Category: Research

City Skins: A Survey of Transient Urban Surfaces

City Skins documents urban streetscapes and surfaces in transition, making visible alterations to human habitats and public spaces. The Survey includes photographic documentation, surface rubbings, and movement-research that document evidence of neighborhood change, gentrification, and the disturbance of urban environments. In collaboration with Ellie Irons. City Skins documents urban streetscapes and surfaces in transition, making […]

hiway/hiway

hiway/hiway is a site-specific investigation of the Flushing Creek at the intersection of the Long Island and Van Wyck Expressway in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park. The project explores the value of unmediated weedy landscapes that surround highway interchanges and on-ramps, and considers how transit systems act as habitat, repository, and conveyance for seeds, pollutants, water and […]

Mycoramblings

A collaboration with Ben KinselyUsing mushrooms as a material and metaphor, Myco-Ramblings explores the intersection of mycology, folk knowledge, and storytelling. We invited participants to join us on a ramble through Central Park to forage for mushrooms, to cultivate collective knowledge related to fungi, and to create a chance-based field recording. We walked, we noticed, […]

Emergent Plantocene

Suit Up: Join the Emergent Plantocene Clean-Up A project and installation for the exhibition The Department of Human and Natural Services, curated by Mariel Villeré at NURTUREart. EPA Embodied Scientist Training is a call to participate in a multispecies coalition of embodied scientists, activists, and spontaneous plants who are re-imagining federal policy and agency in […]

Fruiting Bodies

Fruiting Bodies is an experiment in fungal sociality, exploring the possibilities of mushroom cloning, remediation and social exchange through collaborative experience and community science. The project launched with a workshop at GenSpace in Brooklyn, NY where participants created agar-based sculptures modeled from chosen body parts. The sculptures were inoculated via oyster fungi with the intention […]

Multispecies Care Survey

The Multispecies Care Survey is an Environmental Performance Agency public engagement and data gathering initiative meant to provoke and articulate forms of environmental agency that de-center human supremacy and facilitate the co-generation of embodied, localized plant-human care practices. This continues the EPA’s work in response to the dismantling of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency under […]

Chance Ecologies

Location: Queens, NY Collaborator: Amplifier Inc., Catherine Grau, Stephen Zacks, and Nathan Kensinger Chance Ecologies is a framework for artistic gestures and research projects exploring the un-designed landscapes and wilderness found in abandoned spaces, post-industrial sites, and landfills. The main trajectories of the project are to create research and discourse around the value of wild […]

Weedy Nomad: Ruderal Ecologies of LIC

Location: Queens, NY Collaborator: Thomas Choinacky, Flux Factory Weedy Nomad is a movement-based storytelling project that explores neighborhoods in transition through plant-body encounters. We invite activists, artists and publics to share their experiences of development and gentrification through guided walks and movement scores that look particularly at marginalized urban ecosystems and spontaneous plants (aka weeds) […]

Cole, My Sooner Love

Cole, My Sooner Love is an installation exploring the shifting politics of climate change, urbanization, and queer identity in the American South. The piece draws inspiration from a close relative’s collection of writings, digital ephemera, and photographs that survey his life as a closeted gay man and former minister in Oklahoma. Three months of daily […]

An Atlas of Endangered Surfaces

Location: Queens, NY Collaborator: Ellie Irons An Atlas of Endangered Surfaces identifies and categorizes a range anthropogenic, naturally occurring, and hybrid surfaces in the area known as Hunter’s Point South in Long Island City, Queens. In collaboration with artist Ellie Irons, the project is a part of Chance Ecologies, a platform for documenting, learning from, […]

Above Middle Below

Above Middle and Below is a three-part laboratory dedicated to formulating ideas for an Open Movement score through collaboration facilitated by Leila Mougoui Bakhitiari (urban ecologist), Christopher Kennedy (teaching artist), Athena Kokoronis (choreographer), and Jan Mun (artist-scientist). Part One is dedicated to presenting and mapping Fort Greene Park’s social and ecological relationships. Part Two focuses […]

Mycological Provisions

An interview project archiving the stories of four contemporary artists while hunting for mushrooms in the summer of 2013. Participating artists include Rob Peterson, Cassie Thornton, Caroline Woolard and Kate Clark. (Research blog: mycologicalprovisions.tumblr.com) (Video Credits: Music by Quilla, Sound design by Marty O’Connor and Quilla) Sound Recordings: Rob Peterson: [audio:http://christopherleekennedy.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Rob-Peterson-Conversation-Edit-2014.mp3] Cassie Thornton: [audio:http://christopherleekennedy.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Thornton-Final-Audio.mp3] Caroline […]

Museum Futures

Museum Futures Vol. 1 What is the connection between one woman’s 58-year collection, a nomadic assemblage of queer ephemera, a high-tech teen hangout, and the treasured remains of a fishing town? Beginning in a lake Michigan lagoon and sustained through a trans-continental Skype conversation, Museum Futures is an interview project developed by three people with […]

Strataspore

StrataSpore is a platform for collective knowledge about mushrooms. Initiated by Kate Cahill, Christopher Kennedy, Athena Kokoronis, Caroline Woolard, and mycologist Gary Lincoff, Strataspore uses mushrooms as material and metaphor for latent potential and unseen infrastructure. Right now, mushrooms are eating oil spills, connecting old members of Fluxus, feeding communities, and growing as alternative packaging […]