in the spring of 2012 with the aim of creating projects activating engagement with our local ecologies. We use various media to create projects–most often with public, participatory elements–that activate the interconnectedness of riparian species and their human counterparts. These works scramble strategies from ecological design, craftivism, communication engagement, tactical urbanism, interspecies communication, micronations, and empathetic making.
Platform’s work has been exhibited at galleries, in public spaces, and along shores in the US in Boston, New Bedford, Lowell, and Dartmouth, Massachusetts; Minneapolis, Minnesota; and Brooklyn, New York. Among the institutions that have supported Plotform’s work are Boston University, UMass Dartmouth, Northern Spark.mn, and many others.
The core team is Jane D. Marsching + Andi Sutton
Andi Sutton (Rochester, MN)
Andi Sutton is an artist whose practice explores the ways that performance art methodology can create new models for community development and social engagement. An avid collaborator, she has created participatory projects with farmers, chefs, birding enthusiasts, poets, Asian and LatinX youth, botanists, amusement park ride operators, and many more. She has exhibited at museums and galleries nationally and internationally including the Walker Art Center (MN), Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), MIT Museum, Universidad de Bogota (Bogota, Colombia), and more.
In addition to Plotform and her solo art practice, Sutton is a member of The National Bitter Melon Council which uses the form of a vegetable promotion board to create public projects that use the flavor and emotion of bitterness–and Bitter Melon–to spark dialogue about difference, foreignness and community. She was also a member of Platform2: Art and Activism, an experimental forum about creative practices at the intersection of social issues (2007-2012). Sutton has received grants from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the LEF Foundation, and has received an MFA Traveling Scholars Award (2010) and, along with The National Bitter Melon Council, an Artadia Art Award (2007). She is Executive Director of the Southeast Regional Sustainable Development Partnership at the University of Minnesota Extension School. Previous to this she managed communications at the Abdul Latif Jameel Water and Food Systems Lab (J-WAFS) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. andisutton.net
Core Team
Jane D. Marsching (Boston, MA)
Jane D. Marsching explores our past, present and future human impact on the environment through interdisciplinary and collaborative research-based practices. Her projects have been sited in museums and galleries as well as weather observatories, public parks, city streets, radio waves, and the internet. She has worked with scientists, educators, kite builders, meteorologists, artists, and musicians, among others.
She has exhibited at museums and galleries nationally and internationally. She has received grants from Creative Capital, LEF Foundation, Artadia, and Artists Resource Trust.
Marsching is also an author and editor; her most recent essay on Gideon Mendel’s photographs was included in Running Falling Flying Floating Crawling, edited by Mark Alice Durant and published by Saint Lucy Press in 2020.
She was also a cofounder and member of Platform2: Art and Activism, an experimental forum about creative practices at the intersection of social issues (2007-2012).
At Massachusetts College of Art and Design she is Professor and Sustainability Fellow.
