EPA’s Department of Weedy Affairs announces Mugwort (Artemisia vulgaris) for US EPA Science Advisory Board

EPA


FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE


EPA’s Department of Weedy Affairs announces Mugwort (Artemisia vulgaris) for US EPA Science Advisory Board

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Environmental Performance Agency’s Department of Weedy Affairs (DWA) announces the nomination of Mugwort (Artemisia vulgaris) for the US EPA Science Advisory Board.

“Mugwort has a proven record for fighting and not giving up and will go deep to find new territories and new perspectives for the challenges facing the US EPA right now,” says EPA Agent Andrea Haenggi.

We invite you to join us at 2pm on June 15th at Transformer for a ‘meet the candidate walk’ and kick off event. The event will include public readings of comments collected at the DWA office, embodied actions, and a public address at 3PM at the US EPA Headquarters in Washington DC.

As the DWA’s resident Rhizome Biologist, Mugwort’s platform is multi-pronged and multi-species, using its root system to address a range of regulatory rollbacks including Scott Pruitt’s recently 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.

Mugwort invites you to stand in solidarity on behalf of all life to imagine a world beyond human. Come meet the candidate and join the entire EPA team for an afternoon of embodied action, reflection and a public show of gratitude to current US EPA employees.

The Environmental Performance Agency (EPA) is an artist collective using artistic, social, and embodied practices practices to advocate for the agency of all living performers co-creating our environment, specifically through the lens of spontaneous urban plants, native or migrant. Contact EPA agents andrea haenggi, Christopher Kennedy, Ellie Irons, and Catherine Grau at environmentalperformanceagency@gmail.com

The event takes place June 15th, 2pm at Transformer, 1404 P Street NW, Washington DC, arrive 3PM at the US EPA at Federal Triangle, 12th St NW and Constitution Ave

Weedy Resistance on the National Mall

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This weekend EPA agents Ellie Irons and Chris Kennedy (with indigenous activist Sebi Medina-Tayac) led a Weedy Resistance Walking Tour of the National Mall. They led participants through a series of embodied actions, observations and discussions on the complexities of land management practices, colonial occupation, and the possibility of spontaneous urban plants to inspire new forms of political and cultural organizing in the so-called Anthropocene age.

Department of Weedy Affairs Interoffice Memo

EPA

TO: All Human Allies
FROM: Department of Weedy Affairs
RE: CALL OR TEXT THE EPA HOTLINE (240) 808-2372

Dearest friends and supporters,

I send this message from the Department of Weedy Affairs (DWA), the Environmental Performance Agency’s new office in Washington, D.C. As the Chief Safety Officer of a department founded to take “environmental protection” beyond humans, I want to alert you to the many threats to multispecies well being that have been ignored or actively exacerbated since US EPA administrator Scott Pruitt took office. Issues such as:

  • the rollback of car emission standards, and cuts to climate and clean energy programs
  • the rejection of proposed bans on harmful pesticides
  • the removal of “climate change” from US EPA and FEMA strategic plans
  • the rollback of key toxic air pollution regulations
  • the approval of Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines
  • a proposed rule change that would restrict threatened species from receiving the full protections of the Endangered Species Act
  • and the rejection of the Bureau of Land Management’s public land use planning process, among many others.

As the Chief Safety Officer I assure you that our staff at the DWA, made up of the most resilient of your kingdom Plantae, can handle these threatening environmental conditions. We’ve been evolving to endure the excesses of post-industrial Capitalism for generations. However, the other nonhuman species with whom we share this world will not be able to cope so easily, and place human well-being in further danger.

In response, the Department of Weedy Affairs has activated the web platform OnBehalfOf.Life to encourage our human allies to submit public comments to the US EPA on behalf of another species. We urge you to raise your voice and call or text the Environmental Performance Agency’s hotline (240) 808-2372 and leave a message for Scott Pruitt and US EPA officials on behalf of a species who can’t.

Let them know what you think about these changes, and help us imagine a governmental agency that advocates for ecological justice in a multispecies entangled world. Your contribution will be hand-delivered on June 15, 2018 to the steps of the US Environmental Protection Agency’s headquarters in Washington DC. All comments will also be displayed online at OnBehalfOf.Life

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact my office.

Sincerely,

 

 

 

 

Buckhorn Plantain
Department of Weedy Affairs, Chief Safety Officer
1404 P Street NW, Washington DC

A Solid Artistic Argument That We Should Replace EPA Leaders With Actual Weeds

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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).

Crack the Patriarchy in DC

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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

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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

EPA
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

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Crack the Patriarchy Workshop Image
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Weedy Resistance Workshop Image

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