Artist Paul Villinski's Emergency Response Studio, a solar-powered, mobile artist's studio, will be on view April 23rd – May 2nd as part of this year's Fuse Box Festival.  It is co-presented with Arthouse, Austin. In August 2006, on a visit to post-Katrina New Orleans, Villinski wished he could transport his studio from New York to the Lower Ninth Ward, so he could create work in response to the conditions he found there. Creating Emergency Response Studio was his solution. Over seven months, Villinski transformed a salvaged FEMA-style trailer into a rolling, off-the-grid live/work space that could house displaced artists, or allow visiting artists to "embed" in post-disaster settings.

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Emergency Response Studio

"I believe we ought to consider deploying artists as part of the mix of disaster workers, medical personnel, NGO's, architects, and urban planners – those people charged with responding to, repairing, and re-envisioning disaster sites like New Orleans," says Villinski. To this end, from April to October of 2008, Villinski worked nonstop, gutting, rebuilding, and playfully rethinking a 30-foot Gulfstream "Cavalier" trailer virtually identical to the 50,000 trailers built by Gulfstream for FEMA. Re-born as the Emergency Response Studio, the trailer's formaldehyde-ridden original materials are replaced by entirely "green" technology and building materials, including recycled denim insulation, bamboo cabinetry, compact fluorescent lighting, reclaimed wood, and natural linoleum floor tiles made from linseed oil. It is powered by eight mammoth batteries that store energy generated by an array of solar panels and a "micro" wind turbine atop a 40-foot high mast. Not only practical, Emergency Response Studio is a visually engaging structure with an expansive work area featuring a wall section that lowers to become a deck. A ten-foot, elliptical geodesic skylight allows extra headroom and natural lighting in the work area. Though designed as an artist's studio and residence, Emergency Response Studio is an ingenious prototype for self-sufficient, solar-powered mobile housing.

Emergency Response Studio was created as a project for the Prospect .1 New Orleans Biennial and is courtesy of the Artist and the Jonathan Ferrera Gallery , New Orleans. Emergency Response Studio appears as part of the Fuse Box Festival and is co-presented with Arthouse, Austin.