Community Organizer Artemisia vulgaris (common mugwort) is representing the urban spontaneous plants and says : It is sensational to be smelly – be hazy — be tasty – be dreamy – be blurry – be green – be silver –be juicy – be fragile – be resilient – be vulnerable – be loud – be unnoticed –be overwhelming –be everywhere – To affect – be affected – To have no self-expression- To need light – water – touch – wind – rain – microorganisms – It is sensational – To be fluid – changeable – unpredictable – invasive– persistent – resilient – sharp. It is sensational to be a rhizome. It is sensational that you make me a stranger in the street -> an immigrant -> an alien -> a healer -> a smuggler -> with no passport
Catherine Grau‘s art practice is focused on creating spaces and projects that reimagine/reclaim knowledge production and social relations towards post-capitalist imaginaries. Currently her work is questioning human relations with the natural world as manifested in the intersections between language, migration/globalization, value systems, and climate change. She is deeply committed to and loves working collaboratively and across disciplines. Some of these collaborations have been operating as collectives, including Process Institute (2010/2011), Chance Ecologies (2015 – present), and EPA – Environmental Performance Agency (2017 – present). Others have been long-term research relationships, operating under the framework of Unlearning Practices. Catherine holds a BFA in sculpture from Pratt Institute (NYC, USA) and an MFA in Public Art and New Artistic Strategies from the Bauhaus University (Weimar, Germany). She is currently based in Queens, New York and works as Public Programs Coordinator at the Queens Museum.
andrea haenggi (CH/USA) is a Brooklyn-based artist, choreographer, dancer, educator and radical care sitter. Haenggi is known for mixing disciplines and modes of making. The last view years, she is in search for another kind of theater, an “ethno-choreo-botan-ography” to explore the notion of colonialism, feminism, ecology, migration, labor and care for a world beyond humans. Spontaneous urban weeds are her mentors, collaborators and performers. In 2013, Haenggi turned her new rented studio in Crown Heights, a former auto-repair garage with a 1900 Sq Ft vacant lot, an increasingly gentrified neighborhood in Brooklyn, into a socially and ecologically engaged research and performance space. This 5 -year art project “1067 PacificPeople” grow into the co-founding of the collaborative project Environmental Performance Agency in 2017. Haenggi’s work have been presented in numerous theaters, galleries and public spaces around the world, including Queens Museum, Dance Theater Workshop and MASS MoCA in North Adams; and internationally at the Society for Performing Arts in Lagos, Nigeria. As an educator, she is on the faculty of the Laban/Bartenieff Institute of Movement Studies in New York. Haenggi holds a MFA in Creative Practice from Transart Institute/Plymouth University UK and is a Swiss Canton Solothurn Dance Price 2008 recipient. http://weedychoreography.com; http://andreahaenggi.net; http://1067pacificpeople.nyc
Ellie Irons is an artist and educator based in Brooklyn, NY. She works in a variety of media, from walks to WIFI, to reveal how human and nonhuman lives intertwine with other earth systems. Recently she has been in residence at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory, the Headlands Center and the SVA Nature Lab. Her work has been part of recent group exhibitions exploring contemporary environmental issues, including Social Ecologies, Emergent Ecologies, and the ongoing Chance Ecologies project. Recent exhibition venues include The Queens Museum, Arsenal Gallery in Central Park, Pratt Manhattan Gallery and William Paterson University. Her writing has appeared in Temporary Art Review, The Brooklyn Rail and Landscape Architecture Futures. She is a 2015 NYFA Fellowship recipient and a 2015 Turbulence Commission grantee. Irons teaches part time at Brown University. She studied Environmental Science and Art at Scripps College and received her MFA from Hunter College, CUNY.
Christopher Lee Kennedy is an artist and educator who creates site-specific projects that examine conventional notions of ‘Nature’, interspecies agency and biocultural collaboration. Kennedy’s research focuses on understanding the socio-ecological benefits of spontaneous urban plant communities in NYC, and the role of civic engagement in developing new approaches to environmental stewardship and nature-based resilience. Kennedy has worked collaboratively on projects shown at the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts, the North Carolina Museum of Art, the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, the Levine Museum of the New South, Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art, the Ackland Art Museum and the Queens Museum. He currently serves as the assistant director at the Urban Systems Lab (The New School) and lecturer in the Parsons School of Design.
Collaborators: Carrie Ahern, Anne Percoco, Kimberly Reinhardt, Karolina Sobecka, Dan Phiffer and others!