EPA was recently featured in the year end issue of Art in America Magazine with a piece written by Stephen Zacks called Other Voices, Other Worlds exploring emerging ideas about ecology and the Anthropocene. Read article here
Category: Research
EPA Featured in Podcast: Data Remediations
EPA is featured in the first episode of the podcast Data Remediations co-organized by Bethany Wiggin and Patricia Kim and others at The Penn Program in the Environmental Humanities! Data Remediations is a podcast meant to get you to think about how we can “remediate” quantitative measures of our rapidly changing planet, translating them into stories and art to stir hearts and minds—and to promote #ClimateAction.
EPA Field Report: The Emergent Plantocene
The EPA presented a field report at the School of Visual Art’s Hothouse Archives conference this November (2018), organized by Suzanne Anker and Sabine Flach. Developed by EPA Agents andrea Haenggi and Christopher Kennedy, the talk examined popularized narratives of the so-called Anthropocene to explore the possibility of new tools and practices that draw from the wisdom of spontaneous urban plants (aka weeds). Taking the form of a performative field report that centers the voice and agency of urban weeds, the presentation argued for a reclaimed intimacy with urban landscapes that helps publics move beyond a mere awareness of the “non-human” toward a new kind of radical stewardship facilitated through embodied actions with ruderal and marginal ecologies. Through the lens of urban weeds, we ask: What would it mean to frame our new geologic era as the Emergent Plantocene? To recognize the incredible wisdom and survival strategies of “invasive” and “alien” plant species? How can we better understand the value of ruderal landscapes as spaces for liberation that strengthen body-plant connections? EPA practices such as “radical care sitting,” embodied science, and the development of movement scores from the perspective of urban weeds offers a set of examples to consider as both political acts and performative artworks. In so doing, we make a case for the plantbodyhumanbody as lab, and for new ways of redefining entangled action(ism) through kinesthetic multispecies fieldwork practice.
SVA will be releasing a catalog soon with the full text, so stay tuned!
EPA Visits UPenn – Liquid Histories, Floating Archives
The EPA visited UPenn this week to work with students in Professor Bethany Wiggans course, Liquid Histories and Floating Archives. We introduced our Embodied Parkour project and led students through a series of intimate encounters with disturbed and weedy landscapes outside of Goddard Labs.
An excerpt from the syllabus:
Climate change transforms natural and built environments, and it is re-shaping how we understand, make sense, and care for our past. Climate changes history; rising waters make it soggy. This experimental seminar in interdisciplinary, embodied learning explores the Anthropocene, the present age in which humans are remaking earth’s systems, with a perspective on/near/in/above/within water. How are rising waters transfiguring our heritage, history and its practice–as well as our present and future? Readings, discussions, and field work invite trans-historical dialogues with a focus on the riverscape of the tidal Schuylkill and the colonial and industrial-era infrastructure that transformed the mid-Atlantic’s vast tidal marshes and wetlands.
Photos by Patricia Kim (PPEH)
Exploring the Schuylkill River Watershed
The EPA team went to Philadelphia this past week to begin research for our Ecotopian Fellowship project at UPenn in collaboration with Professor Bethany Wiggins. Starting at the banks of the Fairmount Waterworks we began to explore several sites including a small park at Forgotten Bottom, and a new park area south of Bertram Gardens. Thanks to collaborator Thomas Choinacky for all the tour guiding!
Interspecies Memo: Scott Pruitt Resigns
Dearest friends,
We write to you in the wake of the resignation of US EPA administrator Scott Pruitt. While the plant experts at the Department of Weedy Affairs welcome Pruitt’s departure, they are equally concerned with the interim appointment of Andrew Wheeler. A former coal lobbyist for Murray Energy who has spent his career representing the fossil fuel industry, Wheeler also worked directly with James Inhofe (R-Okla), arguably one of the biggest climate change deniers in the Senate’s history. Wheeler is expected to not only continue the unprecedented rollbacks and reversals of environmental protections that began under Pruitt (see what’s changed since 2017) but may also prove even more dangerous (see resources below).
In this time of transition we look to the wisdom of the weeds. As we write, Mugwort (Artemisia vulgaris), who’s been nominated to the Science Advisory Board, is taking root in the front lawn of the US EPA Headquarters in Washington DC. Since June 15th they’ve been extending rhizomatic networks and cultivating interspecies alliances to resist the dangerous changes underway (Watch the EPA meets EPA Video). Like Wheeler, The Department of Weedy Affair’s Herbicide Branch Chief, Horseweed (Erigeron canadensis) is also prepared — strong, grounded, rising and making decisions in its vertical dimension with clarity and precision despite compacted soils.
We have also reactivated the web platform OnBehalfOf.Life to encourage the submission of public comments on behalf of local plant experts in the Bronx in response to a newly proposed rule, “Strengthening Transparency in Regulatory Science.” Despite the deceptively benign title, this new rule will prevent vital forms of public research from being carried out by US EPA officials, weaken the role of science in the development of environmental policy, and open the door for corporate and private interests to conduct misleading research with severe consequences for human and more than human health.
We invite you to draft a comment by listening to a local plant expert. Go for a walk to find the plant. Listen, move, and allow your writing to be truly imaginative, poetic and scientific by entangling the plant’s voice with your voice. Consider what a plant would say about this new rule.
Finally, while we expect things at the US EPA to worsen, the Environmental Performance Agency continues to find strength, gratitude and inspiration from weedy plants and multispecies networks all around us. Every hour of every day, the weeds remain persistent, scratchy, sensual and they continue to show up. If you want to truly resist, listen to the weeds, let them be your guide, and we’ll see you in streets.
In weedy solidarity,
The EPA team
Resources and Info about Andrew Wheeler
- EPA Press Release on Andrew Wheeler
- New Yorker: Scott Pruitt Is Gone, But The Trump Administration’s Climate Negligence Remains
- The Verge: The EPA’s deputy chief may be an even bigger threat to the environment than Scott Pruitt
- NY Times: How Andrew Wheeler, the New Acting E.P.A. Chief, Differs From Scott Pruitt
Image - The Hill: Andrew Wheeler has the potential to be even more dangerous than Scott Pruitt
- Chicago Tribune: EPA’s acting administrator has long lobbying record on issues before the agency
Trump’s EPA Is a Disaster, So These Artists Made Their Own
The EPA’s exhibition at Transformer in Washington DC was recently featured in a Vice Article by Claire Voon. To read the full article click here.
A Solid Artistic Argument That We Should Replace EPA Leaders With Actual Weeds
Thanks to the Washington City Paper for featuring the EPA’s latest project The Department of Weedy Affairs.
“Of course, the point is to say that ours is the timeline that’s gone crazy, where elected officials have deleted all reference of climate change from official government platforms and rolled back dozens of common-sense standards for safeguarding our water and air. A good protest show might have made the point through biting satire. But Department of Weedy Affairs is rather joyful—or rather, it feels normal. The project imagines a nation that values and protects marginal ecosystems, which is to say, one that prioritizes environmental justice. A country in which this work is not just performed, but one in which it is boring—another given, like death and taxes.”
To read the full article visit:
At Transformer, a Solid Artistic Argument That We Should Replace EPA Leaders With Actual Weeds, by Kriston Capps. Washington City Paper (May 24, 2018).
EPA Recieves UPenn Environmental Humanities Fellowship
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!