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University of Victoria Permaculture Design Course

2017 May 26 - 12:00pm - 2017 May 27 - 3:00pm

 

 

I will be co-teaching the University of Victoria permaculture design course at Linnaea Farm on Cortes Island. There will be some short lectures and some fun romps through the local rainforest.

Nature 2.0: Post Industrial Ecologies of the Hudson River Estuary

2017 May 14 - 1:00pm - 5:00pm

 

 

N.B! This has been rescheduled to May 14th from the original April 22nd date due to a family emergency.

So sorry for any inconvenience.

 

I'm giving a workshop on postindustrial ecologies at the Sanctuary for Independent Media in Troy, NY.

Please check the Sanctuary website for the exact times.

Here is the blurb describing what is supposed to happen:

 

Stretching from Troy to the New York harbor, the Hudson River’s estuary has played an integral part in the rise and fall of America as a vast industrial power. Its waters and surrounding landscapes have been heavily impacted since the earliest days of the Industrial Revolution and there are troubling legacies of persistent pollutants such as the the PCBs left behind by the General Electric manufacturing plant at Hudson Falls. Yet there are signs of regeneration, if one knows where to look. Abandoned factory landscapes called brownfields harbour surprising biodiversity as the man-made habitats they contain mimic prairies and savannahs, cliffs and gravel banks. The post-industrial flora and fauna that thrives in these disturbed sites comprises a ‘hyper-ecology’  - a  fascinating mix of natives and exotics, pioneer species, habitat opportunists and a range of other organisms that benefit from conditions that are significantly hotter, more alkaline and less fertile than the primeval ecosystem so long ago obliterated. With the decline in industrial activity and the enforcement of laws governing the discharge of pollutants, aquatic ecosystems too are showing signs of recovery, despite significant challenges. Who would have thought even a few decades ago that humpback whales could once again be seen feeding in the East River just off Gracie Mansion?

 

In his talk and workshop, ecological artist, writer and activist Oliver Kellhammer will frame post-industrial ecologies as sites of renewal and the emergence of novel processes. In collaboration with artist Kathy High, he has been compiling a field guide to the biodiversity of the brownfields of Troy and has been experimenting with strategies for bioremediating contaminated soils in the area using a combination of fungi and plants.

 

 

  

 

Gaia Summit

2017 Apr 30 - 8:00pm - 10:30pm

 

This panel in Greenpoint Brooklyn was a lot of fun. Many thanks to Sara Blazej and the folks at Cleopatra's for putting this on! Thanks also to my co-panelists Stephanie Wakefield, Christopher Kennedy and Karolina Sobecka for their all around brilliance!

 

Weedy Resistance

2017 Apr 9 - 6:00pm - 8:00pm

 

 

 

I am on a panel at Parsons in NYC, convened by the Weedy Resistance People:

 

 

https://weedyresistance.tumblr.com/post/158550873354/session-one-borders-april-9th-3-5pm-parsons

 

Session One: Borders

April 9th, 2017 (3-5pm) @ The Parsons Transdisciplinary Design Studio, 6 East 16th Street, Room 1203, New York, NY

Special Guests: 

  • Oliver Kellhammer, Lecturer on Sustainable Systems at Parsons School for Design
  • Eve Mosher, artist and interventionist
  • Zhaleh Afshar, Center for Social Inclusion

Terrain Vague: The Wonderful world of Disturbance Ecologies

2016 Nov 15 - 2:00pm - 4:00pm

 

 

 

I am giving a brief talk at Free Association Design in Brooklyn, in acknowledgement of the massive disturbances we are experiencing in the wake of the recent US elections.

 

 

20 Jay St, Suite 516

in Dumbo, Brooklyn

freeassociation.is

Fashion Institute of Technology 10th Annual Sustainability Conference

2016 Apr 12 - 5:00pm - 6:30pm

 

I am on an artists' panel at the Fashion Institute of Technology's 10th annual sustainability conference in I'll be talking about artistic engagement in issues of climate change (Dear Climate, Neo-Eocene etc)  and sustainable place-making (Cottonwood, Means of Production, Healing the Cut- Bridging the Gap). Check it out if you are in the neighbourhood!

 

Details here: http://www.fitnyc.edu/sustainability/news-events/conference/

venue is Fashion Institute of Technology, John E Reeves Great Hall 227 W 27th St. New York, NY.

Dear Climate at NYPL

2016 Mar 1 - 12:00pm - 2016 Jun 6 - 9:00pm

Dear Climate will be part of the NYPL Art in the Windows series

@ Mid Manhattan Library - 40th Street @ 5th Ave, NYC 

VERGE conference

2016 Feb 25 - 2:15pm - 2:30pm

 

 

 

As part of this year's VERGE conference on the topic of 'elasticity' I am giving a very short talk at Parsons tentatively titled:

 

NOT DEAD YET: THE SURPRISING ELASTICITY OF POST INDUSTRIAL BIOTOPES/REMIXED AND NOVEL ECOSYSTEMS IN THE RUINS OF THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT

 

The venue is

The New School University Center 63 5th Avenue, New York, NY

If anyone is in the neighbourhood please check it out! 

OTIS COLLEGE

2016 Feb 16 - 2:15pm - 2016 Feb 17 - 12:45am

 

 

I will be giving a number of talks at OTIS in one day in good old Los Angeles.

The main talk (see OTIS website for details) will happen at @ 11:00 am in THE FORUM, 9045 Lincoln Blvd, Los Angeles. This will beopen to the public and free. This talk will be  a survey of my work in the context of Climate Change and the Anthropocene with an emphasis on the strategy of 'botanical intervention.' Also, I'm trying to get people interested in the complexities of the Anthropocenic landscape and will discuss the biodiversity and geomorphology of industrial wastelands and the significance of these landscapes as sites of regeneration and as internalized territiories of our optical subconscious.

 

That same evening, I will be presenting a modified version of the above at Elektra Grant's Human Ecologies class which meets from 7-945p in the Ahmanson Bldg, room 309. 

 

 

Nodes and Networks: the city as superorganism

2015 Dec 2 - 10:00pm - 2015 Dec 6 - 10:00pm

 

 

I am part of this amazing collective experiment organized by the illustrious Heather Barnett, the doyenne of slime mold art and research, who has brought together a fantastic team of participants for a meet up in NYC.

Here is a link to her site for more detailed information:

http://heatherbarnett.co.uk/Projects/nodes-and-networks/

Nodes and Networks is a series of collective art and science experiments exploring biological systems as a model and metaphor for social intervention. Taking inspiration from slime mold navigation, bacterial communication, and insect cooperation, a group of artists, designers, and scientists are collaborating on a series of public experiments and interventions across New York City.

Throughout the first week of December, the interdisciplinary team will design experiments that test our collective intelligence in comparison to other, seemingly simpler, organisms. The team will invent experiments, games and activities to explore how the city behaves like an organism. Experiments will be based at the School of Visual Arts’ BioArt Lab, the Metropolitan Museums’ Media Lab, and public sites across the city. Additional participants are invited to join the experiment through public events on 2nd and 6th December.

The project was prompted by the First International Physarum Transport Networks Workshop to be held at Columbia University, 3-5 December 2015. As part of BICT (9th Conference on Bio-inspired Information and Communications Technologies) the scientific workshop is dedicated to a wide spectrum of research on slime molds including physics, cell biology, and genetics of Physarum polycephalum as well as sessions on Education & Science and Art & Science. The giant slime mold cell can mimic human transport systems and navigate efficiently through mazes in search for food. This fascinating foraging behaviour emerges from collective cellular interactions, networking without a brain.

Project lead, Heather Barnett, says “Nodes and Networks is a way of exploring the themes of the workshop creatively and from multipledisciplinary perspectives. Simple organisms like slime mold, bacteria and insects offer intriguing models to test how ideas spread, how group decisions are made and how communities cooperate. New York City is a perfect test bed for collective experiments.”

The multidisciplinary team leading the collective experiment includes artists, writers, architects and designers working with biological systems, and scientists from the fields of biophysics, ecology, genetics and neuroscience. Nodes and Networks brings these many heads together to create novel ideas and experiments through a creative emergent process.