Crack the Patriarchy in DC


EPA Agents Catherine Grau and andrea haenggi were in Washington DC this past weekend, working with members of the Department of Weedy Affairs staff on a workshop called Crack the Patriarchy. Together with the weeds, workshop participants explored the question: How can we articulate, ally with, and reclaim the more-than-binary ways of being that are cracking the patriarchy?

Open Engagement: Plant Talk, Human Talk

This weekend, EPA presented at Open Engagement at the Queens Museum and Hall of Science in New York. We led an interactive workshop called Plant Talk Human Talk exploring the lawn outside the Hall of Science in Corona-Flushing Meadows Park. Plant Talk Human Talk explores the biocultural possibility of spontaneous urban plants (aka weeds) as collaborators and guides in imagining new urban systems/ecologies. The Queens Museum’s surrounding landscape serves as a site for applied fieldwork where participants will engage in EPA’s embodied scientist training for cultivating plant-human relations and interspecies alliances. Tactics include wild plant unmapping, radical care sitting, and creating embodied scores for a world beyond human.

EPA Recieves UPenn Environmental Humanities Fellowship

Cecily Anderson, Tidal Schuylkill Visitors Map, Ecotopian Toolkit (2017)

The Environmental Performance Agency is excited to work with The Penn Program in Environmental Humanities (PPEH) on their Ecotopian Toolkit initiative to explore the complexity of urban waters and “what it might mean to face contemporary ecological challenges with critically attuned and creatively oriented tools.” As 2018 fellows, EPA will be developing a project called, Embodied Scientist Parkour: A series of site-specific scores for practicing multi-species research and being in a world beyond human. Stay tuned for more details and updates on upcoming workshops and events in Philadelphia!

EPA Meets EPA: Department of Weedy Affairs

This spring the EPA goes to Washington DC where we’ll be partnering with Transformer to launch a new artwork — The Department of Weedy Affairs, a speculative proposition which imagines a governmental agency that is beyond human. This new EPA office opens May 5, offering visitors an opportunity to engage and learn from spontaneous urban plants (aka weeds) through a toolkit of radical care practices and embodied science. Throughout the duration of the exhibition, we invite the public to submit a comment to the US Environmental Protection Agency using a web platform, OnBehalfOf.life. At the end of the show, the EPA collective will lead a public march to deliver the collection of comments, desires and demands on behalf of the weeds to the US EPA on the National Mall. The EPA meets the EPA.

WORKSHOPS + PERFORMANCES:
MAY 5, 2018 | 3 – 8pm
Department of Weedy Affairs: Opening Reception
Transformer, 1404 P Street, NW Washington, DC
Featuring a live performance by andrea haenggi, Teaching a Human the Urban Weeds Alphabet (created with 26 urban weeds). Live engagements at 3pm, 5pm and 7pm

MAY 20, 2018 | 2 – 5pm
Crack The Patriarchy: Moving, thinking and feeling with plants that break through cracks in asphalt
Led by EPA artists Catherine Grau and Andrea Haenggi
Meeting Point: Transformer, 1404 P Street, NW Washington, DC

JUNE 9, 2018 | 2 – 4:30pm
Weedy Resistance: A Weedy Walking Tour on the National Mall
Led by EPA Agents Ellie Irons and Christopher Kennedy
Meeting Point: Constitution Avenue NW and 12th Street NW, Washington DC

JUNE 15, 2018 | 2pm
EPA Meets EPA: A public walk to the US EPA Headquarters
Meeting Point: Transformer, 1404 P Street, NW Washington, DC

fertilizing fire circle

DECEMBER 1, 2017 | 5pm – 12am @ EPA Headquarters 1067 Pacific Street, Brooklyn

We invite you to join EPA collective’s night of embodied storytelling for decolonizing, healing and belonging within a multi-species future. Celebrate the final transformation of our rented garage and lot turned urban weeds ecosystem.**

Break the pavement. Practice primitive fire-starting. Whisper and listen to the flames to fertilize relationships with urban land. Bitch and dance to acknowledge the agency of urban weeds. Counter monoculture! Burn it down! Touch stillness. See time.

Beginning at dusk and continuing until midnight, the environment will be transformed into Soft-Precarious Openings by EPA artists Catherine Grau, Andrea Haenggi, Christopher Kennedy, Ellie Irons, and participating artists and storytellers: Carrie Ahern, Tara Daino, Nancye Good (fire bow drill teacher), Simone Johnson, Holes in the Walls Collective: Julia Meeks & Dhira Rauch, Cooper Miller, Robert Neuwirth, Lissette Olivares, Iele Paloumpis, Marýa Wethers (firekeeper), and Moira Williams, and nourishing bites and warming drinks inspired by recipe-stories from the neighbors on our block.

Registration is required. Please RSVP
Suggested donation $15
Detailed schedule TBA

+++ Stay the full 7hrs to get fully fertilized for the next epoch!! +++

** In 2013, artist Andrea Haenggi and writer Robert Neuwirth signed a 5-year lease for 1067 Pacific Street, a former auto-repair garage with a 1900 Sq Ft vacant lot in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, with the intent:

  • to find LOVE in this contaminated urban feral landscape
  • if you enter the LAND of 1067 Pacific Street, you shape the artwork
  • the PLACE, 1067 Pacific Street, is the artwork itself
  • the artwork is the studio for Haenggi’s movement-based artist PRACTICE
  • to find an aesthetic in rawness and LABOR
  • in search of AGENCY for nonhuman life forms
  • to question VALUE in all its economic and philosophic meanings

The socially and ecologically engaged research and performance artwork, with its many public encounters, grew into the co-founding of the collaborative project Environmental Performance Agency (EPA) in March 2017. On January 22, 2018 we must surrender the key.