StrataSpore used mushrooms as both metaphor and material to discuss infrastructure, networks, and latent potential. The process cultivated “spores” of knowledge about local ecosystems and urban sustainability. The collaborators combined elements of task and performance-based art, experiential learning, cooking, mushroom hunting and identification, and experimental design practice.
Chris Lee Kennedy
Christopher Lee Kennedy is a teaching artist who works collaboratively with schools, youth, and artists to create site-specific projects that investigate queer identity, radical schooling, and material culture. These projects generate publications, research, performances, and ongoing exchanges that celebrate the collective knowledge of a place and its forgotten histories. Recent projects include an intergenerational free school in North Brooklyn called School of the Future, an ongoing dance project using fungi as a material and metaphor for connectivity (StrataSpore), and the Queer Explorers Club, a publishing platform for queer youth, designers and artists. Kennedy hails from the shores of Ocean County, New Jersey and has lived/worked for the past 4 years in Greensboro, NC where he served as the education curator for Elsewhere, a living museum and artist residency program set inside a former thrift store. Kennedy is currently living in Brooklyn, NY where he is an Assistant Professor in art and design education at Pratt Institute. Kennedy holds a B.S. in Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, a M.A. in Environmental Education from NYU, and a PhD in Education Studies from the University of North Carolina. http://christopherleekennedy.