1. Panel Discussions
Indeterminacy, Ecology, and Urban Design: The Performance of City Ecosystems
Urban design and landscape architecture are two applied disciplines that have generated important knowledge about urban ecosystems – knowledge that has only recently been scientifically assessed in recent years by the growing field of urban ecology. How can design play an intermediary role between science, art, and performance? Is design the “missing link?” How can art and performance change design that is inherently concerned with creating urban landscapes? What does improvisation teach for designers and scientists working around the environments of cities?
Performing Queer Ecology
What does queer theory have to offer the fields of Urban Ecology? Queer Theory has powerfully influenced the field of performance studies. How might this overlap with urban ecology practices and perceptions? What does this have to offer our critical views of urban ecology? As we learn to keep an open mind to cities as ecosystems worthy of the name, are we “queering” ecology away from a normative view of wilderness and nature? Panelists will explore the relationships between queer theory and the emerging field of urban ecology.
2. Participatory Sessions
John Cage & The Art of Indeterminacy
This workshop will look at the unique role that John Cage’s interest in environmental phenomena played in his aesthetic practice and the powerful space he created for the evolution of new music and technology. Cage’s “Experimental Composition” classes at The New School are an important part of the institution’s history – not to mention the history of 20th century art and the Fluxus movement in particular – and are celebrated this year at The New School.
Open Space Discussion: Moving Forward with Science + Performance
An open conversation about blending environmental science, dance, and performance.
Thrown Outside: Research & Improvisation on the Street
Civic science & movement on the street (details TBA).
3. Performance
Lectures For Weather
Performed by Athena Kokoronis
Lectures on Weather is a performance work choreographed and performed by Athena Kokoronis in collaboration with dancers Carolyn Hall, Julia Handschuh, Hazuki Homma, HanaKyle Moranz, Katie Schetlick, and Meredith Ramirez Talusan. The piece utilizes a 1975 John Cage score called Lecture on the Weather, and incorporates ideas about mushrooms, appetite, protest, and a barter economy to create a work that explores not only an individual body’s relation to society as a whole, but also society’s relation to the individual body. With a video by Jan Mun, and sound constructions by Sandy Gordon